Devising: Day 33

Today was the scheduled date of our performance, however, after spending the day setting up and sorting out last minute sound and lighting cues, we only managed to get one group performed. The decision to delay our performance was mainly due to the fact that the end of the day would start a lot of noise and our audience would want to leave to go home. Personally, I had no problem performing after school, but I would rather us not be interrupted. One benefit of this is that we have more time to prepare, although we were ready to go today. During run throughs, transitions were still messy but a lot better than previous attempts. I think the choice to keep the same base costume was a wise one as we took long enough moving our desks and chairs out of the way so to just throw on and off a blazer made things a lot easier. I think the piece should be fine, our practice run allowed us to get everything in place and just how we wanted, from songs, sound effects and lighting. We just need to perform it.

Below is my teacher characters costume. I chose this blazer for him as I imagine him to fit nicely into a wool, almost tweed like. It emphasises the fact that he is like a granddad for his age. The 25 year old that shops in M&S, drinks cup-a-soup for lunch, organises his aftershaves, someone who should really be 60.

Devising: Day 32

Today was our last day of rehearsing before we actually performed our piece on Monday. We decided to use this time running through our whole piece. Whilst working on trying to remember our transitions and lines again. There wasn't really much we could do other than keep practicing today, making sure we knew our lines and scene changes.

We discussed costume again and decided that we didn't need to change our previous ideas, also we worked out what props we needed for Monday and where we would get them from. We experienced the same problem with our meeting scenes again in the fact that they were still very static. Hence, we all picked a time in the performance where we would get up from the meeting table and go to the coffee table in the far end of the stage. Other than that we didn't really have much to do. I put all our tracks and sounds we needed onto a media player and that what is it.

Devising: Day 31

We managed to get into the main hall for the first time in a couple of weeks today, which was a great help as it allowed us to set out our stage on the floor and finally use the exam desks that we wanted, hence, we could plan our transitions and set out our scenes from paper to real life. This was fantastic as it made the piece seem like it was no longer in our heads. Transitioning from the end of every other piece back into the meeting scene was fine, all we had to do was arrange our tables in a circle. Originally we joined all the tables together, however, this blocked some of the audience out and made is seem very small in comparison to the rest of the stage, almost as if we were excluding some audience members. This sparked the idea to move into a circle. We also had the idea of rotating where we sat each time, however, for some reason this became far too complicated so we decided to stay in the same places.

The main problem was trying to clear the performing space for movement scenes. The Victorian scene was relatively easy as all we had to do was face two desks out either side and leave one in the middle with another desk shifted a few feet in front of us. The only change we made was that instead of those sitting on the desks facing the audience nearest to them, they would face the side furthest away. This way the audience wouldn't feel intimidated by the performers being so close and we could all see the small book routine that the teacher character leads. For our second movement piece, we needed to clear the desks of the stage but leave the chairs on to shift them to the back of the stage in an arc. This was a little harder to conduct. In the end, we settled for each of us just taking our own desks to the side we were nearest to and the coming back for our chairs, it looked a little messy and is something we need to work on getting the timing right.

The final part of the lesson involved us working on the final part of the script. One of our members suggested that, as the final scene, it needed more substance. Hence, we tried to add to it. The main point in this scene was to have everyone's tempers boil over and for the scene to develop into chaos, whilst remaining rather comical. This part, we improvised and picked out lines we liked to add in. We also added a small argument scene in the middle of the piece to give another group members late entrance more of an impact as we all fall silent and glare at him. We work shopped certain ideas of lines we wanted to say but ultimately came to the conclusion that we were going off on a tangent too much and our scene had peaked a long time before, hence, cut it back down a little to make sure the climax built as we wanted it to. This lesson really helped us in the fact that our ideas were made tangible and made me realise how much we already knew, allowed us to make minor changes according to our surroundings and highlighted areas of work, namely lighting and transitions.

Soundscape (top picture)
Victorian scene (bottom picture)

Devising: Day 30

We began our last full week of rehearsals with a run through of what we had to the class and our teacher so that we could make or he offered any small adjustments to our piece before the performance. One of the main weaknesses in our run through was the transitions from scene to scene. We hadn't really focused on transitions before not really knew what we were doing, so the change over from each scene looked messy.

However, the core of the performance was there, and seeing as we had been without one group member for the last two weeks, we were in a decent place ready for him to come back. All that was really required was to learn our lines, and make sure that our conversation scenes flowed fluently, as a normal meeting would. I think that aspect would come into play any more prominently once we know our lines, which are beginning to take shape, occasionally we go a little off script which works rather nicely.

After an hour or so, we switched and were sake I watch the other group run through theirs as they watched ours. However, I saw this as an opportunity to get more planning done. Whilst watching (and I promise that I was) I conjured up a small lighting plan for our missing group member to plot seeing as he loves lights so much.  I think the piece is slowly starting to get there. Although I am a little nervous and worried about it not being ready. I think we took a little too long with the scripts, but I suppose the main focus on our piece was to create quality dialogue. It's different from what I'm used to. We've created movement pieces so many times in the past that creating actual dialogue that is sophisticated is rather hard. I hope the quality of our writing is shown.

lighting plan

Writing in role: Education

I based this written piece around my teacher character, however, this time with a completely different mindset, one before the meeting and before his first day in his new job.

Staging ideas

As we have set the piece in traverse, we need to be very careful in how we stage things. Of course, no matter how hard we try, we will always have one point were our back is to the audience, it more of a need of making sure as the whole audience can see enough to understand what is going on.

One problem became apparent in our movement piece... we had set it up as if we were performing to an audience in proscenium arch. We were faced with two options as labelled below. Each scene is labelled with the arrows showing what way we re facing to open us up to audience. Assuming the audience is running vertically either side.

Devising: Day 29

Devising: Day 29

Today, we spent the first lesson perfecting all four of our scripts, looking at previous annotations and correcting them on the computer. We also stayed yesterday evening to set all of our scripted scenes and look at how we wanted to perform them, looking specifically at playing our characters properly and effectively. So, for me, I focused on making my speech jittery and quick, whilst wing conscious to make sure my diction was still as good as it needed to be for the audience to be able to understand what I would be saying. I made sure I was restless in my chair and played close attention to the lines the others were saying, which ultimately led to us being able to correct the parts we wanted as we had a better idea of how we wanted the events to unfold.

Once the scripts were corrected we went onto re setting our new contemporary pieced based around control. As we forgot what we set last time, we found it difficult to remember what we needed to do. Of course, we could remember certain bits but not the whole piece. To add some more content to the piece we devised a small section of chairography. In this part, we hid behind the chairs whenever the teacher would look to the front and edge in closer. Freezing whenever he turned around.

Writing in role: After meeting

Education

I'll have to be honest with you, I feel completely out of my depth here. I mean, for starters... no one seemed to listen to me in that meeting. We think we have a problem with the children, but really, the adults here a to blame too. They were rude, talked over each other, not to mention one idiot arriving late. I'm sorry, but I did not go to university to do my degree in English plus another two, hard years of teacher training to be pushed around and work with these buffoons.

They just don't seem to care! And they're hardly welcoming...You know, on my first day here one of the staff members thought I was a new year 12 sixth former! The cheek, I'll have you know that I am actually 24 years old. I actually have the need to shave, I can actually drive and have an alcoholic beverage. Just because I'm short and choose not to grow the beard does not mean I'm a child. I cannot help looking so youthful! I came out of uni with a firsts for Christ's sake, not to mention the fact that I was ambassador for my uni, which just so happened to be UCL, who are only one below Cambridge and Oxford. Sure, I applied for them but I guess I just wasn't good enough for them. Apparently in the interview for Cambridge they said I was too jittery and nervous. Haha, funny that. Me? jittery and nervous. It's not as if I actually enjoy perspiring twice the amount of a normal person, or begin to laugh uncontrollably when placed in a new situation, another reason why Cambridge didn't like me, they told me I laughed even when they didn't say anything remotely funny.

But, that aside, seriously, I'm beginning to wonder what on God's green Earth am I doing in a condemned hell hole of a school like this. The children are vile, not like the children I grew up with. I thought I'd be teaching nice, pleasant, hard working pupils. But I'm faced with the same little, vulgar maggot children every Tuesday afternoon. They throw books, call me names, snap my own pens. Which are not just any pens I'll have you know, but Parker. I'd only trust WHSmiths to provide my pens but those horrid devil children seem intent on snapping the ends and smashing the cartridges all over the windows. Then, I get in the neck for not controlling them properly! Seriously, I get so worked up sometimes that I need to pop to the canteen to make myself a dandelion and elderflower tea. Seems to be the only thing that can stop my crying. Haha...hah...hahaha. Ohhhhh.

Character profile


The character I will mainly be playing in our devised piece is the young, jittery teacher in the boardroom scenes. Although we didn't give any of our characters different names, our personalities would be far different from ourselves.


I took inspiration from my character from the character Josh Maguire played in Future Conditional (the one in the orange tie and grey blazer) As you can see, he appears quite geeky and jumpy, something I want to show my character as being. I believe my character would be quite childish and pathetic in the way he speaks, almost as if he hasn't yet reached the proper maturity adulthood entails. I decided that my character would always be jittery. Whenever I sit in the meeting scenes I work on how I sit, with feet tucked under the chair, perhaps a little restless to emphasise my characters juvenile nature. However, trying to convey this restlessness was more difficult. I didn't really know what to do so I thought, maybe I should get up and make a cup of tea, or offer out a pen. I think a nervous laugh every now and again would sum my character up too. Being not completely sure about the others around him, not knowing whether to be forceful through fear of being shouted at.


When I decided I wanted to play a character like this in our piece, I always gained the impression that he would be a very young teacher, one that is new to the job and hence, whilst in the meeting is skittish and not completely comfortable in his surroundings, after all, he barely knows the people he is speaking with and perhaps feels a little nervous. He is threatened by the strong personalities in the meeting room.

Devising: Day 28



Having missed the previous lesson through other commitments, we discussed where we were at. With the three out of the four scripts ready to be printed. We briefly checked all of our scripts and made little changes to the area we felt necessary before printing. Whilst one of our group members began work on writing the script, the rest of us began thinking about the costume we wanted to wear during the performance. I think, with all the scenes where we would play students, we agreed that we would wear the same clothes, whether that be in the Victorian time period, or the future. The idea behind this being that the children will always have the tendencies to misbehave and will always have the same capabilities of bad behaviour, but that it is the time period and how this influences the children that cause a change in the behaviour across the years.


The costume we decided on for the students was black trousers/skirt, with a white top and various ties, we will adjust these uniforms for each scene, whether that be unbuttoning a shirt, rolling the sleeves up or taking off the tie. We also decided that the teachers would be wearing a robe in the 1800's and a grey blazer in the other scenes.

 

The Victorian picture that sparked our uniform idea. As you can see, they're all wearing a white collared top with a tie, however, wearing a blazer for us would be too difficult to find six matching ones, plus it would make quick costume changes even harder, especially in the traverse staging. Ideally, it would be great to have all the costumes we needed and be able to carry out numbers of costume changes, however, they would take too long and weaken our piece if we did so. I think, in order to improve what we done today, we needed to discus more, as a group, what we wanted the end script to be like, we left it to one person, who was happy to do so, whilst we got other things sorted and as a result, it may not be completely what we wanted as a whole.

Devising: Day 27


Today, we continued on with our 3rd script. We had previously finished our 2nd script, so we decided to give what we had written a read through to make sure it sounded okay and read properly. We made annotations to this original piece, re wording lines to make them flow better giving the script a greater cohesion. We then, made the corrections to the original script on the laptop.

Our third script however, needed adjusting. We wanted to give our sarcastic character the right lines to bring out the comedy value and mix the seriousness of the topic with some humour. But finding these lines was a difficulty. We experimented with several but needed one that packed a punch, without sounding immature