Rehearsals

We had some rehearsals outside of class time, and this session we were able to show our work to Hilary for feedback. When she saw our work she really liked the theme of success that we were working with. She suggested that we record the interview questions by microphone, and have them playing on a loop so we could each answer them. She also suggested we are all on the stage at one time, whereas before we were on stage one at a time in a spotlight, answering the interview questions on by one. I really liked Hilarys suggestions because the idea of having us all on stage at one time shows equality, and shows that even though we are all from different walks of life and even though we all strive for different things, we really all just want success in life. I also liked her idea of recording the questions prior to the performance because it made the interview look more realistic and left more room for showing our characters personalities.

Rehearsal technique: hot seating

When we rehearsed for the first time we used the rehearsal technique of hot seating to explore character. We put one person in the "hot seat" at a time, and all asked her questions to which she would have to respond to in character. We asked questions such as "what do you do for a living?" "how old are you?" and "what are your hobbies?". This really helped with developing our characters and we have come up with six different personalities that we are each going to represent.

Our characters

Me: "The over-achiever"

I will be playing a smartly dressed business woman named Katie who is applying for a managerial position at a law firm. My character is sometimes full of herself and can appear cocky, but really she is a hard working individual who wants the best for herself. She has lots of experience and is very skilled at what she does.

Pauline: "The african auntie"

Pauline will be playing an older african lady named "Auntie Sarah". Her character is applying for university and has left a hard life in Nigeria to pursue her goals of getting a good education. She has small children at home and sees success as being able to provide for them, as well as proving her ex husband wrong who has held her back in the past.

Jennifer: "Essex Amy"

Jennifers character is an aspiring glamour model from essex named "Amy". She speaks with a very strong essex accent and is quite a comical character as she is so over-the-top with everything she does. She sees success as looking physically attractive and feeling good about herself. She is a very vain character who doesn't like the idea of putting in much work. She feels success can just be granted to her because of her good looks and doesn't have a very good work ethic.

Bennie: "Footlocker Flex"

Bennie will be playing a young man named Flex who is applying for a job at footlocker. He is a young father and wants to support his daughter, Kia by making money. He sees himself as physically powerful because he is motivated in going to the gym. He has never worked properly in his life but now realises it is time to get serious and be a father. He hopes to one day have a home in America.

Yughiny: "Pippa"

Yughiny will be playing a very wealthy young woman named Pippa who is simply applying for a job because her parents no longer want to support her financially. She is very inconsiderate of others and doesn't really care for working. Money has always just been given to her in the past so she has yet to learn how to work for it and achieve true success.

Shanice: "Sunflower the Hippie"

Shanice will be playing an American Hippie who wants to achieve world peace. She socially does drugs and has a very relaxed outlook on life. She has no long-term goals but wants to achieve peace and love in the short-term. She feels that her laid-back personality is all she needs to get success and hopes one day to change the world by being "everybodys best friend".

We have also now devised the interview questions that we will be recording for our performance:

-What is your name?

-What strengths can you bring to the role?

-What are your strengths and weaknesses?

-Why have you chosen to apply here?

-What does success mean to you?

Bamboo sticks and socking

Once the interview section of our performance is complete we will be performing the stick exercise we did in class in pairs. In each pair, one person will end up dropping the stick, and the three winners will do the socking exercise to compete for the final position. The performance will end for the three winners reaching for the stick, and the audience never see who actually gets the job interview. We felt that this would be the most interesting and effective ending.

This week will be working on character development and rehearsing our performance with all of our class sessions in mind.

Session 10

We began the session looking at the reading on "Theatre and Globalization". In groups we bullet pointed key points from the reading.

-"McTheatre" major musicals such as "Phantom of the Opera" "Cats" and "Les Miserables" are not individual and unique, they are a franchise. Yet they are so successful. Similar to the success of food chain McDonalds.

-Focus on money

-Homogenization is where all constituents are of the same nature.

-Globalization has spread so quickly because of technology (phone, computers etc)

-Focus on the role of language and religion. These are exchanged across the entire globe.

-Logos and brands that are instantly recongized globally.

Performance ideas

We have now formed our groups for the final performance, and I will be working with Pauline, Shanice, Yughiny, Jennifer and Bennie. Focusing on the work we have been doing on performance and the city and performance and the street, we have decided to use Stratford city as inspiration for our piece. We started thinking about what we think of when we think about Stratford, and we agreed that on a daily basis we often see people from all different walks of life walking to and from work or university. They are all dressed differently and we might speculate what type of job they are in from this. For example men in suits may be businessmen, teenagers and young adults dressed casually might be going to university. Age, appearance, language and physicalities are all factors in this. We have decided to explore the idea of success .

In order to work with the theme of success we will each be playing a different character, from all walks of life. Our performance will be based on the journey to success of each of our characters. We have decided to structure it as a job or university interview. Each of us will be answering a series of interview questions in our characters to show what success means to different people. We will be starting the performance downstairs in the university outside Stratford cirus and we will be leading the audience up to our classroom where we will perform the main body of our piece. This is because we want the audience to feel as if they are being taken on a "journey". This reflects every day life, as we are all on our own individual journeys to success. We want to incorporate the idea of socking to show how we all must defeat obstacles on our way to success and we all sometimes want to be seen as the best and the "front runner" in our jobs and in our education.

Session 9

Boal's arsenal

We did an exercise based on "hypnosis" from Boal's arsenal which involved working in pairs to experiment with power and control. One person would hold their hand out in front of their partner, and the other person would follow their hand around the space, moving with it. Sometimes my partner would raise her hand higher meaning I had to jump or stand on my toes. Sometimes she would put her hand down low making me sit or lie down on the floor. It was quite difficult to be controlled like this because I didn't have any freedom with movements. When we swapped roles and I was the one in control, I enjoyed the exercise much more because I was able to do free movements and control what my partner did. I experimented with pace, making my partner move faster or slower around the space. I also looked at how far I could take my movements while still maintaining her focus. I span around and did things to make my partner drop focus, but she managed to keep up with what I was doing quite well. We tried doing this firstly close together, and then did it being further away. I stood at one side of the room and my partner on the other, and we tried to maintain the same level of focus. This was much more difficult because other people were crossing our path, and when I was the one being controlled I felt a lot more free to move around, and I felt more like I was mirroring my partner rather than being controlled by her.

Stories

In an exercise to help us with devising we were asked to devise a table with three columns on a piece of paper. The first column was a personal story, the second was details we remember about it (what people were wearing, smells, tastes etc) and the third was political or cultural context where we wrote about what was happening in the world at that time.

My story: I was in magaluf on holiday with my friends in 2011. We were walking down a street called "the strip" which is where all the popular bars and night clubs are. I was offered a free drink by a bar tender, which I accepted. I immediately passed out and don't remember much or what happened until I was in the hospital. The doctor said my drink had been spiked with Ketamine, or horse tranquilizer. I remember crying because I was so scared, and I had to stay there for a few hours until it left my system. My friends stayed with me and then we got a taxi back to our hotel at about 6am. Since then I have a fear of taking drinks from people and am always very careful.

Details

In "the strip" I was wearing a white vest top with a pink skirt and black shoes. My best friend Hannah was wearing a black dress and had a purple flower in her hair. The song "Mr Saxobeat" by Alexandra Stan was playing. We were in a bar called "Linnekers". The bartender spoke in a thick spanish accent and wore a white t-shirt.

Context

At the time this happened, there had recently been a stabbing outside a local night club in my home town. This had made me very scared and weary to go in to night clubs, and I had to be persuaded to go on the holiday because of this fear.

Images/movements I associate with this

- Ensemble- A group of girls dancing, walking down the street

-Flashbacks- Different scenes in non linear order. Begins in the hospital

-Friends panicking

-Slow motion actions showing me taking the drink

-Done in reverse

Session 8: Performance and Globalization

Focusing on the ideas we looked at in our session on performance and the city, we explored the Stratford centre through the lens of both spatiality and movement, and globalization. Firstly we walked through the space as one group and looked at how other people reacted to us as well as experimenting with different speeds. Here are my observations:

When we entered the Stratford centre I noticed that a few people looked at us with confusion. This may have been because the majority of people in the centre were walking as individuals or in much smaller groups. Although we got a few strange looks, for the most part people seemed unconcerned and just continued with their business.

Nextly, we did this same exercise in pairs while focusing on 2-3 square meters of the space. My partner and I focused on the largest and most open part of the centre which was in the middle of all the shops. We firstly stood still in the space and observed, and no one seemed to acknowledge us particularly. Then we tried leaving the space and walking back in to it, and got a similar reaction. When we tried walking around the space in a circle rather than just going from one place to another, a few people did seem confused at what we were doing. The fact that our walk had no purpose or destination seemed to make people curious and they seemed more interested, a few people watched as they walked past. We also experimented with pace and tried walking faster and slower. The faster we walked, the more people seemed to pay attention to us, perhaps because this isn't something you would see in this space on a daily basis. When I did this as an individual, no one really acknowledged me. This shows that when you do something as an ensemble, it can be much more powerful and really grab peoples attention due to their curiosity. This has got me thinking about breaking barriers of peoples expectations. Why can't you walk around in a circle? Why is it abnormal to be in a group of 10 or 20 people? Would it be "normal" to do this anywhere else? What is "normal"? I will be considering these question in the lead up to my performance and would like to focus on doing non conventional things in a very "normal" and public space, where this type of ensemble would not be anticipated.

Session 7: Performance and Politics

Desmond Jones exercise

In this exercise we looked at exploring different states of tension and explored different physicalities. Some examples are "be hot" "be a fire" or "be jelly". With embodying these images, we moved around the space exploring the physicalities of them. We looked at seven different states of tension inspired by Lecoq. We explored these levels and had to consider the extremes of each level. When I was "being" a fire, I focused on firstly being a huge out of control fire, and then lowered the energy of my physical movements until I became a small camp fire, or a lit match. It was interesting to see different interpretations of my colleagues and see how we all respond to images in a different way. When we were responding to the image of Jelly, i noticed that my movements were quite slow and sluggish, I used flowing movements to travel around the space. However other people responded in a more fast way, they quickly threw their arms and legs about and at some points were almost running around.

Liz Lerhman- Cutting exercise

For this exercise we had to use our bodies to "cut" the space we were performing in. We started off fairly small and used movement to disect small areas of the space, before taking this idea further and creating bigger physical movements. We then tried cutting our own bodies with other parts of our bodies, and then looked at cutting others bodies. As i'm not a dancer I sometimes struggle to create flowing movements that are performed gracefully and seem dance-like, however in doing exercises like this it became easy to create a dance-like piece because of the image I was responded to. It took away the element of me thinking about my next move, and was much more instinctive and spontaneous- which is for me, what made it most successful.

Poems

We looked at reading poems aloud and physically responding to them based on how they are read. Lines of poems were read to us, and as the actors we would have to establish how we should move based on how quickly or slowly they were read. When the lines were read fast, most of my movements were rigid and quick. In contrast, when the lines were read slowly I found my movements to be quite flowing and subtle. I took my time with it. We also explored non linear structure and read certain words of the poem randomly and not in any particular order. This made my movements a lot more random, and I would respond to each word at a time because I couldn't make sense of it as a sentence. Because of this I wasn't able to fully rely on the text so I found that I had to think much more about what I was doing. It was interesting to use the poem as a basis for a performance, but also have the freedom to build upon it on my own and respond instinctively to each line, and even each individual word.

Reading: Kelleher, J (2009) Theatre & Politics, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 16-31

This reading talks about the relationship between performance and politics and how we can use performances to understand the political context of our world and make sense to it. It also explains how we might use political events to make sense of a performance, and form an emotional response to it through association.

One of the performances mentioned is the Sacha Ware production of Debbie Tucker Green's play "Random". The play has one character who emerges from the audience to tell her story, making the audience believe she is "one of them". She plays all of the characters in the play and tells a story about a violent killing that she has experienced. One of the reasons the audience are so engrossed in what she has to say is because she appears to be an audience member herself. There is a blurred line between what is real and what isn't. The story that she tells about this tragedy she has experienced is very politically relevant to our society. We have all heard about crimes, some of us may have experienced them. There are tragedies happening every day in the world as we know it, and although we may hear about someone getting murdered on the news, we usually have not heard a first hand account of the events that took place. Political theatre is a very effective means of putting a face behind the story. It allows the audience to gain an emotional understanding of events that are happening in our world. There is also some cultural relevance to the story told in this performance because the crime was committed by a black man. In today's society there is a strong association with black communities and crimes, particularly in London. This makes it all the more culturally relevant.

Political performances are an effective way of raising awareness about current events as well as potentially creating change. The emotional performance of these events on stage and the effect it may have on the audience could inspire people to change the negative things that are happening in society today and do something about it.

Session 6: Module review

In session 6 we had a review of the module so far and reflected on the practitioners we had seen to begin thinking about how they could influence or own work. Here are my notes from the module review.

Blurring boundaries

-Going beyond narrative structure

-Brechtian style of representation, announcing stage directions and changing character on stage.

-Actors do not neccesarily have characters.

Elements

-Suspension of linearity means looking at performing in a non chronological order. Doesn't always have to be a beginning, middle and end.

-Using dreams as a way of suspending time

-Text is not the only thing that is important as contemporary performance is collaborative, more emphasis on theatrical elements

Drama

-Aristotle's "mimesis"- imitations of actions and movement.

Session 5: Performance and the every day

In this session we looked at performing in various places around Stratford. I had been absent from university that week so was not able to participate but I watched all of the group performances of my colleagues. Here are my observations:

Westfield stairs

The first group I saw was Leanne, Sherelle, Jessica and Dasha. They looked at socking which is an exercise we had done in class similar to fishing. It involves moving in a similar group formation to fishing but with the person at the back of the group coming to the front, and this is repeated throughout. They performed the socking exercise on the stairs of the Westfield shopping centre in Stratford. The reaction of passers by appeared to be mainly confused and intrigued. A lot of people became interested in what was happening and stopped to watch. What i liked about this performance was the use of levels. The stairs were a very helpful part of the performance as it allowed them to experiment going up and down, higher and lower rather than just performing on one level. They also experimented with movement, rather than just walking to the front of the group they would use big over the top movements with really helped the performative aspect and made it very interesting to watch.

The second performance by Shanice and Dil also took place on the Westfield stairs and was a variation of the stick balancing exercise we had been doing in class. This group used a rope to replace the stick and worked with the same type of movement as the stick exercise to travel up the stairs. The movement was interesting because rather than just walking in one direction, they would weave in and out of the barriers on the stairs and they also experimented with pace, trying out fast and slow movements. The movements I saw were much more relaxed than the stick exercise where it was at times quite rigid. The way the piece flowed easily and gently made it seem dance like and graceful. I would like to explore how I can use movement with others to create a dance-like performance in future.

Another group performance that used dance-like elements was Jenny and Bennie's group. They performed on a small platform outside Stratford Circus and looked at moving up and down the platforms in ensemble, performing different movements. They swapped positions with each other quite often while experimenting with pace and direction. I liked how these performers were so in-tune with eachothers movements and they really looked as if they weren't just performing as individuals but they were playing off of eachother and reacting to the movements each of them did.

Reflections and ideas I would like to consider

-Experimenting with levels

-Dance-like style

-Group ensemble

-Stylised movements

Practitioners

Bobby Baker- Kitchen

One example of a contemporary performance we watched in class was Bobby Brown's kitchen performance. She used food to represent her emotions and would express different feelings by doing different actions with the food. An example of this would be when she's angry she would throw a piece of fruit. The performance felt as if it was a mockery of some kind of cooking show and reminded me of Nigella Lawson.

Bobby Baker- Shopping

Another performance done by Bobby Baker had strong themes and showed her stealing a tin of fish as instructed by the Lord, and following various commands he give to her. This felt somewhat comical and also had a theme of satire. However from another point of view this could be seen as an expression of her faith.

Lin Binyuan- Internal affairs

This performance looked at performing every day tasks such as brushing your teeth or shaving in public places. I liked the idea of taking something so ordinary and using location to create a performance out of it. It would be interesting to explore this idea in Stratford city perhaps around the shopping centre or on the tube.

Michael Landy

In this performance, Michael Landy destroyed all of his posessions to convey the message that we are too concerned with material items. It has strong messages about society today and felt very culturally relevant.

Reading: Banes, S (1993) ‘Equality Celebrates the Ordinary in Johnstone, S (2008) The Everday-Documents of Contemporary Art, London and Massachusetts: White Chapel & MIT Press pp. 113-119

In this reading, Sally Banes talks about the celebration of "the ordinary" which relates to the work we have been doing on using every day life to create a performance. One of the pieces she talks about that celebrates the ordinary is "Living Room Music" by John Cage. This was performed in 1940 and showed Cage using various household objects found in a living room to create music. This reminds me of Bobby Bakers kitchen performance as she uses household objects to create a performance that celebrates every day life and the normality of it. This module so far has led me to question- why shouldn't the "normal" life be created? Why does performance have to be dramatic? about something exciting? I believe that every day life is something we all have in common, and it is something that unites us. Therefore, we should respect that and it should be used in performances.

Another example of this type of performance talked about in this reading is "Acapulco" by Judith Dunn which showed normal activities such as a woman ironing a dress, people playing cards, and a woman brushing her hair. These every day activities were performed in slow motion which transformed them in to a dance sequence. Banes talks about how artists who perform in this way are "ordinary people" and that relating to the audience through the normalities of life such as watching people "walk, run, eat, sleep, make love, tell stories and smile" is "the most worthwhile thing an artist could help a spectator to do".

Session 4: Performance and the city

Fishing exercise

For this exercise we got in to small groups and physically formed a tight cluster by standing close together with one person at the front. In this formation we walked around the room firstly being led by the person at the front, and then by others in the group who took the lead. While walking around we performed in ensemble, and all the group members copied the movements, sounds or gestures of the person who was leading. Some of the actions we explored were lunging, running, clapping and jumping.

My observations:

-The most effective way to perform ensemble in this way is to stay close together in a tight formation, and move at a steady place.

-It is important to go with impulses, when the actions are spontaneous the performance is much more effective than them being thought out beforehand. These spontaneous impulses sometimes triggered other members of the group to take the lead and react impulsively.

-We can explore characters when doing this. Being in this type of formation made me think of animal behaviour. We experimented with the movements of a group of chickens or mice.

After doing this exercise in small groups we experimented with it further by interacting with other groups in the class to create a performance. I noticed there was a type of call and response theme with this as both groups were reacting to the movements of one another to move forward with their own.

After the main part of the session we performed a short piece that we had been developing in our free time, and these took place in various spaces around the university such as in the stairwells, the lifts and corridors. It was interesting to see how people used different spaces to create a piece of contemporary performance and it really made me realise what an extremely wide variety of performance ideas there are for my own work.

Presentation

In groups we were given a practitioner or performance organisation to research and present our findings on.

Jérôme Bel

Jerome Bel was born in the South of France in 1964 and was a choreographer who studied experimental dance. His work was known for being controversial and his pieces were usually unconventional due to his use of props and objects. This minimalistic style of performance sometimes meant there was no movement whatsoever and this would sometimes receive mixed reviews from the audience. He also focused a great deal on the theme of every day life. One of his most well known performances was called "The show must go on" which was performed in 2001. This was one of his most controversial performances and while some members of the audience sang along to the songs and enjoyed it, others walked out in anger- confused by it's unconventional style. Bel was sued in Ireland in 2002 because of a piece he performed that was not considered a dance. Many of his performances featured nudity and one of the more extreme examples is when he showed a man urinating on stage.

Reading: Harvie, J (2009) ‘Theatre and the City’, Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, pp. 1-10 and 45-61

This reading talks about the relationship between theatre and the city and why it is important in contemporary performances. It states that understanding theatre in relation to a city can make us understand the city better, and vice versa. One of the performances mentioned is "Small Metal Objects" which was performed in Stratford underground station. I found the description of this performance to be very relevant to the work we are doing in class because our university is based in the city of Stratford and this is where our performances will be. This performance involved the audience members using headsets because it was performed in a loud and busy environment. This does place some emphasis on the importance of dialogue in a performance, particularly when it is performed outside. However performances like these can make us understand how we live in a certain city or environment. The city of Stratford is well-known and iconic. I would like to consider basing my performance around every day life in Stratford, as I want the audience to understand the rich culture of it and get an insight in to how people live there.

Harvie goes on to discuss some of the benefits of performing in a city. He states that when we gather in a place or community, as audience members we might experience a sense of group identity. We feel part of something. In light of this we might look at performing in the city as not only an intregal part in the ever growing success of outdoor theatre, but also an important part of reaffirming our sense of community, and making us feel as if we belong.