Frantic Assembly

Frantic Assembly is a physical theatre group formed by Scott Graham, Steven Hoggett and Vicki Middleton in 1994. It is led by artistic director Scott Graham with Despina Tsatsas as the executive producer. The company have a vivid and dynamic style combines movement, design, music and text. They have performed, created and collaborated in 30 different countries across the world.

Round-by-through 

Round - turns across the body (e.g. roll across the back)

By - step past but near your partner

Through - (e.g. lift your partners arm and go underneath and through)

      -- Experiment with the three movements to form a short sequence
      -- Add weight to the moves and 'squeeze air out'
      -- Strong contact enables transferences of partners weight
      -- Lifts and shifts are then added
      -- Focus is then varied which changes narrative

Hymn Hands
      -- Face your partner
      -- Move your own hands or your partners on each other
      -- Vary your point of focus to change the narrative
      -- Changing speed changes the narrative

Ensemble Chair Work Exercise
Our first step to create this piece was by forming our own eight positions. We then worked out who we were passing when travelling to our next position, and did a "round", "by" or a "through" movement with them. Also, we originally had pauses between each of our positions, but we then removed them to make the piece more fluid. Once our piece flowed properly, we changed our focus to make a narrative: all actors looked towards one actor and pretended that we tried (and succeeded) to get the one character drunk. This represented the scene from Shakespeare's "Othello", where the guard becomes intoxicated.

Combined Pair Work of Hymn Hands and Round-by-through
      For this exercise, our group of six broke off into three pairs and created our own characters. By being in pairs, it made it easier for us to do contact improvisation.

      Oliver and Lewis's characters were soldiers, with Oliver being wounded in battle and on his death-bed. They decided to focus on hymn hands. Certain movements displayed their characters (for example when Oliver salutes Lewis) whilst other movements help portray the narrative (for example when Lewis puts his hand over Oliver's eyes to suggest his death).
      Rhiannon and Charlie's characters were young children. They showed this by playing pat-a-cake and by having a childlike innocence with their oblivion to what goes on around them (with death on one side and relationship difficulties on the other).

      James and I were playing husband and wife, but the husband was wanting nothing to do with his wife due to her previous cheating, despite her trying to apologise and explain herself. We tried to display this through our use of facial expressions and by my movements being very open to him, whilst he had his back to me the majority of the time.
      All three pairs had one thing in common: the theme of loss. This was because we had been set a stimulus of the "Save the Children" advert of "Most Shocking Second a Day" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBQ-IoHfimQ).