"Suddenly there is an almighty crash and countless MEN IN UNIFORM flood into the room and set about dismantling it. It is terrifying and completely disorientating; the whole world changes."We wanted to do a movement piece here involving everyone to make the audience feel confused and on-edge. The purpose of this section is to confuse the audience by destroying their "safety net" of the Book Club. Throughout the play to this point, we have lured them into a false sense of security by keep returning to the Book Club - this is a safe place to the audience as they understand what goes on during the Book Club scenes and are comfortable at these points as they are not tense. By having a movement section that destroys the idea of Book Club, and basically suggests that it never existed, confuses the audience and makes them feel very vulnerable.
Our initial thought for this section, was to have Julia and Winston in the middle, and everyone else moving around them quickly and we would use strobe lighting for this. However, we decided to forget about lighting for the time being and focus on the movement itself. We instantly decided that we wanted to use Mudvayne's "Dig" again to have continuity in the piece and to suggest to the audience that something terrible is happening. Our first step to creating this section was by working out what the stage space looked like in the previous scene. We realised that the Book Club chairs were still set up, so we would use these in our section. To show the Book Club being destroyed, we would pick up these chairs and get rid of them. We wanted to make this section quite chaotic, so Charlie came up with the idea of throwing and catching chairs, stacking them and then leaving. The aim of this would to be disorientate the audience.
We liked the idea of throwing chairs around, but knew we would want to include more movement as well as to build more of an atmosphere. Therefore we got into pairs and came up with a few movements that would be suitable for the piece. We picked our five favourite movements and would use these throughout our section. The movements were varied in terms of levels (with three of them being on the floor and two standing).
We began our physical theatre section sitting in the chairs as if we were about to do a Book Club scene, but Winston and Julia stood centre stage. We sit still for the first four bars but put our hoods up on the last beat of the last bar. The purpose of this is to show the audience that we are not our normal characters (as we are representing Thoughtcriminals at this moment). We then all perform any three of the five movements in different orders. Once we have done this, Hope and Oliver go back to their places and catch the chairs that are thrown at them and then catch and stack them. When throwing chairs, we had to ensure that they were thrown flat as to ensure that no one would be injured. We also had to make sure that anyone not throwing or catching chairs were right out of the way. Those not throwing chairs continue performing some of the five movements and mime tearing down posters off of the walls.
Once the chairs have all been stacked and are moved away, everyone performs lifts or short sections to get off-stage. The first thing that happens in this leaving process, is Julia has a paper bag put over her head (as instructed by the stage direction) and is taken off by Ollie. In the meantime, Charlie picks up the one remaining chair and places it centre stage (ready for Winston to be placed on at the very end of this section). Charlie then stands on this chair and is lifted by Lewis, Oliver, James and I, and is carried off to the back. I exit by being picked up by Oliver and carried in a bridal carry lift, but my body is limp.
