Devising (11) - Being more abstract

To begin today's lesson, we ran what we had created last lesson. We liked the beginning of our piece, but felt that the shop section and the cash point section were a bit boring and also not long enough. We felt like we were being a bit to naturalistic with it, so decided that we needed to be more abstract. 

Necklace Section:   We decided that we would adapt our shop section so it was slightly longer but more interesting to watch. We wanted to make our movements very regimented and almost robotic to make it more abstract. Therefore, I repeated the movements of miming picking up an item on my right, scanning it centre and placing it on my left. Once I had repeated these movements a few times, I mimed tearing a receipt from the machine and giving it to the customer who would then be on my left. Whilst I did this, the customer (first Lewis and then Ollie) would mime taking an item out of a basket and passing it to me. All of our movements would be very clean and identical every time we repeated them - this was to make it as abstract as we could. Our transition from our opening positions to this scene is a fluid turn and walk to the back (for Ollie and Lewis, but I walk to the chair and sit behind the table). To begin this scene, Lewis and Ollie walked forwards in a straight line. They performed some regimented movements in unison to show them taking items off of the shelf. Lewis shall then walk over to me and be the first customer, whilst Ollie continues the shelf movements. Lewis will then walk to the side, as if he has left the shop, whilst Ollie becomes the next customer before bumping into Lewis outside.

Cashpoint Section:   For this section, we kept exactly what we already had, but we made it extremely abstract. We made this section similar to our shop one by making our movements very regimented, but we weren't as rigid at all times. We turned the table up on its side, so the top of the table was facing the audience - this formed our cashpoint. Ollie hid behind the table and put his hand over the top, as if he was giving Lewis money, after Lewis tapped the table. Originally, I stood to the side and watched him - I then mimed placing a gun to his head and taking his money then leaving. However, there were two things we didn't like about this scene - the fact that our backs were completely to the audience so they wouldn't be able to see much; the fact that my part was quite naturalistic. To solve our first problem, we turned our piece 90 degrees. We didn't think it would work that the audience could see Ollie, but we tried it this way and it actually worked quite well. Lewis' movements were repeated and organised, but less rigid that the shop section, as he added in a fluid arm movement to collect money from the cashpoint. Rather than me standing and watching Lewis, we changed it so I start facing the back, do a half turn to face the front, then do a head to the left (to look at Lew) then to the front, then a knee roll to turn me to face Lewis. I then did three walks towards him, but on my fourth step I turned so we were back to back. This made our piece really abstract, as I didn't just walk in naturalistically, and we did the robbery with our backs together. I put the gun up to his head by doing a half circle with my lower arm. Lewis then passed his money to me over our shoulders.

The Beheading Section:   For our beheading scene, we turned the table (that was on its side) upside down. We wanted this scene to be completely different to our first two sections, as Danny Cornelius was a witness to this event, unlike the other two where he was the victim. Therefore, we didn't have a section of movements that we kept repeating - we created a physical theatre scene of movements that all flowed into each other. We initially thought that we could use lighting to show the beheading - but as we needed this scene to be longer (for Rob to do a good amount of meaningful narration over it and because it was the event that tipped Danny over the edge) we created a piece made up of different methods of torture, rather than just the beheading. We used the upturned table as if I were trapped. We use a bit of puppetry to show the murderers manipulation and control. We decided against using lighting at this stage, as we wanted the suicide to be the main section of this entire scene, and also we didn't want to take away from the lighting we use in our motif. Instead of the lighting, Lewis and Ollie will have some red face paint on their hands (inspired by pictures of killers whose hands were covered in blood) that they will smear across my neck. Therefore we shall make this entire the scene the last scene in our piece, and only Rob and Ollie shall be in the final motif. So we could use more space and wasn't restricted by the table, at one point I break out of the table. We involved some floor work and moments of slightly more abstract stage combat. We vary our levels to show the victims struggle with survival, but end on the floor to show the inevitable death. 


Next Lesson:   Hopefully by next lesson, Rob should have finished writing all of his narration (but if not we shall help him). We shall film this scene in its entirety and hopefully continue with our domestic violence scene.