Devising (18) - Motifs & Research

We devoted the vast majority of this lesson to our motifs, and the remainder to a discussion about my scene.

1. Our first motif we had already devised - this was Ollie walking from one side of the room to the other, followed by Lewis who joins in a little bit later than Ollie's entrance. 
2. We had a rough idea on what we wanted for our second motif - we knew we wanted to do some sort of puppetry. We changed our chair from our first version, to me on my hands and knees to form a seat as this made our motif more abstract, as the puppetry isn't very naturalistic. Our puppetry section contains Rob controlling Ollie's arms, checking his reflects and his pulse. Every movement that Ollie does is because of Rob controlling him. However, before our blackout at the end of this motif, we wanted something that Ollie could do by himself - after some experimenting, we just wanted Ollie to clench his hand into a fist - this is because it is small enough that it isn't too cliché and over-the-top, but it is enough for the audience to notice.
3. Our third motif is practically the same as the one we had previously created - however we have developed it slightly. Instead of Ollie just listing simple colours to me, he shall get brighter as it continues - i.e. he will start with colours such as "blue" and "yellow", and will eventually lead to "burgundy" and "magnolia". At the end of this motif, there will be a flash of bright light and Ollie will look directly at me.
4. We have completely changed the final motif. Initially, we were planning on Ollie doing a variety of head movements. We took inspiration from our physical theatre hospital scene in "Dr Faustus" - we aren't doing our version to music though and aren't making it seem such a chaos. Instead, Ollie lies on a table, and we all have three movements that we shall repeat (I mime putting a mask on his face, giving him an injection, and taking his temperature). After this, Rob mimes using a defibrillator - on each touch Ollie lifts his chest up. This happens four times, but then Ollie doesn't move on the next few. Therefore, Rob, Lewis and I walk away, but as we walk off Ollie starts doing the same chest movements again. On his last one, his head falls to the side to face the audience.

Having decided against the abortion and the domestic violence ideas, the only other idea we had before this lesson was body image expectations... however, we were unsure on this idea as we thought it might be too similar to the idea of media. We therefore came up with three new ideas: religion, adultery and World War Two - the ideas seem random and completely different, but we wanted something quite unexpected but something that haunts you. We also want this scene to contain quite a lot of dialogue as our other scenes are heavily movement based. We therefore thought that we could do a section of a play from one of these topics. We were all interested in the war, so we ended up coming across the play "Kindertransport".

"Kindertransport":

• "Kindertransport" is a play by Diane Samuels.
• Kindertransport was "an organised rescue effort that took place during the nine months prior to the outbreak of the Second World War" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindertransport.
• Play's setting: November 1938.
• British government set us a programme to allow Jewish children safe entry to the UK. They were separated from their families, and moved to a different culture in Britain, and were spared the death camps.
• In the play, daughter of Helga and Ernest, Eva Schlesinger, is transported to Manchester and moves in with single mum Lil (until her parents have got enough money to move to England too).
• Lil and Eva fall out because Eva skips English classes to go round to posh houses to try and get her parents a job. Lil and Eva eventually make up, and Eva starts to lose her Jewish roots as she eats ham.
• When Eva is in her late teens, Helga arrives and is told by Eva that she is now adopted by Lil, English and called Evelyn. Helga is "offended and upset" she won't go to New York with her family, and tells her her dad is dead. They argue, and Helga leaves - followed by an "imaginary vicious, angry argument between Helga and Evelyn in which Evelyn gets out all of her hatred for Helga, and she proclaims that Helga IS the Ratcatcher."
• Meanwhile, in the present, "Evelyn's daughter Faith is uncovering her Mum's secret past and they have an argument, which eventually comes to rest. All of this takes place in the attic of Lil's house, which supposedly represents Evelyn's psyche."

We shall have a look at this script and see if we can do anything with it for my scene.