Devising (23) - Full run

In this lesson we ran the whole of our piece and timed it. Below is the outline of what out piece looked like and how each scene went:

• M - Ollie walking, followed by Lewis:   Looked effective. Though can't flash the lights as frequently throughout the piece - as not allowed to have flashing lights for more than ten seconds for health and safety reasons.
• S - Rob's scene:   Rob had great eye contact for the first section. However, Rob needs to keep his feet flat on the floor at the beginning as to not distract the audience, as they are able to see his feet. He also needs to be a little bit louder in places and keep talking to the audience - as to not lose their attention. We remembered all of the movement and it all went smoothly.
• M - Ollie puppetry:   Movement needs going over and polishing.
• S - Lewis' scene:   Dialogue section was a lot better. Need to do the naturalistic section with the music Rob has sorted with the recorded questions on it.
• M - Changing colours:   Need to sort the projection.
• S - Lorna's scene:   Passing letters needs work to make it fluid. Dialogue needs a bit of work (though this was expected as it was improvised) to make sure it fits with our 1940s setting - i.e. we can't say "yep" or modern colloquial language! We need to make it clear that we aren't in the modern day - we shall do this by using an air raid siren at the beginning and by having the radio prop. We also need to practice this scene with all of our props in place - i.e. the photo frames. Also, our scene was a little bit unclear as it is in a different order, so we have decided that we shall put this scene into chronological order so it is definitely clear.
• M - Hospital:   We need to have a longer bed for Ollie.

Our piece ran today at about 17 minutes. We were fairly happy with this time as we didn't run our naturalistic section of Lew's scene. One concern we have with our piece is the motifs - it dawned on us that these might not be clear to the audience. Our first decision was to somehow put these together to form one scene, rather than four motifs, so our piece as a whole flows better. We then thought about these mental health motifs and questioned how they linked to the stimulus. I then thought of old-fashioned treatments and wondered if the idea of ghosts could be implemented somehow. Then Ollie came up with the idea of being a ghost of yourself - something that has changed you so much that you aren't recognisable as you. We liked this idea and agreed to think about it leading up to next lesson to bring some ideas to try out on Thursday.

However, when reflecting on our entire piece, and asking for feedback from the other group who watched our run, it dawned on us that it is not clear when one story ends and another begins - the audience may think it is just another scene. We then discussed how we could do this. We thought about using blackouts, but thought this could still look like just another scene. We then considered having a flip chart at the side with writing on, but thought that we could be more cunning with it. The idea of a flip chart made Ollie think of having a giant story book at the side, which then made me think of having four books (a book each). These four books could be lined up along the front of the stage - before that scene starts, the main person of said scene would pick open the book and leave it on the floor open, and then walk back to the book after the scene to close it (whilst the next person opens their book). This will hopefully make it clear that each person has a different story (as well as this linking directly to our stimulus "ghost stories"). Whilst the main person is opening their book, the other three could set any props needed for the following scene, to make our transitions as smooth as possible.