Site Specific (3) - First ideas - Temple Manor

In today's lesson we were given pictures of Temple Manor, as this is the venue we are preferring, and split in to two groups to come up with ideas. Katya really likes the play "The Crucible" and thinks that this would work well in this location. We took the idea of a witches ritual and came up with ideas. We thought about making the ritual a motif. We debated whether we should show a recruiting ritual or a sacrificial ritual. We watched a short YouTube clip to give us inspiration - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUGvUhlj-cc. From this clip, we liked the idea of shapes, chanting and unison movements.

Using the pictures for ideas, we thought of three places that our ritual could take place: around the fireplace, outside (potentially using a tree) and everyone on the ground but the leader on the balcony section / top of the steps.

We tried to avoid stereotypes by making out ritual in the shape of a square, instead of a circle. After listening to a couple of pieces we decided on this piece of whispered chanting (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsEw9lBiDBg).  We tried doing our movement to a choral piece of music, and then again to the instrumental version of "DNA" by Little Mix, but we settled on the satanic chanting. As there was no real beat for the choral chanting we found it difficult to stay in time with each other, and we decided against "DNA" as it sounded too 'poppy' but we liked the introduction. The movement we came up with was as follows:

• All begin facing outwards in a small square (DSL Lewis, DSR Kat, USR Hope, USL Lorna) with our heads down. Wait for 8 counts. Intriguing start.
• Reach outwards for 4, then pull in for 4. Shows desperation and looks creepy. Swap places with the person diagonally opposite, Kat and I move first (new places: DSL Hope, DSR Lorna, USR Lewis, USL Kat). All reach again for the same amount of counts. All walk in to centre and then move as a group round 90 degrees and walk back out to new corner (new places: DSL Kat, DSR Hope, USR Lorna, USL Lewis).
• Reach outwards for 4, then pull in for 4. Swap places with the person diagonally opposite (new places: DSL Lorna, DSR Lewis, USR Kat, USL Hope). All reach again and then face inwards. Audience expect the same sequence, but challenges their expectation / surprises them when we don't.
• We utilised our groups abilities - Hope is bi-lingual; she can speak Nigerian fluently. Rather than trying to script something clever to chant, Hope spoke in Nigerian in a smooth, low tone. The reason for this is that our audience wouldn't know what was being said and thus may make them feel a bit uneasy - it also avoids cliché dialogue and is different to the chanting track we used. When she says "fall" in Nigerian (which she taught us), we drop one at a time to our knees. We then picked a different movement each, which we repeat whilst we are on the floor. This creates the repetitive feel of rituals.

The other group then told us their ideas from looking at the pictures. We had a practical approach for our ideas, coming up with a short section of movement, whilst the others came up with ideas for a story line. They came up with the idea of using witches to influence a young girl. This girl also owns a voodoo doll and is destroying people with it. They were inspired by the room with a large box in it, thinking that this could be the little girl's room. They also thought of the idea of healing and having a priest character.

We shall develop our ideas next lesson but decided that to finish this lesson we would put everyone else in our movement piece, as we thought it would be a nice piece to keep and potentially use.