Today Lewis gave us our second script for his Greek era play. Originally he gave us part of the play "The Frogs" by Aristophanes, but he had edited the script to turn it into a rap battle. However, the class (including me) didn't understand the meaning of the lines and were unsure on this play. Therefore, Lewis changed the play to an extract from "Cyclops" by Euripides. Lewis hasn't told us much about this scene apart from he wants to change it into a physical theatre piece. He will remove almost all of the dialogue (apart from any chorus sections) and change it into gestures, mime and general physical theatre. He gave out the roles and told us to all create a mask for our characters. As well as being in the chorus, Lewis has also given me the role of a soldier (indicated in green in the script).Above is the mask I designed. As my character is a soldier, I instantly thought of a helmet therefore I covered the forehead and cheeks with metal. I made the mouth hole large and square: large to fit the Greek style (as they had large mouth holes for projection), and square to fit regimented and orderly military theme. I added "dents" to the helmet to show that my character is a serving soldier and will fight hard in battle.
20/01/16: Today we began blocking a little bit of the piece. Lewis has now decided that he wants the whole piece to be physical theatre, and the only spoken section will be little rhyming stanzas by the chorus (as if they are narrating the action).We shall have music underneath the whole scene (apart from when the chorus speaks); the song we are using is "Heartbreak" (Chase & Status remix) by Nneka. We devised some of the movement piece for the introduction of the soldiers. Whenever the soldiers stand still, our feet are shoulder-width apart (to create a strong looking and sturdy base), our left elbow out with our hand in from of our chests (to represent a shield) and our other hand in a fist to the side of our body (to represent holding a spear). Our movement section aimed to portray who our characters were and to present the unity amongst them (hence why our movements were in unison). Although the movements were in unison, we performed them facing different direction - this is to symbolise the togetherness but also how they look out for one another, are protective and brave. Next lesson we shall add to this scene.
21/01/16: In this lesson we completed the movement for the scene. All we have left to do now is teach Tom the scene (as he was absent this lesson), learn the stanzas off by heart so we don't need to use scripts and to make our masks. We began this lesson by doing a physical warm up to ensure that we wouldn't pull any muscles and to increase our heart rate. We then ran through what we did last lesson, movement wise. Lewis then taught us what he had devised; the photograph on the left is of the notes from his journal for the scene. I thought Lew's movements were very clever as they not only portrayed our characters and relationships but it conveyed the narrative effectively. Although the piece worked well, there were a couple of bars once we walked on where we simply stood still. I then created a short little movement section to fill the gap. Once we walked on to our places, I made us all move places in a clockwise direction to show that we are a uniformed group who support each other. When we return to our original places, I set a lung outwards to different directions to portray the soldiers looking for trouble, covering all directions. We then repeated this lunge to show that the soldiers are cautious and have each others backs covered. Afterwards, we march on the spot turning 90 degrees anticlockwise every two marches. As this is in unison, it suggests that the soldiers are uniformed and are a professional squadron. Next lesson we shall be making our masks, but we also need to teach Tom what he missed, perfect our contact improvisation duets and fill a couple more "lamppost" moments (and learn the stanzas!).
