At the beginning of this lesson we all agreed on where and when we were going to set our version of "After Troy". We decided we wanted to set our piece in modern day in an abandoned underground station. We liked the idea of having our piece set in modern day as it makes the audience feel slightly more connected (rather than having the whole piece set in ancient Greece). However, so the audience understands where our piece was supposed to be set (to make the characters names make sense), we will have Greek graffiti on our set. The abandoned underground setting causes an uncomfortable and eerie atmosphere.
Once we made these decisions, we thought we would create our own physical theatre prologue. The idea of this was to help the audience understand what has happened prior to the beginning of the play (to give them a bit of background knowledge) as well as to show the contrast between men and women at this time, and to create atmosphere. To make our prologue modern and to create the right atmosphere, we decided to us "Nightmare" by "Avenged Sevenfold". We liked the contrast between the eerie introduction and the aggressive song itself.
On the introduction, we decided to have Hope, Kat and I walk on holding our babies (rolled up sheet). This showed the women as caring and supportive. However, the fact that there was just three of us and the music foreshadows something bad is going to happen to the women and children, the introduction suggests that the women are very vulnerable.
When the drums come in, the boys enter. On the first drum fill, two of the boys run over to Kat, pull the sheet out of her arms and open it. Kat then drops to her knees reaching towards the sheet. The purpose of this section is to show that the women had to watch their children be murdered in front of them. This section happens twice more - first to me (on the second drum fill) and then to Hope (on the third drum fill).
Afterwards, the three of us run in to the sheet and try to get through it, but are forced back. The idea of this was to show that the women have no way of escaping and have now been captured. We then have different lifts in these small groups to show that the women were man-handled and were given no respect. It also showed how strong and powerful the men were. Charlie then brings Rhiannon on by her hair. He goes to offer her a drink (as he feels bad for her), but is scowled at by another officer and then drinks the drink in front of her (as he is under pressure). The purpose of this was to show that regardless of how the men may have actually felt, they were given orders to follow.
All the while, Lewis and James have broken off to the back and are destroying the set (tearing paper of the wall, moving blocks by throwing them to the floor, etc.) to show the destruction and violence at the time. We are then left with three sets of partners: Ollie and Kat, Oliver and Hope, Robert and I. In these pairs, we show the three different types of abuse that women received: mental (Ollie and Kat), physical (Oliver and Hope) and sexual (Robert and I). We show this through short movement pieces. We decided not to perform these at the same time, because otherwise the audience would not know where to look and thus would not understand our intentions. Therefore, we performed these sections one at a time and ended our section on a freeze frame that made it clear what the abuse was (purely by looking at the freeze frame itself).
Next lesson, we shall continue developing our prologue, and add Rhiannon into it (as she wasn't in this lesson).
