In this lesson we performed our piece to the Year Eight's to see how they would react to what we have done so far, so we could work out what we wanted to change before we performed it to our Single class. What went well:
We all remembered the movement and it looked really effective
Our transitions between each section were smooth and we went back to the correct chair
We all put a lot of emotion into it by using our facial expressions
I tried to use a contrast of dynamics when performing my duet section with Lewis, this was to trick the audience into thinking that I was the victim.
What didn't go so well:
There was a large gap between each section due to the music not coming in on time.
At one point, the wrong music track came on due to technical difficulties.
Our timing was a little bit dodgy at the beginning, due to the fact that we scrapped the quotes.
What we will change before we perform to our year group:
We shall create a duplicate playlist on another phone, so if one goes wrong, then we can use the other one.
Rhiannon and I shall lift Rob a little bit later to ensure that the rest of this section fits better with the music.
We weren't 100% certain that our audience understood our piece completely so we shall adapt what some people say during their group sections to make sure they did get it. Also we have now created a projection PowerPoint that we shall play at the very beginning of our piece. This PowerPoint will be made up of questions such as "What would you do if you saw domestic violence happen in public?", "Does domestic abuse have to be physical?" and "Is domestic abuse gender specific?". This will ensure that our audience understands exactly what the piece is about.
At the end of this lesson we also discussed Rob's character. To show that Rob is the same character in the opening and the councillor, we though that he could have a monologue at the beginning and then a short one at the beginning of the counselling scene. His first monologue could say how he "is stuck in the middle" and his later monologue could mention how he "was stuck in the middle". This monologue would introduce the abusers and victims and audience to the counselling session.
In today's lesson we taught Ollie what he had missed in the previous lesson. We also walked through the ending scene. We found this quite challenging as we are so used to the opening, so doing this backwards felt rather strange. However, the ending does look really effective now.
We then ran through the entire piece. We altered sections that we thought needed to be altered as we went along. We decided that we shall have the chairs positioned SL and SR facing inwards. When we are not performing we shall sit on these chairs and watch the performance. We have decided to do this instead of facing out as it symbolises how many people may see domestic violence but do nothing about it. We also decided that abusers should sit SL and victims SR, as this is where we finish the opening scene, but also to make it clearer to the audience. To keep continuity, we had to leave these chairs to begin our duet/group sections and then return to them. To be able to do this, we had to alter our entrances and exits.
Moreover, Lewis and I ran our duet section twice: once to see if there were any mistakes and once to perfect it. The first time round we realised that we had forgotten our speech and a little bit of our beginning section. Therefore we quickly recapped this and then ran it again.
Afterwards, we all agreed that we would cut out the facts at the beginning the reason for this is that when we came to reverse the scene at the end, it wouldn't make sense.
Bring chairs on and sit down. All repeat one movement that shows our character (the victims did a movement that showed they were vulnerable, e.g. cowering / the abusers did a sharp sudden movement) - I did a sudden kick before I crossed my legs, to show my character's unpredictable nature and violent tendencies.
We all perform a movement towards the person on our left, in cannon. When the circle is complete, we go back the other way reacting to the movement that happened to us on the other way round - James is on my left and goes to hug me, but stops before he touches me. I turn and spit at Rhiannon. The reason I spat was to show continuity as I spat at Lewis during our duet section. Rhiannon's reaction to me is to wipe her face and then turn me to face James. My reaction to James is to put my hands up in a cross and then throw them down. This also shows continuity as I do this in my duet as well.
To allow Rob to have some movement, we thought that he could be the leader of the counselling session. Rob does a little duet section with the three victims where he uses a puppetry technique to get them to stand up tall (to represent them becoming more confident) and he turns them away and makes them stand to the sides.
Rob then stands in the middle of the circle and uses puppetry again to make us stand and then move over one place to then sit down in the seat that was on our right - when the abusers sit in the victims chair, we are representing the abusers seeing things from the victims point of view.
We then repeat the movements that the person who was sitting in the chair before did at the beginning - this is symbolic of the abusers being in the victims shoes.
Whilst the abusers are performing the victims movements, the victims pick up the other chairs and place them behind the abusers so they are back to back.
Rob does a duet with each of the three abusers. The duet consists of him trying to touch us on the shoulder and then give us a hug but we reject both. We then takes our arm, lowers us back to our chair and then pulls us back up again. We then turn round and sit facing the victims backs - Rob lowering us on to the chairs represents him lowering our egos and reducing our anger. The fact that abusers take Robs arm shows that they have calmed down and are more trusting.
The victims and abusers have a duet section in which the victims at first refuse to accept their apology because they are scared, but by the end they seem to have resolved their problems - we end our duet with the abusers putting their hands up, and the victims flinching at first, but realising that the abusers haven't moved, they put their hands up to them as well as touch hands.
Ending:
We have decided that we shall end our piece in a similar way to how we began our piece, but we shall do this section in reverse. We thought this would look effective as it shows that although things may take a long time, things can be turned around.
Dialogue:
We thought that we should add dialogue into our piece to ensure that the audience understood what our piece was about. We thought that we could complete the rest of our facts (that we stated a statistic for in the opening scene) in our ending scene. We also thought that we should include some dialogue during our duet/group sections to ensure that the audience understood what each groups section was about. Originally Lewis and I said "I'm sorry" at two moments in our piece - me at the beginning and him at the end. However, we decided to change this. Instead, when I break away and run to the mirror I say "it's going to happen again". The audience may assume that I mean that he is going to abuse me, but my meaning is that I am going to abuse him again. At the end Lewis then breaks the fourth wall by saying "you didn't expect that, did you?". I think it is important to break the fourth wall in this piece as we do not want the audience to get too involved in the piece and should instead be focussing on the meanings and the issues we are actually addressing.
Last lesson we discussed mine and Lewis' duet beginning with a section that makes the audience think that I am the victim, to then make them feel guilty by going on stereotypes to assume that the man was abusing the woman. We now begin our piece with Lewis sitting on the floor and me walking in towards him. We did a very basic hymn hand section to make it look like Lewis is authoritative and dominant over me. At the end of this section, I get up and run to the front to then sort my hair (as if looking into a mirror). We then begin our original section from this point.
After sorting out the movement for this piece we decided on what song we shall definitely use. We decided we shall use an Eminem song, as the other two groups have used an Eminem song for their pieces. We considered using "Mockingbird" as it is a slow piece and is about relationships, but decided against it as it mentions children in it. We suggested this piece to Rhiannon, Ollie and Robert as their piece involves a child. In the end, Lewis and I decided that we would use "Space Bound" by Eminem as it is a slow piece but still conveys the right atmosphere. We then ran our section a few times with the music to make it fit nicely. We wanted to make sure that our climatic moments in our piece fit with the climatic parts of the song.
When then discussed how we would end our piece. James mentioned mirrors - as if the victims were visiting their abusers, but we thought this would limit us as we couldn't physically touch each other. We then realised that we have an odd number in our class so this wouldn't work very effectively and we then questioned why the victims would visit their abusers?! We then decided we wanted to end in a circle of chairs as if in a group therapy session. We did not get round to creating this section but discussed that we would like to include chair duets.
Mine and Lewis' duet section:We added more to the end of our duet section. We added a few moments where we used the space (by stepping around each other) to create tension. To finish our duet, I offer to help him off of the floor but drop him back down and spit at him. We liked this idea of spitting as it is not very movement-orientated like the rest of the piece, so therefore stands out more. We have decided that we would like to add more to the beginning of our piece. Lewis came up with the idea of us sitting on a bench in the park (to show that these things can happen anywhere), but instead of using a literal bench, we could use other people in the class to form this bench. This idea was inspired by DV8's "Can We Talk About This?". We thought that this could represent other people not standing up to what they see and instead blending in to the scenery (in our piece, them being a bench symbolises those who do not stop what they see). At first, we thought our first section could be us two looking like an ordinary couple, with no issues, to make our piece more shocking. However, we decided that we shall create our beginning section in a way that makes it look like I am the victim in our section. This will shock the audience more when they realise that I am in fact the abuser. Our aim with this is to make the audience feel shocked and a bit guilty for assuming that the men are the guilty - we are breaking stereotypes. We have not created this beginning section yet, but shall do this next lesson.
Opening group section:We added a lot more to this section in this lesson, but we also slightly adapted what we already had. Instead of having James in the middle, we decided to put Rob in this place instead. This is because Rob is the only character in our individual groups that isn't directly abused, nor is he abusing anyone. Rob's character is a small child who watched his father abuse his mother daily. Therefore, we decided that he should be in the middle of the opening section to symbolise that he is literally in the middle of everything - he is being surrounded by all of this and cannot escape it. We then realised that we happen to have the three victims on one side of Rob and the three abusers on the other side of Rob - we decided to use this. After Rob is lifted, Ollie puts him down on the floor (as is putting him to bed - as Ollie is Rob's dad in their group piece). Ollie, Charlie and I are in a straight line on Rob's left, whilst Lewis, James and Rhiannon are on his right. Ollie, Charlie and I do three aggressive movements (as if about to hit him), but they are joined with a smooth transition. This is to show that the abusers are unpredictable. On each of our three movements, we have a lower level and our hands become closer together - we end on the floor on our knees with our hands together, as if we have been arrested. Contrastingly, Lewis, James and Rhiannon do three movements (beginning on the floor in the same position as the abusers finish in) to show them getting a higher status and escaping from their trapped lives - they are free.
To begin this lesson we looked at songs we could use for our piece. We will need to use more than one song to make our piece the required length of 10 minutes. The songs we came up with were as follows:
We decided that we wanted our piece to be on domestic abuse and the publics perception of it. We thought this was a very hard-hitting subject so we thought we could explore it and make the audience think. We thought we could include quotes of statistics and facts, but we decided that this would be a little bit boring and took us away from physical theatre, so we have decided to use small section of quotes instead (e.g. 40%, 1 in 5, etc.). We also watched an Australian commercial (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjBfU-bfGII) stating that we should stop violence from the start. It shows that if children aren't corrected from a young age and if they witness domestic abuse when they are younger, then they are more likely to offend when they are older. I thought the video was very effective but I didn't like the fact that all the victims in the video were women. I thought this was quite sexist and thought it supported the fact that the public tend to ignore the fact that men can be victims of domestic violence too. Therefore, we want to explore different types of domestic abuse.We also realised that we don't all need to be in the piece at all times - thus meaning we could have sections that focus on different types of couples.
For our introduction, we are using the first 40 seconds of "Dark Necessities" by RHCP. We thought this was quite an intriguing opening and offered quite a good build up in atmosphere. We all begin lying on the floor very close together to represent the countless number of victims of domestic abuse. Whilst lying on the floor, we all say a fragment of a quote, to intrigue the audience. We then reached up one at a time and turned round to kneel on one knee. We did this one at a time, and did this in cannon around the circle. James stayed on the floor, and then we did a lift where we hoisted him up onto his feet. This was to show that some people are forced to get up on their feet and carry on with their lives. After we do this lift, we wanted to do another lift where James is lifted and flipped over to represent how domestic abuse can completely flip your life upside down. However, we didn't do this lift this lesson as the ceiling is too low in the room we were rehearsing in.
Instead we moved on to our pairs and groups. Lewis and I are one pair and we will portray domestic violence with the man being abused. Charlie and James will present domestic violence between brothers. Ollie, Rhiannon and Rob will show domestic violence between husband and wife in front of their child and the effect it has on their child.
Below is what Lewis and I created for our section and our thoughts behind it:
Lewis stand behind me, with one hand on my waist and one hand caressing my neck - to establish that we are in a relationship
I flick his hand off of my neck with my hand - to show that I am dominant and don't care for him
I do a head roll (with my hands on my head) and a kick to the left (with a flexed foot), and then step on to the left leg - this section shows my frustration with my partner and symbolises how I want to kick him into shape into the man I want him to be
Lewis reached towards me. I block him by putting my hands up and putting my weight on my left leg (which is bent, inverted and on my instep) at the same time. I do this with a slow dynamic - Lewis reaching towards me shows his desperation to be forgiven. My block shows that he is not forgiven. The fact that my leg is inverted and bent shows my corrupted state of mind.
Lewis reaches towards me again. I block him again in the same way, but this time with sharp, jagged and quick dynamics - Lewis is desperate to be forgiven. He won't give up. My character is aggressive and can flip very quickly.
I perform a "round" action from Frantic Assembly's technique of "round-by-through. I roll across Lewis' side so we end up back-to-back - My character dismisses Lewis and turns her back on him and her morals.
We do a lean, where he leans on me, but I then push him off - The lean shows that he relies on me. It also shows that if my character left him he would fall and crumble.
In today's lesson we decided to do some research and look at videos for inspiration. Below are the videos we found that we liked and who found them (in brackets are the moments I liked most:
Today we began our physical theatre unit. Our stimulus is "F(l)ight"... or fight in flight.
Below are the list of our initial ideas (in no particular order):
Betrayal. Back-stabbing.
Options. Split. Two people representing the same person. Parallel universe.
Personal (moral) journey.
Coward. Decisions.
Being cornered. Adrenalin.
Soldiers and refugees.
Fight on an aeroplane. Hijack. Terrorism.
Animalistic. Chase and hunt. Predators and prey. Survival of the fittest.
Instinct.
After writing down our initial ideas, we discussed our favourites. We liked the idea of number two the best as it is very open and we could do a lot with it. We then discussed this idea in more depth. As there are two girls in our class, we thought we should use this and have us two represent the same person. We then questioned what this section could be about.
We thought relationships would be a nice idea as we could involve everyone in the story (Rhiannon and I being the same person, two of the guys being our partners, two guys being the best friend and the other guy being the driving force for change). We thought that we needed something hard hitting for our piece to be effective so we decided on domestic violence - one side would show the woman leaving the man, whilst the other side would show her staying. When we continued discussing this, we then realised that the woman leaving the dangerous relationship would actually be "flight", suggesting flight is a positive thing whilst fight is negative - although this isn't always the case. Instead of the woman leaving the man, we could have one side showing the woman being assaulted and the other side showing the man being assaulted. We could then explore how people react to the same scenario but with the genders switched over. This idea reminded me of a social experiment video that I watched a while back. I found this very interesting but worrying that people can't recognise violence when the gender stereotypes are reversed. I think this is quite shocking and hard-hitting and we could present this in an interesting way in our physical theatre unit.
