Evaluation of Our Experimental Performance Piece

Evaluation

Overall I am very much satisfied with our experimental piece. I believe we all showed commitment to our characters, maintained a strong actor- audience relationship and had enough freedom within our characters and the choices that we made as actors during the performance.

The three most effective moments of our piece was a moment in which we managed to encourage audience members to sing and dance with us during the Tom Waites song (a song they most probably didn’t know), when we had a moment when we simultaneously improvised a conversation solely based on an actor forgetting to do something and lastly when we as a cast got involved in a characters storytelling and this created enough of an atmosphere that you could feel the tension in the room.

The first moment was effective because we were able to, in such a short time, build an actor- audience relationship so much that a few audience members got up from their seats and decided to join in singing. I feel that this happened because the audience members had felt a connection or a relationship being built in the bar environment between the characters and themselves because we had often spoken to or made some form of contact with them as characters. I find this interesting because I certainly didn’t expect that involving the audience throughout the piece would make them feel comfortable enough to join in. I think building a strong audience-actor relationship was definitely very important to our piece because our interaction with the audience helped them to both understand and acknowledge the environment our piece was set in and also create a more comfortable and realistic setting. I feel that the audience although they were probably quite confused about what they were seeing probably went away feeling as though they had made some form of a connection with us through our character which, to me, is quite pleasing to know. I think the rest of the audience who were not joining in singing and dancing with us were just happy to watch other audience members joining in as it was moment of unison in which we sort of broke down a barrier by literally reaching out and pulling an audience member in instead of telling them to remain as mere witnesses. This kind of breaking down of barriers is something that isn’t very usual to see in theatre when an actor physically touches an audience member. Personally, I feel it is a very beautiful moment as the audience crosses over fully into our world and we get to share with them our happy vibes from the song. This moment fitted in well with the teachings of Grotowski because we worked to make a deeper and fuller connection with the audience creating an audience-actor relationship so much so that some of them were fully involved in the piece both physically and I think mentally.

The second effective moment of our piece was when an actor who was supposed to get out his guitar and start playing the Tom Waites song completely forgot to. In this moment a member of the cast remained in character and drunkenly said something along the lines of ‘Hey, why don’t you play us a song?’ The actor picked up his guitar and in character said ‘Sure, yeah I’ll play something’ as if he had no intention of doing it in the first place. I believe this was an effective moment because it was a moment in which two actors were able to improvise with one another without even knowing they would need to for the benefit of the entire cast because without the actor beginning to play the character the end of our piece would not have been able to happen. I believe that it took a very high level of professionalism to know how to remind an actor to do something whilst completely remaining in character. This was also effective because the audience stayed completely oblivious to the fact that a mistake was made because we all worked so well at covering it up. This was a great example of teamwork in that we are all able to support one another. As an actor, it’s quite relieving to know that if you do make a mistake or you need reminding or any sort of help whilst in a performance that other cast members will have your back. I think this cover up only really effected the audience in that it further displayed the way in which characters in our Tom Waites world interacted with each other and also the way in which they’re relationships work. To the audience, they may have seen it as just a rehearsed part of the script or an interesting improvisation in which one character decided to show interest in another’s property.

The last effective moment was when a character played by Adjei began to tell a story stimulated by an object which happened to be a remote control. I feel that in that moment Adjei had great confidence and trust in him that whatever he was going to say would be good enough for the story. I could tell that through his improvisation he had found the freedom to allow the story to take him wherever it needed to go. From the look in his face I could see that he wasn't worrying about how successful the story was going to be he was just going along with whatever came out of his mouth. This freedom meant that he wasn't panicking or stuttering and instead seemed as though he was telling us a story he had come up with weeks ago. I believe that because his story was told with such confidence the rest of us were able to create a soundscape in which we were all independently taking on the role of different sounds and not having to worry about whether or not we were making a suitable soundscape for the story. I think the combination of the intense story told with such confidence and the varying soundscape we had created produced a piece that gave the room a tense atmosphere in which everyone in the room actors and audience were experiencing the story surrounding them. The lighting at this point served to make this moment even more effective because as the tension built up in the room the more noticeable the red lighting was becoming. In rehearsals I had not noticed this, maybe because as actors in the rehearsals we were not all in sync with each other and weren't really able to respond to or acknowledge our environment, but I feel that the use of red lighting in the actual performance helped to intensify and heighten the suspense at the climax of the story. I feel that these factors combined created an environment that meant that the audience became so engrossed in the story as we all made a huge deal of heightening it. The audience’s entire attention was drawn into this scene as we created a piece that stimulated sound through noises and storytelling, feeling through the intensity of the moment and sight through presenting the actions of the story. I believe that this also an example of Peter Brookes teachings where the actor works as a sort of medium channelling emotion and telling a vivid story that engulfs the audience into it.

I believe that one of the least effective moments of the story was at the beginning of the piece when the majority of the characters were seated and only one or two were standing. I found this to be ineffective because it meant that not a lot of us were being brave enough to take initiative and stand. I feel that it was quite hard to stand up because I felt that if I did so I would draw to much attention to myself but I did anyway because I felt that too many of us were sitting down. I feel this affected the audience because they would not have been able to experience a variety of characters. For example, because the majority of characters were sat down all of the characters came across to the audience as if though they were sociable whereas if we had had more characters standing it would have meant that there were a variety of characters some that wanted to socialise and others that didn't. I believe that this could have been improved more if we had worked harder to develop our own characters so that as actors we would know our characters thoroughly and be able to tell whether they would actually want to socialise with the audience or not. Also, I believe that this could have been further improved if we all had more confidence and felt as though we were freer within ourselves. This way we wouldn't have felt inhibited and restricted to sitting down instead of being bold and standing up for a while.

Another moment that could have been improved because it was less effective was when we all began to huddle together to fall asleep on one another at the end of our performance. I felt that this was a great way to end the piece because it added to the whole madness of our piece however because we hadn't rehearsed this part very much we were not able to work out how long it would take the audience to walk out of the room therefore we had to stand in very awkward positions but none of us knew how long for. Because of this many of us began to talk and come out of character before it was time to seeing as the audience had not yet walked out yet. This was quite unprofessional to do because it meant that the audience were not able to experience our piece fully because the characters that were fundamental to maintaining the piece were coming out of character. For me, it wasn't fair on the audience to give them so much of an experience and then take from it by coming out of character. To improve this I would have made sure that one person is responsible for letting everyone else in the cast know that the audience have left and only then would we all be able to come out of character. This would have meant that our piece would have had a higher level of professionalism and the piece may have been more highly thought of.

The strengths of my individual piece were that I was able to find enough freedom within my character to really tap into what my character would and wouldn’t do. I feel that this meant I was able to use my character more effectively and that her characteristics were more prominent as I was not inhibited within myself. I believe a strength was that I was brave enough to interact with the audience whilst staying in character and also maintaining my character throughout the whole piece. Another strength was that I was able to stay on top of everything and so I knew exactly what was going to happen next so I could always move swiftly and efficiently to where I needed to be. This was definitely a positive thing because my confidence in what I was doing lead to the confidence in other people to know what they were doing because they were able to follow by my example. This meant that as a whole we were all really depending on one another and using each other’s characters to get to where we needed to be. I think my weakness was that I sometimes deliberately didn’t make bolder character choices because I felt that too many eyes were on me at that time. Although throughout the piece I felt I didn’t become totally free because there were far more audience members than I expected there to be. In rehearsals I hadn’t though too much about audience size and so I hadn’t prepared myself for the large number of people watching.

One strength of our group piece was that we were all there to rely on each other and were able to make sure that when one actor fell behind or forget something we were able to depend on each other meaning there was a good relationship kept between actors. One weakness would be that we were a little bit unprofessional towards the end and spent too long on rehearsing the entire performance and not enough on the last bit so we were all unsure on how long we should have to wait for the audience to leave this may have changed the audiences view on our professionalism.

Mental Illness Discussion

Today we sat down and had a open discussion about what mental illness was to us as individuals and how we feel about it. I feel that it was important to do this before our performance because the foundation of our experimental piece is mental health therefore it would be helpful to discuss what it is and what it means for those affected by it and those suffering from it. Personally, it was interesting hearing what people similar to myself feel about it as everyone in the room discussing it was around the same age group as me. Seeing as it is a very personal thing that can affect people in a various number of ways it was important that we addressed the subject in a sensitive way because it was important not to offend or make anyone feel guilty or uncomfortable for sharing their experience with mental illness.

Personally, I said that I felt that it was interesting that someone else's mental illness is something that you don't really notice is a problem or problematic until you learn that mental illness is a problem in itself and that you can just associate the 'symptoms' of the illness as just behavioural traits that come natural to the individual that you know and because you are so used to that person behaving in that way, it takes time, knowledge, a bit of growing up and some maturing to ever come to terms with the fact that that person actual suffers from a mental illness.

Others mentioned that:

• its not just the sufferer that is affected by the mental illness, a lot of the time the people around them e.g. family and friends are affected.
• mental illnesses often effect people differently
• there is often a spectrum of varying versions of one illness; some that are more severe and some that are less 

We were next asked what society could do to help sufferers:

I mentioned that often the accurate diagnosis of a mental illness can sometimes help the sufferer in knowing what is causing them to behave or think in the way that they do. Sometime its helpful to have clarification that you are suffering from something real. I think this makes it easier to help address the mental illness because it means you know exactly what your up against and what it is that is a problem for you.

Others said that:

•  its helpful to have your own feelings toward the illness and have them validated without people telling you that they once felt the same and that they understand it or giving examples of 'similar' experiences that they have been through or no of. This is helpful because its nice to know that your feelings are yours.
• its helpful that the people around you know that the family and friends of the sufferer can be affected by their illness too. 

I agree with all of the above statements and feel that it was great to just speak about the subject as a class and not feel criticized about my individual feelings towards the subject because there was a mutual understanding in the room that everyone had their own experiences and feelings about mental illnesses. Discussing the subject, made it clearer to me perhaps why and how mental illness may be linked to creativity. Here's how:

I feel that everyone has a different idea about what mental illness is and how much it actually means however only the people affected by mental health know what it really means. This must mean that a lot of the time mental illness and mental health are often misunderstood and or misinterpreted as something else leaving sufferers and people close to the sufferer feeling as though they cannot be understood by other people and that they need to express feelings towards the illness and in a lot of other cases feelings towards other things through another medium. This medium can often be creativity. Through creativity you don't have to speak, you don't have to justify and anything and you don't have to expose your own self and make your self vulnerable to other people that will choose to be close-minded or just not understand. Creativity offers freedom. In some suffers of mental illnesses that I have spoken to they have often told me that they don't very much feel free. If creativity offers freedom then it is easy to see why anyone would resort to doing something creative in order to escape.

The Structure of Our Piece:

1. Audience enters and all the characters stare at them making them feel uncomfortable
2. Bar girls filter the audience into the seats dotted around the bar
3. Tom Waits quotes are projected around the room until they overflow and we stop
4. We begin to play the copying game
5. Yasmin enter with box of mysterious object and it is revealed to us after the ritual and Reece predicts the weather
6. Eve introduces the bar/chemical girl and we all begin to react off of it
7. Bar/chemical girl drinks chemical hormone
8. The lighting changes to the colour of the hormone
9. Someone begins to use the object as a stimulus to  tell a story
10. One main actor acts out the character in the middle and 3 Butoh Dancers begin to act out the emotion and movement of actions mentioned in the story
11. We then all begin to do whatever the weather Reece mentioned to us symbolises
12. Dies down again]
13. Scene in between characters
14. Repeat 5-13 a total of 3 times
15. Luther sings on and we join in we fall asleep in a huddle
16. Bar girls lead the audience out.

Lesson 6 9/02/16

Lesson 6

We discussed at the beginning of the lesson that during our rehearsals that we would try not to respond to the pressure of letting go or performing in front of anyone. We were given feedback to:

·         Learn to go

·         Have fun when you are performing and enjoy what you’re doing

We had to ask ourselves:

What do we need to do today?

-work out strength and weaknesses of the piece by seeing what works and what doesn’t

We began to set up the bar and put cardboard all over walls to give the space a blanker feel to it and give the space another level of an atmosphere.

We then asked ourselves:

Why is our performance piece experimental?

Because:

·         It’s not traditional we don’t know what’s going to happen- this links to Grotowski’s teaching of channelling emotion like a medium (which is what the improvisation storytellers do during the performance piece)

·         We are altering a space to make theatre- this links to Peter Brooke teaching of being able to take any space and make a piece of theatre there.

·         We have being studying Tom Waits and our piece is based on him. We have previously acknowledged that Waits has a contrasting view to many people similar to the experimental practitioner Artaud.

We then asked ourselves:

 How can we make our piece good? 

·          By keeping things simple but bold and commit to the action

We next did a character exploration exercise in order to further develop our characters and add more layers to their personalities. We were asked to walk in our own characters up to the front of the bar table, get a drink, walk over to a large box, stand on it say a Tom Waits quote, walkover to the microphone and say another quote from Tom Waits.

We received feedback on our characters for this exercise:

·         Inhabit your character

·         Let go of anything that is stopping you from freeing yourself

·         Keep feet still to be grounded and rooted to receive energy so your character can feed off of it

·         Give more energy

·         Allow your character to come out fully and focus less on the drunkenness of the character  and more on the personality hiding behind the drunkenness

We then did a run through but without lights and all of the appropriate props and costume.

Feedback on Run- through:

-Butoh Dancers during the story telling need to be the movement of the action instead of the main character

-Don’t be scared to get into the middle of the stage because you need to own the entire space

- Develop your character more because otherwise it doesn’t feel like a bar

-We need to get more contrast in the piece (between more than just characters)

-Go a lot further with the build ups of tension

-Be much more free

Lesson 5 2/02/16

Japanese Butoh:

Today we learnt about a Japanese style of theatre called Japanese Butoh. We learnt that it was very spiritual and involved rituals. Many other cultures have been influenced by this style of theatre. They view energy and its benefits as fundamental to Butoh.

There are two types of Japanese Butoh:

·         no theatre

·         kabuki theatre

It’s known that Butoh Dance came from Butoh Theatre.

Butoh Dance:

-          Butoh Dance means that you move with absolute freedom, only doing what your body naturally wants to do. This means that every Butoh dancer would dance differently and have individuality in their own movement.

-          Butoh Dance often looks at opposites and tries to find beauty in the grotesque.

-          It also asks the individual where can they find free movement.

We next did a Butoh Dance exercise:

Some music was put on to allow us to focus on something other than our own thoughts. We were then asked to move with the music allowing ourselves to be absolutely free, moving at a pace we felt we wanted to move at without any constraint. I found that this exercise was helpful in allowing me to understand the importance of moving and also being free. In being free, I found that I could be more genuine and honest with myself, as I began to think less about what I was doing. It also put in a very relaxing state, enabling me to tap deeper into my freedom. I felt the exercise stopped us taught us how not to constrain ourselves both physically and mentally.

Cling Film Exercise:

In this exercise we had to put a piece of cling film over a clenched fist and try to force our hand out of the cling film by trying to burst the bubble. The hand had to work against the force of the cling film much like how an actor may need to work against the force of constraint due to insecurities or lack of knowledge or will to free oneself. We all noticed that when trying to force our hand out, there was a build-up of tension and then the cling film suddenly popped. After this, the hand finally finds freedom which is mimetic of how an actor will only find freedom once they work against the force of constraint (whatever is stopping them from being free)

We then tried to recreate this moment but instead left out the part in which we covered our hand with the cling film. We found that because there is no tension or force you can only imagine it. I personally found, that there was no sense of unpredictability that there was the first time in not knowing when your fingers will burst through because you seem to be deciding when and which finger will pop out.  It also felt quite unnatural to create this feeling of ‘restriction’ when actually there is nothing there to restrict you. This sort of reminds me of how all the things that are there to stop you from being free are all actually in your head and the only thing that is stopping you from freeing yourself is your own self and the barriers you decide to create.

Following in A Circle:

We had to stand in a circle and turn over with our right shoulder so that we were facing the back of our neighbours head. We all had to walk behind this person maintaining the same distance between ourselves and them. I found that when concentrating on maintain the same distance as our neighbour meant that my feet very heavy because we had to work harder to be in more control and create more awareness in what our legs were doing. Personally, I found that I often hesitated to put my foot down because I was trying quite hard to make sure my foot was always positioned an equal distance from my neighbours. I found myself copying my neighbour therefore whenever he hesitated I in return hesitated.

Skipping 4 Year Old:

In this activity we had to skip around the room like 4 year olds until we were asked to slow right down into a much slower pace. We were asked to this a number of times. I found that I felt as equally as out of control, moving at both speeds, due to the great contrasts between the two throwing me off of balance. This exercise is linked to Butoh as it shows the transition between freeness (in being a four year old) and control (in walking very slowly).

Rehearsal:

In rehearsals, we had to practise singing a Tom Waits song called Blue Skies. The song at first sounds quite positive and happy but the lyrics talks of a person not having any possessions or money but still being happy. I feel that the song relates to the theme of mental health because in some circumstances in some mental illness cases people often don’t feel the way that a person without poor mental health would feel. It could be argued that a person with good mental health would be quite saddened by not having many possessions. (The song will be sung at the end of the performance both in ensemble and in a solo).

Some of us with characters that were not as developed as they had the potential to be were then assigned a character with a minimal characteristic. I was given ‘a gossiping and judgemental old neighbour’. This matched the characteristic I had already planned for Gladys previously. The line I was given (a lyric from a Tom Waits song) was ‘what’s he building in there’.

We spoke about how we should behave when the audience arrived in the room and we decided that we would stare at them in order to make them feel uncomfortable as if the bar/brain was a bar that no one would really want to walk into.

Diction 20 Game:

The next exercise we played was one where we as a class had to sit in a circle and count to 20 in no particular order and whenever someone repeated a number or said a number at the same time as someone else the game would have to be reset back to 1. We had to restart the game quite a few times but this practise helped us to work on slowing down the pace of our voices and also diction so that we could make clear to everyone else what number we were saying. This can also be applied to our performance in terms of using clear diction as a more effective way to communicate.

In our rehearsal I feel that we really had to rely on each other a lot to move the whole process of the run through of our performance. for example, when forgetting what we were supposed to say as an ensemble being able to look at someone else and know from them what you should do was helpful.

Doing exercises before the rehearsal meant that we were able to get rid of any negative energy from outside the room helping us to get on a bit better with each other. (grotowskis teaching)

Doing exercises together in general has helped us to become a good team as a class because we have been able to see that we have to support each other because we felt that our group responsibility us increases to really work together.

Hannah's told an on the spot story about a house fire- i felt was so organic because she gave herself space to think of more material through her repetition of Tom waits lyrics. she kept it very simple and this meant that the story was so much more significant and put together.

Overall I feel that today's rehearsal was more of an organised chaos because we don't always know what we are doing but we know what we are supposed to do in the order.

Lesson 4 26/01/16

In today's lesson we played a few exercises to practice our teamwork skills and better our ability to really pay attention.

Copycats in a Circle:

We started by arranging everyone in a circle that was evenly spaced out. We were then assigned people directly across the circle to mirror every action and movement they made no matter how bold or insignificant. Initially I found it quite hard to copy everything that my partner was doing because I found fast paced movements particularly hard to follow. I soon had to get used to doc using on moving whilst copying what my partner was doing so in a sense I was actually multi tasking.

I began to make progress towards the end as I began to find it a lot less difficult to concentrate on what I was doing.

As a class because everyone had at least one person that was copying them and themselves were copying someone else this meant that everyone would and should eventually get round to doing the same movement almost in a ripple effect or chain reaction. This was quite cool to see out of my peripheral vision.

The game itself helped me in noticing that the best way to focus is to really watch carefully in order to notice every detail. This was also a helpful exercise to do because during the performance there are quite a few times where we will have to follow the actions of others so it was good to get used to doing this in a more rehearsal fashion.

Exploring and Discovering:

We then went around the school exploring and discovering the best places to hold our Circus Freak Show Performance section. I felt that it would be a good idea to hold our section of it in a narrow corridor to give the audience the impression that they were enclosed causing feelings of claustrophobia. This is because although there is a sense of comedy to our circus section we also want the audience to feel quite uncomfortable. I feel this should be effective because we shouldn't always cause the audience to feel engaged because what they're seeing is beautiful and aesthetic sometimes they should be engaged because they are watching something grotesque, disturbing or something that at least makes them feel uncomfortable. This would be good to do because the impact of the performance on the audience would differ from watching something positive and pleasant. Doing this enabled me to think about not just what would look good as a performer but also what would look good watching it as a member of an audience. Viewing it in this light, made me see that the more you do this when devising a performance the better the outcome of your performance will be because the whole point is that you perform in a way that will impact the audience in some way so you have to be able to put yourself in the audiences shoes so that you can see how and if they will be impacted by why you are trying to achieve.

Brainstorm of Ideas and things to Include in the Circus Freak Show:

We decided to brainstorm idea of ways we could add to our character development of the individual characters in our Circus Section by attaching mental health issues or things assumed to count as mental health issues to out characters. 

For example, Mute Girl isn't able to speak because she has severe anxiety issues. Crumpet had a physical condition that he is so embarrassed and ashamed of that he begins to involuntarily move his body in a fast and rigid fashion. These mental health issues are only to help the development of the individual character rather than a characteristic that the audience are actually aware of; much like how real people in real life who have mental health issues do not make it obvious that they have a mental health issue.

Iggy Pop and Tom Waits Video Inspiration:

We then used factors from a video as inspiration for the atmosphere that we wanted to have in the bar/brain. In the video the music in the background is quite calming but quite chirpy and vibrant. I feel that to enhance the bar-like atmosphere we should use music that will create the same sort of calming and friendly tone. I like the idea of having such a chirpy music playing in the background because it creates the same sort of effect of contrapuntal music because there will be a contrast between the chirpy atmosphere and the nasty way in which the characters in the bar/brain will be looking at the audience members.

Rehearsal:

We then did a rough rehearsal of the show. At this point, I can see that our performance will be quite experimental due to the fact there will be a lot of elements in which people will not really know what is going to happen. For example, there is a section in  our piece in which a random object is brought into the room and a story must be made up on the spot incorporating the object into it. In addition to this, actors will have to move and respond to the story with their bodies even though each time a new object will be brought into the room.The rehearsal helped me to work out what exactly I was supposed to be doing at a certain point in time. This was helpful because it meant I could stay in character as much as possible as I wouldn't be distracted by the need to ask or think about where I needed to be and what I needed to be doing.

Grotowski Research

Jerzy Grotowski 

- born in South Poland, Rzsow in 1933
- influenced by religious writings including The Bible and The Quran
- he set up The Polish Theatre Lab (a theatre company)

Theatre that portrayed real life was what inspired Grotowski to create his experimental work because he wanted to push more boundaries than what realistic/naturalistic theatre was pushing. Grotowski was often more interested in form than the story itself meaning he was able to strip theatre back into what its foundations were.

He believed in the importance of the actor-stage-audience relationship and wanted to get rid of everything superfluous as he felt that their value was not as great as this relationship.
One of his most infamous beliefs was that exhaustion allows an actor to have more of an ability to tap into their own visceral emotions that we as actors don't or can't normally tap into. He believed that the actor- audience relationship was key because it was the only way that the actor could truly connect with their character and then the audience resulting in altering or changing the audience.

His Experimental Style wasn't just an exercise; it was really a way of life. He would encourage his actors to eat together, run  together, live together and exercise together. He believed this would create the Holy Actor.

He invented the term Poor Theatre.

Poor Theatre: is theatre that gets rid of the superfluous factors that normally come with a play such as costume and lighting. It is essentially not investing money into it and staying well away from making a business out of it.

He believed in Poor Theatre being the best kind because it increased the actor- audience relationship which has a greater effect on the audience and their perception of the play.

One of his practises was called via negativa. This meant to rid yourself of anything that would stop you from becoming the best actor you can be.

I can see that this would be an important thing to do and pay attention to because there are quite a few things that can cause friction between actors causing them to not perform so well such as personal issues with other actors and self confidence issues abut their issues with them-self as an individual performer.

Grotowski really believed in being in the moment whilst acting because he felt that it was important
to genuinely feel as an actor what your character is feeling.

One exercise he often enforced was to force his actors to run around the woods naked for long periods of time so that they could access their emotions more readily

Circus Street Freaks

A freak show is an exhibition of biological rarities, that are commonly referred to as 'freaks of 
nature'. People exhibited at these shows are uncommonly large or small, people with both male and female sexual characteristics, people with diseases and conditions, and performances that are expected to be shocking to the viewers as well as heavily tattooed or pierced people.

 In the mid 16th century, freak shows became popular pastimes in England. This is when deformities began to be treated as objects of interest and entertainment meaning crowds flocked to see them exhibited. Freak shows were popular in taverns and fairgrounds where street freaks were often combined with talent displays.

For the beginning part of our performance we have been separated into 3 groups:

-Circus Street Freaks

-Nirvana

-The Clockwork Group

Each group is inspired by the songs written by Tom Waits. The group that I am in is the Circus Street Freaks. I feel that it is important to know more information on Circus acts especially the ones that were regarded as freaks because those were the people that were considered as faulty or different. This links to the way that people with mental health issues are thought of. A lot of the time people with mental health issues are not helped in the right way because they are outcast by society which would have been exactly what had happened to the circus street freaks. I feel that in forums and social groups where people with mental health issues are able to talk and socialise with others with the same issues, they will often feel less alone and have a sense of belonging. I feel that the circus street freaks years ago, although they were definitely made to feel ugly and often ridiculed by audiences, would probably feel more comfortable amongst each other. I feel that this should be implied in our section of our performance because it creates a more obvious link between the brain and more importantly mental health issues.

As a group we brainstormed ideas for characters that we can embody who will collectively become the Circus Street Freaks. We decided to create characters that were not really that spectacular or interesting to make it a little more comedic. We don’t necessarily want to portray the hardship of being a circus freak. We would more want to imply to the audience that although we all have our differences, freakish talents or not so freakish talents, we are all human beings.

As there are 7 of us in our group, we had to come up with 7 ‘freakish’ talents to incorporate in our piece. We did this by going round the entire group looking at each person and using their appearance or characteristics to inspire their own character. We did this to make the talent seem even less impressive.

The first character we had come up with will be played by Edgar who has red hair; we decided to call him Fire Boy because of this. We decided to have him on a stool or even standing up with a lighter in his hand flicking it on and off. I feel that his character should be staring at the flame quite intensely. This would make his ‘freakish’ talent seem much funnier.

The next character we came up with was Lizard Kid. We gave Hannah this character because she has a very long tongue. She will be crawling on the side walls and the floor at quite a steady pace, miming the physicality of a lizard.

The third character will be played by Delainey who will be Big Bosoms Girl. She will be walking around with two balloons. We will have the two balloons in her top to make it look like. This character is based on a real person called Sarah Baartman, who was displayed as a freak because of her unusual physical features (mostly her large bottom).

The next character will be played by Tobi who will be the Ringmaster of the Circus Street Freak Show. We chose this character for him because he is a natural leader and has a naturally loud voice.

Another character will be played by Rasaq; his character will be called Crumpet and he will be 

crumping which is an impressive dance move.

The next character would be played by me and would be called Mute Girl. She won’t at all talk throughout the whole performance but will accidentally say something she shouldn't.(contradicting her freaky talent).

The last character will be played by Fifi. Her character is called The Girl who Doesn't Move and throughout the performance she will be keeping very still and releasing short screams.

Forced Entertainment 

I decided to research the company Forced Entertainment because I felt that what they often work to achieve is something that we could work to achieve as a group in our section of performance. 

Earlier, I touched on the idea that we as a group had decided to make our 'freakish' talents the least impressive as we possibly could for a more comedic effect. Researching Forced Entertainment meant that I could discover how we could incorporate this strange style of comedy in our performance. For example, in one of their shows a man stood on stage and spent roughly 30 mins trying to remember his lines purposefully. 

On the website, they admit to have 'stayed silent' and 'made serious work that turned out to be comical'. I would agree that this would create a more experimental type of theatre, one that we could definitely achieve in our Circus Street Freak Show Performance.

I like the idea of purposefully making your performance quite dull and uninteresting in order to create interest to get the audience to question 'why have they done that?' and 'what are trying to say?'

Lesson 3 19/01/16

Today we started the lesson with an exercise to make us more alert and give us more energy as a group.

Clapping Game:

In this game we had to start off in a circle and all close our eyes so that we could not see what everyone else was doing or going to do. We then had to all begin to clap as one. We started at a steady pace where there would often be a beat in between. This then began to gradually speed up as the claps began to get faster to the point where it just sounded as though we were applauding. After a while we as a class, still with our eyes closed, began to slow down the tempo of the applaud until we were back to the original pace that we began with.We were able to acknowledge as a class that this build up was similar to the rhythm of life ( or the rhythm of all things in love) e.g. something begins steady and slow it eventually begins to speed up as there is a build-up of something often tension, an event occurs and the pace is steadied.We realised that it would be a good idea to reflect this in our play as it would create more interest for the audience as it would mean they would be pulled into the build-up of tension or excitement. This exercise definitely brought to my attention the importance of the structure of our piece and the how this will impact the audience.
Object/Picture Inspiration Exercise:

We had been asked to bring in a random object from home or something we had found in the street or an interesting picture from the internet. 
We then had to use the object to inspire the characteristics of a character that we could use in our play. One person was chosen to sit amongst the rest of the class in a circle and then had to describe the character they had moulded using the random picture or object as a stimulus. Another person had to stand on a box in the centre of the circle responding to and acting out the character information that they were being fed by the creator of the character. This was a good exercise because it was a new and more experimental way of forming a character. Normally you wouldn’t rely on a stimulus to form a character however this meant that our characters were a lot more colourful and complex. I feel this will help me in rehearsals in the future because my character will have far more layers that I can play with and portray through her interaction with others.I brought in a picture from an alternative rock synth artist because I felt that the album art for it was so interesting to look at and very eye-catching. I looked at the image and thought of who would like the image and then decided to think of the way a typical person who would like this type of music would look like. With this picture in my mind, I began to think of the polar opposite of this kind of person and I then came up with Gladys, a 67 year old woman, who has a real love for rock synth style music. I felt that Gladys was quite kind and generous, a gentle soul who had many children and grandchildren none of which know about her love for this style of music.I was surprised at how quickly I was able to form my character and her traits and I definitely feel that this has a lot to do with the fact that I used an interesting image as my inspiration because it meant that my mind was stimulated in a different way from which it normally is stimulated when developing a character. This makes me feel as though my character will create more interest than if I had created her in another way (without a stimulus).

One Sentence Story Exercise:

For this exercise we all had to stand in a circle and as we took it in turns each say a phrase or short sentence. We were able to say anything we wanted to, there were no restrictions or limitations. I found this particularly hard because it meant that because there were no limitations, the possibilities were endless, making it harder to make a choice of what to say. I feel this exercise helped in teaching me that sometimes you have to use your instincts and impulse to connect the story. I felt that because we were asked to say a phrase we were able to have even less control over what the story would transform into. This may have been a good thing because it allowed us to create a more interesting and experimental story because none of us really knew what was going to be said or what the end outcome would be.We next played another version of this game. The only thing that we altered was how much an individual in the circle was allowed to say. Instead of saying a sentence or phrase each, we were only allowed to say a word each. This was quite difficult in terms of making a story because there was less of a sense of control in the direction the story was going in because each person has less of an ability to change the story. Also as individuals we felt we had to refine our impulses to say a certain word to make a good sentence which meant it took us longer to figure out what we wanted to say. This exercise definitely made me feel like I was being less instinctual than the previous exercise because I was using my brain far too much. This was quite amusing because we found that because we all had no control over the direction of the story, more people were adding in random and rude words. This made the story much more interesting as the words we used to create the story were quite funny.These exercises helped me to realise that the importance of telling a story in an interesting way isn’t through being decisive or choosy about what you say, sometimes it’s more effective if you just use your instincts and say what you want to on impulse because sometimes this creates the most interesting stories.

Brainstorming the Brain

After realising that we wanted to make our Experimental play about the brain, we decided to brain storm all of the interesting facts that we knew about the brain as a class.Between us all we came up with these facts:·         Chewing stops you from stressing about things because it tricks the brain into thinking that you are eating and therefore makes the brain think that there is no danger to stress or worry about because as primitive animals when eating we are not in danger because you would never eat whilst in danger. ·         When you die your brain plays back all the memories of things you’ve seen, heard or felt for 7 mins. ·          Serotonin is used inside the brain and affects mood and social behaviour ·          The hippo-campus is thought to be the centre of emotion memory and the nervous system ·         The left side of the brain first sees details  and puts them together to form the bigger picture ·         The right side of the brain looks at visual reference as a whole and then works its way into noticing finer details.

These facts could be quite helpful in helping us to devise and refine any material we may want to put into our performance. This is because I feel it would be good to be able to reference actual facts or connotations about the brain in our performance so that the audience can really take something from it, not just in the theatrical sense but also the educational sense.

Experimental Story Exercise

The exercise we next played was very fun and I feel it would be a great piece to incorporate in our piece. One person was given a piece of paper with a drawing or image on it. This person then had to use the image as a stimulus to create a story whilst telling the rest of us the story. The rest of us had to create the story we were being told using our bodies. We could do this through embodying the physicality of characters or in a more abstract way creating emotions. I like the fact that we were able to tell a story using our bodies and not just through the normal play narrative of a play. This made it a lot more experimental as there was a sense of unpredictability in what the people around you are going to do. I like the idea that if we were to do this in front of the audience they would't know what to expect and neither would the actors doing the exercise.