Lesson 2 12/01/16

We started off the lesson by asking ourselves a few questions and we then discussed our answers:

What is Art?Some suggestions:'Art is a way of expressing feelings and emotions without having to use words''Art is a way of saying things that you don't find easy to say''Art can recreate life''Art is everything'

How can we perform an experimental theatre play?

Some suggestions:'We should make something that isn't pretty or nice to look at, it should just reveal truth and be honest'.'I think we should make an experimental theatre play that explores things, however our final outcome should be a performance that no one would have ever seen before - this would create a uniqueness'Asking ourselves these questions, retrospectively, had an impact on how I viewed the rest of the lesson. The questions made me think about the fact that everything we create during activities, exercises and discussions can be used as stimuli or inspiration for a play because everything is art and everything exhibited has the potential to evoke feeling and a sense of importance for an audience therefore anything can be art and anything can be performed as theatre.We next did an activity.Jewel in the Dark:Two people were blindfolded and spun around on the spot to make them feel more disorientated. Their aim was to find a roll of newspaper hidden somewhere in the room and once this is achieved they next had to find and hit the other person with it thus making them the 'winner'. The rest of the people in the room had to act as audience members or spectators watching and witnessing what was unfolding in front of them. As an audience myself I felt that was a sense of dramatic irony as the two people were blindfolded and therefore did not know what was going to happen however we as audience members knew exactly what was going to happen i.e. the whereabouts of the newspaper, the proximity between the two players. I found that, this dramatic irony created a more obvious relationship with the audience as the two players began to become performers and we as people watching the events happen became spectators. This relationship was created because the events had engaged and invoked the audience drawing us into the game.The interesting thing about this was just how mimetic of a play the game was. For example, the two players were similar to two actors, the watchers of the game were similar to the audience viewing a play. Similarly when a group of actors are performing a show repeatedly their aims may be the same every time and they may have the same intention e.g. to seduce or to belittle however no show will ever be exactly the same as the last (an actor will not blink on stage the same amount of times or stand in the exact same stance every time they perform the show) just like when playing the game the two players will never move in the same way as they did the first time they played the game. We tested this theory, and the outcome was that when placing the newspaper in the exact same spot as it was placed the previous time they played the game and even so the two players did not move in the same direction to the newspaper as they had previously. In addition both an actor and a player of the game would have an intention or aim. For example, the actors’ intention may be to convince and persuade and similarly the player of the game would have an intention to obtain the newspaper and hit their opponent with it.

Newspaper Stepping Stone Exercise:

The aim of this game is that one individual who is blindfolded has to be spun around in order to disorient them and they have to jump over two rolls of newspaper that they would have glanced at the situation of before being blindfolded. At this point, the audience (the rest of the class) are allowed to cheer.This again created a relationship between the audience and the performer because we rooting for him to achieve it so that we could reward him with applause.It also create an atmosphere of excitement because there was the chance that he either was going to succeed by being able to jump over the newspapers or failing by not being able to be able to jump over the newspapers and as an audience we like to see a character or performer failing or succeeding because they both engage and intrigue. I also found that there was a lot of gravity to the moment. For example, after taking the first jump, the performer hesitated to take the next,  breathing deeply and this created a tense atmosphere because the audience were rooting for the player just as an audience would root for a character in a play.

We then did another exercise:

Trapeze Exercise:

We were led through instructions of a routine in which we had to imagine we were trapeze artists. The first position was standing with legs a hip width apart with arms high up, straight in the air, standing ready to jump on to the trapeze. The next position is when the torso drops down with the arms as the artist swings downwards. Next, the arms move back up to the first position and imagining there are sharp blades attached to the elbows the elbows come down stabbing the stomach. The reaction to this must be one that shows the pain of being stabbed. The arms then rise up back into the first position as if they are blood slowly seeping blood up towards to the sky.We were then asked to do this as a routine three times as a class. So that we could see what the routine looked like we split the class in half; one half watched and the other half performed the routine. I feel that everyone had different levels of emotion; some were fearful and some seemed to be anxious and this helped to build momentum and intensity for the audience when watching. Some decided to make their own individual routine more beautiful and aesthetic whereas others chose to make theirs raw and more beautiful making their physicality more bold and large. This proved that emotions when imagined in improvisation are subjective and can be interpreted in different ways and therefore portrayed to the audience in a different way. This exercise helped in getting us to think how differently people can interpret a routine an add in their own emotion that they feel should be portrayed. It also made me think about how pace in movement has a definite impact on how brutal or calm the action may seem. For example, when imagining stabbing myself with blades, during the exercise, I had to complete the action with a fast pace because it is a violent and slightly aggressive thing to do to one’s self.  

We next did another few exercises.

Sound-scape exercise:

In this exercise we were asked to create sounds and noises that we would expect to hear in a certain environment or place. We were first given the environment of a wood. Initially, one person began to make a sound that triggered everyone else’s sounds to be released. The first sound that was made was the sound of a bird calling and after hearing this I came in making the sound of a bird knocking on the bark of a tree with my tongue. I then heard others making the sound of the trees, other bird calls and the sound of the wind. It was amazing to hear how accurate we were in sounding like the noises you would realistically hear when in a wood. The combination of the sounds created a sense of peace and tranquillity and made me think of how important sound is and how effectively it contributes to creating a certain atmosphere. We were next asked to create the sound-scape for the end of the world. We immediately began to use our voices to speak, saying things that we would expect to hear people saying at the end of the world. It was interesting that straight away people began to shout, given the fact that no one knows what the end of the world would be like. We all had just assumed that the end of the world would be a chaotic time so people began to create noises similar to that of sirens, car alarms, screams and shouts. I also thought it was interesting that we had heard the sound of a wood before however when we were asked to create the sounds of a wood we all hesitated because we wanted to really think about what sounds we were creating whereas when we were asked to make noises that we would hear at the end of the world we didn't hesitate, we ran straight into making the noises because we knew it would be chaos at a high level volume so it almost didn't matter what we were saying as long as it made a lot of noise.

Mother and Child Exercise:

Two girls were asked to sit in the middle of a circle created by the rest of the class. One had to be sitting up and the other lying on her lap. Their actions (the thing that they had to do) were that the girl sitting up had to cry (as a mourning mother) and the girl lying on her lap had to be dead (as a dead girl). The rest of the class had to watch and then begin to make the sound-scape that would accompany the scene. At first I found it important that we all just listened and watched so that we could really concentrate on creating an atmosphere that really matched the grief, raw emotion and devastation of the mother. By watching and listening to the crying of the character we almost used the sadness of the situation as a stimulus in order to create the atmosphere. This exercise reinforced the idea in my mind of how important sound is and how effectively it contributes to creating a certain atmosphere which in this case was a sad one.The sound-scape exercises made me think about the importance of atmosphere in terms of how this could help us when devising an experimental theatre play.

Crying in a Group of 5:

We were asked to get into groups of five and stand in a line. We were then asked to as individuals in the group show the process of someone crying one stage at a time, from the beginning stage to the final stage. We practised this in groups and then we were asked to perform this in front of the class. Our group was successful in that we did show the progressive stages however I found the other groups to be much more successful. This was because they showed more of an interesting dynamic. For example, one group showed the first person at the beginning of the stage of crying as much more subtle, the next person pushed out more emotion however the third person showed a sense of concealment by almost seeming as thought they were suppressing their tears. I found that to be quite effective because it showed the complexity of a cry and suggests that not all people are able to progressively just release a cry and that some people try to hold it in. As a class, it was interesting to watch back the groups doing the exercise because we all differed in our approach to the exercise; some of us showed a sense of suppressing and others showed an outburst. This was quite realistic because the environment in which you are in always has an impact on how you cry. For example, when crying in front of other people you may try to hide it whereas by yourself you would have the freedom and the isolation to release all of your tears.

Passing a Laugh Around Exercise:

We then played the pass a laugh around game again. This time I feel that we were all much more confident in really pushing out the laughter when we had to making the laughter bolder and more eccentric than the laugh that happened before you. We all really struggled doing the exercise last week because we were not familiar in how to really make the laugh sound genuine. We were advised to do so by bouncing the breath in our diaphragms up and down and this helped to make the laugh sound much more realistic because it mimes the action that the diaphragm really does when a person laughs.