Evaluation

I feel that our final piece was very effective. It was exciting and crossed the boundaries of traditional theatre, by it not being nauturalsit, having different staging, immersing the audience, using dance and music, not using a script but devising and creating a unique actor/ audience relationship.  The Leicester was powerful and have the audience something to think about after they'd watched it. I feel that it was very successful in being experimental.

I feel that one of the most effective moments was when the whole ensemble did the copying exercise. I think that this was engaging to watch because we used our whole bodies, especially with the crying one, because some of us dropped to the floor or hugged another actor for comfort. I think that as the emotion built up, it became tense for the audience, because they didn't know how far the emotion would go. It was also really fun for the actors, because each time you did it, you responded to your emotion in a different way- for example sometimes my crying was very vocal, but other times is was more internal and I showed it more through my breathing and posture. On the other hand, I think that it was easy to become selfish with this exercise and only share the emotion with the other actors or yourself, instead of direct it to the audience. I feel that in our 4:30 show we were too selfish with the emotions, but in the 6:30 show we were more confident at showing the emotion more openly. This exercise was only effective when I made myself vulnerable and was prepared to look silly.

Another thing that was effective was the story telling section. The improvised nature of this section meant that it was really risky, because anything could go wrong at any moment, however it also allowed really inventive, strange stories to be told. The stories were not completely random, because we based them around the object and also tried to fit Tom Waits lyrics into our story to help centre them. I think the lyrics were a really helpful way to stop the stories from rabling, but not enough people used the lyrics. Because the stories were not planned, they were really weird which showed  how strange the brain is, fitting into the 'brain bar' perfectly. The only technical problem with the story telling, was that the story teller couldn't be heard very clearly because sometime our soundscaoes were too loud and they didn't talk into the mick properly.

In my opinion, the moments we saw between Sam and Olivia and Toby and Fifi, weren't very effective. I think this because they were too random and didn't connect to anything else that was going on in the peice. I also think that they weren't inventive enough and were too dramatic, lacking any real substance. A way to improve this would be to have these private moments between two people, come out of the stories that were being told. I think it would have been really effective to use the stories, to improvise a scene between two characters. By doing this, it would have meant that the moments fit in to the rest if the performance and it would prevent the scenes becoming moments out of Eastenders !

Another weak part of the performance was the opening. We began the performance by, one at a time
saying Tom Waits quotes, then building them up so that we were all saying them, all at the same time. I feel that we should have taken this beginning bit slower, allowing more time for everyone to establish their characters. The quotes lost their meaning, because everyone rushed them and didn't say them with enough characterisation. I think that this was everyone's opportunity to establish their character, but nobody took it because they were holding back. Characterisation was an important element to our peice because in a bar you get a whole variety of strange and wonderful characters! However I don't think we did enough character development in our rehearsals to make the opening really strong by introducing everybody's weird personality !

The end to the whole peice had strong and weak bits. I think that it was really good that we got everyone from all three shows, to create the finale, because it linked them all together and made the show feel like one peice, instead of three separate shows. The use of the sellotape worked really well because it was aesthetically pleasing and also looked like links being made in the brain. The only negative about the sellotape was that it was loud when we unraveled it, stopping the lines of the poem
being heard. I think that everyone should have repeated the poem together, so that it could be heard over the tape. It was also difficult to use our phones as torches to light up the tape and it drew away the attention of the audience, when we got our phones out and fiddled around with them, to get the torches to turn on. I think that we should have all used traditional black torches. We also didn't have enough balloons for everyone to pop and the ones we did have just got handed to the audience who didn't pop them. I think that only the actors should of had balloons, because we couldn't expect the audience to take the initiative to read out a fear, then pop their balloon.

The promenade pieces where really effective. They were an interesting way to get the audience from one performance to another and they set up the themes for each performance. I think that because they were installations, instead of over the top performances, they gave the audience more space to observe them and take them in. 

Over all, I feel that we experimented with this performance and pushed boundaries to make it the most interesting and exciting peice if theatre it could be. We could have made improvements and spent more time developing character and refining bits that didn't fit, if we had had a few more rehearsals. I feel that we applied elements of Artaud's, Brook's and Grotowski's work, to help create an exciting peice of experimental theatre. I feel that in the brain bar, we mainly used Artaud's idea of changing the actor/ audience relationship and creating as real an experience as possible. We also used physical theatre, in the form of Butoh dancing, which was something that Grotowski did with his actors. I feel that it was an exciting peice of theatre and I spas really happy with the end result. 

Lesson 6

In this lesson we did a full run through in front  of an audience to get an idea of how we should stage the piece and how we can involve them. After we did the run through we talked about the weak parts of the performance and what needs improving before our final performance next week.

Lesson 5

 Butoh- Japanese dancing 
In the lesson we looked at Butoh dancing which is a type of Japanese dancing which focuses on how you, as an individual, moves. There is no correct way of doing this dancing, it just relies on you being free and open and listening to your body.
At the beginning of the lesson we did a short exercise where we tried to do our own Butoh dancing. I found it difficult because it was hard to let go of my inhibitions and let my body move in ways that might feel silly. The longer i was moving, the easier it became. It was also helpful that everybody else was dancing, because it is easier when you're not the only one looking silly!
From watching other people I realised that the more you commit to the movement, the more effective it looks. If a person is completely in tune with their body, the movements look beautiful.
This helped me realise that for our performance we need to commit to everything - our stories we are telling and Butoh dancing we are doing on the podiums. If we don't commit, the piece will look rubbish and will lack energy. The movement will only be effective if we try to forget any inhibitions we might have.

The Rough Run Through - W.W.W

• We have got better as a group at reading each other and finding the right moments to copy one another.
• We are taking a lot of risks, so we feel that we need to support each other. We have got better at going along with the stories and not questioning what another actor decides to do. 
• Hannah's Story- Hannah's story on the podium was a brilliant moment. She used lines from a Tom Waits song to get inspiration for her own story. The story was simple and she used the repetition of the lyrics to give herself time to think about what she should say next. It was really effective centering the story around the lyric and I think everyone who tells a story should do this. It means that the story it focused and the person doesn't start to talk aimlessly and lose grasp of their plot. 

Storytelling- What are the challenges? 

When improvising a story it is difficult to give it a clear direction, because you do not the conclusion is going to be. If you have no direction to your story it is easy to talk aimlessly, whilst you work out what to say next. This is boring for the audience and means that they lose interest. A solution to this in our piece would be to use some Tom Waits lyrics to help centre and story and if we ever start to talk aimlessly, we can come back to the lyrics. 

It is also important to be relaxed when telling a story because being in a state of relaxation gives you creativity. If you feel to tense when trying to improvise a story, we won't be able to come up with anything exciting or inventive. 

Everybody has to be ready to jump in and take risks. If nobody is going up to tell a story, you must be prepared to jump in and trust that everyone else will go along with it ! 

Characterisation

In order to improve our piece, everybody needs to do work on their characterisation. Our piece is experimental, so our characters need to be really bold and exaggerated. In order to go father with our characters, we need to do some character research and know our characters inside out. To have bold characters, we need to lose our inhibitions and be more free. 

Lesson 4

In this lesson we did a rough run through of the piece, to try to work out what order we should put things in and how we can fit every thing we have worked on, together. So far we have got ...

• The building up of emotion as an ensemble
• Storytelling, using an object
• Everyone saying a Tom waits quote 
• Luther singing 'blue skies' 
• Edgar and Daisy talking about an object from the perspective of left and right brain 
• A moment between two characters in the bar (Fifi and Tobi / Olivia and Sam) 

After we did the run through, we discussed as a class the things that needed improving... 

• sound scape is too loud - storyteller cant be heard 
• stories need to be more specific - they are too general and cant be acted out 
• better spacing when people are sitting in the bar
• the story needs to link to the weather and chemical
• we need to learn what all the weathers mean 

We have decided to link the object to a weather and link the weather to an emotion. When an object is taken out of the box, Reece will decide what weather that object is. After the storytelling about the object, the whole ensemble will recreate the emotion of the weather, using the exercises we did last week.

• Snow- exhilaration
• Sunny- happiness
• Thunder - anger
• Rain- sadness 
• Fog- nervous 

Brook

Deadly Theatre

• all theatre that is driven by the needs of commercialism
• theatre tht follows a set of rules
• to be deadly does not mean ot is dead- it means it is alive in the wrong way 
• follows a formula
• introspective- incular in its thinking 
• the one thing that is particularly deppresssing about deadly theatre is that it is very alive and well
• the fact that it is struggeling alone contains one element of hope, a theatre that is alive at all, however dull or deadly, still has hope.

Holy Theatre

• seeks to transcend ordinary life
• does not speak to enough people
•  it is a theatre limited to itself 
• too narrow
• too limited
• not enough people can grasp it
• too niche 

Rough Theatre

• any theatre that does not happen in traditional theatre buildings
• seeks to change society
• populr theatre
• source of most renaissances in drama throughout history
• political and satirical 
• similar to Brecht
• opposite of holy theatre 

Immediate Theatre

• actors are like mediams, totally "in the moment", translating feelingsto the audience who are carried along with them 
• in touch with their creativity 
• instant creativity 
• relaxatin of body and mind 

Lesson 2

In this lesson we did...

Duel In The Dark

• tense
• silent
• battle
• exciting
• weapons
• impulsive 
• can't be recreated 

To start the lesson we played a game called 'Duel in the dark', a game where two people get blind folded and two rolled up news papers are put into the space. The two people have to search for the newspaper and once they find it, they must hit the other person with it and who ever does it first, wins! The whole point of the game is not to amuse the players, but to entertain the audience who is watching them. As an audience member it is very tense to watch because anything can happen. You feel like you have more power than the players, because you know where the newspaper is, who is winning and who is losing, where as they don't. This game was as involving for the audience as it was for the actors, because they were routing for one side and they felt frustrated when something went wrong or happy when someone found the newspaper. This idea links to Artaud's theory that the audience should be as involved as the actors. The game broke the separation between actor and audience and gave the audience just as much, if not more, power than the actor. 

I was also a player in one round of the game. As I was on my hands and knees searching for the paper, I hit my lip on the corner of a table, making it bleed! This proved how unexpected and impulsive this sort of performance is. Me injuring myself proved that by giving this freedom to actor and audience things can go wrong, but this also makes it much more exciting and dramatic than traditional theatre. 

I think that this exercise shows how being impulsive and not planning what is going to happen, results in a very engaging and involving experience for the audience. I think we should try to incorporate this sort of improvised work into our final piece and work on ways to make the audience feel involved in the action. 

Trapeze Movements
The next exercise we did was a series of movements where we lift your arms up in front of us, as if we were about to jump onto a trapeze. then on an out breath we fall forward, as if you have leapt off the perch. Then you come back to standing, raising your arms up, then quickly push your elbows into your ides, as if you were stabbing yourself. 

This exercise didn't have much depth when we first started doing it, but once we stared doing it with music, we reacted to the mood of the music it changed the whole feel of the movement. The music was quite sad and the sequence began to look like someone's descent into suicide. The raising of the arms looked like someone trying to reach for help, but then they dropped, suggesting them giving up and the stabbing motion looked like someone's final moment. 

This showed how powerful physical movement can be without any speech. A whole story can be told just through a sequence of simple movements. However another dimension is needed to set the mood, in this case it was music, but it could be anything - lighting, costume, film etc...

Sound Scapes
We sat in a circle and recreated the sounds of different settings. The first sound space we did was a wood. I was really surprised at how effective it sounded and if you closed your eyes you could image being outside in a wood. I think this one was so effective because everyone did subtle sounds and nobody was too over the top. 

We did another sound scape of being in a fair ground, but this one wasn't as effective because everyone went over the top with their sounds. There was too much screaming, crying and laughing to the point were it became comic and unrealistic. I think this was because we started off too loud, so everybody was competing too be heard instead of listening too each other. This showed us that in order to make a sound scape work you cant be selfish with your sounds, but listen to other people and fit in with what they are doing. 

Grotowski

• He was born in Rzeszów,in south Poland.
• He was influenced by religious writings such as the Bible and the Qu'ran.
• He was inspired by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, the author of 'The Idiot.' 
• He set up his own theatre company called 'The Theatre Lab'. 
• He was fed up of the naturalistic theatre environment, because he thought that nothing boundary pushing or exciting was happening.
• More interested in form, rather than story. 
• Wanted to strip theatre back to an actor on stage in front of an audience, then look at the potential. 
• Grotowski wanted to get rid of anything superfluous, such as lighting or costume.
• He believed that physical exhaustion allowed his actors to access raw, truthful emotion- this was absolutely necessary because without superfluous elements the actors had to be AMAZING.
• Being exhausted means that you can tap into visceral, real emotion. 
• His theatre company was very spiritual- they would live together, share the same political views and do the same things.
• His ideal actor was called the 'holy actor' and was completely stripped back. 
• Grotowski believed in 'poor theatre' - not spending money on superfluous things. All that is needed in poor theatre is the live communion between actor, audience and space. 
• With his actors he used a technique of elimination called 'via negative', because he wanted his actors to rid themselves of anything that would stop them playing a truthful role- this could be distractions, personal issues or feeling self concious. 
• To help his actors clear their heads, he would take them on long runs.
• Grotowski believed that the actor-audience was key, because when an actor truly connected with the audience, they were able to change the or influence them.
• If the actor was truly connected, they could share a moment of self revelation with the audience. 

Lesson 1

In this lesson we had three different workshops- one on Artaud, one on Peter Brook and one on Grotowski. The reason we did this was to get an idea for how these practitioners worked, so that during this term we can use their methods in our rehearsals and performance.

Workshop one - Artaud 

In this workshop we all lay down on the floor and Ben gave us different scenarios to react to. We had to think about what our emotional reaction would be to these situations. The first scenario was being trapped in a giant spiders web, the second was sinking in mud and the third was lying in a chocolate fountain. The lights were turned off and we were all lying down with our eyes closed, I found this helpful because it helped me feel more relaxed and less self conscious, allowing me to be real with my emotional response, instead of being fake.

Another exercise we did was line up lots of chairs in a row so that the legs were all in line. This created the impression of a tunnel and several people lay down in the tunnel, so that everyone lying down was trapped. Ben then turned out the lights, played dramatic, scary music and the people who weren't in the tunnel came and banged on the chairs and tried to frighten us. Being trapped in the tunnel, I found this exercise genuinely scary because I was experiencing the real feelings and  definitely wasn't acting! I think this would have been interesting for an audience to watch because everything happening on stage is real, not pretend and I think we should try to capture this truthful experience in  our piece.

Workshop two - Peter Brook

In the workshop we began by sitting and watching Olivia in the space. Jack told her to to try to clear her mind and look forward. We watched her for a while, then Sam came into the space and Jack told him to choose an emotional state (anger). Jack told him not to act, but really try to feel angry. Even though he was feeling an internal emotion, it was clear that his physicality and facial expression was very different to Olivia's, because of his state of mind. This showed that you can convey an emotion to an audience in a very subtle and powerful way, as long as you REALLY feel the emotion. You don't have to be melodramatic or pretend because when you access the real emotion, it will naturally show in your face and body. 

Workshop three - Grotowski 

In this workshop we began by jogging around the rehearsal room with our shoes off. We had been told before we started the workshop that we had to be silent from the moment we entered the room. I found this helpful because it meant that I was more focused and couldn't complain about what I was doing, which made it easier to carry on running! 

After running around in the rehearsal room for about 15 minutes, we put our shoes back on and ran outside for about 1/2 an hour. We still weren't allowed to talk  and Sarah kept shouting at us to carry on, not letting us stop. 

Although I found this really difficult, whilst I was running I found that I got into a rhythm and my head eventually cleared and all I thought about was what I was doing in the moment. This meant that after we finished, I was completely focused and had no distractions. 

The point if this exercise was to physically exhaust ourselves, so that we could access real emotion more easily. I understand how this would work, but during this workshop we didn't have enough time after our run to do some emotional recall, so I couldn't experience the full benefits of this exercise.