Evaluation

I believe that our expectations of the piece were met because we had allowed enough rehearsals to smooth over many creases and issues that could've occurred. My expectations of the piece is that it has to create numerous emotions within the piece for the audience to latch onto, being discomfort, confusion, isolation and laughter. We ran through the performance once more before the audience came and it allowed us to avoid a mistake that I would've made about my entrance, if I didn't do that it would've gone wrong in the official performance and would've thrown off many others. I believe that a lot of the problems were fine in the performance because we ran through it all. However the part wherein I had to be lifted onto Dans back and kick off the slanted roof was shortened because of the placement of a shirt. so we had to adjust the positioning of my body and shorten the time spent kicking off of the wall to allow this to still work effectively. The only problem that occurred in the performance was allowing the audience to know that the piece had ended, waiting with baited breath behind the cloth waiting for the audience to recognise the ending was one of the moments of doubt within the performance amongst the actors. I think that one of the best moments was the use of recording that we had put together of everyday life, and that as that was playing it echoed our performance or helped us along. It gave us all a time for everyone to perform within, and added to our piece as the cove was quite echoey and symbolised the echo nature of memories. I believe that the audience reacted well, although there was only two, because the space only allowed two/three audience members to be present. I believe that this made the experience of memories more intimate and allowed us to perform in a more subtle and naturalistic was as everyone was able to see everything to an intense detail. I felt quite exhausted by the end of our performance, as it is although quite short it requires a lot of memory of cues and props, as well as the constant changing of character every few seconds. I found our physical theatre clip quite painful because at one point I scraped my knee but it only began to hurt afterward and so didn't effect me too negatively in the performance. 

Watching other peoples performance beforehand meant that we had learnt a lot about what was more successful and what was less so. This enabled us to adjust apporpriately or take on board what others had positively achieved or created. 

I found Hannah's group extremely atmospheric and interesting due to their use of sound, light and character creation. The use of Robyn in order to guide us up the flights of stairs in the darkness spooked us and gave me the chills. Immediately taken in to an area where you feel defenceless from the darkness. The use of light initially used the spaces architecture effectively as the gridded railings shadows were aesthetically pleasing and prodded scary thoughts and imagination. The use of the door's window was also extremely effective because it allowed Billy to use his head torch to shine it through. Making us take off our shoes was also effective because it meant that we felt more vulnerable, and under their control. The several characters that you met along the way meant that the space was used effectively because it was hard to see where the next batch of characters was coming from due to its winding path. The use of light and echo also meant that shadows and sounds followed through the path and shone on different textures and bounced off the walls, so that our vision wasn't fully obscured but we still struggled to see. I liked there piece very much because they set the tone effectively and it meant that they could make us feel a certain way throughout the entire performance because they had thought it out thoroughly. The only thing I would've changed is the information on where they had got the separate character stories from that I had found out later from talking to the group as I found that intensely interesting. 

Several of the items that we had collectively brought to add detail and interest to our site.

Brochure from my planning, echoing the protagonists defeat.

The t-shirt was repositioned and I had to use different sides of the ceiling to place my feet, in order to allow us to use the site properly for the physical piece and utilise the interesting slant of the ceiling fully. 

Dan's school clothes were added to the midst amongst some peoples food, using white tape it allowed us to blend it in with the walls of the site without it appearing too jarring.

We hung shoes off of the emergency call box and used the green light to enable us to create the puppets of our memories. Also the light switches enabled us to create the on off lighting that happens on the train sometimes to add to the clip where we are on the train.

Final Rehearsals

Final Rehearsals

Adding onto the idea of a film of life, and a montage of memories that we had organised, I decided to put forth an idea of a Film credits in the end and a clapper moment after the dramatic section wherein he fell through the portal into a cabin of limbo and memories.

I found several film credits from a member of publics favourite film, so as to piece together another section of someones memories that may occur within there 7 seconds. One of the films being the film Contact https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrL-lNtN140 These credits where chosen out of many because of the fact that it is within seven minutes and so reflects our 7 second theme idea, and also it runs as long as our performance. It also runs parallel with the character as it was released around about when our "protagonist" would've been able to watch it and enjoy it in 1997.

 All of the memories that we would use during the film credits and using the light from the green lamp on the side would allow us to puppet our own dreams, so as to use the site and create an even more stunning and effective piece of surrealism within our montage and highlight what was used in other cultures to tell stories.

Using chalk for Daniel to use the floor would allow him to use another section of the space that is important and interesting as the grey floor can display the writing amongst it. Another prominent memory that we found from asking around in the school was that Birthday memories were quite prominent, so Daniel would write his own birthday message and then as people would walk by they would see and be reminded that it was his birthday, as it is an event that we are all familiar with.

The selection of items that would be hung around would resemble underneath someones bed, as if it was a pit of several memories. The meaning of our site was the use of it as a storage space and a hidden cove that was hardly remembered. As a group we decided to bring in several items that hold significance to us, not necessarily being profound.

My list was:

The brochure I was given on Blue Skies day
My handbag brush
Cinema Chocolate wrapper
Metro
3 items I haven't taken out of my bag
Favourite food-Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Fudge Brownie

Costume:

Wearing all black so as to allow us all to use the props found in the space and what we have brought so that it can enable us to change in and out quickly and so that we become people within Daniel/Felix' memories that can be anyone from any point in his life.

We ran the performance multiple times so as to enable us to perform it without stopping and enabling us to go through it smoothly.

Week 4 Perspectives, Space, Symbolism

Perspective 

Today's rehearsal taught me that our space has an important ability to present interesting and stimulating perspectives for the audience. The inside of it enabled us to experiment with such ideas, and the cozy indent where we have decided to place the audience gives them the maximum ability to do so, it also gives them the fullest way of experiencing our performance, and we explored this through trials of moving ourselves personally around to discover the best possible place. 

Another important element of perspective in our piece is the idea of sound perspective, the fact that our space is placed under some stairs allows our sound to travel through material, it gives us the higher ground element to disperse between many areas as well as the walls and echoey fabric of the walls inside the site. This may cause the audience to have varying experiences with sound, due to their varying positioning and what mentally echoes personally with them.

Space

Exploring the spacing inside our site as a place that is quite compact and small, means that the control that we must have as well as the placement of our varying characters is penultimately important for this performance and in rehearsal we explored the scenes and freely changed the spacing  to give the audience the best visual experience. The placement of our audience close together minimises the space between them and causes their discomfort to reflect that of the main character, them living through his "7 Second" life and travelling with him on this journey should undergo a similar experience to them as well, so that they become much more active rather than passive in their viewing of the piece.

Scenes

Our development of the scenes means that we disjointed the chronology of it all. This is shown my our initial structure that we had decided in the previous week, but felt the need to change and adapt and develop as we reflected back on the space we had present. We found rehearsal in that space constantly allowed us to do that effectively as different aspects triggered our imagination and enabled us to work directly from the stimulus rather than create from our mind. The recordings also added a layer of depth to the performance and gave the character more to work from as we listened to the recordings of general life that would occur in your seven second life and fed it into the piece.

Importance of Seven seconds 

It became immediately evident that we wanted to incorporate the importance of the number 7 that we had received from our research into the 7 Second Theory and so we wanted that to run parallel in our piece. This is done throughout the scenes of childhood into adulthood and is a reoccurring subtle theme throughout, which incorporates the research we have done previously.

Utilising the MT people walking past 

In rehearsal we found the constant throng of students quite adaptable for our piece as it added to the perspective mentioned earlier and easily represents a part of the characters life. This makes our space even more crucial to our piece as the atmospheric elements of chatting and footsteps etc. become a constant part of our site that should be involved rather than controlled and got rid of throughout our performance, it adds an element of changeability and reflects what unconventional theatre is made for and how it causes the actor to work even harder to remain on top of it all.

Symbolism of the doorway

In discussion with our group we found the symbolic meaning of the doorway created narrative for our piece and personally I found the interesting proscenium arch-esque appearance incredibly reminiscent of any kind of doorway/portal or cupboard that you can discover in most places and adds to the kind of relationship of the piece with an audience member, as it is although unique as a site, can be easily transferred into the audiences experience and memories of any aspect of their life. As well as it also being an window into the soul of our protagonist which we have moulded into a multirole so that both actors get an equal amount of exploration and living within the space as it also represents different time periods of their life as different people.

Rehearsal and Devising Week 3

The exploration of theatricality in our piece is done through our developmental devising process. We have split our performance into 7 main sections, due to the use of the information that you are given a flash back that works over seven seconds that fast forwards over your life. We separated lives chronologically and interviewed each other and members of the public to discover what particularly they remember from different stages of there life, be it insignificant and significant.

Memories such as:

• Ice cream flavours
• Arguments
• Fears
• Reoccurring nightmares
• Friends
• Play dates
• Films 
• Music
• Moments of heated panic
• Separation from family 
• Foods 
• Rooms
• Christmas

As well as many other insignificant and significant memories, we chose to separate life into 7 chronological sections and from this diagram below of what we had sectioned off in the lesson to structure our devised piece, and to confirm particular moments that we are going to start.

We are now able to merge and mix up the order, in the lesson I grew to realise that we can do this in theatre because it is such a freeing art form that has boundless limits and no set rules enabling us to create whatever we want without the constrictions of rules, laws and methods that are found predominantly in the outside world.

We also discussed the idea of the use of multi media to develop our piece and add layers to it. The idea is to record conversations that are significant or insignificant, regular or irregular and replay them whilst they are attached to the sides of the wall within our space. This means that different audience members will experience and remember different things that may particularly stick with them as it rings through there ears. It also makes our piece much more in-depth as each seven second that passes you get more of his life running through the piece and as we have asked the public at random this is more of a representation of society as a whole.

We want to make our piece as diverse as possible and exploring the space we have created meaning through our space with possible memories that  may occur of ring true from the site that we have chosen. We want to use an element of physical theatre to display a relationship between his daughter and the dying father and would like to explore it through the use of physical theatre. I also believe that this relationship gives the performance an element of warmth and heart and introduces a theme of love and protection into the piece as a man that is experiencing a lot of deterioration and destruction within himself.

I believe that as a group we are now at a place where we can feel more assured in our decisions as although it sounds contradicting our structure has given us more freedom to produce as we have given ourselves objectives and criteria's that we need to meet.

Site Development Week 1 & 2

When initially devising in our space we decided to remove all the objects that cluttered and caused safety hazards and began to explore the empty space, exploring the perspective that this space could offer for us. We didn't just explore the space but the factors around the space such as the sounds that can be heard from outside and around the space and how clear those were, I did this through sitting in the space for 5 mins silently observing the sounds with my eyes closed in  order to heighten my other senses and allow me to find the heart of the atmosphere.

Here are some words that sprang to mind:

• dust
• decay
• children
• footsteps
• enclosed
• suffocated
• corporate
• whine
• moan
• mental
• closed
• open
• paradox
• crisp
• nobbled
• stone
• reverberate

 Also the use of light that we have explored in our Theatre Workshop lessons from studying Artaud, this taught us the importance of light, there being a green light in the enclosed space we decided that this creates dark and sinister atmosphere in the room and that we could possibly explore the meaning behind green lights and so I researched further. It automatically clicked the association between a Green Light and the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel "Great Gatsby" that I have been studying in English Literature.

"To Gatsby, the green light represents his dream" 
http://thegreatgatsbysandm.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/green-light.html

The idea of a dream like state enticed me and my peer Felix offered the idea of exploring Artaud's 18 Seconds, the idea that a display of something from a mans head will take 18 seconds for him to see but for it to be reprojected it will take an hour or two. We listened to this clip in our space and the ideas formed for many of us to use this space as a display of someones mind and the audience being able to see the person who's mind it is attached to the walls by wires and the things that occur outside of the walls would be what he is seeing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YShtXbIbrW0

We also liked the idea of shadow and silhouette that this room produced and used the objects that were found inside the room as a barricade to prevent the light getting in, it gave it a moody and jealous feel and we began to find connotations of jealousy and a dungeon like quality to it also. I found the space incredibly malleable in both sessions and that it as a simple space had interesting and diverse features, but it still had an intricacy and clean feel also. Choosing this space was useful because it meant that we could increasingly test and develop ideas and I felt less attached with them as I went along, because of our groups ability to contribute and change as we continued to discuss further possibilities and directions we could take with this piece.