Our group, scene 5 rape scene

We wanted this scene to reflect what is happening in the girls sub-conscious, a conflict between lust and fear, pleasure and pain. We have played with power levels, sexual tension and violence.

Needs some more work and will run for approx 3.30mins.

Any comments welcome :)

Todays session? Wed 25th Nov

What did I miss today? Ben indicates that some progress was made!

Latest Task and Groups

All this week you will be working on a particular story which may involve only two or ALL members of the company. This will probably come from something previously discussed, but may be an entirely original story that the group has decided upon. If memory serves me well the groups are: -

Ben, Kelly, Chris, Angela
Lisa, Leah, Kayleigh, Shika
Amber, Lindsey, Andrea, Camille

You should break your story down into scenes in a particular order. Then look at how you might stage this. Finally start writing a script and acting it out (performing). We will share on Friday then give notes for further work with an aim to having something polished for the following Friday.

I suggest a moment or two to reflect on Friday afternoon followed up by off-site group research if anyone is available

Circle of Ideas 10/11/09

Hey Bloggers

This is for anyone who would like an update on today's session

• Flashbacks-re-tracing steps
• Uncovering layers of wallpaper (Angela's home)
• Sixth sense, what doesn't exist
• Pages turned-telling stories.uncovering layers
• voices-different tones and styles
• using words on different parts of the body for the audience to piece together a sentence
• Mental state taking a physical state
• Isaac and Abraham. Battle of conscience.
• Families and hidden states of secrets
• Resurrected death. Higher power
• Closets and skeletons
• Organ transplant. Taking over another persons traits
• Retracing steps of remembrance-a lot like Memento
• Physicality crap but mentally brilliant (Kelly's story)
• Good vs Evil. Heaven and Hell
• Mental illness
• Justification, gates of heaven. Asking the question. Where am i?
• Looking at higher powers, eg: government officials
• Green/red cards for audience member's, Judge and Jury (Linzy's idea)
• How we are programmed
• Story from Northern Light, 'Amber Spyglass'
• Research Alzheimer's
• Memory stick in at beginning out at the end
• Pass on memory stick in space
• Robots, Frankenstein's monster
• Cabinet of the cast waiting for their character to enter the stage area and perform
• Scientist making an experiment
• Advert 'we could sort out your life'
• Bodies as memory sticks. we are all data
• Time limit for stories. Time limit for human life expectancy
• Dissociative Identity Disorder
• Timer, Time limits
• Box, another box. Layers
• Trying to find memory
• Confessions using memory stick (another persons story)

MULTIPLE PERSONALITY DISORDER.. PLS WATCH

THE 3 FACES OF EVE!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpJxZaaFv9U&feature=related

Someone mentioned this in the dicussions we had today and I thought i'd post this footage, it's rather intriguing. A lady who has 3 different personalities is being questioned/explored. There's a section 04:45 where each personality is asked to dress in what they would normaly wear. It's amazing just how these personalities are so diffrent I found it hard to believe at first!

POEM - THEY'LL NEVER FORGET

Poem is based on the task.. thoughts/imprints we believe people would have of us if we died.

She’ll never forget my Mickey Mouse pyjama suit
She’ll never forget my homemade soup
She’ll never forget, she’ll never forget
my warm hands upon her breasts
She’ll never forget my annoying laugh
That made her smile when she was sad
She’ll never forget the fun days out
She said that’s what life is all about

She’ll never forget my silence
That frustrated her for days
She’ll never forget my island
I talked about always

She’ll never forget me ever
Her only baby girl
She’ll love me till forever
She brought me in this world
She’ll never forget my runny nose
Or walking me to school
She’ll never forget my “Minnie” clothes
That made me look real cool.

He’ll never forget our movie nights
I’d hide behind the couch
The ones that gave that awful fright
He’d always laugh out loud

They’ll never forget our hide and seek
I was the best at that
They’d look for ours on that street
I always got there last

STORY IDEA - THE TWINS

Hey peeps

From the idea of “you see your own corpse revealing marks of your death how did you die” I wrote this story.

You come across your own corpse how did you die.

Simon has posttraumatic stress disorder. He has blocked out his past because it’s too painful. He has been prescribed tablets to help him deal with it but had stopped taking them because he felt he was better. He starts to have nightmare dreams and Hallucinations. One of his dreams is seeing himself laid dead on the floor with gunshots in his body and marks around his neck. Simon has always worn his dog tags around his neck and also a small chain with a key on it. He notices that the hallucination of himself is wearing dog tags but not wearing this key. He comes to the conclusion that someone has murdered him for the key as there is a lined mark around his neck as if someone had pulled it from him. Thinking that it’s something that’s going to happen to him in the future he tries to remember what the key is for.

He continues to have these Hallucinations/dreams and decides to draw what he sees to piece together what they all mean.

Hallucinations/dreams he has

1. Himself dead with missing key
2. A photo album with missing pictures
3. Black box
4. A diary
5. Shot wounds and mark around the neck
6. His dog tags with the numbers 1469.

Simon tries to look around his house to see if he can find anything. He comes across an old photo album many of the photos are missing.

The black box:
Inside the black box he finds a diary with padlock on.

The key around his neck fits to the diary he found. The diary has no numbers. On the 1st page it reads “the” 4th page “truth” and 6th page hurts” he continues through the book but the pages are blank. He writes the word out and the pages they were on.

He goes back to the drawings he has and comes across one with his dog tags the numbers are very faint it reads “1469”.

The numbers are links to the pages he was reading except with the extra number 9.

He goes through the book again and looks on page 9 he finds nothing. He counts the pages until he ends on page 1469 where it reads. “I hid these memories for a reason when the time comes I will open them up again but embrace them, embrace the ones that mean the most to me.” In the book is an address of a safe deposit box company.

In the safety box are the missing pictures, in the pictures there is always another boy. The other boy is his twin brother; there are pictures of when they were younger, at home with family birthday’s etc. one picture strikes him most, the one of them in the war together hugging, one is wearing a key one is not.

He begins to remember that his twin brother had died in the war they were fighting together. Simon was there when his brother was shot several times and his helmet was caught on something, causing the strap to chafe. The body was in the exact position as in his hallucinations.

Simon had brought a diary to record his time in the army but used it after his brother died to keep his past memories in.

Corpse Bride Story

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Hello Bloggers!!

Yesterdays session was interesting, it was excellent to piece together great content for our show.

I thought I'd share my story that we were meant to piece together and discuss to the group on Tuesday.

The story is based on a Bride (that will eventually turn into a dead body on the floor).

Beat One: Getting ready for her 'big day' family and friends gathering round etc.

Beat Two: Bride alone in her dress with emotions-quiet, reflective, pensive. She is holding a red lipstick and puts this on (with a mood reflective piece of music). We could have live noises like the ones we have been doing with Angela. Church choir but spooky.

Beat Three: Church service (traditional) the service begins and when the priest says 'do you promise to obey' the mood changes, the actors change their positions (we could explore this).

Beat Four: The bride a corpse on the floor with her white dress red blood stained, confetti around her.

Beat Five: Identity parade, police or investigators discussing the very unlikely and different looking suspects discussing how they knew the victim, connections etc.

Beat Six: The hard bit, the ending? what is the message?neat and tidy?or more thought provoking?

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Find the Belbins

There is a stack of Belbin tests in the corner of the Vision Suite. Enjoy.

If the session starts to flag on Tuesday afternoon you could do worse than watch a DVD of a Gob Squad performance from the LRC (library. I will have a word with the library staff so they can point you to where to get the DVDs.

Lists

Thought I'd put this down in black and white. These are the lists you should have put together.

1) An inventory of everything material you own: all objects and possessions which you will leave behind when you die.

2) An inventory of your emotional legacy: traces of you which will remain in people's memories when you die.

Minding Rocco (a short film) PLEASE WATCH

Hi everyone

This morning I came across an interesting short film called Minding Rocco by Roy's Boys. You can watch this film on their website, here is the link below.

http://www.roysboys.co.uk/

once on the site, click on films and you'll find it listed at the bottom.

what I really enjoy about this film is that the audience enter the lives of the main characters some time into their relationship, weeks, months maybe even years and throughout the whole film the audience is trying to understand and work out the relationship between the leading male actor and the clown, and even at the end of the film where everything is revealed, the audience is still left trying to work out what happened before we first meet these characters.

I also liked the use of distorted music that created alot of the atmosphere and tension for this film.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE WATCH. I THINK YOU'LL FIND THIS RATHER INTERESTING.

Amber :)

Belbins

Also up for grabs on Tuesday - the Belbins Test. I have photocopied one of these questionaires for each of you. Read and follow these instructions FIRST and make sure you understand what you are doing before you start:
1. There are 7 questions. You have 10 points to assign to responses to each question
2. There are 8 responses to each question. READ ALL 8 RESPONSES before assigning points. Responses you agree with should be given 1 or more points. Responses that don't apply to you should recieve 0 points. Remember you have TEN POINTS to assign to each question - no more, no less.
3. Write the points next to the responses on the sheet.
4. When you have finished all 7 questions, transfer your points onto the Self-Perception Inventory Analysis table.
5. Once you have done this, add up the totals at the bottom of the page. This will give you an indication of what roles you are good at when you work in a team.
6. Only now look at the description of the roles.
7. If your totals add up to more or less than 70 you've done it wrong. go back and check your numbers.

Tuesday Session

This was discussed on Friday, but for the benefit of those of you who were away:

I will be at a conference on Tuesday so will be trusting you to work on your own on Tuesday. I'm concerned that we do not have enough 'content' material to choose from at this stage and so ask that you concentrate on this, rather than the 'form' or method of conveying/ presenting the content. To this end, can you write up any 'stories' you have linking the characters (or new characters) and bring them to them table. In groups can you develop these stories into 'beats' or 'scenes',e.g.
Scene 1 Doris meets Steve,
Scene 2 Steve gets run down by a bus,
Scene 3 Doris Identifies Steve's body in the morgue.
Scene 4 Doris dreams of Steve's corpse.
Scene 5. Doris can't concentrate at work, keeps thinking of corpse.
Scene 6. Doris breaks into morgue and is caught fiddling with Steve's body.
Obviously, your versions will be a bit more detailed than this, but you should be able to break your detailed step outline into simple beats like above.

Once you feel you have come up with some interesting stories, which explore the concept of forensics have a sharing session and discuss which stories have the best legs - I will hear you favourites on Wednesday morning/ Afternoon.

Please, please, please resist grand ideas of presenting these stories to the audience at this stage.

Keep working at the vocal stuff, hakka warm-ups and any student led sessions. SHIKA - do you want to develop or consolodate any of the work that's emerged from your sessions?

The Magdelene laundry scenario

A young woman has been locked up in a religious institution (Magdalene Laundry style) for being a little bit wayward. She has been in there for a year and she is now 15 years old. She has a rag doll that she rubs on her face as a comforter. The priest in charge has recently made her pregnant. Once the pregnancy is known about she has been locked in her room by the nuns and told to pray. We see one of the nuns take the rag doll off her as a punishment. The rag doll is then taken to the priest who instructs the other nun to pour a chemical onto the doll which will induce miscarriage. When the doll is given back to the girl she immediately rubs it on her face. Within minutes she is kneeling in agony. We see blood and she falls forwards onto her face having died as the miscarriage has caused her to hemorrhage (the nun has been very heavy handed with the chemical). We see a another nun enter the room and check the girls pulse in her neck, she realizes she is dead and goes to tell the priest.

Gang dance idea

Evening guys!

As we have been discussing the idea of gangs and religion. I was looking into how we could differentiate each gang from the idea Ben had mention in his blog about the Jabbowakeez on “ensemble work.” I thought to expand on that by researching different types of dance and movements that each gang could associate themselves with. I came across a dance called the Hakka war dance.

The Hakka dance is a traditional dance that was performed by the Maori warriors of New Zealand before they went to battle. Its purpose was to intimidate the opposition and to create a frenzy atmosphere to mentally prepare them for war. Today it is used for many different reasons for example achievements, to welcome guest, ceremonies etc.

A modern example of this could be the New Zealand All Blacks rugby team who perform the dance before every match.

Characteristics – vigorous movements, stamping of the feet accompanied by rhythmic words.

The concept of the Hakka dance could be used as a gang battle, an initiation test or rituals. The word Unison springs to mind when I see these dances performed. It would be great to experiment around the idea of that word. If possible doing some movement exercises based around mirroring each other and keeping in mind the idea of the characteristics of the Hakka, thus create a sense of being as one in your gang. Each could have a different style of hakka maybe with different sounds and movements. It could also be done with a form of mime as away of mocking the opposing side.

hopefully see you all tomorrow for some feedback, thank you :)

OMG its 5:30am!

Hi all

I love the idea of using masks and tribal dance to show emotions instead of the cliche fight scene, and also the use of animal mask and movements to display humans raw emotions I think would be a powerful statement.

I have also had some idea's (at 5am I woke up and had a brain wave, I had to go and write them down and tell you all about them here). I have been thinking about "what is forensic?", and have the idea of stripping it down for the audience in a series of different sketches.

these can go in any order, and would need more sketches (prob 7 or 8) for a full performance.

I was inspired by Dan's class today, and as such would like to use a sketch based around that, but also the following idea's:

1st sketch:

Question: How do we find evidence?

For this I would subject our audience to their 5 sense's, we take our sense's for granted, and as such by isolating the audience to each of these I would hope to achieve a heightened state of the audiences sense's for the remainder of the performance.
With the stage blacked out:

Smell - we release two smells into the audience, the first one a nice smell that would remind people of a pleasant experience, and the 2nd smell something nasty (we would have to experiment ourselves with this and use Dan's stink machine).

Sound - As above, we play some music that's calming, and another that is dark and gets the heart racing.

Touch - We use different items (feather, hand, brush - any idea's would be great) and touch the audience with them.

Sight - someone enters the stage (still blacked out) with a very narrow beam torch that reveals a disturbing scene of death, but as the torch is narrow beam the audience will only get to take in the information a small piece at a time, and over time they can piece together the whole image of whats on stage in their minds.

Taste - Full lights up this time. Before the audience take their seats we give each member a piece of bread for a communion that will be on stage, this is to signify both taste, but also that with all our sense's now working we can all work as one and join as a group.


2nd sketch:

We all come onto stage and through movement we all form a shape by joining ourselves to one another. Then we brake apart and get one or two members of the audience to put us back into the shape we was (with the audience's help). This exercise will start to put into practice the experiences we have just given them through using their sense's.

3rd sketch:

Based upon Dan's idea, we would all come on stage for the random (linear walk), but we all wear tee shirts that at the end of the piece when we all die we face down, and on the backs of our tee shirts we each have part of an image that when joined together (in sequence) form the picture of a corps.

These are the idea's I have had at 5am (now 6am after taking notes), please let me know of your views, and if you like them we could try to subject ourselves to the 5 sense's test.


Still love the idea of a tribal dance with animal masks though, but going off the idea of gangs for entirety of the performance, I just think we have the chance to be more explorative with our idea's at this stage.


Thanks for reading this, see you all on Friday. X

Another concept - pls read :)

Hi guys, kelly, lisa and myself did some thinking this evening after feeling a little deflated due to today's afternoon session.

We felt that a more realistic environment might bring more clarity to the notion of gangs. We thought of setting the piece in a Borstal (school/containment centre for delinquent teenagers) an environment like this would make more sense in the forming of gangs - surviival in numbers etc.

We went back to our idea of using masks and felt that one gang could wear Lion masks and the other could possibly wear wolf masks as both of these species hunt and hang together in numbers.

After some tweeks here and there we could keep Dan's scene as the opening scene and the character that walks out and dies in the middle is wearing a Rat mask. This alone would already signify to the audience the nature of this character and the audience could find some meaning as to why this character has been killed i.e. the rat has been hanging around in in both gangs - who is he working for? is it a double bluff?. in possible flashback scenes we can have the rat hanging with both gangs (alternating between each gang in different scenes) the gangs of course always see the rat as one of their own as if he were wearing their mask up until his demise(The masks are just symbollic messages to the audience)

The wardens of the borstal don't want to deal with the reasoning behind the rats death as he is merely a troublesome youth to them, which is where the audience and gangs come in, both trying to find the answers to the rats death.

Each gang member could be unmasked and deliver a confession whilst sat in spotlight next to the rats corpse. This confession should consist of the crimes committed by the delinquent that resulted in their confinement. each gang member should have some sort of link in their story that could suggest they killed the rat e.g. if the rat was stabbed, one of the inmates could have a confession that involved them stabbing someone in the past, creating a link to the murder (repeat offending) this character also could display signs of great regret towards that action therefore creating an element of doubt for the audience (is he telling the truth?)

We realised that religion came up a lot in our sessions, so it could be that the gangs are tutored by a catholic priest in this borstal, one gang could show a positive attitude towards him (following religion - signs of repent and regret or just a facade????) whereas the other gang could have a negative attitude towards him (atheism - more honest???) this could also show a real visual divide between the gangs and asks the audience to either favour a gang with apparent religious views or those without.

A possible twist to the show could be that whilst the audience are trying to work out which gang/gang member executed the rat the real answer lies in the higher orders (wardens or priest) There could be suliminal/sub-concious clues laid out to the audience throughout the piece that make links to these higher orders although they are not made to obvious.

Using grafitti either conventionally or on the projector, messages and clues could be laid out to the audience making them question whether its the spirit of the rat, a witness or just a hoax.

With gangs there is obviously conflict but rather than using a cliche fight each gang could perhaps use a tribal war dance to intimidate their opponent or even a more dance-like fight as used in the pint glass scene in DV8's "Enter Achilles" - this would work a whole lot better with the masks as a war dance is very animalistic and territorial.

As a final thing, if you get a chance watch some dancing done by "jabberwocky" for idea's on ensemble work as a gang, these dancers work brilliantly as a unit and if we were to use gangs in our piece the general image they portray is very effective

Thanks for reading! :) we're going to ask Dan if we can lead a method acting session next week that incorporates some of these ideas just to see where it goes. This will also involve some character building work over the weekend that will be your responsibility - will let you know more about it after speaking with Dan

Reference List – Forensic

Novels

Rant – Chuck Palahniuk
My Name is Red – Orhan Pamuk

Films

La Jete – Dir. Chris Marker (28 mins)
Memento – Dir. Christopher Nolan
The Killing – Stanley Kubrik
Any Portmanteau Film (e.g Amoures Pedros, Babel, Pulp Fiction)
Tango – Dir. Zbigniew Rybczynski

Performances

Hidden J – Forced Entertainment (Learning Centre)
The Pilots – Reckless Sleepers (Nott Dance Festival)
New Art Club (talk -Friday 16 October 11.30am-1.00pm)
Lone Twin (Talk - Friday 23 October 11.30am-1.00pm)

Artists

Mike Nelson
Cy Twombly
Bansky
Grayson Perry

Television

The Singing Detective – Written by Dennis Potter
CSI/ Silent Witness/ etc
Any documentary on forensic science.

Performance Theory

Mitter, S. (1992) Systems of Rehearsal: Stanislavsky, Brecht, Grotowski and Peter Brook. London: Routledge
Lansdale, J. A. (1994) Dance Analysis: Theory & Practice. London: Dance Books
Tufnell, M. & Crickmay, C. (2008) Body, Space, Image. 2nd Ed. London: Dance Books
Zarrilli, P. (2002) Acting (Re) Considered. 2nd ed. London and USA: Routledge
Keefe, J. & Murray, S (Ed). ((2007) Physical Theatres: A Critical Reader. London & USA: Routledge

Music

Any Ballet score. (esp. Daphne et Chloe, Rites of Spring)

Definition of Forensic

Forensics encompasses the accepted scholarly or scientific methodology and norms under which the facts regarding an event, or an artifact, or some other physical item (such as a corpse) are ascertained as being the case.

Put more simply, it’s the process of trying to find out what has happened in the past from the traces left behind.

ऑनलाइन फॉरम

Please post anything you think is relevent to the research and development process. Ben, Kelly, Andrea and Angela please post entries summing up your ideas so far. Shika - if you have written anything up from your workshops please post them here.