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 :)
Friday, October 30, 2009
Thursday, October 29, 2009
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.
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?
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?
Monday, October 26, 2009
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.
Monday, October 19, 2009
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 :)
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 :)
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
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
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
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
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)
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.
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.
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