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
May I just add, the majority of our discussion was more of a debate form (in relation to the concepts and ideas developed for the piece)rather than this is what we should do! A lot of the ideas are worth exploring, so the use of animals and definately the masks, war dance etc; I really like the idea. Especially when thinking about using physical theatre, I believe as group it is something we could all be really strong at. I think that the religion scope is something we all like the idea of and should definatley consider.
ReplyDeleteWe could always look at the idea of 'Girl Interrupted' as this could be seen as animalistic if people weren't too keen on the animal idea, (as in being hunan!!! haha) because of the institution idea and the divide between sanity and insanity, where does that fine line get divided? Who is sane? What is sanity? etc!
Anyway I thought these are a few things we could possibly think about also but definately coiniciding with the opinions and ideas stated above by Ben!!
As in the post i have made, i love your idea of a tribal dance and think the animal mask idea would be more powerful than the normal masking work that other theatre groups do. As humans we are all capable of doing anything and I think the idea of Sigmund Freud's Ego-ID-Superego theory would fit well to this theme.
ReplyDeletesome great ideas - thanks for references to DV8 and Jabberwocky.
ReplyDeleteRemember our discussion about Company Worker Ben? I think I'm going to make you all do Belbin tests next week so that the Plants, Shapers, Resource Investigators et al don't get swamped by your Will to Power.
ReplyDelete