Sunday 29 November 2015

Thursday 19th - Week 3

Thursday 19th November 2015

In today's lesson we focused on the beginning and end of our scene. We started with an activity which taught us to use gesture theatre. We were in groups of 3 and were given 3 places, which were at home, at work and at a restaurant. For each of these scenes we needed  to create 3 movements each. With this we created a small piece of gesture theatre, exaggerating all the movements. When we performed it infront of the class, the music gradually became faster, speeding up our performance. This activity helped us to explore more types of theatre which we can use in our performance. The activity was inspired by the work of gecko theatre who use gesture/ physical theatre to create a moving performance.In their work, the scene forms around the actor, still keeping the scene clear and easy for the audience to interpret because of its flowing dance-like movements and transitions. Gecko theatre's performances have very smooth transitions which we are hoping to incorporate in our scene.

During the lesson we spoke about how we will use the space and what props still needed to be organised. We also discussed as a group different techniques of theatre will be used. We began by working on the dilemma of who the audience will be, keeping relevant to the scene they are stepping in. We had the idea of a police officer escorting them out of the room, however, that did not solve the problem of how we will move the audience through the space.

 After a while, we re-created the map, still similar to the previous one, however, we included more gesture theatre and audience interaction. From this new map out ideas of how we move the audience through the space began to grow. We would start with people holding up a washing line near the door where the audience walk in. this means that we limit them from seeing the whole room and stopping them from wondering off. We then close it around them, having actors go in and speak to them. Whilst this is happening, we transport the audience, still inside the washing line, to the next scene, where we see me and others eating oranges. During that piece of eating the oranges, Ruby will be trying to get the audience to give her money whilst she is juggling, followed by Ruby, Poppy and Lili doing a piece of gesture theatre about a day in the life of a street child, creating a transition, which leads the audience's focouse onto the next scene. Their piece will end in them opening a box, inside we will have one of our actors surrounded by images and words about her life as a street child. While the audience are looking at the box and information, the three girls will go to the end scene, which involves the homeless children sleeping under a bridge, where on top another piece of gesture theatre is happening, in which two more privileged people will be telling their story. It will show the couple meeting, falling in love all of which is symbolizes the ease of their lives compared to the homeless children, which the audience has just seen the difficulty in which they live. At the end of the gesture theatre piece, they will have a child which they will abandon because she is a girl. In India many young girls are abandoned because society does not allow them to earn as much as men, costing the family more than it will benefit them. The way we will show the baby to be a girl is by having her wrapped in a pink blanket.
The child in the box is also approached by a traffiker, who will first seem as if she is offering the child safety, but then goes on to blindfold her and drag her away to be sold. This will not be very load, however there will be a struggle. Due to the new ideas and changes of the scene, we could begin to rehearse parts of our scene.

During the devising process we needed to keep in mind that the scene needed to be reset almost immediately because the audience come in straight after, and the scene is repeated 5 times. Although the scene has changed, it is still take place in the course of the day, the audience are arriving as tourists in India, early in the morning and the piece finishes at night with the homeless children going to sleep. We cut the use of a video because of the more structured movement of the audience.


Props:
cardboard boxes, oranges, litter/ rubbish, materials to make the rag dolls and to be on Aarons stall, larger box, we will make use of the white corners which are already in The Space, as well as using shelves from the rooms upstairs for the end section. We would like to have an orange cellophane over the lights to stop it from being such a harsh light. A doll to be the child at the end, portable speakers as well as the over head sound of traffic. Advertisements for big companies like Coka-cola which are found internationally and images drawn by children and first hand accounts.
I bought in string and sheets which will be used for the washing line which helped us begin the rehearsal. We have moves a little away from immersive theatre and we are now using different types of theatre such as physical and gesture theatre, which allows us to use more of the space and have a variation in our performance, immersive theatre when in contact with the audience and allowing them to read the things on the walls. These choices have been made by the whole group so that it highlights a day in the life of a homeless child. It also gets the point of the performance across.
The title of the whole performance is 'Kids In Camps', this is why we show children together in a community, making a camp at night to sleep in.

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