Pillowman - Lesson 4 - 23/10/15

23^rd October 2015

In today’s lesson we have gone back to the first scene so that we can try and stage some of it. So far we have come up with some music that we want to include for our opening. The first song that is ‘Pure Imagination’ sung by Gene Wilder. This song was chosen to be played whilst the audience are being seated. This song is supposed to relate to the fact that Katurian and Michael have a Pure Imagination when writing their stories, and also more towards Michael as he is child-like and probably has a bit of an imagination in his head.  The second song that we have is called “Sing Sing Sing” by Benny Goodman which we will use for comedic purposes and also as Arial and Tupolski’s entrance music. When we reach the performing area, my character will nudge a desk and the music will cut out.   

Victorian School research

As we are showing how schools have changed and developed over time, we are performing a small movement scene that is repeated and cannoned throughout. I've done some research into what victorian schools were like as it may help with our uderstanding on what the schools were like.

"There were maps and perhaps pictures on the wall. There would be a globe for geography lessons, and an abacus to help with sums. Children sat in rows and the teacher sat at a desk facing the class. At the start of the Victorian age, most teachers were men, but later many women trained as teachers.
Children wrote on slates with chalk. They wiped the slate clean, by spitting on it and rubbing with their coat sleeve or their finger! Slates could be used over and over. For writing on paper, children used a pen with a metal nib, dipped into an ink well."

"Discipline in schools was often strict. Children were beaten for even minor wrongdoings, with a cane, on the hand or bottom. A teacher could also punish a child by making them stand in the corner wearing a 'dunce's cap'. Another, very boring, punishment was writing 'lines'. This meant writing out the same sentence (such as 'Schooldays are the happiest days of my life' 100 times or more."

Information found from : http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/primaryhistory/victorian_britain/victorian_schools/

here is a photo of a class in the victorian days.

London Riots - MP Speeches Starter

In today’s lesson we were able to do a whole run through including our MP speeches. Personally I think that it went well and the transitions go really well with our pieces. I think that the MP speech scene will add a bit of comedy to the entire piece as my character’s speech is rather like Boris Johnson and gets interrupted which the audience could find funny. One thing that made me go a bit comedic with the speech is that when we had a workshop sort of lesson on the speeches that we had prepared, my character always seemed to come across serious with the main person in charge (Mr Speaker) however comes up with rather strange and random ideas or suggestions.

One thing that I think I need to improve on is the slight bit of ballet that we use at the beginning of our movement piece. In order to be able to improve this bit, I think that I need to just keep going over it and then hopefully once I get used to the movement it will look better. But I also think I need to be more confident with it and just really go for it.

La Vie Boheme part 2

To start off the lesson, we had recapped what we had done in the previous lesson (the freeze frames and the sitting down dance). And then we tried adding in the next section which we all thought that would be a good idea was that we add in a drum beat like pattern which would go from one end of the table to the other which was rather hard as we have to do the beats rather fast and make sure that it's all in time. Then we added in the movement where we all stand up and point at Ashley. We chose this as we didn't want to spend the whole intro sitting down and felt that there should have been more movement and us getting more entertaining for the audience. When it got to the second lesson we spend a while singing through the song, really trying to get a feel for it and then trying to get used to the lyrics and when peoples ques are. We then got to the section in which it really speeds up and most of the words rhyme. The Lyrics are :

"Bisexuals, trisexuals, homo sapiens,
Carcinogens, hallucinogens, men,
Pee-wee Herman
German wine, turpentine, Gertrude Stein
Antoniotti, Bertolucci, Kurosawa
Carmina Burana

(ALL)
To apathy, to entropy, to empathy, ecstasy
Vaclav Havel - The Sex Pistols, 8BC
To no shame - never playing the Fame Game"

And we had to go line by line as it was a bit of a tongue twister. Also, as i had never heard the song before I was a bit baffled by the song and thought that it was really quick however, the more I listen to it, the more I feel like I can really achieve singing it at a fast pace. 

London Riots - The Riots in their own words part 2 notes

• Like a bubble – no one bothered you if you were driving about in your car.
• Rioters seem excited, not actually related to the death of Mark Dougen story.
• Escalates really – bus on fire
• Adrenaline + Buzz
• Little kids being involved – got no reason to.
• People rioting iver other reasons (Jobs, government etc)
• Lidl – Alcohol was stolen but no fruit, veg or other types of food. Just expensive things.
• Stupidity and anger to make a statement – don’t like the corrupt system.
• People stopping to see fire in furniture store – realism (people knew how serious the riots were getting)
• Up bring – Future Careers (how people were brought up and raised at home and how it will affect them in the future)
• Easy for Media to jump to conclusions.

La Vie Boheme Introduction

20/10/15

In today's lesson we were introduced to the song 'La Vie Boheme'. We listened to the first few minutes of the song to start with as it's such a long song. And then from there, we decided on how we were going to set the song. As it's based in the "Live Cafe" we thought there should be a really long table that can seat us all. From there we spoke about what kind of movement that we wanted to do. So someone then suggested that we try freeze frames as our characters to the beat. So we tried it and then we found out that we had too many frames so we have cut it down to 5 frames and then on the fifth frame we go into the part. The class then started to discuss about what they had seen in the Broadway version and it was all choreographed to a dance that is all sat down on a chair. So being inspired by this, we decided to do our own version of this sitting down dance but we have kept some of the movements (eg: the point).

London Riots - Beginning Update

For my character when walking down the steps, I really thought that it would be a good idea to act as a clumsy, idiotic chav as the audience can laugh at it but also feel slightly intimidated. Then when we turn into the monkeys, my monkeys characteristics is very much selfish and greedy, hence why he takes certain objects (Chair). Then for the freeze frames my chavy rioters picks up the chair and freezes in positions to make it look like he’s either looting a shop or throwing things at the police/audience.

I feel as if my character for this is someone who was raised up in a rough area and didn’t have the best childhood. I also think that he was easily persuaded by people around him who are a similar age to him. Also I think that because of these two elements, I think that his views and opinions on certain things such as government and looting may be rather extreme compared to other peoples.

Pillowman - Lesson 3 - 16/10/15

16^th October 2015

In Today’s lesson we read through the final act. We thought that it would be a good idea to read the book through as a whole was rather important so that we had an understanding of our characters and also so that we could see what actually happens in the end of the play but also so that we can see if there are any changes to our characters compared to the start. I feel as if I like my character even more now due to the fact that he’s not really the same person he was in the first act. We see two sides to him. We see the angry and dark side of Ariel at the beginning of the third act and then when he returns in the last bit he’s caring and talks gently to a deaf girl. However you also learn about a bit of his past and how he was sexually abused by his father which in some ways explains his views and beliefs.

London Riots - Transitions and Police Theropy Update

For today’s lesson we polished of scenes and during or after some scenes we discussed about who will be moving the props/objects around after each scene (Transitions into the next scene).

It was then decided that Ashley & Lewis and Tom & Rhiannon will be performing their rioter’s scenes. Leaving myself & Lorna and Tom & Dan to perform our Police therapy sessions. It was decided this because some people suited some a certain role and could really bring out the right emotions and body language so that when we looked at the rioters interrogation scenes, Ashley would put his feet on the table as if he was rebelling even more against the police one he had been captured and Rhiannon had the right kind of language as in she would use slang that we hear today but said it in a proper London accent and could actually be rather intimidating just to hear. And then Tom had this really interesting idea and he would lay down at the end of the previous scene and then people would move the props around him and then once Dan sat down in a chair that had been moved next to Tom and then they would being the therapy session.

In order to prepare for the scene, Lorna and I had discussed about what kind of things that would be spoken about in these kind of sessions. So we decided that we would both go and do some research. Lorna looked at what types of questions would be asked at a therapy session and I watched a documentary based on police officers who were working in London the nights of the riots and what kind of things they encountered and thought about how that what they experienced may affect them in modern day.

Starting on education

The First thing we wanted to start off with was something rather simple and rather easy to come up with. So the first thing we started on was a coming up with a soundscape. Originally the sound scape was going to be a register being called out and then you hear how stuents usually act during it (trying to talk over each other and playing on their phones). My character was being annoying and going through every ringtone on his phone rather fast and doing this on a repeat and we also had different types of characters in the soundscape. We had really enthusiastic students and we also had a rather chavy student, we had a student that everyone picked on, a student that was always on their phone (played by myself) and a student that was always telling on everyone.

Personally I did like the idea, however it just seemed a bit to staged and unrealistic or even childish so we ended up changing it so that we were sitting down and I changed my character so that my character would be arguing with the chavy character (played by meg) and I would say "shut up meg you skank". Everyone in this soundscape would being saying their lines in a cannonn and then would start to repeat it and get faster each time. Then Dan, who's playing the teacher in the soundscape, slams a meter ruler onto the table which will then be used as a signal to change our scene into a victorian styled school theme and he will then say "books out".

Here is a video of the soundscape we created.

 

Scripted Start

The group that were working on the script had got the first scene completed and therfore we spent the lesson working on staging it. We had one period to work on it and then for the other period we would show our teacher what we have and he would give us some advice as to how we can improve our scene. The scene is set out like a staff/senior staff or head of education meeting and they discuss how the education system if failing and how they can make sure it improve and they discuss their ideas to one another.

The scene was really inspired by the play "Future Conditonal" which we went and watched as a class a few weeks ago. The play is also based on the education system and how it affects students but also parents and the teachers. It was rather clever as the character that Rob Brydon played was giving really long monologues however the way he done it, it was as if he was having a conversation with pupils. But the scene that inspired the scrpited piece that the group came up with was inspired by a meeting which was heavily based in the play. The way it was set our was in a circle and the people always changed seats everytime they returned to the meeting, so that the audience could see their facial expressions.

My character is suppose to be a sarcastic teacher so in order to achieve this, I will need to show that he's not really listening to the key facts of the meeting and that he'll just chuck in random snarky coments which the audience will hopefully find amusing.

Pillowman - Lesson 2 - 09/10/15

9^th October 2016

This week we focused on the second act and gave it a read through. We see Michael for the first time (Katurian’s brother). We also discover more gruesome stories that Katurian had written. Plus Michael confesses to killing little children in the style of his brother’s stories. We also see that he’s got some sort of brain damage and is a bit mentally ill. One problem that I have with this scene is that we only have to two characters in the scene, even though it might seem good, it could also be a little boring. So a way that I thought could make it interesting was to have Ariel and Tupolski showing the story as it is being read out by Michael or Katurian.

Changes to devised

Recently we decided that we should work on something that is a developing chrisis but isn't as big and notaicable as other things. We decided that we should do something based on the education in the uk and how it's getting worse and worse and harder and harder. We spent most of the lesson discussing about ideas and we didn't feel as if we were going anywhere with what we had on our spider diagram and the two we had decided we would research on (Genocide & Kinder Transport). We thought that with the Genocide idea, it would be and very basic and the Kinder Transport could be unclearto our audience and also very basic. Then we were all discussing topics and then somehow ended up on the topic of education. We really liked the idea quite quickly and then decided that we would stick with it. We also liked parts of our drug piece such as the whole separation of reality and what someone can see/feel whilst on drugs. Yet again we thought that this was rather basic and wouldn't allow us to show what we can really do.

Once we settled on the whole idea of a piece based on education, we chose to do try a sound scape of a modern day class room. We decided to do this as it sets the scene and also allows people to hear and give a slight insight into what it's like to be in a modern day school and the type of things you would hear in a classroom.

Ideas for Humanity in Crisis

Once we were given a task of actually trying to make a piece that we would show to our class, as a group we really liked the idea of the Armenian Genoside and the Kinder transport. After talking about it we liked the fact that not many people knew about it and it was an event that had horrific results. After talking about it for quite some time we decided that we would try something based on a concept of drugs. We decided to do this based on the fact that the audience might not realise that it's the genocide or kinder transport. So we were able to do a movement piece based on drugs and we had like a splitscreen to represent reality and the vision that they have. However after talking about it, we liked it however it seemed to be something that we've seen a lot so we decided to think of something else. We then all came to a conclution that we were going to do something based on schools and how they have changed over time and how staff members at school  have less and less controle of what they can do.

London Riots - Run Through

In this lesson we had to work as a team due to our director not being in. As a result, we worked on making our emotional term oil piece more fluent and more improved. We also worked on the consequences scene and saw what it looked like with blackout and we decided it looked really good. A way of improving this is that we recorded what we had done and then went back and watched it so that we could see what it looked like and therefore we could focus on any improvements.  For the consequences scene once I had decided on improvements for my character, I decided that I should perhaps be look upset in my facial expressions or try to hide my face as the character may be so lost and knocked down he decides  to hide his face and then drink a lot (focus on a lot of stumbling).

Dan worked on lighting in this rehearsal so we slowly went through our whole piece so then he was able to add in a variety of colours and affects so that it could really help engage our audience. For example when we had our physical theatre scene about the boy that lived on the estate and then would be easily fooled by other teenagers in his community and his friends. We added in strobes for when my character fights with Tom’s character. This way it can represent what the boy might think or feel and the effect of it will look artistic and also kind of like a fast comic book style.

London Riots - Consiquences Starter

Today we started to work on a new scene, the “consequence” scene. In this we each have a character who demonstrates consequences due to the London Riots. We either have a partner or do this solo.  To get an idea of what kind of events happened in the riots, we watched two music videos one was Dizee Rascal – Love this city which shows Dizee and some other people dressed up as rioters but instead of vandalising or tormenting anyone, they helped their community and cleaned up stuff, they wiped windows and took any rubbish to any bins they could find. The purpose of the video is to say that maybe as people we shouldn’t discriminate because we could gain something positive from those who may not look like they’re going to help. The second Video that we watched was “ill manors” by ill manors.  In this video we see the opposite side, we see crime and we see the way that many people who live in dodgy areas see politics and say about how corrupt the political system is in the UK.  These 2 were our stimulus.

After watching these videos, we spoke about what we thought about the 2 videos and what the consequences might have been for some of the people affected in the riots. I feel that as a class we were more influenced by the ill manor video as there was more to create and more ideas with it where as with the Dizee Rascal video, I highly doubt many people would just go and clean up shops and streets.

• Tom and Lewis are in a group together and they demonstrate justice in the community as they portray a rioter being arrested.
• Lorna and Rhiannon were demonstrating a mourning process, maybe loosing someone in the riots or even Mark Dougen.
• Dan’s portraying a student who’s being expelled from university as he took part and was influenced by the riots.
• Ashley is representing guilt, it could be anything but personally I would think that it’s something to do with looting.
• Finally, my character is a working class man who has lost his house and his job. He’s now relying on alcohol and lives on the streets as he has hit a bad state of depression and wants to be alone.

The Final Desistion on Our Piece

In todays lesson, we decided that we would settle for this education based topic for our devised. And we also thought that it would be easier to perform and work on in the long run as it was the one idea we put the most effort into and we thought that it would be something that could interest the audience as it's not something that they would expect to see.

Once we were adamant that this was the final idea, we all split off into groups. Me and Carl were researching and the others were starting on writing on a scripts. Carl was researching schools in the 40's and I was researching schools in the 70's.

Whilst I was researching I came across a video that was filmed by the BBC and it was from the popular show Panorama. In the videos it was strange to see all these class rooms with very little technology, it was full of books and I thought it was strange as I was taught in a classroom which had very basic technology. We would have a TV that would be on wheels and now we have interactive white boards. There were blackboards and everything seemed to be rather dull as all the students done was copy out of a book.

Also for the PE classes, students were running around with there tops off whilst playing sport. I thought that this was really strange as for starter, now a days a teacher or coach could be sacked if they were caught allowing students to partly strip but also I thought it was weird that a cameraman was recording them shirtless in a basket ball.

here's the link to the video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY7ThNFtf68

Types of staging

In Mr Webbs lesson, we watched another video based on blackwatch and from this video we looked at the way the audience was set out. The piece that we watched t me was incredable. They would have two or more actors distracting the audience in some way by either singing or using a really in-depth monologue and by doing this, it allows them to change set and add or remove certain props without the audience really paying that much attention, it's quite sneaky however rather cleaver.

We then went to the hall and "played" about with the chairs, and set them in different ways we can seat our audience. We tried in a round and found that it would be hard to do as we would have our backs to the audience for most of our performance. We looked at the traditional "end on" or "Proscenium Arch". We didn't like any of these as we didn't feel like the audience wouldn't really be engaged with our piece. So we then tried out traverese and rather liked it. We decided that we would use it as the audience are level with us and also to make things more interesting, we thought that we should place exam desks for where the audience sit, allowing them to feel in a school environment.

A picture of what traverse staging is:

Pillowman - Lesson 1 - 02/10/2015

2nd October 2015


In today's lesson we started to work on the pillow man. To get a feel for the play, we decided that we should have a read through Act 1. Personally I felt that the first act is actually really dark and disturbing. I really like the character Areal as I can already think of some ideas as to how I can portray this character. I'm a little unsure on how I feel with Tupulski and Katurian. The only vibes I get from Tupulski is that he's the boss and only slightly psychotic.