Stimulus

For our piece, my partner and I want to look at women and the role that they played in the First World War. One thing that we discovered when looking at women and how they were portrayed at the time was that we see them being used as tools for the men during the war.

When we looked at these photos, we thought that women were being used as propaganda to push the men further to war. For example the "Women of Britain say - GO!" Shows women being used as encouraging and wanting the men to go and fight for them and their country. It also shows them as being weak looking out the window and needing men to protect them. Also the other one shows women needing to do work and supporting the men in the war.

We saw this as showing women as being used as tools to keep the country running and working however they still weren't in power as they didn't have the vote and men were telling them what to do while they worked.

We saw this photo as showing men that the women were pleased that they were going to war and that they were wishing them luck - keeping their moral up and in good spirits. It also shows how everyone was excited by the war and the prospect of the men fighting for their country.

 

Lecure notes on WW1

• 70,000,000 troops mobilised
• 20,000,000 died
• Trigger of the war – Archduke Ferdinand was shot by a student –heir to the Austria-Hungry throne.
• Build up to war – arms race, tension in Europe, two separate groups – Brit, France, Russia, against Germany, Austria-Hungry.
• 1914 – was started – celebrated
• Women in war- Victorian feel to them- long dress and headwear
• Britain was full of WASP’s – White, Anglo Saxon, Protestants. – very patriotic – owned the world – empire- British troops were also from empire from India, Africa.
• Most British people were working class – uneducated, in poverty, e.g no running water in house. – MASSIVE IMBALANCE IN SOCIETY – Upper class very small and owned everything
• Age expectance – men 50 and women 54
• Industrial revolution – rural communities became more rare
• Women very restricted- no vote, no work
• Homosexuality illegal – imprisoned or labour
• Cinema was black and white – accessible to all
• Train was transport and used in war
• Austria-hungry invaded Serbia and Belgium got invaded so Brit went to protect = WW1 BEGAN
• Western front in stalemate – Russian invade Germany-  Turkey join war
• Russian empire starving. – revolution – killed Zar- set up socialist republic
• 1917 – America join war – lead to win – VICTORY FOR ALLIES
• Empires die – brit, france, germany,, turkey, Russian
• League of Nations created
• WW1 lead to fascism and WW2 and humiliation of Germany
• Horses and bikes were used in war
• Military techniques wasn’t gaining but technology was
• British used colonial wars as technique – used to fight people with bad weaponry- not ready for people with modern technology – machine guns, barbed wire ect.
• 1916 – walk over the somme valley – walked into death as Germany covered it with machine guns and killed the Brits- Brits did not learn and 80,000 were killed in very few hours
• Used untested weaponry – flam throwers, bombs- thapnol, tanks, machine guns à killed masses
• Shell shock – PTSD – psychological àhypnotised, electrocuted, imprisoned as a result – seen as coward- didn’t understand the illness. à Symptoms- shakes, flashbacks, insanity, trench warfare à relationships were destroyed.
• Trench warfare- brutality of war – overwhelming, disturbing, living in constant fear and distrustàout of mind with fear and distrust – living in mud –scummy/ fear, rats, no sleep. 
• Deadly gas- chemical war fare – outlawed since 1920’s. à mustard gas – 1915- blistered, blinded, corroded lungs- filled with blood –drowned in own fluid.
• Poem – Wilfred Owen – knocked knees, clumsy/fumbling, white eyes, trudge, limped, choking, hanging, fatigue, drowning
• “old lie” – sweet to die for victory
• Women forced to work – ran country, new opportunities, vote in 1920
• Russian revolution -1917 socialist
• USA super power
• Art changed – surrealism – more realistic with T.S.Elliot- none linier
• Labour movement and empire dead

20th September

In today’s session we focused on working with partners and how we can use the other person to create interesting stories through sharing weight and exploring moving as one. I found this really useful as we are working towards solo or duo physical theatre performances and as I am performing in a pair this allowed me to explore and experiment with different interesting ways to work together.

We did various exercises that relied on us being in tune with another person and being connected with them to make the exercise work. One exercise that we did is that we had to walk next to another person and explore how we could connect to one another by simply walking around in time with them and feeling when to stop or turn or start without talking or communicating it, just when we felt the moment. I found this exercise really opened up my awareness to working with another person and it made me think about working as one rather than two separate beings. It also helped me to be able to connect with another person without having to talk about everything but just being able to feel it in our bodies. I think that this is really important when doing physical theatre especially when we are in such a small group. I feel that it allows you to explore more daring and interesting physical movements and pieces, it also creates and builds trust between the two people as you can know that you are connected to them, even if you are not touching or in view of each other. For me personally I think it creates a stronger working bond with the person and this transpires to the performance as there is another layer to the working partnership.

We then developed this walking exercise so that the pair had to be constantly touching with a part of their body and sharing weight with one another. I think that this again develops trust between the pair as you can feel yourself being supported physically and this can transfer to being supported in the performance and as a pair. Furthering this I think that the sharing weight allows you to explore and experiment with physical connecting to another person and what is created out of this and how interesting it can look and what movements it can move into. It also allows you to take the subliminal connection to a physical one so that you can start working with one another to learn to move as one body rather than two connected bodies. We also moved this exercise on further so that we looked at moving at different levels connected and sharing weight to do more complicated and interesting movements. I found that not only was it good to explore yourself but also it was really interesting to watch other pairs moving as one as I felt that it started to tell a story and that a relationship was being created through the sharing of weight and the movement. For example one pair had one of them leaning over the others back while the other one crawled; when I watched this I got the feeling of one person emotional carrying the other one and having to support them through something difficult or having to pick someone up when they were down. I thought that this was a really useful thing to have experienced as it made me start to consider more abstract ways of portraying relationships.

We also did an exercise where as a pair we had to come up with a sequence of movements following the markers of around, through and pass. So we had use going around our partner and through them and pass them to create a small section of physical theatre. However we were also given the title of “Goodbye” and the background of WW1, this allowed our pieces to have some context to them and created a story and relationship between the two actors. I found that this was a really good way to start creating a small section of theatre in a really simple way to show an audience the relationship between characters and the time period that the piece is set in. Different pairs focused on different relationships, for example my partner and I looked at a couple separating, while others looked as friends having to say goodbye and others explored a parental relationship, however they all we able to encompass the emotional state of WW1. The pieces that I thought were really interesting to watch and to draw a story out of were the ones that didn’t simply move from around to through to pass but had other movements within them allowing the audience to get a greater sense of the story that was being told. I also liked ones that explored with the floor and different ways of moving through or around their partner rather than the obvious, conventional ways because I felt it was more engaging to watch and it added a more complex layer to the relationship. However the pieces that I like most and thought worked the best were the slightly more abstract ones as it told a really interesting story not only physically but as an emotional metaphor as well, and it really looked at the different ways to tell a story with your body, which as an audience member was a lot more interesting and fulfilling to watch.

MUSIC AND CHARACTERS

In today’s session we looked at music as a form of stimulus and how characters and worlds can be created through listening to music and responding to it. We listened to three different songs and with each song we spent time letting our imaginations react instantly to the music. After listening to the song once, we played it again and started to move around as our characters and explored how they walked and lived within their world. We also exaggerated and under-exaggerated our characters and noticed how this affected or changed our characters. This is a Steven Burkoff technique and we are exploring him more through these exercises.

The first piece of music we listened to was a very fast pace piece and when listening to it I instantly got the image of a congested train. This simple image led me to create a character that would be around during rush hour on the trains and combining this with the fast tempo of the music I thought of a constantly busy business man. When I got up on my feet, my walk and rhythm as a character fell into the tempo of the music and this really helped me to set the pace of my character and to find objectives that would fit this tempo and this character and what their headspace was like. Although I had created a fast person when I exaggerated this character I found myself moving slower as my body and physicality got bigger, I felt this created a slightly more stereotypical business, suit wearing, male character. However when I went down of the exaggeration scale I found myself folding into myself but moving quicker, in a mouse-like movement, and this created a shyer, more introverted, slightly older, bit awkward business man. I thought that this was really interesting to see as from the same stimulus two very different characters were born even though they had similar qualities such as their profession.

The next piece of music we listened to was a more metal, heavy, slightly violent piece of music and for most people this created a defiant, outcast character that was a bit more negative. However oddly for me I found the music exciting and intriguing and immediately a child-like character was created and I wanted to explore the world around me. When I got onto my feet with this character I constantly wanted to move around in a bouncy-light way, looking and searching for everything and anything. Contrastingly to my first character, when I heightened and lessoned this character I felt the core of her didn’t change, she was still a child exploring just got more and more excited as I exaggerated and slightly more cautious when I lessoned her physically. Interestingly I felt that the character didn’t change but perhaps the circumstances and environment around her didn’t, resulting in her being more cautious or more confident.

The last piece of music that we listened to was a lot slower and lower of tone and instantly I felt more negative and alone when listening to it. Consequently the character that I created was one I felt that was suffering, I felt suppressed and isolated and so the physicality was slumped and enclosed to itself. This one I found the hardest to exaggerate and under-exaggerate as I was doing very few movements already but I changed and experimented with my positions and as I exaggerated I moved more and more into myself and scrunched up even more to hide away from the world, where as when I went down on the exaggeration scale I opened up a bit more and wasn’t as alone.

I found music really helpful and interesting to use as stimulus to create characters as it opens up your imagination to feel instinctual reactions. It also gives you so much to work off of, for example you could go with the tempo or the lyrics to create a character or you could go against the music to layer a character. I also think that it gives you a really strong core of a character and that you can then develop these characters through exaggeration and exploration. 

6th September

In today’s lesson we looked at Steven Berkoff as a physical practitioner and did some exercises that help to develop and explore characterisation. Berkoff often works with non-naturalistic texts with grotesque and exaggerated characters.

We started off with a Jacques Lecoq exercise, where the top half of your body hangs over the legs, imagining there is a sheet of glass in front of you, you roll up pushing out the knees, hips, chest and nose so that they touch the piece of glass until you are standing straight.

Knees: We then repeated this roll down and up but stopping at the point when the knees are touching the glass. We took this stature for a walk around the room and we saw what characters were created by the physicality. I immediately created an older more hunched character as I had the top of my body still rolled over, creating a slightly weathered element to my character. This made me consider her back-story and previous life that may have been difficult or just had to work had at getting what she wanted. My character also had a lower status as she was so introverted and almost seemed to shy away form the world, this made me think of the old ladies who become so scared of leaving their homes because of the media and how the world is portrayed to them. Other people created different characters such as one person straightened their back but still lead from their knees, this created a character that was of a similar age to mine however the straightened back and having her head raised gave her character a much higher status than my characters and gave her a snobbish, looking down on people element.

Hips: Again we rolled down and when we rolled back up we stopped at the moment when the hips were touching the glass and we started to explore what types of characters were created through leading with the hips. I had my pelvis thrust out and so it felt natural to lean my to half back as much as possible. This created a very relaxed posture for my character and I had the feel that they didn’t care much about what was happening around them and this gave them a slightly higher status because they seemed unaffected by the world. I also went for a male, very “laddish” type of character as I felt he was being lead by the penis, combining this with the casual attitude coming out of the physicality I felt I created a quite popular, sexual confident chap. It was very interesting to watch the other characters that were created and the small differences in their physicality that changed the intention of their character. For example another character was also a male and being lead by his penis in a sexual manner however instead of having a relaxed, laid back upper body, he was hunched over and wringing his hands. This gave the character a much more creepy and sinister feel and implied that he had bad intentions sexually within him. Instead for going for a male character someone choose to do a female and by simply placing one hand on her belly and one on her back she created a pregnant woman.

Chest: This time when we rolled back up we stopped when the chest was touching the glass and walked this character around the room, developing and exploring their characteristics and what was created. As my chest was sticking out I created a confident, sensual female character and the breasts are quite a sexualised part of the female form. It made me do a more feminine walk, crossing my feet and wiggling my hips to highlight the other assets of a female. Also because I was very upright, as a result of my chest being pushed I felt very powerful as a character and that I had a lot of confidence and looked down on people. This power and confidence was mirrored in the male take on sticking the chest out. The character became very proud and puffed out like a cockerel demonstrating his status and his masculinity. This one was driven more by his own appearance and pride to have confidence, where as the men with their hips out were driven by the sexual wants to have confidence.   

Nose: When rolling up this time we stopped at the nose touching the glass and explored what types of characters were created when they were being lead by their nose. Again I went for an older character and hunched the rest of my body but kept my nose up in the air, as my head was up and open I was of a higher status than my character that I created with my knees. Also this character moved around a lot, twisted their head to try and smell out what was happening and what they could see. As I live in a village this character reminded me a lot of the older members of my community who like to be nosy and know everything about other peoples lives. Other characters that were created were very high status as they had their bodies kept straight and with good posture, with this as well as the nose being pointed up into the air it seemed to created a very stereotypical view of posh people. It looked as if they were looking down on everyone around them and were disgusted by people who were lower class than them.

 

This was really useful because it showed us how different types of characters can be created from the same bases of being lead by a certain part of the body and how more detailed characters can come to life by the simple things you do with the rest on the body, such as moving your hands. It also helps to see and acknowledge the stereotypes of different characters and then decide whether to follow them to present a certain group of people or to go against them to show a slightly more interesting and real character. This exercise also tied in really well with looking at Berkoff as he would use this to see where a character was lead from and how this defined a character or not and what it said about them. Also he works a lot with exaggeration and this exploration of their physicality allows an actor to connect with their bodies and to see how different characters could be exaggerated with their physicality’s to create a grotesque version of them. 

 

As I have said Berkoff works a lot with exaggeration and he uses the scale of 1 – 10, 1 being the smallest and 10 the biggest, to explore the characters exaggerated and under-exaggerated and see what affect that has on them and the situation that they are in. We did an exercise where we had to go through eating a certain meal; first we did it at 5 – naturally. I choose to be eating spaghetti bolognaise and we had to go through it a couple of times to get a set routine and then we started to play with the scale. As the scale went up the amount and size of the food got bigger and as a result our reactions to the food got bigger as well. When we were going up through the scale I saw my spaghetti getting bigger and this meant that I widened my feet so that I could encompass all of the food. I also made the movements of turning the food onto the spoon bigger and had to use two hands when I got to 10 and had to physically crouch and turn my face upwards to lower it all in. I feel that this created a much greedier character as I was really tucking into the food and it was getting more and more open and grotesque, because of this there was an off putting element to the character as they were so messy. The physicality getting larger created a more animalistic and boisterous character in the way that they ate. However when we started to go down the scale my physicality became a lot more insecure as it was very introverted and turned inwards, with my face down I felt that a more timid and shy character was created compared to the larger numbers on the scales. I felt quite suppressed and very conscious of what was happening around me and never really comfortable in what I was doing. This exercise was really interesting to see what changed when you played around with exaggeration and what types of characters are created when you push them to one extreme or another. It also really engaged my body and made me aware on my physicality and how that affected and changed characters and what was happening on the inside as well as on the outside.

We then extended this exercise with a partner and put the characters, which were created, into a situation such as a restaurant. We had the characters separate from each other and one was large on the scale with the other small, then we introduced another character who we both greeted however the greeting provoked the characters to swap positions on the scale of exaggeration. I started off being an 8 or 9 on the scale and I was really digging in and eating my food manically, as if I really enjoyed it, then when the third character came in and I greeted, I moved down to a 3 or 2 on the scale. I made this move purposeful by having an emotional attachment on the third character of fancying them and then being embarrassed of how I was caught eating and that making me shrink into myself. Where as my partner started eating in a really small way, showing insecurity and low self-confidence but when she was the third person she lit up and became more exaggerated and her motivation was of being really good friends with this person and them giving her confidence. I thought that this exercise was really useful because it showed how people and characters can be affected by others and how that can change their confidence or attitude inside them and consequently affect their outside physicalisation. It shows how important reactions are when action and how your physicality can tell a lot to an audience about how the character feels or how someone makes the character feel and it can build and explain relationships between characters.