EVALUATION

Overall I think that our performance was successful because of our detailed and extensive rehearsal process as it gave us time to explore, change and develop our piece. Throughout our rehearsal process the performance went on a real journey and transformation that I think was crucial to the development of the piece.

At the start of our rehearsal process, we found that getting inspiration from our stimuli was easy enough and we began to start to form a piece. However after getting feedback we realised that our piece had become very dance based and when we re-evaluated what we had already created we found that it was all focused on lifts and looking effective on stage rather than being an innovative piece of theatre. We found that this was because we hadn’t looked at the stimuli in detail but instead only taken them at face value, this had created an emotionally empty piece without any characterisation or development of the relationships within the piece. When we then went back to the stimuli we started to look into the pictures deeper and decided to look at the less conventional side of the stimuli as what we had originally created was very predictable. By re-approaching our stimuli with fresh eyes we found that what we started to create was more focused and relationships rather than just women. I think that this was really important as we had used improvisation to create the base of our new piece and the fact that we naturally went to relationships not just women I think gave our piece an instinctual element to it. Consequently we started to look at more relationship stimuli and things that related to shell shock, as we continued to discover new stimuli we constantly had new ideas and built on our other ones to keep our performance fresh.

Personally I think what made our rehearsal process effective was that Asa and I had a really goo, strong and open working relationship allowing us to create a safe place for us to rehearse and to discover new ideas. I think that our performance was good because we had created a secure place for us to be able to experiment in, so that our performance could stretch us as actors and could explore different themes as we felt comfortable to confront these problems.

Personally I think that we could have maybe included more elements from the stimulus in our performance and we could have explored them physically in our rehearsal so that we could have recreated some of the images in our piece. I think that this would have given our piece a stronger feel of the 1910’s and WW1, rather than just the idea of the aftermath of any war. I think that we could have made the time period clearer to show the audience the world that our characters were created in as this could have had a larger impact on what the audience see them go through, creating a stronger connection and reaction from the audience.

I was really pleased with our performance and how it all went down as I felt that we gave it 100% by really committing to the performance and being confident in the piece that we had created.

I think that what made our performance successful was that we really connected to our characters and invested in the relationship and the emotional journey that they go on. I think that this gave our performance more theatrical and making the audience buy into and get drawn into their relationship. I think it also got across the idea of the more personal stories in the war which was an aim of ours, we wanted to show a personal story that encompassed a larger idea and I think that we were successful in this. I also think that we were able to tell clearly a complex relationship through our physicality and that we took the piece into all of our body.

I think that in the moment we rushed the performance slightly because of nerves and although we were fully invested in the performance I think it would have been better if we had relaxed into it more and taken our time to enjoy it. I think this would have allowed the audience to take the performance in more as there was many sections in it and we might have rushed over a few loosing the emotional hook of that piece. I also think for us as actors it would have been nice to have enjoyed the moment a bit more so that we could be really present on stage and not let the nerves get in the way. However over all I was really pleased with how our performance went as we had worked really hard on it and  committed to it fully to perform an effective and thought provoking piece.

Space

In our lesson we looked at space and the effect of it and how it can change the meaning of the story. This was really interesting to explore as with our duets and solo’s we cant encompass all the space all the time, so it was helpful to see how we can use our bodies to tell the story or present a relationship in a smaller space and how this changes or develops the piece and characters in anyway.  

We first looked at the conventional setting of a lift and in the confined space we had a number of people and were given different circumstances to explore. The first was that there was a bee inside the lift, what made this really interesting was that as strangers we had to touch each other and often were all clumped in one of the corners closely touching. This was a good exercise because it made me think about reaction and how one can move or react to another in a small space and how that effects the way that I could express myself physically. I found that the small space made my reactions more intricate and detailed and that I was showing my emotions through my hands and areas of my body that I others couldn’t see so clearly. I also found that the tension in my body went to these areas and that I was having to hold the emotions in me so I became a lot stiffer in my body and that the effect of my suppression of emotions came out through my body as it became more rigid.

The next exercise that we did was taking a large story and seeing how we could tell it in a small space. This showed us how we could create space even out of the smallest spaces. For example one group had a person on each corner pointing outwards, this was effective as it gave the impression that there was more space around them and it created the illusion that they had more space then what they really did. Another group showed 4 soldiers going over the top; this also gave the impression that there were more of them but what I think it achieved was a close up camera shot on stage. I though this was really useful for a theatre piece because it allows you to extract the details from a large story and am able to tell a personal story and create characters that are full of detail that have been part of a larger story. I think that this could be really helpful for our performances as WW1 is a massive part of history and loads of people were involved but we can use the small space to show that we are zooming in a personal story and showing the intricate, sometimes forgotten part of the war.

More Rehersing

When we started to really explore our piece and the different techniques we could use to enhance it we started to consider juxtaposition. Most of our piece explores the breakdown of a relationship in a fairly linier way, starting with the meeting and ending with the emotional death of the relationship. We wanted to make our piece more abstract through the use of non-linier storylines and use juxtaposition to emphasis the destruction of the relationship. We did this by experimenting with how we could contrast the voice and the physicality to tell another layer of the story and to develop the relationship. We started to explore the poems that we had written in our characters and the different contexts that they could be performed in and how we could use the words and the movement in an interesting way. We used improvisation with the movements to see how they could relate to the words or symbolise them, we also started to say the words in a violent, angrier way. However from feedback we realised that is wasn’t effective keeping the emotion the same throughout the piece and actually it didn’t create another layer to their relationship as we had wanted. This is how we came to the discovery that by keeping the movements still linier with the rest of the story but juxtaposing this with softer, loving words showed the contrast as to what their relationship was before and after the war and actually emphasises the psychological effects of the war more. It also meant that as actors we could relate to the writing more as we spoke it as if it was being written at that time and it created a love that had clearly been destroyed by the war. It also created a more interesting piece of theatre to watch as it creates a non-linier storyline showing the audience flashbacks of their past and they love.

This last week that we have had to continue to work on our pieces has personally been really helpful and useful for my partner and me to really enhance our performance and to tap into the emotions of the piece more. Although our piece has been born off of improvisation and the exploration of each other and the stimuli we had rehearsed certain pieces so much that they had become over-worked and not instinctual like they had once been when we originally developed them. This last week has allowed us to revisit pieces of our performance that have become mechanical and overworked and get to reconnect to them and to understand why they are there and there relevance to the piece, the relationship and the characters. We did this by working out our objectives in our movements and what we were trying to gain and get by doing certain actions. On top of that we re-explored the reactions to the piece and why my character is reacting in a certain way to his touch and what that internally does to her and the psychological effect that it has on her. This also allowed us to look at the smaller details of the piece and to add purpose, emotions and characterisation to it, making it more believable.

STIMULI

 

These images are really good for our stimuli as the first one shows the affect of the internal thoughts and how they cant be rid and how that destroys you as a person. It also conveys a huge amount of pain and suffering which I think is really strong and could be looked at to show how badly these men were affected.

 

The quote on the second image I think is really interesting as we could use the paranoia and see how it could affect the relationship between a couple and we have begun to explore this with the letter and how the male may have to know everything that's happening and become very protective and controlling of his wife because of the illness and how this effects their relationship.

Research

 

These videos are what I looked at for research and stimuli to do with shell shock and how it effected people mentally and physically. I found some of the images really helpful as we could use the shaking and the static movements in our physicality to show that they had been effected. Also a lot of the images were quite distressing and uncomfortable to watch so I think that we could use this horrible atmosphere in ours piece to show the audience the reality of what was happening and how lots of people didn't understand what the men were going through.

 

I also found the insomnia really helpful to look at because in our improvisation we explored sleep a lot and how that is supposed to be a close time in a relationship but was being destroyed by the mans illness and how we could demonstrate that in our piece.  

 

This shows the physicality of how people were effected and what happened to them and some of the effects.

 

This is part of a documentary about the effects; physical and mental of shellshock. I found this useful because we can explore physically and through movement how they would have been seen and how others would have reacted to them.

 

 

I found that looking at a real example of what had happened really helpful because it gave us a real person to explore and look at how they were effected and the emotions that came with them.

This is about insomnia and this helps us because we are looking at nightmares and terrors and how this effected people and their sanity. I also found it interesting because it showed what was shown to some troops and how it wasn't always seen as a real problems - like when the cartoon is used to make it funny.

Rehersals

During our rehearsals we found that our improvisations started to explore more the relationships of people after the war rather than just women. Consequently we decided to do more research and find more stimuli that were to do with couples and relationships affected by the war and how that changed their love or life. When we were doing our improvisations and exploring each other and how we connected as two people after the war a common factor was shell shock and how the men became more distant after what they had seen.

We started to look at shell shock and how that still affected the men and their relationships once they returned home to their wives and how their couldn’t always get back into the old life that they had. I looked up the symptoms of shell shock:

• Hysteria and anxiety
• Paralysis
• Limping and muscle contractions
• Blindnes and deafness
• Nightmares and insomnia
• Heart palpitations
• Depression
• Dizziness and disorientation
• Loss of appetite

These are some of the symptoms and nightmares and depression are ones that really stood out to us as we wanted to explore the effect that they had on relationships and how a woman would have to try and understand what was happening – if they could. These lead us to improvise and explore how they would treat each other and at first how they would explore each other’s bodies after being apart for so long and if it would be like what they imagined or hoped, like they wrote in their letters. Another effect of shell shock was men not being able to get erections and the nightmare could lead to violence in their sleep and in real life, we wanted to explore if a woman could cope with this new man that had been brought back from the war and how the man would deal with the change that had happened to him.

POETRY

Pride can't explain the pain I endure everyday waiting, waiting, waiting, wishing, willing, wanting, the way you smell to suffocate, to smoother, to seduce my every instinct.

 

I want to be isolated, just weighted and consummated with you.

I want to be consumed and connected and craved by you.

I want to be sound and safe and secure in you.

- Me and my partner both used our stimuli to create a piece of writing/poetry that we could also use as an extra stimulus or put into the piece.  I found that this was really good to do because it helped us to understand and connected to our stimuli in a really creative and emotional way as we had to understand the emotions that was needed in our piece to make the movements more interesting and meaningful rather than empty. I also thought that it really helped me to get into the character of our piece and to understand and develop the relationship that we are portraying.

- Once we had both written our pieces we read them and thought that the juxtaposition of the position of the characters was really interesting to play with and that it would work well in our performance. As a result we improvised and explored different ways that the words could be used and contrasted with movement and the other piece of writing. What we discovered is that it works well when we say a line each of our own and then the other says their line and the piece overlaps, I thought that this was effective as it shows the different places that they are in but how they were still connected emotionally and mentally to one another.

THE ABSTRACT

In today’s session we looked at working in the abstract and being able to tell a story in a less literal way. I think that this was really useful because it showed us how we could still connect to an audience in a non-linear, more interpretive way, giving us inspiration for our performances.

We looked at different forms and forces and how they can be embodied physically and create an emotion or story. The first exercise was an individual one where we were told a movement and we had to recreate this in our bodies, for example; melt, shatter, freeze and disintegrate. Some of the movements were a lot harder to create and had to be interpreted individually and what it meant to us, where as others created a more instant response and a lot of people seemed to have the same idea of the word. One of the first words that were said was melt, this seemed to create a unanimous idea across the class of what melt meant, and instinctively we all began to slowly collapse into the ground. Personally I found that my body dropped and my limbs all became very heavy and were pulling me into the ground. The movement was a very slow, soft movement as I felt I was turning into liquid and that is a lot more fluid and less harsh. As soon as melt was said I got the image of the Wicked Witch of the West from the Wizard of Oz melting in my head, I thought that this was bad at first because it was a stereotypical image, however I felt that it gave me a base to work of and to explore and develop into something more abstract. Another word that was said was shatter and although similarly to melt it was going into the ground, shatter was of a higher, more violent speed, of which there was a lot less control and fluidity within my body. I also found that my movements became a lot more ridged and sharp. One of the hardest words I found to interpret was disintegrate, I think this was because unlike melt your body wasn’t turning into another substance and unlike shatter is was falling apart but it was disappearing and dissolving into nothing. Physically I found this quite hard to explore because I felt I had to try and make my body become nothing, however I explore the movement of falling to the ground but it felt like a contrast of melt as it was a slow, steady, controlled movement to the ground, and shatter as there was a slightly harsher edge to the movement. I found that these explorations were really useful to develop and to work with because it could be applied to different characters, similar to Laban, and to show an internal turmoil. For example you could show someone being loss and suffocated from their problems through melt or the end of a relationship through shatter.

We then developed this exercise so that we were working with a partner and we had to explore a piece of movement where we a playing opposing forces, for example melt vs freeze, solid vs liquid, shatter vs fragile ect. I found that this was a really interesting way of developing the exercise and it opened different avenues within a relationship and showed the different elements to a story or characters and this could communicate and connect to the audience. One thing that is interesting about working in the abstract is that the audience have to invest in it more however the all get out of it an individual story and message from the piece. With the partner that I worked with, we explored solid and fragile. At first I found this difficult to work with, especially when we worked together, touching, as it was two completely contrasting movements trying to work as one and I think that it when watching it really said something about the relationship but when doing it, it felt unnatural. However once I got into the exercise I found it was about reacting physically to my partner’s movements and how they changed or affected my movement. From watching others work I thought that it showed and expressed really interesting story and I could have my own personal interpretation. I think that the individualism that the abstract gives the audience creates a great sense of personal interaction between an audience member and the actors and I think it creates a really special piece of theatre. For example one couple that I watch was one melting and he collapsed in on himself around his partner’s legs, while his partner was freezing and he stayed strong but had a few sharp movements. I thought that this showed the different ways that two people experience and reactions to the war. One who had a complete emotional meltdown and lost all stability and focus on reality and only way of surviving is by clinging onto his friend. I thought that the friend on the outside had to remain strong and stable, however lost all emotional and sentimental ability as he wanted to help his friend. I think that this demonstrates the power of the abstract and how it can connect with an audience and they can develop their own story.