Week 26: Starting Brecht

Researching Brecht

As we were finishing our last module, we were informed that in the next module which was Contemporary theatre included Brecht and so I decided to do some initial research before hand so that I might be able to understand the style slightly faster and also when we begin to actually work on the style hopefully I will be able to put my prior knowledge into the physical performance. I began my research by searching for a definition of contemporary theatre and I found a website called http://contemporaryperformance.ning.com/forum/topics/how-do-you-define-contemporary that defined it Contemporary Theatre as "hybrid performance works and artists that travels between the fields of Experimental theatre and dance, video art, visual art, music composition and performance art without adhering to one specific field's practice." I then moved on to researching Brecht's methods and techniques. One of the main points that there was a lot of information on was his use of "Verfremdungseffekt" which has no English translation but is known as the "Distancing method." I found a website (http://beautifultrouble.org/theory/alienation-effect/) that described the time period in which Brecht was writing which was between the 1920s and 1940s. They say that "the theatre of his time, like most Hollywood movies now, relied on emotional manipulation to bring about a suspension of disbelief for the audience, along with an emotional identification with the main character. Audience members were taken on an uncritical emotional roller coaster ride, crying when the main character cried, laughing when s/he laughed - identifying with him/her even when the character had nothing in common with them or their interests." This is where Brecht's distancing technique came from, as he wanted to replace this emotional manipulation with something that had a more political background to it. "Rather than investing in or "becoming" their characters, they might emotionally step away and demonstrate them with cool, witty and skilful self-critique." Having the actors on stage almost come out of role, it was allowing the audience to realise that they are indeed watching a performance and he wanted them to focus on "why" the events were happening rather than "what" those events are. The audience almost become morally aligned during his plays as their mindset changes to what they can do to help rather than what is going on in the situation.

Classwork

At the start of the lesson, we were given some background facts about Brecht before we started exploring the style so that we had some ideas of both the time he was alive in, perhaps allowing us to see the meanings behind his style, and also the times in which he was writing his plays, to see whether his writing corresponded with any main events going on at the time. Using Brecht in this module means that we are pushing quite far back in the Contemporary theatre genre as he could also be known as a Historical. During the 1940s was when Brecht's writing was really starting to become known which means that he was formulating his ideas and opinions in the 1930s. We know from previous research that Brecht was German and so the ideas that he must have based his plays off of must have happened in Germany throughout his life.

We did a short task of making 3 freeze frames of what we thought was going on in Germany throughout in the 30s, 40s, and finally, the 50s to help us understand some of the events that were going on in Brecht's time period. We decided that we would make a freeze frame on the Nazis rise to power for the 30s. For the 40s, we decided on the war as World War II started in 1939 and lasted while 1945. And for the 50s, we did about the divide between East Germany and West Germany. We found out that Brecht was a Liberal, or more so a Socialist, and he was living in Germany around the late 30s and through the 40s. Like we had picked out in our freeze frames, Hitler was gaining support for his fascist regime during the 30s and at this point he started drawing out lists of people that were against his ideals and who were speaking out against him. Brecht was on one of Hitler's death lists because he spoke out about his opinions which were against Hitler.
When the war broke out, like we had shown in our freeze frames, it became too dangerous for Brecht to stay in Germany and so he left to live in America where he spent most of his life afterwards. When he was in America, the divide between East and West Germany began and, as a Socialist in America, he was actually called before various committees to answer to claims about him being a Communist and they brought out an array of poems that he wrote that could be classed as having Communist views behind them. He was a political writer and this segregation became his driving force as he wanted to inspire change through theatre.
One of Brecht's famous quotes is "Theatre isn't a mirror that we hold up to reality but a hammer in which we shape it." Showing that Brecht's theatre was much more about the audience watching the play and coming out of the performance wanting to change something and help solve the issue that has been portrayed on stage, rather than watching a performance a getting a large emotional response to it. We brought up the question of whether evoking the audience into wanting to change something could be classed as an emotional response to the performance and we talked about Brecht wanting to argue that what you want to change is a broader political idea rather than thinking about an individual thing that you can do to help change that issue. We used the film Titanic as an example to help us understand this theory more and we identified that the story of the Titanic is based really tightly around and through the story-line of Jack and Rose, which is a love story and truthfully the audience becomes more focused on their story as they become emotionally connected to these two people but, the audience are therefore forgetting about the larger political side of the film. If Brecht were to do this play in his style, he would not on the amount of people that were killed in this tragic event but the class of those people and the effect that it had on the different classes that were on board. It would be seen as a motivation to try and make the audience feel something political rather than emotional. A popular misconception about Brecht is that he didn't like emotion which is a lie because he's not saying that he doesn't want his audience to feel emotions, he just wants them to use these feelings to fuel them to make a change. Linking this idea to his use of the V effect, we can clearly see that this technique was used to make the audience focus on the political message of his play and relate that to something that they could change in their own lives.

We participated in another small discussion exercise where we were given the situation of the time period which was "the majority of the people at this time, went to the theatre to be entertained and there were lots of musical type theatre going on or there were high-brow intellectual realistic theatre going on." The questions that we needed to discuss was "What are the things that you feel you would have to do to a piece of theatre to start people being more politically motivated by it?" and "What would you change about the theatre to make it more political?" We weren't trying to relate this to Brecht's theories, we were just trying to think of our own ways on how we would address this idea. 

We had discussions in smaller groups about the strategies that we would use to move the focus onto the political message.
Some of the ideas that we came up with as a class were:

• Conversations being directed at the audience - So rather than the conversations taking place between characters, we would "break the fourth wall" and use direct address towards the audience so that they would know that this is a play they are watching and focusing more on the relationship between the audience and the issue are arising rather than the relationship between the characters on stage being effected by that political issue. This will also help educate the audience which comes about through a more direct dialectic discourse between the actors and the audience.
• Using plays that are written with a more political intention - This means that we would be able to follow the writer's intentions more clearly and the political message would be clearer for the audience to grasp if the political intention was the focal point originally. These would then enable the characters to discuss the politics of that time as well.
• Drawing attention to the political motivations behind each character - We could have things happening to our characters but we're looking at the political motives that fuel them to make their decisions, like the example of Rose and Jack in Titanic. Instead of it being emotional, we draw attention to the reasons why they are in that situation.
• Satire - It is the use of humour and comedy to expose/criticise people's political judgement. There is normally an element of wit involved as well.

We imagined that we have used our theatre company to create a performance using all of these techniques to put on a performance and we started to discuss how well we think the piece would sell on the box office and we said that people just aren't interested in the heavier topics that we would have brought to light and some people aren't interested in politics at all. If we were trying to mobilise grounds of support to try and politicise the audience, it means that we're trying to focus on a new audience and those are the type of people who are the least likely to come and watch something like this.

Brecht's idea of Spass revolves around the idea of using humour to engage the audience and make them think at the same time. If you are making your audience laugh then they have already made a decision about the piece and are therefore open to thinking about why the events are happening as they have already made a decision on how they feel about the play. Spass was also a way to break tension on stage as Brecht needed to break any kind of tension so that the audience weren't becoming emotionally involved. Spass can include anything such as breaking into song at random junctures, slapstick comedy and even stand-up routines. Before Brecht got to the idea of Spass, he went through a period of time where he wrote the "Lehrstucke plays", also known as the "Learning Plays" which we the idea of working with the audience as a group of actors are they are going to work through the play with the actors guiding them and there would be a moral lesson at the end of it, normally a political lesson as well. As you may expect they weren't very popular and he tried to go into places like the steelworks and they weren't very successful. They are rarely performed today due to their lack of success but they were a key stepping stone for Brecht and the development of his ideas. The key idea is that Brecht's play should be funny and have humorous elements to them, and so Spass is important in understanding his plays and the language involved.

We then moved onto talking about another one of his techniques which was the "V effect" which I had previously researched and we talked about the fact that there is no English translation which has caused many problems. It wasn't something that he invented, it's more a collection of things that he did during his plays which lead to this effect being in people's brains while they were watching the piece. Like, for example, if we were to say "we want an emotional response" that's not a technique that you use, it is the response that you want to happen. Brecht wanted this "V effect" to happen throughout everything that he was doing in his plays so the audience would watch it with this effect going on and it would make them think about the political message instead. It makes the audience tilted their perception slightly at what they are watching and hopefully see it in a different light.

He accomplished this effect by what he called "Epic Theatre" which looked at the form in which the performance is presented and what the audience would be watching. Epic theatre's purpose is to emphasise the audience's perspective on the piece and their reaction to it through the techniques that we have already discussed which forces each individual audience member to react in their own way instead of having a collective reaction. This allows each audience member to make their own opinions on the issue that has been pointed out and therefore throughout the piece will be thinking of that issue in relation to their lives and what impact that could have had on them. Epic theatre also included the use of Historicisation which was used in order to make the audience look into the connections between historical events and a similar event that was happening in our modern world. Plays like "Mother Courage and Her Children" and "The Good Person of Szechwan" highlight issues that were relevant in that time period in relation to another historical event. Also in Epic Theatre, majority of the set that was used was realistic as were the costumes worn by the cast to highlight the reality of these problems and how relevant they are to the audience regardless of their societal positioning. The actors who were involved had to portray a believable character with making the audience think they have become that character. This is where another technique called Gestus comes in. This means that the actors on stage take on the characterization of what is being said during the social commentary. An example of this would be that if there was a character of a housewife, their movements could be very quick and agitated whereas her husbands could juxtapose with that and be very slow and sluggish to reflect there position in society at that point. Actors also played multiple roles to show that everyone was acting and they were told to be specific characters at those points in the play.

After discussing some of Brecht's main aspects, we moved onto doing a short scene where we had one person who came home late, to their partner because they were working late at the office. They were tired and their partner was a little irritated that they didn't call but were okay with it. The last person in the group was to be a child who comes in to say goodnight to the parent who just arrived home. We made a short realistic scene that highlighted the weariness of the father and the frustration of the mother and then we had the child come in at the end to say goodnight even though they should have been in bed. We then show the other group our short piece but we had the added feature of a placard, which was another aspects of Brecht's theatre. He used placard to add to the "V effect". On the placard was "Alexis arrives after a hard day's work, a frustrated Megan serves her food. Connie arrives to say goodnight." The other group that was watching us had to imagine that they were seeing this placard all throughout the scene and afterwards we were discussing that because they knew what was going on in the scene already and what was about to happen, they were watching the scene in a different way. They were more tracking what was going on in the scene and it stopped them being emotionally connected with the scene as they weren't trying to understand what was going on because they had already been told. It's not that the actors have stopped acting realistically but the audience's perception has slightly changed due to them knowing what was going to happen. One things thing that Brecht thought was an issue was the idea that if the story had massive amounts of suspense in it and the audience were looking to find out what was going to happen all the time, they actually get distracted from thinking about why it's happening.This is one way that he used placards, which is to remove suspense from what the audience were seeing by telling them what was going on in the scene.
We then watched the other groups scene and we were looking at a different way to use a placard. Theirs said "Charlotte has been having an affair for the last 6 weeks. The husband does not know." As an audience member, with that use of placard, it added a reason to the way that Charlotte was reacting towards Caitlin and it gives the scene some sort of context without having to spend a lot of time building up this backstory, the audience are just given it. Using placards, can also begin to create a sort of judgement like if the placard hadn't been there, we might have thought about the interaction on stage in a different way.

We then moved onto discussing some other aspects of his work and one of the main topics was structure. In a realistic play, the most common structure is chronological and during the realistic plays that were being performed when Brecht was alive, there setting was in a short span of time, like a week or an afternoon in someone's life. Some plays were set in real life time situations which makes sense if you are performing a realistic play. Brecht opted for a more episodic structure, which is shorter scenes which might be consecutive but they might be consecutive and years apart. So this gave Brecht a chance to explore a whole decade of issues that might be going on in a short space of time. This accentuates the "V effect" because the audience don't have an extended amount of time to connect emotionally with a character, they could see them when they are a child and then the next time is when they are an adult and are married. If we tie in other aspects like being told what is going on, with placards or placards telling you what is going to happen, very quickly the audience's perception does begin to shift from trying to work out what is going on, to working out why its going on. Brecht also liked to use music and songs in his productions, sometimes in the middle of the play and this is clearly a distancing effect for the audience as it has nothing to do with the scene that was just happening. Brecht also liked to use realistic props, but only enough to set the situation up. For example, he would use the corner of a building, made very realistically but the rest of it wouldn't be there. So he would use elements of realistic staging but not whole set pieces which adds to the "V effect" in the idea that the audience would be able to see that it was set that was being used and therefore it was a play that they were watching and not real life. Adding to the idea of wanting the audience to know that they are watching a play, he liked to show the scene changes and the lighting desks as well.

After studying some of the theory behind Brecht, we looked at one of his plays called "Mother Courage and her children." We read through the scene and then proceeded to look for elements of the Brecht style that we had been discussing previously and outline them.

We then began to discuss the scene and we found that the language was colloquialised but if we were to perform it in our modern day, we could do it with an earthy tone to it and the colloquialisms would be able to be recognised by the audience. We then ran through some confusions that may occur with the scene as the language was slightly hard to understand and we clarified that Mother Courage's son was killed because she wouldn't pay the price for him to be released and kept bartering to get the price down. She wanted to bring the price down because she likes to keep hold of her money and she originally was relying on the money from the cash box, that Swiss Cheese had hidden, to get the money to get the wagon returned to them. From this you can sense the Capitalist background as there are many bargains being made and everyone wishes to spend the least amount of money possible. Mother Courage has got herself into this situation as well as her family and her son is in a worse position that she is at this point. She is desperately trying to work her way out of it using money to do that but essentially it doesn't work.

After discussing Mother Courage, we moved onto looking into "The Silent Scream" picture by Helene Weigel, she was Brecht's wife and he gave her all of the main female roles in his plays. They were married about 4 times and she was one of the best actresses of her time. He gave her the part of Mother Courage and the "Silent Scream" was included in the scene that we had just read through in her performance. One thing that is cut out from the picture is the body of her son which is over to the left.

During the scene, she actually had to silently scream because if she screamed out loud then the guards would have heard her and known that this was a result of seeing her son's body. This became part of the "V effect" as it is a highly emotional moment but the audience are distanced by the facts that are surrounding the scene, they can;t get emotionally attached to Mother Courage and they cannot have the emotional attachments to the son considering there isn't much character development on his behalf. At the start of this scene, there is a placard that tells the audience what is going to happen so at this point they were expecting a reaction from Mother Courage but perhaps they did not know to what extent.

Mother Courage is an actual play written by Brecht so we moved onto looking at a play called "Our Country's Good," that is written by Timberlake Wertenbaker, which is a more modern version of a Brecht play. We have previously studied this text, during Director's Challenge, were we had to research the play and use that to direct a group of actors. One of her biggest influences, of course, was Brecht and Epic Theatre. We looked at a scene and read through it and began to see it in a Brechtian way rather than just a text as, in our previous research, we had only skimmed over the idea of Brecht and we had focused on why she had written the text instead of her influences. I did some more research into the text and got some extra background information which may help us to understand the conversation subjects a little more. In the 1780s, convicts and Royal Marines were sent to Australia, hence "the savages" also known as Aborigines, as part of the first colony there. This play highlights the class systems both within the convicts and within the racks of the officers. It discusses themes such as sexuality, punishments, the Georgian court system and the idea of using "theatre to be a humanising force". Wertenbaker actually went to see a play performed by convicts which allowed her to see how they acted with one another and also allowed her to see a play that was actually being performed with people in the same situation as her characters. She said that "the convicts were, at least momentarily, civilized human beings, and they had taken their work very seriously: The convicts knew their lines absolutely because they had nothing else to do and they didn't want to waste time with pleasantries; as soon as you came into the room they started rehearsing. The two hours were very intense because the time was so valuable and we saw immediately how doing a play could become absolutely absorbing if you were incarcerated." In Our Country's Good, most of the characters are based on real people that would have been aboard the ship as Weretenbaker was allowed to read the journals of the First Fleet members in order to portray them accurately.

Here is our interpretation of one of the scenes from "Our Country's Good"

https://youtu.be/sD97oklxqZk

- We used chains to reflect the idea of "the savages" as they are slaves so we had the chains to add context to the scene and the constant noise of them banging together or against the chairs showed that the slaves hadn't just disappeared but these men were just drinking and laughing as though they didn't exist at all. The chains would ideally be fitted into the costume, if we were doing this scene professionally, and we wanted the chains to become the tassels that majority of high ranking officers have on their uniform so that it would be a constant reminder for the audience that they were to blame for the mistreatment of the slaves. We also wanted to include the idea of keys and one of the characters have a large amount of keys on their belt.
- In the centre, the smaller tables are representing a large banquet table that would be filled with an excessive amount of food and drink. Reflecting the idea that the slaves are starving and these men are wasting so much food that could be given to those who need it. And with the added use of forks, the officers use them to accentuate their point and so use them as tools to point with and then continue eating. These props, both the food and the chains, re-enforced the irony of the topics that we are discussing and the language of what we are saying.
- In terms of the delivery of the lines, we are directing some of the lines out to the audience and then some to other characters on stage. Those who opposed the idea of the play have the bigger gestures and bigger movements around the stage to reflect the idea that they are commanding and therefore can project their lines outwards but because of the power that they hold, whoever they are talking to still knows that the lines are being directed towards them. One of the character makes reference to the stars as so the setting must be outside with some sort of slight covering over the food and so the higher ranking characters direct their lines outward as though they were observing the scenery. We wanted to make it clear on which characters were for the play, against the play and those who were neutral ground about the play.
- We did realise that there were two singular characters who were coming across more realistic than the others which were Connie's characters of the Ralph, who was going to direct the play, and Alexis' character, who was the Captain of the ship. We thought that this was based off of the ideas that they were the more calmer members of the group and they were more for the play to be held whereas the rest of the cast were more exaggerating their disagreement towards it due to them wanting their point to be heard.
- The use of stereotypes and stereotypical actions allowed us to heighten the aspect of the audience knowing that this was a play. They also add as an element of social commentary about the opinions that were present at the time in which the play was set.

A possible next step would be to look deeper into the characters of Ralph and the Captain to see whether we can use their realistic nature to reflect a political or societal issue. They could be the voices of reason in the scene as they do try and justify the play being held. Connie's character is the more diplomatic whereas Alexis holds more power due to her status and so she has the final decision on whether the play will go ahead or not. There are also references to people like Rousseau which reflects how educated both these characters are in contrast with mine and Caitlin's characters. We are so against the idea of the play that we begin to stereotype the people that they bring up such as the Irish and the Swiss. Our characters could reflect those who have strong beliefs about the British Empire and believe in everything that they say is what we should live by which, in a modern setting, would equate to xenophobic and racist people who believe that punishment is punishment and the convicts are in prison because that is where they belong. We do not see them as human beings which reflect what the play is about as we are exploring the idea about the morality of punishment and rehabilitation which are the political arguments that are being made apparent for the audience to consider.

Week 25: Primary School Review

Review of performance

During the last week, we performed our Theatre In Education "Survival Guide" to an audience of around 50-60 students at Dore Primary School. The piece lasted for around 45 minutes which was more than we had originally anticipated due to the interactive discussions being in more depth that we had originally thought. We did, however, leave extra time for this in case the students needed more help or needed us to go into more depth about the subjects we had mentioned during the piece. After the performance, we had given us some time to talk to the audience to get their feedback on the piece and we thought that we could also use this time as a discussion that the audience can use to ask us any questions that they had about secondary school whether we had mentioned them or not. Here are some pictures from the performance:

Some of the positives from the performance were:

• The opening - As we were doing the high school musical dance, I was looking over the audience and could see that a lot of them were enjoying it and even started to laugh at us whilst doing it which was the point of using the dance, for comedic value. And the dance clearly had started to interest them in the piece and they were starting to become intrigued by what we had to say about both high school musical and what it had to do with secondary school. Also the fact that they were finding it amusing accentuated the fact that they knew it was false and knew that we were using it as a gimmick.
• Interactive Sections - Every time that we asked the audience for suggestions whether that be "who can I talk to?" in the Little Worries Chapter or "what could I do in this situation" in the Bullying chapter, they were constantly engaged with the piece and could give us an array of suggestions very willingly. This made it so much easier for us to interact with them as the cast fed off of their energy which made the piece all the more enjoyable to perform and, I hope, to watch. The enthusiasm that was shown for all the questions that were thrown at them, reflected their interest in the piece and the answers that they gave were both intelligent and expected. Majority of the answers that we got were what we expected but there were some unusual ones especially in the Little Worries section.
• Responses to their "Little Worries" - I think that overall, we responded to the audience's personal little worries both professionally and confidently. As the narrator of this specific chapter, I didn't have a set group to myself and so I had the freedom to go round each group and join in all the different discussions that were going on. I found that everybody was talking through the worries and acknowledging that the worries that they had were what we also had when we were in their position. I was able to help with this and I had a conversation of my own with a student who told me that he didn't have any worries which was what I was like when I was moving up to secondary school. This allowed me to have a short discussion with him about the ways that he could help other people who have some worries and he agreed that now that he knows what people are worried about, he can help them to feel a little more comfortable with transitioning to secondary school like he is. I also had another conversation with a girl, during the friendship chapter, who wasn't going to the same secondary school as the rest of her friends which allowed me and another cast member to reassure her that it's okay to be nervous about these things and making new friends does take time so she doesn't need to rush.
• Freeze frames - The freeze frames that came from these little worries were very interactive and the whole audience worked hard to come up with some interesting freeze frames of their own little worries. They were a range of different worries which allowed the audience to see an array of worries from all of the students. The audience were both enthusiastic to show their own freeze frames and guess what other people's were as well. This interest in the freeze frames allowed us to explore them in depth both in the individual groups and as a whole.
• Quiz scene - This was the most interactive part of the whole piece as it took up a whole chapter and the response to it was more than we could have ever imagined as they were really competitive which added to them wanting to get the best answers. Especially my group, came up with a load of different answers obviously, some were jokey answers but majority of them were great responses to the question like "ask the teacher" and "remove them from the situation" Doing the discussions between each question, the whole of my group was really involved in the answers that we were giving and as a collective we came up with the best answer. Both me and Jenna, who was also in charge of our group, tried to include the whole group in the conversation and brought everybody's opinion into the mix so that we could choose from everybody's answers for the best one. This allowed us to have a big discussion about which answers were the best to suit the situation and at times there were discussions between not just me, Jenna and the group but between people in the group as well which gave me and Jenna the chance to build on those conversations.
• Question and Answer Session - At the end of the piece, we broke off into smaller groups to discuss what the audience had learnt from the piece and to try to answer any questions that they had remaining about secondary school. In my group, we started with discussing what they had learnt from the piece and they all said that they felt better about transitioning up to secondary school and some said that they're even looking forward to it. We moved onto some of their questions and I got a lot of questions about detentions and what you get them for. I explained all of the reasons why you could get them and explained that they are only there if you go against the school values. I also got questions about the work and whether it was much harder than what you get in primary school which I assured them that it may seem difficult at the start but you soon realise that you can do it and it isn't much different. I also mentioned that there are also plenty of teachers that can ask for help as there are multiple teachers in each department which also shocked them because they've only ever had one teacher for each year. We also talked about being late which was the biggest worry out of my group and I made sure that they realised that once you get used to the school then it really isn't as big as you think it is and if you're late in the first couple of weeks all the teachers are understanding enough to let you off for being late as it's a new school.
• Responses from the audience afterwards - Our teacher was able to get some feedback from the children in the audience after the performance and some of those reactions were: "It helped us with our worries" "They showed me that moving to secondary school is not a big deal" and "It felt like a weight was lifted off my shoulders." Hearing these comments being made about the piece shows that the things that we had discussed really allowed the audience to become more comfortable with the subjects that we had mentioned and that was the whole point of the piece.

Some of the things that went slightly wrong in the piece were:

• Asking the audience after the freeze frames - During the "Little Worries" chapter, which I narrate, after each group had shown us their freeze frames I forgot to ask the rest of the audience whether they had the same worries to accentuate that majority of the audience were feeling the same. But I feel like the in depth discussions that we had whilst making the freeze frames were enough to show that many of the audience had the same worries. I did make a conscious effort whilst I was going round the groups that I had heard some of the other groups with the same worries. The flow of the piece wasn't jepardised and the pace was maintain so that the audience didn't realise that a mistake was even made.  
• Pace - I know that at the beginning of the piece, the pace was very fast and I know that some of the cast members thought that I was talking too fast at the beginning but I thought that I was speaking at a pace which was understandable for the audience. I think that I, and the rest of the cast, did slow down pretty rapidly when we all became comfortable with the piece and accepted the fact that the audience were really enthusiastic about being involved in the piece. I don't think that it effected the piece at all, as the pace was slowed down anyway and the audience still grasped what was going on and the fact that it was my own personal experience that we were talking about.
• Responses during the Bullying chapter - During the section where we asked the audience for their opinions on what Harriet should do in that situation, I don't think that we took enough suggestions in from the audience as we didn't manage to get all of the responses that we wanted. I personally thought that we could have taken another couple of suggestions from the audience as we didn't get one about physically fighting back and I feel like that was a key one that the audience needed to see how the situation played out with that. Although the responses that we got were some of what we expected and allowed the audience to witness what their choices didn't to the situation.

Overall I feel like the performance was successful and ran as smooth as we could have wanted. I thought that the audience understood the messages that we were trying to send them, that moving up to secondary school isn't as scary as you might think. Although I did miss some things out I feel that the pace was kept up throughout the piece and the energy levels didn't seem to drop at any particular point which enabled both us and the audience to feed off of each other in terms of interaction.

Week 24: TIE (Primary School)

Blocking and refining

We used this lesson to focus on making sure that we had our primary school piece completely blocked and then we could begin to refine it and make it performance ready. We had a possible performance date of sometime in the next two weeks and so we needed to make sure that we knew what was going on in all chapters and we were prepared for the possible performance.

We started with Chapter 4 and made sure that we had an introduction that allowed the audience to understand what was going on in the next section and also to set up the atmosphere for the game show that we were about to play. We decided to use a game show layout so that the audience felt at ease with the decisions that they were going to be asked to make and also to show that secondary school can be fun and it doesn't have to be tense all the time. A game show also may get the whole audience involved as it is a competition and our target audience may feel all the more included if we are making them compete against each other regarding who had the best answers in relation to the situation they were given. We decided that each group would have two cast members to help discuss their answers and give positive reinforcements to their suggestions. We also though of having a dedicated speaker for each group so that each person out of the group got to say one of the options that we were discussing. As a conclusion, we used the fact that everyone had come up with multiple answers and outcomes for each situation and therefore they have many options that they could take if any of these situations seem to arise. I think that addressing the fact that they also came up with the majority of these answers by themselves to highlight the point that they could come up with these things by themselves on their feet in these situations.

Moving onto Chapter 5 which we have titled “Good things”, we wanted this chapter to be a positive conclusion to the piece so that we weren’t bombarding the audience with an extensive amount of negative aspects about secondary school. We knew that the client wanted a piece that brought some of the fears that surround the idea of secondary school into light but the piece still needs to make the audience feel at ease with these problems and see that they can deal with them. This is why we wanted our last chapter to end on a positive note so that the audience still felt that they were able to go into secondary school knowing what to expect and knowing that they can expect good things to happen as well as they are transitioning into one of the most important and essential parts of their lives. We wanted there to be a range of good things so they can see that "good things" can come from a range of things and they are definatly going to find their own good things from their own secondary school experiences. We decided to include things like school trips, science labs, food technology etc. just to highlight that our good times come from different years and also we said that we could use these "good things," to mention some of the aspects that they may not realise that secondary school have in comparison to their primary school.

After we had blocked and completed the piece, we decided to do a full run-through and make the piece as fluid as possible so that it was performance ready.

• Energy levels - At the start, we obviously have the high school musical dance section which needs to be very energetic and the whole point of using this is to highlight the misconceptions that surround secondary school and so it needs to be seen as extreme and false. In order for this to work, we need it to be high energy so we decided to add in short sounds like "woo" and "yeah" for us to say over the music to accentuate that false image of secondary school that high school music portrays. We even added in small conversations in pairs that had the same high energy which involved things like homework and clubs etc. This allowed us to set the energy and the atmosphere of the piece high so that we interested the audience straight away and hopefully hooked them into learning about our experiences in secondary school.
• Delivery of lines in relation to the dance section - After the dance section, we have a couple of lines that are "Secondary school isn't like this" and "It can actually be quite scary." We wanted these lines to juxtapose with the enthusiasm of the first section to make it clear to the audience that this is interpretation of secondary school is wrong and a lot of people will probably believe that this is correct. In order for these lines to have the desire effect, we need to make the delivery of the lines break this idea of secondary school and so we decided that we needed to deliver them in a state of disbelief and in a tone that helps break this distorted image. 
• Speed of lines - Due to us becoming comfortable with the lines, we were beginning to speed up the lines and they were beginning to become slightly hard to hear the lines. We need to consciously make an effort to slow down the speed of our lines. I, in particular, found this quite hard because when I thought I was slowing down my lines, it was still quite fast and I found it quite difficult to differentiation between what I thought was slow and what the correct speed for the audience to clearly understand what was going on. I think that I was talking at a speed which students of my own age would understand but I needed to focus on the audience and involve them in what I'm saying and adjusting the speed of the lines to accommodate for that.
• Staging - At the beginning of each chapter, we designate a narrator for each chapter and in order for the audience to know who to focus on and to fully engage with what is going on we had that person step forward and the rest of the cast step backwards. This allows both the audience to clearly see the narrator and vice versa. The narrator can also see the whole of the audience and can therefore interact with the whole of audience by directing their words to everyone. When I was the narrator for Chapter 1, I made sure that I was making eye contact with as many people in the audience as possible in order for them to feel included in the piece and I also had to keep moving changing who I was directing my lines to so that I was explaining to everyone what was going on. 
• Interactive Noises - In order for the energy levels to be maintain throughout, we decided that there needed to be more agreement noises from the rest of the cast whilst the narrator is speaking so that the audience can see that we are all on board with what is being said and having these agreeing noises emphasizes that we have all been in this situation as well. 
• Identifying who's speaking - There are particular sections where we are stood in a line and each person delivers a line, to help the audience identify who's speaking at each particular time, we had the rest of the cast looking at that person along with them making agreeing noises. We had to slightly adapt the speed of the lines in these sections as well so that there was enough time for the audience to realise that there was another person talking and tune into what they're saying.
• Enthusiastic responses - During each chapter there are times when we assign different characters to the cast and we wanted the reactions to each character to be as extreme as the dance section at the start. So if we were assigned a character, then we wanted the reaction to be massive so that the audience could identify who was which specific character and it also adds comedic aspects to the piece.
• Wording - In certain chapters, especially those with more serious subjects, the audience need to be able to understand the situations that we are setting up for them and the way that we are explaining these situations, and the feelings involved in them, needs to be in a way that is accessible for the audience. Sometimes I think that the whole cast found it hard to re-word some of these situations as we were trying to find a way that the audience would be able to understand what was going on and specifically in the forum theatre section in which we had to ask for suggestions from the audience. We began to think about some of the responses that we could get from the audience and we came up with things like "tell a teacher" and "ask them to stop." The wording of the responses was something that we needed to focus on as our response to their suggestions needed to be professional yet appreciative. For example, if we were given a suggestion that didn't fit with the situation and we acted it out, we could completely dismiss the idea yet we couldn't say that it was the correct thing to do. 
• Reactions to the "good things" - The scenes during this chapter are short and quite quick and we needed to keep the energy up so we decided to set small background reactions that would add to the atmosphere and make the "good things" seem even more exciting for the audience.

TIE (Storms) Review

Performance Review

Positive points:

• Comedic timing - audience responded as we expected to the jokes that were made and if we went out to speak to them afterwards the interaction was always easier if there was a joke that had come before it as it made them feel like the atmosphere wasn't as pressuring on them.
• Pace - was majority kept up throughout the whole thing and the speed of the lines throughout was good and kept the audience engaged with the action onstage.
• Opening sequence - when showing the penises to the audience, it created a comedic atmosphere and introduced them to the topic easier and we did get a lot of laughter from the audience considering we were showing them fake penises that we then proceeded to put down our trousers. This was the response that we were expecting and it allowed us to use this to our advantage when we were talking to them because they had clearly seen the penises.
• Facilitation - majority of the facilitation was said in a clear and precise way so that when we did go out to the audience, they knew what was going on and the conversation could start and flow much easier.
• Reflective listening groups - I thought that the end groups worked really well and, specifically my group, found the 7 sins of communication very interesting to try and work out what they each were and then we intrigued to find out examples of each one and identify them in real life. We found that a lot of them identified moments in their own lives when they had seen these and that gave me a nice segway into trying to get them to realise how that made them feel and then proceeding to link that to reactions that they had seen in the piece. Also in my group one of the members came and found me towards the end of the session and told me that he was grateful for us talking about this as he was struggling with some of these things and he hoped that he would now have some of his friends to talk to him about it. This proves that in that audience of 40/50 students, we helped at least one person and that was the overall aim of the piece and it highlights the need for someone to hear what we were saying. It was an amazing feeling knowing that we had helped someone and helped them have a changed opinion on boys communicating how they are feeling with each other.
• Approaching the audience - Every time that we went out to the audience, I feel like the whole cast didn't make the atmosphere awkward and we approach the groups quite naturally and our body language was quite open reflecting the fact that we wanted them to be open to interpretation and I hope that that message came across to them as I wanted them to feel like we weren't going to judge them on what they say, we just wanted to understand their thought process and also their interpretation of the piece.

Negative points

• Murmuring during transition - For an unknown reason, when we got to the cross transition, the murmuring stopped and this therefore made the atmosphere drop, losing the effect that we wanted it to have on the audience which was for them to see the feelings building up in John's head.
• Pace - at times, the pace and speed of lines increased which meant that it was hard for the audience to catch onto what we were saying and this therefore made the continuity of the storyline and the audience's understanding of what was going on slightly harder to follow.
• Refocusing the audience - even though the facilitators had microphones, at times it was hard to understand what they were saying due to them not waiting for the audience to have fully re-focused on the piece and re-engaged with John's emotions. During the facilitation of the sliding scale, the audience hadn't finished their conversations and were still talking/laughing about some of the things that we had previously been discussing and so they lost the explanation of us wanting them to raise their hands when we got to their option and so when we proceeded to carry out the exercise, they didn't understand what to do which resulted in the exercise not getting the result that we wanted because they didn't hear what to do. We did cover it though by making the joke that everyone had broken their arms and so that allowed us to pick the atmosphere back up and carry on the piece.
• Repore with the audience during interactive sections - As expected, there were particular groups of students who weren't interested in the piece and weren't interested in giving their opinions to us which made it hard for some of the questions to be answered. To get around this we had to use some of the techniques that we had previously discussed in the lesson before when we had discussed ways to initiate the conversation. Sometimes this worked and others there was no response at all except for them laughing amongst themselves.

Week 23: TIE (Storms)

Last rehearsal before performance

We used this week to focus on the SToRMS T.I.E in order to get it as fluid as possible and performance ready because we had our performance the following Friday. We wanted to do as many run-throughs as possible both cue runs and full runs in order for us to feel confident and prepared for the performance. We wanted to get as much feedback as possible from our teacher so that we had the best performance that the audience would gain the most advantage from. One of the run-throughs, we found that we could emphasise the fact that we have fake penises and use it to our advantage so we wanted to go out in front of the audience and actually show them what we have to make them feel uncomfortable. We found that we could do it in a Berkoff style so using the extreme facial expressions to emphasise the fact that we are all females and we are talking to an all male audience. This also added to the comedic elements of the piece but the fact that we were being so serious about it meant that that also added to the comedy.

http://youtu.be/eaUhkcPPA0M

The piece was around 40 minutes long and that was without the interactive group section at the end which we thought was enough time for the audience to grasp the idea of what we wanted them to take from the piece.

The main feedback that we got from the run-throughs was:

• All of the earlier scenes - perfectly timed and the speed of the lines was slow enough for the audience to grasp what was going on in the scene.
• Start sequence - nice timing, allowed the atmosphere to be established and the tone of the piece to be set.
• More noise - need more noise when we are doing the crossover transition where we are saying lines. The atmosphere needs to be kept up so that they are constantly being interested in the piece in order for them to both understand what is going on and to gain the most out of the performance.
• Centre the scenes - Because of the new audience seating arrangement, we are so used to being further to one side than the other and so we needed to realign the scenes so that they were central and the whole audience were involved in the scene.
• Asides - Need to be shared with all sides of the audience so that they all felt like they can understand what is going on and understand the information that the asides are sharing with them because that's the whole purpose of the sides - to add extra information to the scene.
• Pace - the overall pace of the piece was very sustained and allowed the piece to have a calmer atmosphere so that the audience were more inclined to listen to what we were saying and therefore understand it more.
• Line pick ups- need to be slightly quicker during the societal pressures on boys section as this is a quicker pace section where the audience's attention needs to be verbally taken through what each little scene is so that they understand.
• Facilitator tone - The tone of the facilitators was good and accurate so that the audience were getting the information that they need in a tone that was easy to listen to and easy for them to take in.
• More irritated thank yous - When Caitlin is getting annoyed with Imogen, we wanted the thank yous to get more irritated to add to the joke and comedic timing of the lines.
• Family scene - needs to be brought further forward on the stage so that the audience feel more connect and immersed in the scene. But we also need to make sure that when we bring it forward, we don't close the scene from the audience on the outside. We need to involve the whole audience and not just those at the front and centre.
• Define the asides - For the maximum effect of the asides, there needs to be a juxtaposing atmosphere change to make them more defined and stand out more. One of the ones that need to be changed is the aside that is done by the school teacher in the school scene as we need it to be giving the audience the right message and the atmosphere helps set that up.
• Murmuring - We need to have continuous murmuring in the background of when the thoughts are building up on John as it adds to the atmosphere and when we go past John in the crossover scene, the lines that are being singled out at that point need to be shouted over the top which also adds to the tension that is building reflecting the breaking point that John is at.
• No props- At the start of the rehearsal process, we started using props like a cup and bottle in the scene but in particular when John "throws" the bottle, we found that there was the sound of the bottle bouncing along the floor whilst Hannah was trying to carry on her John lines which was taking the focus away from the lines that were being said.
• Caitlin's narrator tone - As the piece goes on, we wanted the narrator's tone to reflect the status that we had given them at the start of the piece as the leaders of the performance and so their tone, towards the middle and end of the piece, needed to be more formal. And then when we go into the smaller groups that is when they are able to use a slightly less formal approach.
• Corridor scene - volume needs to be louder to reflect the atmosphere of the school
• Barriers to Communication facilitation - doesn't make sense as the lines that are said are repeated and so we need to add in the line "John may think that he's communicating clearly," so that the audience can understand that John is communicating but perhaps not in a way that is clear enough for Holly to understand what he is trying to say.
• Context for the friends scene - If we add in some context then it might make more sense for the audience to understand the timeline that we are using and so we want to add in the line "Earlier in the evening."
• Echoing lines - There was a line that was repeated that we needed to change so that the audience didn't get confused about what was going on and so after the small scene where we fake what John's friends would look like when he tries to talk to them about his feelings, we got the facilitator to say "that looks ridiculous" instead of repeating the same line of " nothing like this would ever happen."
• Reflective listening - We originally had a version of the reflective listening on a slide on the powerpoint but after considering it we found that it wasn't as helpful as we thought and it was also a distraction from the subjects that we would be talking about it in our groups.

Week 22: TIE (Storms)

Preparing for performance

We have recently found out some provisional dates for performances at King Ecgberts School to launch the project and those are during the next week and so we used today's rehearsal to map out where the audience will be sitting and because it is being performed in our vicinity, we are able to rehearse in the actual performance space. We are thinking that we will be performing to roughly 50-60 pupils in year 11 so they are directly in the centre of our target audience age range. We are thinking that we are performing for 70 just so that we are prepared if it's anymore and that would roughly give us 10 students to work with in each interactive group.

The first thing that we decided to work on was the audience positioning so that we were prepared before the audience even entered the room, to make the interactive elements easier to divide up. We eventually came up with a curved seating arrangement that made sure everyone in the audience was involved in the piece and felt like they could interact with us. 

With the audience seating arrangement then in place we decided to do a run through and adjust anything to accommodate for the seating. The first thing that we came across was the first line of chairs that we sit in was very far forwards and the audience around the sides would only be able to see the backs and sides of the chairs. In order to change this we both brought the line backwards and made it into an arch instead of a line so that we could address the whole audience and play to all the sides of the stage in order to keep them involved.

The next problem came at the "societal pressures on boys" section as we were the opposite of the earlier problem and were all too far backwards. When we did bring the focal point of the action forwards, we then found that the sides of the stage could see the mechanics behind some of the sections so we needed to use the extra people to cover the mechanics at the side and this also allows the sides to see their reaction in regards to the situation, meaning that they are still being engaged in the piece. We also thought about the TV section when we are all facing forwards as the sides wouldn't be involved as much as the central section as we are facing in that direction but we wanted it to be realistic and we are all watching the same TV so it made more sense for that small section to be facing the front and centre to ensure it was realistic. 

We then found that we needed our dramatic asides to be directed to the whole audience and this was the hardest thing as there was only one person talking and they had to direct all lines to the entire audience which meant that they had to keep moving along the audience line so that they included everyone.

We then moved onto the section where the pressures are building up on John and we have him seated centrally and the rest of the cast cross behind him. The issue that we found from this was that the seat was too far backwards and so we moved it as close to the front as we could get which gave this section a theatre in the round feel. This also gave us more space to work with behind the chair and to involve the audience a little more we decided that when we cross and say our lines, we then exit through the diagonal exits that are in the audience so that it gave the piece a more dynamic and "in your face" feel to accentuate the building up of the pressures.

In order for the interactive sections to run as smoothly as possible, we decided which sections we were going to talk with so that we know which group to go to immediately. We also thought that when you address your group and some of the things that you have been discussing we need to come out into the audience to make the juxtaposition bigger and it also makes them more involved and connecting what we discussed with the actual scenario.

When we get feedback from the facilitation of who could John talk to, we need to think about how we are going to tell the audience that John doesn't want to react in their suggested way without telling them that they are wrong and so we wanted it to be more of a sharing of ideas and then have John saying that they are good suggestions but then giving a reason why it wouldn't work in this situation. 

After the run through, we decided to talk through the facilitation and interactive parts in depth and have a small practice of how we would respond to a wall of silent when we ask a question as this is one of the most expected response. We know this from the fact that the target audience are being specifically that, targeted, because they aren't communicating how they feel in an effective way. It made sense for us to have small role plays of how to get round non-communicative behaviour because we can't get annoyed at it or try and ignore it. We thought of a scenario such as being in a classroom and the teacher has moments when the teacher asks an impossible question to the class and the class will try and work out what the answer is and that silence is not an awkward silence. On other occasions there are times when the teacher will ask the simplest question and the class won't answer because it's that simple. And then the teacher will apply the same logic as they would to the first scenario and try to break it down to the class, that is when it gets awkward. Applying this situation to the piece, we were trying to work out the sections where we are asking them these simple questions that may result in the awkward silence that is hard to get out of. We decided that instead of simple questions, we have sections where the audience may not understand what we are asking them to do without us coming and explaining it and that's a potential way into a conversation because you can come up to them and ask them whether they know what they're doing and so that might be able to initiate a conversation. I think that when we come out to the audience, we need to find a way of saying "what do you think" in a more tangential and calmer way that invites them in and makes them feel like they can talk to us about what they've seen and not feel scared, because we're not teachers, we're sixth formers and we can use that to our advantage as we can have a conversation with them in a way that's very different from how a teacher can. The biggest problem that we could possibly face would be silence especially when we're performing a piece about communication.

The first section of interaction that we have with the audience is when we ask them to identify the moments of non-verbal communication and we have specific questions written on the PowerPoint behind us that the audience need to answer. It is a fairly clear task and the only reason why that wouldn't be able to do it would be if they're choosing not to or they're not engaging because they don't see the point of it. Our job is to motivate them into giving us answers as we don't need to explain it, it's more about making them feel like there's a point in talking to us about their opinions. We could possibly even vocalise that it's a simple question but what we're trying to do by that is get them to think about the situations that they have been in and identify possible areas of non-verbal communication in those. We can even try and say that we have seen signs of non-verbal communication in our own conversations with our parents as a way into a conversation and make them feel like we're not being patronising and we actually value their opinions. If we only get one or two answers out of the group that's still okay because it's not all about getting everybody to answer but if the group hears someone talking openly about the piece then it might enable others to feel like they can too. We then paired off and worked on some ways that we thought could be conversation starters as this is our first interaction with them and we need to work out how to break the ice as the first contact is important as it sets the tone of the group discussion for both you and the person who will talk to them after you. We need ways to get under the façade of "we're not going to do anything," as we're quite far into the piece before we ask for audience participation. In our pairs, we discussed a few different ways of opening up the interactions that allows us to set the tone for the subjects that we will be talking about. We thought about introducing yourself - although this means that you will have to introduce yourself to every group that you talk to and avoiding telling them what you want because that seems very patronising.
We also talked about how there are different types of ice breakers because if they are already talking, then this allows you to listen to their conversation and pick up on the points that they are making and add in follow up questions to see the extent of their understanding. There is also the danger of them completely being silent at you if you proceed to ask them a question in which we thought that you could start to repeat some of the things that you heard in their conversation to spark them talking again. We found it hard to not fall into a patronising tone and not sound like it is scripted because we need to ask them questions about their understanding but we need to do it in a conversational tone instead of sounding like a teacher.
We then got the chance to practice how to start of the discussions on our teacher who become an audience member who had been hardly paying attention to the piece and once we had told them that we needed their opinions, suddenly found that they didn't know what to do. We found it very difficult to not approach the situation with a direct question as this made our student immediately not want to talk to us. Our teacher was being deliberately difficult so that we were prepared in case this actually happened in the piece and we would know to expect some students to be like that, hopefully they won't be that difficult and we know to expect the first discussion to start with silence. We need to not be put off by the awkwardness of the first interaction because if we think that the atmosphere is awkward and act like it is then that's going to make the situation worse. I think that we need to really think about these conversational sections and the facilitation before it as that facilitation is like a whole other performance and way of communicating that quite a lot of practitioners in Theatre in Education are lacking in and those that are, dynamically changes the atmosphere of the piece.
Some of us in the class, including myself, have had the opportunity to watch a couple of T.I.E pieces and there was a particular facilitator who was amazing and really engaging with the audience by just listening to things that we being said and drew people in to talk to him. He asked questions in a way that made the audience feel like their opinions were needed and made them feel fully engaged with the piece. We also saw the same company the following year and that facilitator wasn't there and there was a massive difference, not in terms of the acting or the subject that they were talking about but it was the quality of the facilitation that destroyed the piece. So we wanted to take the best assets of the good facilitator and use them in our piece so that we could make the atmosphere lighter and less pressuring on the audience to answer the questions that we need them to.
We discussed some more ideas like acknowledging the strangeness of the situation (an all-girl class speaking to an all-boy audience about communication), bypassing the strangeness of the situation and trying to make some observation and connection to the piece. If they're talking already, we have a massive head start because we can just listen to what they're saying and prompt more questions which is very different to asking direct questions. We could delegate who was going to talk to who which is quite a mechanical method but if we begin to pair people up, they may not be comfortable enough to talk to the person they've been paired with. We could begin with mentioning what non-verbal communication actually is and then we could make a joke out of the silence, if there is one, as in "you're demonstrating really good non-verbal communication right now." If we begin to expand on what we have seen in the scene then we could get them listening to what we are saying before we begin to ask them questions as it's more of an indirect approach. We found that it does help to have a bank of things that we could say in our heads and a shape that we can use because if we go up to them and have nothing and do get the response of a blank look then we are just relying on instinct and this can sometimes go really wrong.
I, personally, found this really helpful especially discussing ways that we could initiate the conversation and building up a bank of things that I could say to my group when the conversation begins.

Week 21: TIE (Primary School)

Feedback

This week, we had a lot of people missing from our class and so we decided to have a sit down discussion with our teacher so that he could play the devil's advocate and ask us to explain why we are doing everything the way that we are so that we can realise any mistakes that have been made and also so that he knows the reasoning behind what we are doing in order for him to understand where we are up to in the rehearsal process.
We began by talking through the piece step by step and at the beginning of us explaining chapter one, Chipp commented "This is the beginning of using yourselves as examples...what is the logic behind this?" We relayed to him the discussion that we had had when we were devising this ourselves and we explained that this would give the audience something to connect and relate to and it also shows that we went through it and highlights the fact that they can take advice from someone that has been through it already.
We then proceeded to explain that the little worries that had been addressed were acted out in little scenes and when we came to the idea of an older student helping the younger one to find their way around school, we were addressed with the question of "Is that real?" so does this really happen in real life and we replied with yes and plenty of us have been both the older student helping and also the younger one being helped.
We were then given the comment of "the core principal of what you're saying is fine as you're giving examples, but it's about how they're being executed." We had a short discussion about how we need the anecdotes to be more believable and heartfelt so that the audience can really grasp that they are real and we had experienced this ourselves first-hand.
We were asked how we had fixed the issue of too much narrative, which was a comment that we had previously got from other run-throughs. We explained how we had extended the classroom scene so that I interrupted and gave comments on how I was feeling at this point and we also added in some forum theatre aspects like asking the audience who I could ask for help so that they were more interactive with the scene.
After explaining our concept of the freeze frames, Chipp reminded us of the comments that we had been given previously about us not addressing the problems that would be brought up by the students and so we explained how we are now deciding to spend longer with the students when making the freeze frames so that we can address their problems in smaller groups so that they don't feel like they are sharing their fears with the whole year group. Chipp asked us "what are you actually trying to explore in this freeze frame section?" and we told him how we wanted them to express their own little worries and explain to us what they're scared of so that we would be able to help them and tell them what it is really like to be in secondary school. We then explained some of the little worries that we would expect them to say like getting lost or getting your head pushed down the toilet to which Chipp replied "Are they little worries?" and we thought that throughout the piece they're going to be thinking of bigger worries and so these are more just like their own worries that concern just them. We wanted the worries to be smaller things whilst we are workshopping so that we are discussing little things in order for them to find the solutions, with our help, rather than us just outrightly telling them the solutions to their problems. It gives us the chance to discuss with them, in smaller groups, in a creative way, whilst they're doing something active.
We moved onto Chapter 2 which addresses the fears and ideas around friendships as they are a massive issue in secondary school and are the cause of 90% of the problems. We need to enhance the format idea of anecdotes so that the audience can identify with us onstage and really feel like we know what we are talking about and in order for the audience to understand the piece and get something out of it, they need to be fully immersed in the stories and feel like we are talking about a situation they can relate to. A possible extension of Alexis' storyline could be the answer to including some other scenarios to do with friendships as well as it giving us the opportunity to explore Alexis' story in more depth. It would also give the audience the chance to see some of the things that they suspect might happen in secondary school and also some of the things that are definitely going to happen.
Later on, we got the comment of " If you're trying to bring in new characters for each of the different scenarios regarding friendships, doesn't that mean the audience only get a short space of time with each one of the characters?" We decided that we would only use the scenarios in asides so that we weren't following 4 different scenarios at the same time but if a situation occurred we could use dynamic asides to highlight how each person felt at that time with their friendship situation.
Chipp thought that using the personal stories format was good and approachable from an audience perspective but does the heavy narrative base obstruct the way of them connecting with the characters. He asked us "what are you doing to give a lot of information and, get them engaged with the characters quickly so that you can work on the moral issues that we want to focus on?" We responded with our ideas behind extending the scenes so that the audience are engaging with specific characters and the narrative helps stop them from getting confused about who is which character and also the narrative helps them understand the scenes. We could also use the narrative to highlight the key morals and ideas that we want them to take from the scene and this allows us to know that they are getting the key ideas from each scene.
We then began to find different ways of breaking up the narrative so that the piece wasn't so narrative based and we had the idea of the character in the scene could come out of the scene and speak to the narrator. For example, Charlotte could step out of her character as Little Alexis and engage with the audience through dynamic asides as this allows us to begin to establish a clarifying dialogue alongside the narration that helps make what Alexis was feeling at this point more relatable and therefore the audience can understand and use the advice we are giving them to their fullest advantage. In addition to this we were trying to think of alternative possibilities that will help us move away from a heavily narrative base and we thought we could get Big Alexis, so the person who's story it is, to try and talk to her younger self which reflects the idea of adding in dynamic asides but still keeping the narrative in place. We would want to have the older Alexis telling her younger self what to do but we also had the questions of "would the younger self listen" which we thought we could bring into the piece to show that the advice we're giving can actually work. So we would have Alexis the narrator trying to convince the younger version to listen to her advice as she has been through it before and knows what to do but the younger version wouldn't listen as they are in the moment and their emotions have been heightened.
We then moved onto thinking about what does this form enable us to do, and challenge, as facilitators and educators towards the target audience that we wouldn't be able to do if we just had one or the other. We are allowing ourselves to challenge the idea that the things that are happening to them at the time might feel like a big deal but in the future they won't matter. We could use Little Alexis to articulate the thoughts of the audience, therefore allowing them to connect and relate to her more, alongside Big Alexis giving advice, we would have a very interesting paradox between the two. We are creating a dialogue which the audience will emotionally connect to however the dialogue is within the dynamic asides as this allows us to open up opportunities to question the decisions made by little Alexis.
The next thing that we moved onto was the list of tips that we made for making friends and we think that the best decision would be to get rid of it and find a different way to enable to audience to engage with the tips more as the audience will try to engage with what we're saying but if we're too energetic and moving around the stage, there will be at least 10 children in the audience who are not paying attention as they are already feeling overwhelmed by the concept of having an assembly on moving up to secondary school.
I think that we need to explore the negative impact it has on an individual when someone says a back-handed mean comment. For example, the moment when you put yourself out there and try to make friends but you get blanked or when you smile at someone but they don't smile back at you. We could incorporate this into Little Alexis and make her feel like she just wants to go home and never leave again just because no one wanted to sit next to her at lunch. We were thinking that we could add this into the nan scene that comes after as we could use the nan as an excuse to stay in the house and not tell her how she is truly feeling. We started to discuss what's more important giving them a list of what to do or preparing them for a reality in which they could encounter and if they do so they will know what to do in that specific situation. We could make a scene in which we include a back-handed comment that is a personal anecdote from someone in the cast, as some of us have experienced that before, and show that person working through the issue and finally overcoming it. We could use a worse-case scenario to show that these situations can still be over-come and we can use this to open their minds to the idea that everybody is feeling the same and will, at some point, feel the same.
Using the connection between Alexis and her nan allows us to accentuate the idea of telling your family how you feel is a good way of letting your feelings out. We could use this relationship and make Alexis feel bad, then bring in the solutions to her problems. We need to make sure that we are making it clear that if these things happen to you, you are not a bad person and you're going to have connections to people at some point. These things can definitely make you feel bad and we know this from personal experience but it's ok to feel this way. It is actually making you a stronger and kinder person.
We then moved onto the bullying chapter. At this point, we had only blocked the first scene and the outcomes that could come from that so we were more discussing the theory and reasoning behind it. We were discussing the reasons behind why we want them to choose "do nothing" as the best option for the bullying as there is no situation created if you don't lower yourself to their level. But we also want to accentuate the fact that asking for help is also a good option and is the first step to asking for help which doesn't create a situation right then and there. We need to make it clear to the audience that there is a difference between asking for help and snitching on someone. We were talking about the idea of see what happens if the situation gets worse and including the reaction of the child who would find the "breaking of the phone" situation very traumatic as would we also be telling them to do nothing? We need to clarify that if it upsets you, it's always best to go and tell someone whether that be a teacher, an older sibling or another family member. Sometimes doing nothing in certain situations can make it worse. I think we need to give them options more than telling them to have a set outcome for specific situations. So we would say that every situation is different and it is up to them in those situations to decide what to do and we're just giving them a few options on what you could do but eventually they will have to make the decision themselves. We thought of our examples as a sort of stepping blocks to helping them figure out what to do so we are giving them a range of examples on what to do which can be used in a range of situations no matter how small. We want to make it clear that if the situation does escalate then telling someone whether that be a teacher, sibling or other family member is needed. We made sure that we are including less stereotypical bullying as there are other forms of bullying that are regularly passed over in school and not recognised as bullying, like the whispering and the sarcastic nature of asking for the pencil. Passive bullying is the issue that we are wanting to show as this is one of the major problems in secondary school and we still see it happening in our every day lives. We need to make sure that we get this particular section right in terms of the delivery and how well the audience can pick up our key messages as this is the single biggest cause of unhappiness in modern secondary schools.
Bullying can start with casual off-hand comments which is what we have included in the small scene and we have escalated that into a more physical representation in order to continue the effects that this could have on someone and I think that it would be good to include the idea that sometimes punching and physically fighting back can be the only way to get rid of bullies but it does also have it's consequences and can get you in trouble. We were trying to identify what we would do if the phone situation actually happened to us and we decided that there would be so much rage and humiliation throughout the situation escalating. We also said that we would probably try and laugh it off at the start as though it was a joke but then the humiliation starts to set in and you start trying to fight back which is how the situation gets escalated even more. I think that we need to adequately explore the emotional aspects of some of the negative side to friendships so that we are showing the audience the reality of what its like and this also gives us other things to talk to them about which may result in them being able to open up to us more and let us help them talk through their fears.
After the bullying chapter, we are still deciding on whether we need to add more chapters in and we thought about adding in an extra chapter about organisation which could include things like forgetting your homework, forgetting your P.E kit or how to organise getting you food technology ingredients before the lesson.
Overall we have found that the anxiety that is centered around bullying and friendships needs to be made clearer and maybe we need to magnify the effects that the anxiety can have. We said that if we tackle the major issues then everything else will seem like less of an issue and therefore hopefully make them feel slightly more excited about going into secondary school than nervous.
There was the issue of gender neutrality as we are an all girl class and so if we are taking things from our own experiences, we don't have anything from a male point of view and so we were thinking of ways that male students would react to things like bullying and we thought that they would laugh it off, as well as females, but then if someone else was being bullied they would just join in on the torment as the spotlight was off them. We need to find a way to add in males worries as well as female which we have a slight hint at in the freeze frame section as we will be working with a mixed group of children so we will be getting the perspective of a boy from that and also with our target audience's age range, their emotional responses to situations will be the same so they will be feeling the same things in relation to a situation but bullying can manifest itself in different ways in regards to the genders. We could use some of our SToRMS experience here and say that it could look like the male isn't effected so that he doesn't get bullied anymore but inside he will be feeling the negative effects of that and when he goes home that could affect him even more. In regards to girls, bullying could also manifest itself into friendship groups as well as they may cling on to a friendship group that they have been friends with all along but that might be toxic for them so they could start to pick up on some traits that we see reflected in bullying.
After the discussion we thought that the best way to use our time would be to act on something we had mentioned in the discussion and so we decided to adapt the scene with Little Alexis talking to her Nan.

Adapting the Nan scene - adding in dynamic asides

We decided to focus on extending this scene and having the conversation between Little Alexis and her Nan after her return from school and we added in a small section of conversation between Little Alexis and Big Alexis to communicate to the audience what Little Alexis is feeling at this point which is like she can't tell anyone. Ultimately we have Little Alexis ignoring the advice and holding all of her emotions back. We then inserted a small scene between Little Alexis and her friend about school and her friend has made lots of new friends and is bragging about how many she has made. Little Alexis would then do an aside explaining that her friend is making her more worried about making friends as she hasn't been able to talk to anyone even though its only the first day of school. We would then abstractly show all of the thoughts that are building up in her head using the rest of the cast crossing behind her and saying all of her thoughts. This method allows us to relay to the audience how much pressure she is putting on herself and we can use the proxemics to reflect that and have the cast moving closer towards her as the thoughts build up. We would then get Big Alexis to reflect on her past actions and reiterate that the best thing to do would be to tell someone probably her Nan since they are quite close to each other.

We thought about the idea of talking to someone like your Nan in terms of having someone there and then we started thinking about it in terms of how much she could actually help with the situation and we thought that talking to some one like your Nan could be quite hard because she could be quite sympathetic and be a good listening ear but she wouldn't really be able to give you any advice. And we said that it would still help as it would relieve you of the stress and it's good to give your perspective to some one that might not understand the situation so clearly. So we added in a few lines to reiterate this idea:

Nan couldn't exactly give the best advice in that situation

But sometimes its better to talk to someone anyway

Its more effort to keep it all in

That will just stress you out even more

Talking to anyone whether that's a family member, sibling or teacher can help put things into perspective

If you don't want to or can't talk to someone, here are some things to remember

And then we proceed to include some ideas around friendships that hopefully will avoid situations like these from ocuring.

Don't limit yourself to one group of friends
Don't expect to make your best friend in the first week
Try joining clubs