Frantic Assembly Workshop

Frantic Assembly

https://www.franticassembly.co.uk/

Before we did the Frantic Assembly workshop I did a bit of research about the origins of frantic and their basics. 

"Can you be terrified and fearless? That is how we started Frantic Assembly. We began with little more than a fierce work ethic and a desire to do something different and to do it differently. The name Frantic Assembly gives it all away. It conjures an energy created by joining together. It has always been about this energy and learning from each other. From a reckless leap into the unknown Frantic Assembly has developed into one of the most studied and praised theatre companies working today. Our ambition is that we continue to learn and remain committed to making brave and bold theatre. At times it is physically dynamic and brutal. At others it's proudly tender and fragile. Frantic Assembly has always been about more than the work on the stage. It is about the ethos of collaboration, of empowerment, of that constant desire to improve. It is about telling stories in a voice we don't always hear and about finding talent in places we don't always look. Over the years the Frantic Method of devising theatre has helped people understand and make work throughout the world. Founded in 1994 by Scott Graham, we have toured extensively across Great Britain and worked in over 40 different countries internationally collaborating with some of today's most inspiring artists."

To start off with, we did an extensive warm up that engaged our whole body and one of the exercises was called Barbara Windsors. This was where you have your arms across the front of your body and then open them so that they are out at your sides and then you do the same again, so that you do each action 4 times. You then swing your arms up and down. We had to do this multiple times and it really made us work as a team because if one person was out of time we had to start again.

We then did a focus exercise where there was 3 chairs set up in a slalom type of thing and we had to run around the outside and then down the center of them. This made us really concentrate on what we were doing. We were given the advice to overshoot the distance around the chairs and use our legs to propel ourselves forward. We also said that it becomes more interesting to watch when the participates are completely focused on what they are doing and putting their all into getting around these chairs. We began to add more complexity to the slalom and so we said that when the person reaches the first chair, we were to make eye contact with the person at the start of the line and then together you would run to the next chair at the same time. Once you got to the last chair, you didn't stop and you had to run through the middle of the people crossing to the chairs at the side.

Maggie, our instructor, said that if Frantic were to put this on the stage, they would up the speed which would up the intensity and then they would put about 3 or 4 of these on stage at once and have them all intertwining. This would then make the entire piece really interesting as all actors on stage know that they are safe but the audience's brains can't understand how it's actually being performed as it seems quite frantic and misplaced.

We moved on to another focus exercise, which was in pairs and we had to place one hand on top of the other and guide each other round. We began to do this with one person's eyes open and the other person's closed.

https://youtu.be/SrSRBNjatXY

Afterwards we had a discussion about which position we found easier and personally I found having my eyes closed easier as all I had to worry about was the connection on my hand not being broken and making sure that I followed wherever this hand took me. When you have your eyes open all you can think about is making sure that everyone around this person isn't going to bump into them and you have to be spatially aware so that if there's a free space in the room then you need to take you partner there.

After we did this trust building exercise between our pairs, we started doing some small lifts that would be the building blocks for us later on. We started off by just leaning into each other and trying to lift the legs that were in the middle up so that we were counter balancing each other giving us the freedom to move our inside legs wherever we want.

Having learnt the basics for using each other to rely on, we began to put these ideas into small lifts. The first was a very easy lift to the side. You have to wrap your arm around your partner's waist and we found that the easiest thing was if the smaller person lifted the taller person because their hips were lower down and the bigger person could push more weight into their shoulders. All you had to do was lean to the side and the taller person would put all their weight into your hip and you would be able to balance. We then found that if we wanted to move your partner the best way was when they were at the top of the balance, they were the lightest and so that was the time that you would pivot and your partner would be able to walk out of the lift.

https://youtu.be/x47yuYq97to

Lift 1: https://youtu.be/GGvl4aiEn7U

We then progressed onto something slightly harder which was changing the grips so that your arm was around the front and this time your partner had to hold onto your shoulders instead of pushing on them because I would be in control of their hips and legs which therefore meant that they had to make sure that they stayed as close to my upper body as possible by pulling themselves in.

Lift 2: https://youtu.be/qT-8MzN7038

After getting some of the basic lifts under our belt, we then proceeded to move onto something a little more challenging which entailed on of the people being lifted over our shoulder. This meant that each person in the pair needed to be completely focused on what was to happen as the person who was being lifted needed to use the other's hips as a lever for them to stay up on so that was a kind of platform that they could use to hold on to. Also as their legs were being raised the more weight needed to be pushed into the lifters hips to counterbalance themselves and also to keep their chest from dragging them forwards.

Lift 3: https://youtu.be/A3F1pe7UJy8

Once we had experimented with all the different lifts, we had a break. Me and one of my partner's decided to make a small sequence with pulls added into the lifts so that all the lifts would be connected. We thought that this could be used in a flash mob for example and could be used as a smaller version of a bigger piece.

Lift sequence: https://youtu.be/0QhQGlNabVs

We then moved onto squeeze duets/trios which consisted of small movements where each person had to touch a part of their partners body and then they did the same. You would make them link together and they became a squeeze sequence. We found that adding in some of the lifts we had previously learnt, added extra intricacy and also playing around with the speed of the movements allowed us to make better eye contact with each other and relationships between us began to form.


https://youtu.be/8_bWWazhSak


After showing all of them to one another, we decided that we would look at two of them and start developing stories for them as this is one of frantic's ideas: you create the movement and then you add the story. We looked one of the pairs and we discussed possible stories that could unfold: broken relationship, a relationship that was good at the start and then took a turn for the worst or a friendship that has been destroyed over time. We originally didn't specifically say which story it was but we decided to add a rule to one of the people which was every move that she makes towards the other person whether that be a touch, reach or grab needs to be an apology. We then saw the story developing as the character that was saying sorry eventually left and we said that she had enough of saying sorry and she'd had enough.

We then looked at our groups piece and we were in a three. We decided to add a rule into ours as well which was giving Hannah a book and she had to read as much as she could whilst still taking part in our sequence. We found that it effected our piece quite a lot as the book became Hannah's focus which meant that when she was meant to be holding eye contact with one of us, she was looking down at the book instead which made us react to the book.

We then started to discuss the stories that could be around this sequence and we said that Hannah was almost lost in this book and the two of us were like people in the story guiding her round the sequence of events in the book. We were quite amazed at the fact that these stories just came from a small movement that we made up in 10 minutes and we were speculating about the amount of depth we could have gone into if we had spent a whole hour making this sequence more and more detailed.

We thought that this would be a good point to start doing some group lifts so that everyone could be involved in one big movement. We started off by doing some basic group lifts like a plank hold lift which required 6 people initially and it meant that everyone had to be connected and concentrating on the lift because we were lifting another person in the air and they were reliant on us as well. When you do the lift two or three times it gets to a point where you can start to take one hand of and this means that you can do the lift with less people. The does add a little more danger to the lift, but you only take a hand off when you know that the lift is safe and the person in the air is safe.

We then split into some more groups and those who had participated in the first lift when we were all learning it had to teach other people the roles which I found very enjoyable. We were able to tell people what they needed to do to keep everyone in the lift safe and if something went wrong we could step in and give them advice on what they needed to change.

The next lift that we learnt was called a Calipo lift which was literally where one person stood in the middle and we came around them. The person being lifted used the two bases shoulders to push themselves up and then once they were off the ground the two bases grabbed their feet and all the people around the outside helped push them up so that they were in the air.

The lift was slightly harder than the last because it involved more people and that was more people to engage and make sure were paying attention. Sometimes the problem was there were too many hands on the person which meant that it became slightly confusing as there wasn't enough space for that many people and so sometimes you had to take yourself out of the lift in order for the lift to be more successful. 

The next lift was again harder than the last because this time the person who was being lifted was on their back and they couldn't see whether the people underneath had them safely or not, so they had to put complete trust in the people who were lifting them and we had to make sure that we were in complete control over the person. We found that the best way to keep everyone safe was the person that was being lifted completely relaxed and didn't hold any of their weight back because if they did it made them become heavier because they were tensing all of their muscles.

After having a short break, we decided to refocus as a group and so we decided to do a focus activity called Quad which entailed us standing in lines of 4 horizontally and one behind the other. There was a piece of music playing and we had to get the beat in our heads and we progressed onto jumping to the beat. As we progressed and got used to the beat, we began adding in movements on nearly every beat so that it become much harder. I think that it really helped refocus the whole group and as we made it harder, we began to come together as a group and starting to help each other more and more. 

https://youtu.be/gdiXOOa9TdI

Having learnt all of these different lifts, we decided to start making some sequences that included all of the lifts and partner work that we had learnt earlier on. We started off with one person, who was going to be lifted, choosing 5 places in the room to walk to and the rest of the group had to use the lifts to get them to the next place. As we made these sequences, we tried to incorporate everyone in the group and as we were adding more lifts and moves in we made sure that everyone was doing something different and each lift had different people underneath so that everyone was involved.

https://youtu.be/h17s7jtOrQM

After showing them to each other, we discussed the stories that we beginning to show even though this was just a sequence of moves that we put together, there was still a story being formed in the audience's mind and this was kind of amazing. In our piece, it seemed that we were all children in a playground and Sarah wanted to play with me and the beginning but Caitlin didn't want us to play together and so took me off of Sarah. She then proceeded to try and find some other people to play with but she couldn't and then Charlotte shoved her out of the way and that was the kind of the last straw for her and that it where the calipo lift came in and she began to rise above Charlotte and stand up to her bully. We then all followed the action that was happening like we were small children and then when we thought something was about to happen, we walked off so that we wouldn't be apart of it.

After discussing these stories we revisited the sequences and added more elements that would add to the story. For example, me and Caitlin walked off arm in arm after the lift with Sarah and at the end when we would normally turn away when something was going to happen, we turn back to look again as though we were telling them that we were on Sarah's side and then when she walked off that was our cue to leave as though we were supporting her in her decision.

I really enjoyed the workshop as you could completely throw yourself into the activities and once we had gotten used to Maggie and the group as we had never worked in groups this big and a mixture of all the age groups, we could all comfortably work together and do anything. I also show the progression of some people from the beginning when they were scared to do things right up until the end where they were volunteering themselves to do activities that they would never have done before. 

Week 32: Review

Woman Alone performance review

On the 10th of July, we performed our Woman Alone piece. We had an audience of our class and our teacher, which was about 15 people. 

Here is a video of our performance:

https://youtu.be/Ze19r75KGo4

Some of the good points about our piece:

1. Establishing the characters - I felt that we did this very well and we tried to make it as clear to the audience who was which trait and I know that throughout the performance I made a conscious effect to differentiate myself from the rest of the group in terms of my trait but then it was also hard to keep the idea that we were one person which was where the group simultaneous movements came from as that is what we used to re-establish the idea of us being the same Woman.
2. Makeup - I know that my group had researched and discussed what makeup we could have and all though I couldn't have face paint due to an allergy, we made sure that we found an alternative which was the amount of makeup that we had on and the black lipstick to connect us all.
3. Gaps in between lines- This was something that we originally found hard as we wanted to keep the atmosphere up and keep the audience engaged but sometimes this made us rush our lines which was the opposite of what we originally wanted it to do. During the performance, I feel that we tried to avoid this but there were a couple of times where the atmosphere slightly dropped but then we managed to pick it back up and carry on.

Some of the points that could be improved about our piece:

1. Reactions between each other - This is a point that was brought up a lot in rehearsal and I tried to make a conscious effort to make react to all of the other traits. For example, when Emily comes and stands next to me to say "And a grope for the groper" I tried to react to her as much as possible without taking any of the attention away from her. Also when the riser was on the floor and became like the mouthpiece, and we started pushing each other out of it, I also felt that that was one of the points were reactions were needed and so when I got pushed out I made it look like I was going to say something else but then Emily took over.
2. Staging and proxemics - Because we weren't able to use the performance space due to exams, this meant that we could only practice in a smaller space which meant that we couldn't use space for visual effect as much as we had planned. We had about an hour in the actual performance space and we tried to use it as much as possible but if we were to do it again I think we would have used the depth of the stage more to add more visual elements as well as the width of the stage.

Tribes Performances and Directing Workshop

Tribes by Nina Raine, directed by Kate Hewitt.

https://www.sheffieldtheatres.co.uk/whats-on/tribes

"Billy was born deaf into a hearing family. In the arguments and jokes around the kitchen table, he has never been treated any differently to the rest of them. But when he meets Sylvia, who teaches him sign language, he starts to wonder if his family have ever really listened to him at all.

Deeply moving and shockingly funny, Tribes is about the need we all feel to belong, to speak and to be understood."

1st Viewing

I first went to see the play on the 30th June and I thought it was amazing. The staging, lights, tech, characters, their development and the development of the story was all portrayed so well done brilliantly by Kate Hewitt, especially since half way through I realised that it was closed room.

Staging

My first impressions of the staging was that it was very simple but effective. There were 6 chairs around a table, a single chair by itself and a small bookshelf. On the raised back was a piano with a stool and another single chair. 

The whole set was wood up which immediately gave it a homely feel and you felt like you were immersed in this family's household and their lives. When you originally walk in, the actor who is playing Billy is sat at the head of the table eating which immediately draws you to him and as an actor myself, I would have found it so hard to not react to any of the audience or keep as concentrated as he did because he never looked anyone in the eye and someone's phone rang and he didn't react to that either.

I thought that the director did an excellent job of making sure that wherever you sat you had at least one person facing you so you could see their reactions and the first time we went to see it we could see Dan's facial expressions more but how the second time we could see Ruth's so it was very well staged in terms of visually to the audience.

There was only one location change and that was the back section when it became the apartment for Billy and Sylvia and this was clearly shown by the lowering of an old light bulb and dimming of the lights.

Lights and Tech

As you enter the Studio Theatre, it is dim lighting with a spotlight on Billy who is sat at the dinner table eating and you what him for about 5 minutes whilst the audience is filing in just eating this pasta and not reacting to anyone. In the background, you can hear an orchestra stringing up their instruments and sometimes plucking out some chords.

The play opens with the orchestra building into a crescendo that gets really loud whilst the actors come on the stage one by one and begin preparing the set for the first scene and then your all of a sudden dropped in the middle of an argument that's going on around the family dinner table. It's very sudden and it takes a while for you to register that you don't really know what the arguments about and you have to pay really close attention to what the actors are saying so that you can piece together what the subject is. I think this reflects on what it's like to be deaf, trying to pick up words so you can understand what's going on.

In various scenes, the lights fade to a spotlight on Dan/Billy or whoever is talking which then fades to darkness which becomes the trigger for the actors to start moving. All of the set changes were done by the actors and could be seen by the audience quite visually and I feel like this was done on purpose so that the audience had a feel of what this family's life was like.

At the end of Act 1 - we see Sylvia (who is played by a deaf actress who can't hear her own voice or the music that she is playing so to her she's just pressing keys but the music that she is playing sounds amazing) playing the piano in a blue light and blue ripples are sent out from her when the music gets louder and more intense so do the blue ripples. The main lights that we on the scene before begin to pulse and fade on the family as Billy turns away from the piano. He can't hear the music as he says earlier on the music is just a crackling which hints at why the piano music fades into white noise because this is what he hears whilst the rest of the family's attention is completely on Sylvia and her music. The white noise fades into the darkness for a transition but there's also a projection of a verse of the song along the top of the set and also on the wood whilst the actors are moving around. 

During an argument later on, the white noise becomes words that are all jumbled up and during certain conversations, when the two deaf characters don't understand, a sentence will flash up on the screens at the back but the words won't be in order and only certain words flash up and certain times and you have to piece together the sentence and that's what it's like being deaf. It really open up your eyes because it really takes a lot of concentration because your trying to think what it is. 

A 2nd time, when Billy and Sylvia are having a conversation that involves both speaking and sign there are certain sentences that are projected on the back walls.

At the end of the play, there is a complete role reversal as Billy needs captions at the start because he signs due to being deaf but then at the end Dan needs to sign because his stammer worsens and so he can't pronounce any words and so asks Billy to teach him sign so that he can communicate with him and also people can understand him.

Characters

Beth - mother, 60, peace-keeper. Played by Lindy Whiteford

- Traditional Housewife

- Gets more feisty throughout the play and challenges Christopher's (her husband's) views but usually ends up doing what he says as he overpowers her.

- Protective of her family and she tries to do what is best for her kids. Sometimes it's telling them the truth straight up or sometimes it's encouraging them and making them feel like she understands them.

- Genuinly tries and cares for Billy as she taught him to speak when he was little which has lead him to being able to lip read really well.

-Strength of character is really shown when Billy decides not to speak to the family unless they learn sign and the family starts to become rowdy, she tells them to quieten down so that Billy becomes the focus of the scene again.
- You get a sense that she has tried her hardest all through Billy's life, and now, to integrate him in "normal" life and when he says that he has found the deaf community, she supports him and encourages him to persevere with it.

Christopher - Father, 60, man-of-the-house, bolshie. Played by Simon Rouse

- Controversial views

- Proud and egotistical

- Stubborn with fairly fixed mindset which makes him opinionated.

- Projects his ideals onto his kids, especially Dan, which sometimes makes them distance themselves from him as the pressure gets overwhelming.

Ruth - sister, middle child, 20's, "singer" Played by Louisa Connolly-Burnham

- Outspoken and opinionated (probably influenced by her father)

- Wannabe singer who has an epiphany towards the end that she can't actually sing.

- Becomes very protective of Dan when his stutter returns and his mental state deteriorates

- More socially aware and has more relationships within the family.

- In Act 1 she is very sarcastic and she becomes the dramatic comic relief as there is a scene in which Dan and Sylvia kiss by mistake and straight after the blackout the lights come up on her lip-singing to opera into a hairbrush.

Billy - deaf, youngest child, early 20's. Played by Ciaran Alexander Stewart

-Isolated, maybe even lonely because he isolates himself from the rest of his family.

- Meets Sylvia and discovers his deaf identity which makes his anger on his family reflect back on himself.

- He's not fully aware of how much his family love and care for him.

- He loves Dan and Ruth, there is a clear sibling bond that forms throughout the play around these three characters.

- He wants to have meaning in his life which leads to him lying to the police about the words that he can lip read.
- He feels like he needs to make the family proud and so learns sign language to show them that he's doing something with his life.

Dan - oldest child, late 20's, maybe schizophrenic.

- Pressure from Dad since he was young.
- Loves Billy very much and is very protective of him.
- Fights with Ruth but their strong bond is clearly shown through the teasing.
- Billy is his safe place and this is reflected in the fact that the voices in his head are of everyone else but not Billy's voice
- When Billy leaves these voices worsen and his stammer reappears.
- There is a role reversal towards the end as his stammer is very bad and he has to resort to signing in order for him to be understood.
- He learns sign for both Billy and himself so that they can communicate together.
- "The first I miss you really means I love you." Daniel tries to tell Billy that they miss him but due to his stammer he cannot. He then asks Billy to teach him the sign for love by spelling out s-i-g-n. This completely juxtaposes with a line that he said earlier as he said "We love you most, idiot" and this didn't get through to Billy but trying to say we miss you really hits home for Billy.
- He kisses Sylvia after they have a cigarette together in the kitchen because he thought that it would break them up due to him not wanting her to take him away because Billy is Dan's safety blanket.

Directors Workshop with the Assistant Director, Jennifer Bates.

On the 8th July, me and a couple of friends went to a directing workshop at the Crucible lead by the assistant director, Jennifer Bates, as we had really enjoyed the show previously and we thought that it would be interesting for us to have a director's point of view on it. Also next year, we have a directing unit and so we thought that it would be helpful to pick up on some hints and tips and maybe some techniques we could use when we start directing ourselves.

Jen said that she would be taking us through the stages that they did in their 5 week rehearsal but instead of spending the 3 days to a week that they did we would be spending 15 minutes to 30 minutes on each section.

We started off with Facts and Questions. This is where you sit in a circle and you assign 1 person (or 2 depending on the size of your cast) to write down everything that is either:

• An immediate fact
• An immediate question
• A background fact
• Or a background question

You then read through the play, we only focused on the first scene as we didn't have that much time, and you shout out at any point when you think that you see one. When we did it, I color coded each category so that I could see where each one was more clearly. This what my script ended up looking like:

As you go alone, one of the directors become the "Timeline" person. This is trying to figure out what time it is set in and any events that have happened trying to fit them in the timeline as well. For example, one of the many conversations that is going on over the table is about nuts and how Beth has "got them off the lawn." We said that this was an indication that it was Autumn when this was set and also they have to be quite a well-off family if they can afford to have a nut tree in their back garden. Some of the immediate facts were:

• There's characters called Daniel, Beth, Christopher, Ruth and Billy.
• They have a garden
• Beth and Christopher are 60 years old.
• Christopher doesn't like smoked roe.

Some of our immediate questions were:

• Have you finished your pasta?
• What the hell did you put on it?
• Are you making fun of your mother?

Some background facts were:

• Ruth thinks highly of the character they call "cunt"
• Ruth views him as a potential love interest
• Christopher is a socialist and well educated

Some background questions were:

• Why is Billy eating in silence?
• Do they all sit down together at every meal, or do they just come together once a year like Christmas?
• Who plays the piano?
• What's the makeup of the family? Step-kids? Real kids?
• Are they Jewish?
• Do they live in the country?
• Does Daniel think Ruth is the favorite?

These are just a few of the many background questions that we got and we only spent 15 minutes on the first scene. As you carry on reading, some questions will be answered and you find that by the end of the play, at the last scene, majority of the questions that you had at the start should be answers but you may still have a few if the play ends on a cliffhanger, which it does; you never really find out what happens to Billy and Daniel.

These background questions are ones which the actors should flesh out when they begin acting as you should have gone through the whole play and by the time you put the scene on it's feet you already have a fuller idea of the character and so should the rest of the cast as you have all worked together. This process can be very slow at the start but once you understand and get into it you can really start to get some interesting backstories building up.

The directors can have done this already so that they have an idea of how they want the characters to be portrayed and so the directors can push the actors forward to discovering the facts for themselves and they also might flag up some new ones that the director may not have  wanted to use.

Jen said that the characters that we never meet, so ones that are just mentioned, become pictures on a wall which are found just on google images that fit what the cast think that character would look like. This is so that whenever that character is mentioned the whole cast knows what they look like and they are all picturing the same person, meaning they are all on the same page.

The next thing that they did is outline the events.

An event classifies as something that is said or done that change's everyone's intentions in the room. If it doesn't change every character's intentions then it doesn't count as an event. As a general rule for this all entrances and exits count as event because if someone exits the room it should change the atmosphere for everyone and same for entrances. When looking for events you need to ask yourself: Does it effect everyone, if not it doesn't count. An event could be a word, action or even the smallest of looks but it has to be noticed by everyone for it to have an effect.

Jen said that she likes to put a dash at the start and end of every events and then label it. The labels need to be clean cut with no guessing or assuming. Don't take things from the text that aren't actually in there. 

Some times it was hard for them to distinguish what was an event because obviously Billy is dead and so he can't hear any words that could symbolize an event so they had to make sure that if there was an event they have to have a big enough reaction or movements that would spark Billy's attention so that it would effect everyone and therefore could be classed as an event.

After you have identified all of the events you then write them all up and that is what your play will be. Different directors could have different events that are significant and so this is why you get so many different versions of the same play because each director has there own opinion. Who is talking and who the line is directed to are all important in how the event changes the character's intentions.

Between each event are units and in each unit each character has an intention and objective. Characters have wants, aims, objectives and sub-objectives and whilst we were at the workshop, I immediately linked this to Stanislavski as that what he based his drama on. In one unit, an actor should have clear intentions and within that, tactics that will make it possible. An event can come along and change that intention which will lead to the character possibly acting differently and their tactics to have changed.

We then put the scene on it's feet and played around with the staging, different intentions, where/how the events come around and how they effect the family. When we staged it, I was originally sat at the head of the table facing the audience as Billy with the intention of just eating the pasta but then we moved Billy next to Ruth with the same intention but Hannah, who was playing Ruth, made more of an effect with Billy. In the end, we had to move Billy to the opposite head of the table so that Christopher could sit down there instead and so Billy's intention changed to keeping out of the conversation. As we were going through the scene, I was going over the questions that we had discussed previously. Jen also said that in their rehearsal they planned the rest of the house so that when the actors went offstage they knew exactly where they were going. We found that as we were sitting at different places it effected who we reacted to, who's facial expressions we could see more etc.

We found that our scene 1 highly contrasted with the actual performance as when characters were leaving we subconsciously had the characters splintered off, crossing and then leaving, which enabled us to see the connections between all of the characters as they were talking to whoever went past and/or reacting to them.

Having this director's perspective really helped us and I was excited to watch the performance again but know what the director's were thinking during the making and I weirdly found that it made me look at things other than the actors when watching the second performance.

2nd Viewing

When watching it a second time I found myself paying much more attention to things like the set, lights, music and I found that when they play the white noise in the first act, it's purely white noise because it reflects what he can hear whilst the music is playing. But I noticed that in the second half, you can start to pick out words in the white noise as this is what he can hear when there's the argument going on about Billy leaving. When the white noise does start the lights dim with a spotlight on Billy and all the rest of the cast go into slow motion mouthing shouting and moving around as though the argument is still going on and then they snap back into the loud argument and it really makes the two experiences juxtapose.

In the end scene with Billy and Dan, I found myself paying more attention to Dan's hands and mouth as he tries to sign things or speak them as I wanted him to say things like "we don't mind" and "no one minds." But when those sentences come up on the back screen you know that he won't be able to say them and your heart drops a little. He proceeds to try and say things like "We miss you" and "please hold my hand" yet he still cannot which pushes him to spell out the word "sign" in sign language which catches Billy's attention he then asks him what the sign for love is and the two boys sign to each other and run to each other as the lights dim for the ending.

We also found that there was another role reversal in act 1 as Dan slams his hand on the table to get Billy's attention and this is when Dan can speak perfectly fine and Billy is choosing to tell them that his hearing aid is turn off but then it switches to Billy slamming his hand on the table to attract Dan's attention so that he can tell him he's leaving.

We could also see the sibling relationship a lot more during this performance and it became very playful and sweet and you could tell that deep down they all did care for one another. There was moments of little shared looks between them and gestures and reactions such as when Ruth swears at the two boys, Billy smiles towards Dan and also Dan fist pumps when Billy tells him that he is high up in the deaf hierarchy because he is deaf from birth.

We also found that Oliver Johnstone who plays Dan was really good at impressions. Throughout the play, we saw a Scottish accent when impersonating his mum, opera and a rendition of the Jungle Book when teasing Ruth and "Siegfried" said in a very unusual way.

When Sylvia is playing the piano, we noticed that it draws the family closer, the girls sit nearer to her and as Christopher moves closer, Billy moves away which is the cue for the music to build and the blue light to deepen which moves into a high pitched noise that builds until it snaps into white noise which is what Billy hears.

At the start, we found ourselves paying a lot of attention to how Billy is sat eating his pasta. The way that he was eating his spaghetti with a fork and a spoon really showed that the family was middle class and we already knew this from the directing workshop but it was nice to see how they had incorporated little signs to show what class they lived in.

Jen said that all the way through the play "they are switching tribes, changing their alliances" which really stood out as now that we had that information you could see them almost swapping constantly and with each comment that was made their were new alliances, new tribes, being formed and reformed.

Week 31: Classwork

Monday

Unfortunately one of the members of our group became seriously ill over the weekend and  had to remain in hospital for a long span of time and therefore we could not perform on the set date that we had originally planned. Even though she was still in hospital in our Monday lesson, we still went over the simultaneous group actions that we have and discussed how big they need to be to help reiterate the Berkoff style.

Our group started a discussion about whether or not there actually is a woman in the window or not. We decided that in the beginning there possibly could be a woman there that Susan (The Woman Alone) is talking to as it gives her the motivation to turn off the music and actually start having a conversation with her and the reason that she connects so strongly with her is the fact that she wants her life to be like hers and sees herself in her. This could also be a reason why the woman could not be real as she could be imagining herself in the way that she wanted her life to be and her ideal appearance. Also towards the end, when she is about to kill herself, she looks through the window at this mystery woman and somehow she switches to the idea of killing someone else. We were saying that this could be her subconscious persuading her to do her deepest darkest thought or it could be the psychotic element taking over. Adding to this, if there was an actual person there in the window, surely the first thing that they would do, if they saw that someone was about to kill themselves, would be to call the police or get some help for her not tell her to turn her gun onto someone else.

We also found out the style of poster that we were going to have and you could say that it reflects the darkest side of her life as the colour scheme is very dark:

The title was the first thing that caught my eye and I think that the use of black and white lettering reflects her life as she can switch from one subject to another very quickly and sometimes the subjects are talked about in depth (the black letters) and others are only touched upon (the white letters). The fact that we can't actually see her full face could represent the fact that we never actually get to know her as a person and/or on a personal level because she doesn't let us stay on one idea for a sustained period of time and so the audience can build only small connections to her and her life.

Looking at the poster, I think it initially shows the strain that is put on her with all of the things that she talks and thinks about and her frantic movement reflect the frustration and desperation she has for her life to be like someone else's. This poster doesn't show the comical way that it is portrayed in so I think that it will be a shock to the audience as they will end up laughing at points or hopefully all the way through. I hope that it causes the audience to reflect on their own lives as they watch this one woman go through all of the emotions and traumas that one person goes through in their lifetime and they are laughing at her struggling through it.

Wednesday

The member of our group that was ill, was released from hospital yesterday and so she came in so that we could rehearse for our performance date that was pushed backwards to our Monday lesson. This meant that we wouldn't have a big audience like the rest of the group, our audience would just be the members of our class and Mr Chipp and Miss Starbuck.

We began the rehearsal by doing a staggered full run-through of our section:

https://youtu.be/fdB_xHZxwKk

We discussed actually putting the gun prop in the sequence so that we would be able to rehearse with it and get used to using it in the run throughs. We also discussed where we thought the gun should be placed throughout the piece and we found that our options were:

• In Melody's pocket, as she could pull it out when she say "I'm going to kill myself" but that wouldn't be sticking to the stage directions as they say that the gun is on the wall.
• On a chair in the audience, have it placed there as the audience are walking in and let them react to it. No one would be allowed to move the gun and it would be surrounded with people in the audience.
• Or actually having someone in the audience hold it. This would mean that the gun would have to be forcibly taken off of someone which could have a bigger impact but not on the whole audience just that singular person who is holding the gun. We said that if Melody does take it off someone, then she could direct her line straight to that person and look at them with glossy eyes and really stare straight through them so they are really convinced that she is going to kill herself.

In the end, we found that leaving it on a chair by itself would be our best option as the audience would see that it was there and be able to react to it throughout the whole piece.

When looking over the video, we commented on the fact that our movement need to be a lot more staccato and we need to accentuate the start and end of every single movement to continue to Berkoff style.

One thing that we found was very hard to incorporate was the movement of the riser and having the motivation to actually move the riser to where we needed it to be. So we changed the staging so that the riser was more central and made sure that Melody had a reason for going to get the riser towards the end. When I interrupt her line when she's on the phone we said that that could be the start of her visual breakdown, as we have slightly hinted about her mental breakdown through the tone of her lines, and she would begin to pace and talk under her breath whilst working herself up and then she would go and get the riser and slam in on the floor. This would symbolize her personality taking of control of the body and all of the rest of us taking a step backward as we know that we have no chance of having any control.

We began to experiment with the actual picking up of the gun and who is going to hold on to the gun itself. To begin with, we all used to bend down and pick the gun up but we decided that only Melody would pick it up as she is the psychotic personality and the others would just follow her lead as she is in control. The other personalities would make the loading of the gun noise and lean back to show the audience our reactions to us picking the gun up. The looking back at the audience would let us reconnect with them and pull them into the scene with us and because of the use of proxemics, we are directly at the front of the stage and so our facial expressions will be seen more clearly meaning they will have more impact.

The makeup and costume that we have decided is as follows:

• Emily (Sexy trait) - black dress, with tights and black socks. Extreme makeup; bright eyeshadow, big eyelashes, lots of blusher and black lipstick
• Melody (Psychotic trait) - black trousers, black top, black socks. Almost Gothic makeup, heavy eyeshadow, thick eyeliner and black lipstick
• Sarah (Bubbly trait) - white top, black bottoms and white socks. Makeup would be mainly blusher, really red cheeks and black lipstick
• Me (Housewife trait) - White top, black trousers, black apron and white socks. Barely any makeup as the traditional housewife wouldn't be allowed to wear makeup, so just black lipstick. 

We are all wearing black lipstick to symbolize that we all share the same mouth piece and we are fighting over who was in control.

Section 2:

No changes:

https://youtu.be/AunuF8m0Ng8

A list of the changes that we made:

1. More emphasis on pulling the spoon out of Sarah.
2. Smoother transitions, adding to the continuity of the style.
3. Snap heads towards the person that is speaking so that we direct the audience's attention on who's speaking.
4. "What are you talking about" - synchro move snaps us out of looking at Sarah, giving us motivation to move.
5. More reactions to each other, reminding the audience that we are one person.

Here is the run through with the changes:

https://youtu.be/LLV7dgqmAb8

2nd Changes:

1. Avoid blocking, to fix me blocking Sarah after the spoon has been pulled out I am going to walk round the back of Sarah instead and direct my attention on her so the audience are still focused on her.
2. Melody shouldn't move out as much so that we can add to the staccato movement so if we are closer we can make the movements bigger.
3. The overall pace of the piece feels very slow so we need to pick up the atmosphere and the pace.

Here's our final version of Section 2:

https://youtu.be/w9JnjPxOOT8

Section 3:

No changes:

https://youtu.be/QAmCIi0Hjww

Changes:

1. Spacing - Emily don't lunge as far away so that we can maintain connection.
2. Melody trumpet sound to make it clearer to the audience what's going on and who we are directing the line to
3. "Slaughter" needs to be sharper
4. Stay in "sod off" position so that the audience is drawn to Melody as she is moving and speaking until the unison movement on "hot water"
5. Melody stepping out of the line needs to be more staccato so that the audience can really decipher what she's doing.
6. Melody don't turn on "now's not the time to start playing jazz" so that it is directed at her.

Final outcome of Section 3:

https://youtu.be/UUy6FRM13RU

Section 4:

No changes:

https://youtu.be/T2_8gjUWlFM

1st Changes:

1.  Synchronized snort after "pigging phone pig"
2. Melody be verbally angry at me when I take the phone, meaning both more interaction between traits and the signal of her physical breakdown.
3. Melody was blocking Emily in the middle of the run and so if she just takes a step to her right then she won't be anymore.
4. "Pregnant" motions need to be bigger and in time.
5. "Locked up" motions - hands crossed in front of chest on "My husband keeps me locked up"
6. When we put the phone down on "click" all heads need to go down as well, only people who have lines should have their head up.

Run through with 1st changes:

https://youtu.be/h9heGCIV4II

2nd Changes:

1. After "what a pig" synchronized snort again.
2. "Locked up" motion after "Look at how old I am and my husband keeps me locked up" only above the head.

Week 30: Classwork

Wednesday

We didn't have a lesson on Monday due to us having an inset day and so we decided to have an extra rehearsal in order for us to make up the time that we have lost. 

We decided to put our rehearsal plan into action and so we began with section 1 as we wanted to chronologically move through the piece and did one run of section 1 before we went through and made some improvements.

Here is the original run through:

https://youtu.be/BnzJCU03Zmo

After doing this run-through we realized that our piece starts off very slow and our piece starts towards the end, so the audience will have seen the journey that she goes through and at this point she is very stressed and worked up about the life that she has to conduct and so we thought that we could carry on that frantic way by using the riser more.

We thought that we could all stand in the riser facing outwards but in different directions and rotate towards the front whilst doing everyday household chores and having the different personalities react to the chore that they're doing. 

As the lines began, we started experimenting with the idea of using the riser like a hula hoop to symbolize the fighting of which personality has the mouth piece and it also looks quite aesthetically pleasing to watch.

This is an example of our experimenting:

https://youtu.be/XWaWAQ10sEs

We began thinking of ways to incorporate the riser more and we decided that we could change the use of the riser for each personality so it could be a person, crib etc. but the disadvantage with doing that would be that it could confuse the audience even more and so if we were to add that into our piece we would have to make it very obvious to the audience what was going on and make them aware that the riser's use is changing for each person.

One section that we found did need work was the section with the phone call as we need to get the movements more slick and also the space between each of the rings needs to be shorter to emphasize the phone ringing. We need to keep the pace up but slow down the speed that we are saying the lines afterwards as we are getting caught up in the momentum of the actions but we need to refocus on the speed and intonation of our lines.