Developing scenes
We started off the lesson by reviewing all of what we had done so far. We specifically went over the 4 topics that we discussed last week where the miss-communication of a boys emotion could lead to something vital or lead to both themselves and their peers suffering. We managed to get them down to 3 main events, difficult home life, exam stress and bereavement, that we could show in small scenes as the build up of pressures on our focal male character, John Doe.
We wanted our first scene to establish the scenario and atmosphere and so we thought that we could use the difficult home lift as our first short scene. We used dramatic asides from both the dad's point of view and John to help add to the story-line and keep the audiences attention on what was going on. We thought that we should use the moment of orientation to set up the atmosphere and we said that we wanted a lot of things going on so that we could add in dual conversations. So we had the younger brother looking for his school bag, John some revision on the kitchen table and the father figure waiting for his breakfast. This allowed us to have the freedom of multiple conversation going on at the same time. We also had the event of water being split onto John's revision notes through the mum being pushed by the younger brother which sparked even more conversations and the atmosphere grew with the intensity of the lines. The dramatic aside that we used for John's character was "Parents are arguing again, doesn't happen all the time, but it's started happening more often. I have to get myself ready and I need to make sure my little brother's alright. I'm not stupid. I know money's tight, they're trying not to let on but it's kinda obvious and that just makes it worse." We think that this is a good way of settings the scene for the audience as they now understand that this is a reoccurring thing that has started to become a problem and it also shows John's perspective on it which adds to the insight on the pressures that have already started building up. We also changed one of the lines to help drip feed more pressures into John and so we added in to the father's aside that the mother is pregnant.
We the thought we could use the exam pressure scene next at it seemed to be in chronological order and at the end of the last scene the two boys were going to school so this seemed like the next best scene to add in.We set the scene of a optional revision session and some of the class were staying and others were wanting to leave and we thought that this would be a good opportunity to add in some more pressures such as the teacher, a girlfriend and a mate. The scene builds up with all of these different people adding to John's pressures as they all have different expectations on him. The teacher wants him to reach his potential, his mate wants him to come out to football and his girlfriend wants him to do whatever he wants. The dramatic aside we used was "Fuck's sake! S'not like I don't want to stay but I need to pick up my little brother because no one else can and my parents don't want him going home by himself. Don't get me wrong, I do want to stay and she's kinda fit, but I just can't today." After we had done the bereavement scene, we decided to change the lines from "no one else can," to "my parents have a hospital appointment," so that we were drip feeding information about other pressures that were going on and this could also reflect the pressure that John is putting on himself by not telling anyone about his other ongoing issue.
Our final installment of the short scenes was the bereavement and we have previously drip feed that the mother is pregnant and so we made it so that the parents have lost the baby and so they ask John to take some of the pressure off them by looking after his brother more but, in turn, this puts more pressure onto John, adding to the pressures that we have already build up in the previous scenes. We thought that the father should have another dynamic aside so that we could see the thought process of a grown male in this situation to show that it effects everyone. We also chose miscarriage instead of stillborn because the statistic of having a miscarriage is 1 in 4 so we thought that it would effect more people and therefore we could relate to more people.
We knew that we wanted all of the asides to have a juxtaposing atmosphere so if the scene was high intensity the aside might have a more casual tone and vice versa so that the change of tone invites the audience to listen and understand what's going on.
We then had a discussion with Mr Bashir, a teacher who specializes in dealing with students who have or show signs of mental health. He said that the main signs of deteriorating mental health is that they will start to isolate themselves as they don't know who to talk to or don't know how to access support. This sometimes progresses into risk taking and things such as smoking weed and drinking alcohol or even progressing onto self-harm in some extreme circumstances. There is normally an underlying mental health issue when people start moving towards suicide, which is the direction in which we want our piece to go so that we begin to talk about suicide prevention. Everyone is from a different background and are brought up in different ways so some boys might have been taught that it's okay to openly talk about their feelings, and others are taught "man-up" and that "big boys don't cry." We need to talk this into consideration and think about the contrasting ways that some people might react to suicide and the triggers that are there.
We thought that the main reaction was going to be defensive of their actions that we are claiming they have and so we thought that we could add in a scene that shows us acknowledging this action. We could have a teacher who has noticed some of the signs of deteriorating mental health and has called John into a meeting about it. We would have John reacting in a way that is quite defensive and this enables us to show that we understand how they react and why.
We carried on adding a few more scenes to the piece and one of which was a scene between John and his girlfriend, Holly, were she has caught him drunk with his friends. We thought that this was showing one of the routes that John could take to "forget" about all the problems that are going on in his life. I think that this is a good example of what someone might do in this modern age as alcohol is available to many more people that it should be and it is one of the easiest forms of distractions for people in our target audience age range.
We then followed this scene with another that presented the coming home of John to find his dad sitting in the hallway waiting to confront him about where he has been. I thought that this scene could be quite hard because it involves two male characters. Both will automatically channel there emotions through anger as they will both sense that this is a confrontation, and also the father will want to lecture the son on his behavior and show his power and dominance as the older male figure and "that is what a father should do." We made sure that the scene ended with the father gaining control over John and sending him to bed but also showing signs that he is just relieved that his home and safe. We thought that the father would been in a similar position as John and being dealing with his own stress in a similar way as he needs to step-up and keep his family together.
We had a small discussion about Forum theatre and we said that a forum, in the roman times, was a place where you had a discussion and in a modern sense this could be an online forum for example. So if a forum means discussion then forum theatre could also be called "discussion theatre." Which it is in a sense as the cast take a scenario and they take on board discursive points from the audience. A facilitator would begin asking the audience questions and establish the subject that they would be addressing. The cast would aim for a resolution through these discussion points and could also add in points that might fuel the discussion onward, possibly into the direction of the resolution. We found that this pushed us onto looking at Augusto Boal, who was the founder of Theatre of the Oppressed, "whose objective was to study, discuss and express issues concerning citizenship, culture and various forms of oppression using theatrical language... His objective was to work out issues citizens might be facing in their communities through theatre, and also to discuss the laws of the city of Rio with people on the streets... Boal also worked with prisoners in Rio and Sao Paulo. Boal argued that people in prison are not free in space, but that they are in time. and that the Theatre of the Oppressed strives to create different types of freedom so that people are able to imagine and think about the past, the present, and the future instead of having to wait for it All this was in order for prisoners to have a 'healthier and more creative lifestyle.'"(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Boal#Center_for_the_Theatre_of_the_Oppressed-CTO-Brazil ) Boal pioneered majority of the techniques that are used throughout Theatre In Education pieces and I have personally seen multiple T.I.E pieces, like "The Raft of the Medusa", and researching Boal has shown me the roots of where the techniques that I have seen, and are currently working with, come from. Applying this discursive technique to our piece, I think the Dad scene would be a key spot, where we could show our version and then ask the audience if they think either of the characters would react in a different way, or their body language might be slightly different and we could also ask them to put in some lines that they think either of them might say. There is a risk that our audience might not participate at all or they might think of it in more of a joky manner and take the scene out of hand. I think that we really need to think about our course of actions if that happens. Will one of us have to give them a line? How will we respond to any inappropriate comments? If the audience to participate, there are core responses that we can anticipate being said as lines, things like "I'm disappointed in you", "I'm angry at you" etc.
I think that this could be a good path into some workshop activities and audience participation and so we could come to a comedic end, re-establishing the audience's interest, in our "scientific" presentation. We could then snap out of our male characters and acknowledge the fact that we are all girls and we don't know how boys react we are just guessing and assuming. This would then lead us into Boal's "discursive points" with the audience.
We wanted our first scene to establish the scenario and atmosphere and so we thought that we could use the difficult home lift as our first short scene. We used dramatic asides from both the dad's point of view and John to help add to the story-line and keep the audiences attention on what was going on. We thought that we should use the moment of orientation to set up the atmosphere and we said that we wanted a lot of things going on so that we could add in dual conversations. So we had the younger brother looking for his school bag, John some revision on the kitchen table and the father figure waiting for his breakfast. This allowed us to have the freedom of multiple conversation going on at the same time. We also had the event of water being split onto John's revision notes through the mum being pushed by the younger brother which sparked even more conversations and the atmosphere grew with the intensity of the lines. The dramatic aside that we used for John's character was "Parents are arguing again, doesn't happen all the time, but it's started happening more often. I have to get myself ready and I need to make sure my little brother's alright. I'm not stupid. I know money's tight, they're trying not to let on but it's kinda obvious and that just makes it worse." We think that this is a good way of settings the scene for the audience as they now understand that this is a reoccurring thing that has started to become a problem and it also shows John's perspective on it which adds to the insight on the pressures that have already started building up. We also changed one of the lines to help drip feed more pressures into John and so we added in to the father's aside that the mother is pregnant.
We the thought we could use the exam pressure scene next at it seemed to be in chronological order and at the end of the last scene the two boys were going to school so this seemed like the next best scene to add in.We set the scene of a optional revision session and some of the class were staying and others were wanting to leave and we thought that this would be a good opportunity to add in some more pressures such as the teacher, a girlfriend and a mate. The scene builds up with all of these different people adding to John's pressures as they all have different expectations on him. The teacher wants him to reach his potential, his mate wants him to come out to football and his girlfriend wants him to do whatever he wants. The dramatic aside we used was "Fuck's sake! S'not like I don't want to stay but I need to pick up my little brother because no one else can and my parents don't want him going home by himself. Don't get me wrong, I do want to stay and she's kinda fit, but I just can't today." After we had done the bereavement scene, we decided to change the lines from "no one else can," to "my parents have a hospital appointment," so that we were drip feeding information about other pressures that were going on and this could also reflect the pressure that John is putting on himself by not telling anyone about his other ongoing issue.
Our final installment of the short scenes was the bereavement and we have previously drip feed that the mother is pregnant and so we made it so that the parents have lost the baby and so they ask John to take some of the pressure off them by looking after his brother more but, in turn, this puts more pressure onto John, adding to the pressures that we have already build up in the previous scenes. We thought that the father should have another dynamic aside so that we could see the thought process of a grown male in this situation to show that it effects everyone. We also chose miscarriage instead of stillborn because the statistic of having a miscarriage is 1 in 4 so we thought that it would effect more people and therefore we could relate to more people.
We knew that we wanted all of the asides to have a juxtaposing atmosphere so if the scene was high intensity the aside might have a more casual tone and vice versa so that the change of tone invites the audience to listen and understand what's going on.
We then had a discussion with Mr Bashir, a teacher who specializes in dealing with students who have or show signs of mental health. He said that the main signs of deteriorating mental health is that they will start to isolate themselves as they don't know who to talk to or don't know how to access support. This sometimes progresses into risk taking and things such as smoking weed and drinking alcohol or even progressing onto self-harm in some extreme circumstances. There is normally an underlying mental health issue when people start moving towards suicide, which is the direction in which we want our piece to go so that we begin to talk about suicide prevention. Everyone is from a different background and are brought up in different ways so some boys might have been taught that it's okay to openly talk about their feelings, and others are taught "man-up" and that "big boys don't cry." We need to talk this into consideration and think about the contrasting ways that some people might react to suicide and the triggers that are there.
We thought that the main reaction was going to be defensive of their actions that we are claiming they have and so we thought that we could add in a scene that shows us acknowledging this action. We could have a teacher who has noticed some of the signs of deteriorating mental health and has called John into a meeting about it. We would have John reacting in a way that is quite defensive and this enables us to show that we understand how they react and why.
We carried on adding a few more scenes to the piece and one of which was a scene between John and his girlfriend, Holly, were she has caught him drunk with his friends. We thought that this was showing one of the routes that John could take to "forget" about all the problems that are going on in his life. I think that this is a good example of what someone might do in this modern age as alcohol is available to many more people that it should be and it is one of the easiest forms of distractions for people in our target audience age range.
We then followed this scene with another that presented the coming home of John to find his dad sitting in the hallway waiting to confront him about where he has been. I thought that this scene could be quite hard because it involves two male characters. Both will automatically channel there emotions through anger as they will both sense that this is a confrontation, and also the father will want to lecture the son on his behavior and show his power and dominance as the older male figure and "that is what a father should do." We made sure that the scene ended with the father gaining control over John and sending him to bed but also showing signs that he is just relieved that his home and safe. We thought that the father would been in a similar position as John and being dealing with his own stress in a similar way as he needs to step-up and keep his family together.
We had a small discussion about Forum theatre and we said that a forum, in the roman times, was a place where you had a discussion and in a modern sense this could be an online forum for example. So if a forum means discussion then forum theatre could also be called "discussion theatre." Which it is in a sense as the cast take a scenario and they take on board discursive points from the audience. A facilitator would begin asking the audience questions and establish the subject that they would be addressing. The cast would aim for a resolution through these discussion points and could also add in points that might fuel the discussion onward, possibly into the direction of the resolution. We found that this pushed us onto looking at Augusto Boal, who was the founder of Theatre of the Oppressed, "whose objective was to study, discuss and express issues concerning citizenship, culture and various forms of oppression using theatrical language... His objective was to work out issues citizens might be facing in their communities through theatre, and also to discuss the laws of the city of Rio with people on the streets... Boal also worked with prisoners in Rio and Sao Paulo. Boal argued that people in prison are not free in space, but that they are in time. and that the Theatre of the Oppressed strives to create different types of freedom so that people are able to imagine and think about the past, the present, and the future instead of having to wait for it All this was in order for prisoners to have a 'healthier and more creative lifestyle.'"(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Boal#Center_for_the_Theatre_of_the_Oppressed-CTO-Brazil ) Boal pioneered majority of the techniques that are used throughout Theatre In Education pieces and I have personally seen multiple T.I.E pieces, like "The Raft of the Medusa", and researching Boal has shown me the roots of where the techniques that I have seen, and are currently working with, come from. Applying this discursive technique to our piece, I think the Dad scene would be a key spot, where we could show our version and then ask the audience if they think either of the characters would react in a different way, or their body language might be slightly different and we could also ask them to put in some lines that they think either of them might say. There is a risk that our audience might not participate at all or they might think of it in more of a joky manner and take the scene out of hand. I think that we really need to think about our course of actions if that happens. Will one of us have to give them a line? How will we respond to any inappropriate comments? If the audience to participate, there are core responses that we can anticipate being said as lines, things like "I'm disappointed in you", "I'm angry at you" etc.
I think that this could be a good path into some workshop activities and audience participation and so we could come to a comedic end, re-establishing the audience's interest, in our "scientific" presentation. We could then snap out of our male characters and acknowledge the fact that we are all girls and we don't know how boys react we are just guessing and assuming. This would then lead us into Boal's "discursive points" with the audience.
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