Week 14: Director's Challenge

Last Rehearsal

Due to this being our last rehearsal with the cast before the technical and dress rehearsal, we made sure that everyone was comfortable with what was going on and we did as many run-throughs of the piece as possible in the two hours.

We found that the first run-through was quite rocky as the cast had realised that our performance was coming closer and their nerves began. We reassured them that everything was going to be alright if they each did what we had told them to do and carried on if something went wrong. In the run-throughs after this, the cast settled into the style and we began to see a piece that is worthy of an audience emerging. The speed of the lines was excellent as one subject fed onto another and, even though I'd seen it multiple times, I started to become re-interested in what they were saying and it really made me think about the subjects that were highlighted especially B's paragraph which highlights that free will is not really as free as we thought. It's more conditioned from each individuals previous experiences and the outcome that we had got from them. If the outcome was positive, we are more likely to do that action again, whereas if the outcome was negative, we are less likely. I began to think about directing in this way, as I am conditioned

Before the rehearsal, we made sure that, if needed, we had cut-to-lines which are set lines that the cast know and can jump to if they have lost their place in the script. We did one run through to make sure whether we did need them or not and we found that in later sections they could need them but if they made a mistake, they were ready to move on and forget about it. There are certain lines that seem to be missed in nearly every run through and so we made sure that there were back up people ready to say those lines in case the person forgot to say them. Having these back up people allows us, as directors, to be sure that the next topic that is brought up makes sense and we know that no key ideas are lost or not mentioned.

Week 13: Director's Challenge

Focusing on Sections 3 and 4

We decided to have a small chat with the cast and ask them, now that we're getting down to the last few weeks before the performance, what they were the most nervous or slightly unsure of and we found that they were conscious that at the end of section 3 and the whole of section 4 was still quite new to some of them considering some people have been missing. We therefore decided to spend this week concentrating on section 3 and 4, and really making sure that everyone knows for certain what was going on and making sure that we had all of our synchronised movements in time. 

We purposefully said that we wanted to concentrate on these sections so that both we, as directors, and the cast themselves felt comfortable with the sections and also we wanted them to focus on the gaps between the lines and making sure that these weren't too long.

One thing that we did notice, as directors, was the delivery of some of the lines needs to change as there are sections where it seems like a conversation between two people and we need those lines to seem slightly argumentative so that we see a different in the tone of the people on stage.

Video of the final run-through of Section 3 and 4: https://youtu.be/q6UCxW-eUXU

In the video, we had to prompt a lot of people which is not what we wanted to be doing at this point in the rehearsal process and we wanted the cast to know this so we gave them a deadline for knowing their lines which is next week. Also in the video, the stand and turn is supposed to be synchronised but unfortunately it was not and so next week, I think we need to review the video as a whole cast and point out the bad and good points of it. I also would like to reiterate to the group that if something goes wrong, they have the power to carry on the performance and cover it up. I think that the use of tone in the video is very good as it shows the difference between the lines and also the difference in the opinion of the cast member saying the lines.

Week 13: TIE (Storms)

Forum Theatre Section

We started off by exploring the idea of Adam, the friend of John that we have seen in the background throughout the piece, having a breakdown (maybe even suicide) out of the blue so that we can accentuate the fact that we can all be a friend and you may not realise that someone has a mental health problem as they may cover it up with humor. We thought that at some point we could have a video of Sue, the CEO of SToRMs, talking about her own experiences with not noticing the signs of a mental health problem in her son but we then realised that it might be too horrific for her to recall the whole story.

After our full run-through, we decided that we wanted to focus on the Forum Theatre addition to the piece. A few weeks ago, we made a short scene that included John and his friends when they start drinking in the build up to the car scene, so like a flashback of when John started drinking. We came up with some suggestions that we think we may be told when we go out into the audience:

• Ask him whether he's alright
• Have a drink with him so that he's not alone
• Ask him why he wants to get drunk

We decided to imagine we had taken some suggestions from the audience and we were going to replay the scene multiple times so that the audience could have control over one of the friends and see whether they could help John express his feelings. In the first go of the scene, we said that an audience member would put forward the idea of a friend asking him whether he's alright and why is he drinking so much. We had the rest of the group answer for John by shouting "Well, it's Friday night." so we emphasised that maybe asking how he feels in a group and whilst the rest of your friends are around isn't the best idea. And so we said that when we are helping the audience that could be one of our suggestions to them that might spark some more ideas. And so we applied that to the scene and added in Adam holding back John from the group and then proceeding to ask him whats wrong.

The conversation that we came up with was:

A:Why are you drinking so much?

J: I don't know cos I'm pissed off, I don't know I just want to stop thinking for a bit

A: Pissed off at what?

J: Just...I don't know I've got a lot going on at the minute

A: You do seem really stressed

J: I am being stressed

A: Yeah being stressed can make you angry

J: I'm literally angry all the time: at mum, at school for putting all this shit on me, at dad for shouting at me, at holly for not getting it.

A: Yeah it sounds pretty tough mate

J: Yeah tough

A: Look I'll keep an eye on you tonight, yeah, make sure that you get home alright.

In previous years, we have worked with CAMHS on the Healthy Minds Launch and we found out that a good way to help someone open up to you was by relaying their feelings back to them and stating that it is clear you know they are upset and so we added that in when Adam changes his tactics and it eventually helps John explain how he's feeling.

We did think that we could also add in an extra bit of audience participation if we stopped after the first question so that we can allow the audience to have control of both sides of the conversation and know how it feels to try and communicate and also be a good friend. We wanted them to tell us what they thought John would say and we thought that they could say:

• Why do you care?
• Just want a good night
• I'm bored what else is there to do?

We then thought of the conversation that might come after and we thought that it may go like:

A: Why are you drinking so much?

J: I don't know

A: Come on , mate just tell me

J: (Lists some of the options given by the audience)

A: It's not like you mate

J: I've got a lot going on

We would then fast forward to the drunk scene with Holly but Adam stays with him whilst the rest of the group leave when Holly arrives. We thought that this could show the impact that having a friend in that situation could have upon John. Adam would stop John from smoking and getting on the car as the designated sober friend that is looking out for John. Adam sees the argument with Holly building and so removes John from the situation in a comedic way so that if reflects how it could happen in real life.

Moving the piece onward, we thought that we could do some small group work with the audience to unpick what Adam did for John. We would try enable them to explain the realistic situation. For example, there was no way that Adam was going to stop John from drinking but not everybody in the group has to drink so that one person can look out for him. Adam listened to what his friend had to say and identified how he was feeling and helped him understand that it was okay to talk about it. We could do small role plays and try to get them to do the scene themselves and see whether they could get John to express his feelings without asking him questions and then we could ask follow up questions like "how hard was that to talk to someone?" This would allow the audience to be put in the conversation still in a safe environment so that if the situation occurs in real life, they will know what to do.

Week 12: TIE (Storms)

Facilitation and Powerpoint

From the previous week, we noticed that in the first scene in the case study, the breakfast scene, didn't have any dramatic asides in it to accentuate how both the males in the scene were feeling at that point and so we made sure that we added in 2 asides, one for John and one for his dad, so that the audience would see what it was like to be on either side of the conversation and the two opinions about it.

We then moved onto the facilitation of John with Holly in the drunk scene where he is on top of the car and we wanted to use that to allow the audience to realise the barriers that are stopping John communicating in a way that Holly would understand and therefore be able to help. We used this as another chance to interact with the audience and so, as a cast, we came up with the 4 main barriers that we thought are the main reasons for John and his miscommunication with Holly:

• Peer-pressure- because at the start of the scene, John is with his friends and they are all drinking and so he is being peer-pressured into following what everybody else is doing.
• Alcohol- Mainly due to the fact that he is drunk and alcohol effects your ability to make decisions and also increases your chance of risk-taking. We have also had a conversation with a mental health ambassador in our own school and he said that when a mental health issue arises in someone they tend to isolate themselves and they do this through risk taking, so drinking alcohol, and we wanted to show that in our piece so that we are showing all the options that someone could take to hide their own feelings and also what could be signs, that we can pick up on, of someone with a mental health problem.
• Aggression - due to the alcohol, John becomes quite aggressive both verbally and physically as he tries to intimate Holly and this leads to him trying to communicate in a way that actually frightens Holly slightly and means that her attention has shifted from "what could make him be this way" to "is he going to hurt me in any way?" and this means that the miscommunication is both John's fault and Holly's.
• Swearing - As a consequence from all the above factors, John begins to swear at Holly and this means that this is adding to the miscommunication.

We were then going to ask the audience to rank them in the order from 1-4, with 1 being the biggest barrier and 4 being the smallest. We would go out in the audience and help them to explain their reasoning behind their answers and see whether they are picking up on the main reasons for each barrier. We would then ask them to show on their fingers which number they ranked each one and then we would remove the barrier that the majority of the audience thought was the main one. Doing this allows us to strip back all of the barriers that John had built up between himself and Holly and we are trying to show that John did try and communicate but not in the right way. We wanted to show the juxtaposition between what John thought he said and what he actually said in order for the audience to understand the difference and it also shows ways that you can communicate in a way that allows others to help you.

A small project that we did at the end was to make a powerpoint that will go up behind us whilst we are acting, with key points that we are making on the board and also questions that we want them to be asking throughout the piece. Having this behind us allows us to continue acting whilst the audience are gaining information from it and we are wanting the main points for each section of the piece to be on each slide so that the audience really understand what we are trying to say. When we go out into the audience to help them, the questions that are on the slide can be used as starting points for discussion and we can follow them up with secondary questions to further the audience's understanding of John and the piece as a whole.

Week 12: Director's Challenge

Changing Section 4

During the rehearsal, we noticed that during Section 4 there was a segment where the cast stood up when their letter was addressed but I realised that that was defeating the object of the piece and going against the authors intention as the audience weren't supposed to have any sort of connection with the people onstage, hence the letter. So if we were to reveal who was which letter then that would give the audience to chance to make a connection between who the line was talking about and therefore make assumptions about the kind of person that they might be.

We have a short rehearsal video from what we were working on and the main thing that we were focussing on was our sychronised movements and getting them perfectly on time as for the majority of the play, the cast remain quite still with no movements at all so we need to make the movements that we do clean and slick so that the impact is greater.

https://youtu.be/7wBZf-AX_9U

Because we have movements that happen between a few people and then movements that involve the whole cast both need to be as effective as possible as they are all adding to the authors intention and presenting the play as it should be. We are performing the play as much to the original as possible as we were intrigued by the idea of it being more of a social experience than an actual play with characters and we wanted to see how our audience would react especially with the parents of the people who are on stage in the audience, as they actually know the students onstage.

Week 11: TIE (Storms)

Adapting the sliding scale

This week, we started by making a slight change as we are noticing that we are mainly saying that boys don't communicate at all so, we wanted to add a positive side to the piece by saying that things like non-verbal communication, like in the morning after scene, is still a positive way of communicating even if it doesn't involved words. The morning after John's argument with his dad was the pinpoint of our negative connotations to non-verbal communication as we were originally saying that John wasn't communicating verbally with his father and therefore it was his fault for not expressing his true feelings to his dad but, we wanted to change this to show that communicating in any form is better than not communicating at all and even in small gestures, there are still feelings behind them.

After this, we decided to adapt our sliding scale and expand on the options that John has. In the previous week, we had defined the key points on the sliding scale but we narrowed those down to three major points: break-up with her, do nothing and beg for her forgiveness. We did this in order for the audience to explore the ranges in between the options when we go and facilitate the scale. We said that when John is walking down the scale, we would pause when someone in the audience raised their hands at one of the 3 main points and we would ask them for the reason why. Asking the audience follow up questions allows us to understand how much they are understanding and it also allows us to help them understand the messages that we are trying to convey in order for our main point to be backed up at the end. We would keep going until John was at the end, and the narrator, depending on the audience's choice, would identify the point that most people voted for. Making the audience vote for which outcome they think should happen engages them with the piece and, also allows us to see whether they have picked up on the key points that we have been hinting at throughout to help in the build up to the main point.We made it so that, no matter what the majority of votes was, it would always lead to the same lines of this was because John tried to communicate but Holly didn't listen to him.

We began extending this into John arguing that he did explain his feelings, or tried, to Holly as this reflects the reaction that many boys would have when asked whether they tried to explain how they felt. We added in a replay of all the scenes between John and Holly to accentuate the times that John did try and communicate how he felt. We thought that, from our previous workshop, we could add in or move our piece towards the Forum Theatre direction so that the audience could take control of one character and see how John reacts to different approaches from different people or how he responds to different acknowledgements of his feelings. We then discussed that we wanted to move away from the girlfriend as we wanted the whole audience to feel like they could connect with John's situation but not everyone has a girlfriend or even had one so we wanted to involved the whole audience and so we moved onto the idea of John communicating with his friends as, we hoped that everyone in the audience had at least one friend that they could talk to. We devised a scene that would be set before John is drunk on top of the mini cooper and it would show the build up to John getting drunk and included a big group of John's friends to highlight the fact that you don't necessarily need to tell everyone in your friendship group. We gave John some lines about wanting to get drunk so that he could forget what was going on and majority of the group cheered and thought of it as just another excuse to get drunk but one friend was concerned about John and why he was acting this way and so when we were going to leave to "go to the park" that specific friend pulled him aside and asked him what was wrong. This section was then going to be our Forum Theatre part as we thought that the audience could control the conversation that was about to happen and see how there are different ways that you can ask about how someone is feeling and there are different ways of telling someone how you feel.

The friend noticing the difference in John's mindset also links with the wise talkers element of SToRMS which was about noticing other people's emotions and how to talk and respond to their feelings/behaviour.