Collaborative project
Work in progress
Overall, I couldn't be more happy with how our devised piece end up going in terms of the presentation of the piece and the question and answer session we had following the presentation. I was struggling in terms of my anxiety (no pun intended)before the piece mainly in terms of my line memorization, because I know that if I don't have full confidence when saying my lines, I won't be able to portray my character to the best of my ability. In order to avoid this we spent most of our time after school and before our presentation either running the piece or simply running through lines. When it came time to perform our piece, we had a decent audience comprised of students, teachers, and family members. Our performance went smoothly with only minor slip ups, whether technical or in terms of lines, but it was never anything noticeable enough for the audience. We were only aware of it because of how well we knew the piece.
In terms of the question and answer session, we definitely were able to get a lot of feedback, impressions, and many questions. Some of the impressions that the audience gave that stuck with me was one comment about how a lot of times kids don't realize that when someone says something in the heat of the moment, it's not always meant; that they shouldn't always take it personally and should always go talk to the person. Another audience member also acknowledged how there always is someone to talk to and with where we are at now in the school year with final presentations and exams coming up, it's necessary for kids to acknowledge their anxiety and work through it rather than just trying to put up a wall. Compared to the Collaborative Theatre Project from last year that I took part in, I think it was definitely easier for the audience to understand what were trying to do which ultimately affected how they felt afterwards, leaving them with a better understanding or new insights on anxiety. I know this is my last IB theatre assessment at West Sound, but I think I will be able to apply all of the skills I've learned through these different processes to my work in the future, whether it's theatre-related or not.
0 Comments
In today's devising session, our group ran through our piece and presented it to our teacher to time it and show her what material we have. Afterwards, she talked with us about how what we need to focus on with our piece is ensuring that we have a solid arc in our show. We decided that in order to do this that we're going to have two different sessions with Dr. Johnson, the first being where Maggie isn't cooperating and just leaves with Anxiety. For the second session, Maggie comes back because the senior presentation is getting closer and she decides that she needs to call Sam but that she can't do it on her own. We started changing some of Anxiety's lines and the intention behind them so she's more like a bully and very negative the whole time, so that when the suggestion of calling Sam comes up, Anxiety starts getting very defensive causing for Maggie to leave the first time.
In this last week of devising, we worked on finalizing each of our stage elements and made a final stage plot. We wrote down a list of everything that needs to be on stage whether it's furniture, props or our costumes. We also were finally able to record the voice overs that were necessary for the phone call, and once it's edited, we'll be able to actually use the recordings when we rehearse instead of just having another group member reading the lines from off stage. Both the voice of the brother of Maggie and I noticed the difficulty with just recording single lines and not having any previous context. We realized that it would be helpful for me to read the line before and than hit record and have him read the next line. I was able to find helpful youtube videos that will allow me to edit the sound to make it sound like an actual phone call instead of a recording. We're at the point now where once we finish tweaking a few tech elements, we'll be able to just run through our piece during each of our class sessions.
In our devising session today, we looked at different devising companies that we could use as inspiration. We ultimately decided on using Station House Opera as inspiration mainly due to the types of technical elements we want to incorporate into our peace. One of the technical elements they most commonly use is projecting a live feed of film onto another group of people that interact with the recording. We realized that two of the technical elements that we want to use are similar to that, those being the recording of Maggie's presentation onto the back wall, and the prerecorded phone call that the actors interact with that's not an actual interaction.
In our following devising session, we filmed and edited both the practice presentation and the final presentation that will be projected in the back wall. We also chose to run through the piece in our actual performance space to work out some of our blocking and to allow our Light Designer to document and adjust lights as necessary. We also are currently working on finalizing any props, stage elements, and costumes. Within this last week, our group focused mostly on creating a preliminary script to work with. We first started with writing out the specific plot moments that we wanted to have. We knew since we were going to have to script the phone call between the brother, Maggie, and Dr. Johnson because we were going to record the brother's vocals, so we scripted that first. It gave us a nice outline of how we wanted to lead up to the phone call, so we decided to just continue scripting the rest of the piece through. We also decided on some of our technical elements including the presentations that Maggie gives, both the practice and the final version, will be played on a laptop for whoever is in the room, but will actually be projected on the back wall. We'll also have the audio pre-recorded for the phone call so the audience can hear what's going on. While scripting, we ended up making it so that Anxiety stayed invisible the entire time and not being reveal to Dr. Johnson, however, we aren't entirely settled on this decision. When running through the version of the script, it timed out to around 10 minutes, which doesn't include the presentations and will work well since our time limit is between 13 and 15 minutes. We also have container that we hadn't really realized of having only three actors. Another container also includes the piece taking place in one room.
We're getting to a point again where we're not necessarily stuck or in a rut so much as we're just needing to get up an do things. We've learned that improve is beneficial for becoming more vulnerable with each other and for opening up to different ideas and conversation. However, like I've mentioned before, utilizing improve when it comes to the topic of fear or anxiety isn't always productive or helpful to one's own mentality and to the material that will end up in the final production.
We've established our roles, both as characters and in terms of the process. We decided that I will play the role of Dr. Johnson, the therapist, due to being the tallest and oldest looking. We also agreed upon my role as Director, due to my active engagement and usually acting as the catalyst for a majority of our conversations or exercises. We also agreed on some technical elements that we want to include as well, so as not to limit what we're capable of doing with this piece. For the phone the call that will take place between Maggie, our main character, Dr. Johnson, and Sam, Maggie's older brother who's away at college, we're going to have the call be on speaker phone, but have the audio for Sam be recorded ahead of time. We also decided that to show the practice run through of Maggie's Senior Presentation where she ultimately panics and doesn't finish it, that we will project the video that was recorded of the presentation. Dr. Johnson will mention how she has the recording of the practice presentation and that she wants Maggie to watch it so she can show her how she appears and what can possibly help. When the video plays, rather than have it play off of the laptop, it will be projected on the back wall of our set so the audience can see it as well. After it plays for some time, this will upset Maggie and have her slam the laptop shut ending the projection. One of the other ideas that I came up with that I hope we end up using is that at the end of the therapy session after Dr. Johnson gives maggie some tools on how to help her with Anxiety, that Dr. Johnson and Maggie will leave the room, but Anxiety will stay and open the laptop backup showing the projection of Maggie's final Senior Presentation where she ultimately succeeds. After looking at and reviewing each of our group members reflections, including my own, I've been able to notice some distinct similarities that we share, along with some differences that might help understand our ideas better or add to our piece.
Similarities:
In our last week of devising, we developed our piece more regarding deciding what we each wanted to include or make sure that happened in our piece. We ultimately decided on the scenario of having our main character who has been having issues regarding school and dealing with their parents, and it's gotten so bad to the point of their parents forcing them to go to a therapist. While there, we see that the anxiety and fear that they have is actually real, but no one is capable of seeing them. The fear sort of acts as an imaginary friend that fuels the main character's fears. We decided that the reason why no one else can see the anxiety is that the main character has never been willing to talk to anyone about them, therefore not allowing anybody else to see them.
We talked about general points that we want to have occur within the plot of the piece such as that the reason why the main character is seeing a therapist is that something bad has happened that has caused bad repercussions or will in the future if the main character doesn't sort out their fears. We also decided that at some point while interacting with the therapist, the main character will reach their tipping point and share with the therapist their fear, causing the fear to become visible. Overall, we've developed a basic structure and just need to process some of our key elements further and to try out some more of our ideas physically. With our last devising session, we went back over the different ideas we came up with and how they could be portrayed in different ways and different contexts. One of the elements that we all liked and agreed upon was how we would incorporate the personification of fear itself. After that, we were having a hard time going farther than that and decided to do some improve games to loosen us up and to make ourselves more comfortable and willing to be vulnerable with each other. The one improv game that we mainly used was "freeze," which has two people start acting out a scene, and at any point in time if there's a character making interesting movement or is in a position that looks like something else, another person can yell "freeze," and tap out with one of the people and take the scene in a different direction. One of the things that I noticed after class was how whenever there was a scene where someone was meant to be afraid of something their instincts were to scream or run away, and this was with everyone.
When I was initially thinking of exercises to use to help with the devising process, I initially thought of Stanislavski's "what if" exercise where people stand in a circle with their eyes closed. Each person will go around the room saying "what if you were in a certain place or in a certain circumstance" and for the next minute or so everyone would try and physically put themselves in that moment. I thought this might help, but after the improv games, I realized that probably wouldn't be the best exercise when it comes to everyone's mental health especially since our subject matter has to do with fears and anxiety. I then thought it might actually help more when it comes to portraying someone who is afraid to utilize some of the elements that I learned from the theatre theorist Rudolf von Laban that I studied for my solo project. One of the elements that I learned previously from a director was the reason why she utilized Laban's techniques was because it wouldn't emotionally abuse her actors, mainly because the Laban's work was based on certain types of movement rather than emotions. In our most recent class session with already haven created our agreements, we were given free reign to do whatever we wanted to initiate the devising process. In the class before, we all brought in different objects that were meaningful to us. One of the themes or concepts that I found was apparent in all of our objects was childhood and fears/monsters. Childhood was an obvious one considering most items that we tend to value we either find or receive when we are young. Monsters, however, was a theme that I wasn't expecting, but came up multiple times in songs, in novels, in collections of art in some way or another. We thought that both of these themes or concepts would provide a good starting point for our piece considering we've all experienced some kind of childhood fear. Our group decided to take a large piece of butcher paper and just right down different word associations that we were having. We eventually came up with several different categories that related to fears whether they were from our childhood, current fears, imaginary fears, real-world fears, causes of fears, and even securities that soothe us from experiencing fears.
After that, we tried to just come up with some initial ideas that we would want to incorporate into our impact and what audience we are aiming for. We eventually established that in some way we wanted our audience to experience whatever fears we will present, whether or not it's because they're familiar with that fear or because they're empathetic and understanding of another's fear. |
|