Amendment

I made an amendment after I screencapped and printed everything on this blog- I changed the titles of week six and seven, due to their mysteriously being the incorrect way round.

I made these changes at 18:23 16/12/2010.

Naomi.

The Performance

The final piece we ended up performing I felt went well. We performed first- 7:30pm 13th December- we waited patiently (and oh so quietly) inside the box for the audience to be led into the space and began to show our piece. There is a basic performance outline at 'scenes and props', but there are a few changes that we made over the week running up to the 13th. A full outline is below, with recent changes in blue:

• We decided to only have two 'children' playing at the start, rather than to have one pair, turn off the light with a jack in the box noise, and then repeat as we'd first envisioned- in the end, we decided that one set of children at the start was more than efficient. They played fairly quietly until the audience were all in place before singing the rhyme from the first scene of Woyzeck as a clapping rhyme.
• Once the children have disappeared, the video starts:
 

 video posted to facebook by Jamilah
• Once the Jack in the Box music starts, Chloe uses a poster tube wrapped in wrapping paper as a crank which leads to the box lighting up and Reece and Anna (representing Woyzeck and Marie) pop out of the box like the puppets in a Jack in the Box.
• We then decided, instead of running around in a chaotic manner, each doing our own annoying thing, that we would re-incorporate the "greed" that we'd first envisioned it back in week four. Audience members were given sweets- with the instruction that they weren't to eat it, once we'd come crawling, laughing out of the box, we went around quickly, demanding sweets from audience members and stuffing our faces.

• During the previous section, the boys both made their way downstairs as the girls remained upstairs- Chloe threw underwear and condoms out of the box in the air and we stood, moaning and breathing heavily to simulate the noises women make when they're having sex. We then took it a step further and got close to the audience, developing the static, unfeeling noises into lust until Anna looked over the balcony and called out for "Woyzeck!"
• All the girls push forwards to peer down at the boys who declare "Maria. Maria! Wherefore art thou, Maria?!" Anna then replies "Chest like a bull, Beard like a Lion- I am the proudest woman alive." (scene seven, Woyzeck) to which each of the remaining girls declares (in succession) "no, I'm the proudest woman alive!"
• Each of the girls return to the box, apart from Hannah, who was the last to declare her pride- during the girls' declarations, the boys make their way back upstairs- Phil goes first, arriving in time to kill Hannah and stare disbelieving at her on the floor. Reece then comes upstairs and shouts at Phil "you Killed her!!" there is a shot exchange of accusations from Reece and guilt filled "i know"s from Phil, before Reece kills Phil. Chloe stands up in the box and declares "its your turn now!!" to Reece before popping back down into the box. Reece smiles and repeats "Its my turn now... Arise!" 
• We all then file out of the box, bent at the waist, flopping like puppets- Reece as the puppet master, controlling us all to doing a short sequence of flops and arms movements
• Straight from the puppet scene we went into our dance scene. there were four pairs of us, each on a different side of the square in the center of the audience. We each froze until our dance scene- we danced with smiles on our faces, but called each other "whore" or spoke a hateful line from the play- the last pair of whom were Reece and Anna. Anna is thrown to the ground and Reece then shouts "ready, aim, fire" whereby follows a succession of gunshots- each of the remaining couples is 'shot down' in turn. Originally, we each got shot at different times, in a staggered order, but we decided against it for the simple reason of being unable to find sound effects which were suitable. 
• Chloe, during the last scene, was unaffected and makes her way to the 'front' of the stage, behind Reece and begins to 'reel us in' dragging us along the floor and towards Reece. The idea behind this, is that Chloe has the ultimate power- but that, as a game, she shares that power with others, to see what happens. Whilst Chloe is pulling on this invisible rope, she is trying to pull back the power she gave to Reece, but he resists as we whisper lines from Woyzeck into his ear and claw at him, pull on his clothing- Chloe, finding it difficult, calls for 'Charlie' (who is Phil) to help her, and Phil joins her on top of the box pulling on invisible ropes until Reece 'explodes' flinging us all towards the box. At the end of this scene, all are inside the box apart from Chloe and Phil. Originally, Chloe was going to be pulled down into the box, and phil would be left outside, not having been involved in pulling reece in, however, it didn't seem like the 'joker' like status was passed onto him in an effective manner. So Chloe and Phil stay outside the box and Chloe turns to him and offers him 'a turn'- handing him the 'crank' from the beginning before getting into the box herself.
• Phil tries to open the box in the same way as Chloe did at the start, making the jack in the box music himself, but finds himself unable to do so. He picks a male audience member and gets him to try, once again making the noise himself- finding that this too, doesn't work- he sends the man back and picks a woman- who he prompts to turn the dial- however, when she turns the dial, the box opens. This idea came from Pandora's box- in which its very specific that a woman opened the box and unleashed chaos, we decided to incorporate this idea into our piece because, although it could be quite subtle, it was a fun idea to play with, this idea that only a female could open this box.

• As soon as the box is opened we went into our "Milly Springer" sequence. We did this in a very over the top way, we had loud intro/outro music, placards with the show's name and "applause" and "boo!" signs, security guards wearing black jackets and dark glasses (chloe and Phil) and people slotted into the audience to encourage the audience to cheer along and shout things out.We ushered the woman from the audience who opened the box into a chair and cast her as "marie!". We then bring out Woyzeck (who is Reece) who declares that Marie is a "whore" he then gets distracted by Milly's microphone, taking dialogue out of context from scene 5 of Woyzeck "what have you got there? Its shining between your fingers" Woyzeck then stands and tries to get to 'Marie' but is ushered away by security. Milly ends the show, plugging her new book "How I like my Peas" and we are all returned to the box by securty apart from Chloe and phil who keep on being security guards until they meet each others' eyes and take off their sunglasses.
  
• They climb on top of the box and hum/sing the jack in the box music (pop goes the weasel) and those of us inside the box join in- with our heads sticking out of the box until it gets to the point in the song at which the box would open, and those inside the box shout "pop!" and promptly disappear. 
• The final piece ended with a voice calling "Charlie, Lola- its time for dinner!" the two 'children' played by chloe and phil jump off the box, do a little clapping 'handshake' type interaction and run out of the staging area- the light on the box goes out.

We set out to show the audience a disjointed and seemingly random piece, in which they felt confused at times- this simulates how the character Woyzeck might feel throughout the play- knowing something is going on, but not being entirely sure. Because of the space we had to work with we were forced to be quite imaginative with regards to using the space- the idea of having a box that we could crawl out of and climb onto presented itself, and when we linked it to the theme we'd been working with from the play of sin- it led to a box of sin, or Pandora's box. For us is was quite natural to think, that there were 8 of us in the group, and 7 sins- which left one person outside to open the box. A lot of the ideas we've had throughout the module have been set aside and reused and evolved into the final piece, there isn't a lot that was outright discarded.

We started off making a mimed 'mirrored' scene from Woyzeck in which 'Woyzeck' had two different attitudes. We kept the idea of more than one side of Woyzeck and Marie. We then changed this and showed a progression of anger and passion leading to murder- in the end we held the same idea of escalating scenes- particularly in the dance scene in which each couple gets more hostile/energetic. These were both shown with the audience in front of us. then we moved on to sin- and we used all four sides of the balcony we had, using the seven deadly sins we went through each of the sins in turn, all performing them until our sin was performed, as outlined in week four's post. We kept and cannibalised a lot of this one- we continued to think about sin throughout the module, and a lot of what we devised in this week ended up in some shape or form in our final performance. 'gluttony' went through a lot of changes throughout the module, but eventually reverted back to its original form, 'lust' was developed throughout the course, beginning as a line of us touching and moaning, to its end form as described above. We had envy and pride used in our 'Romeo and Juliet balcony scene', and anger was embodied by 'Woyzeck' at different times.

During one of our group rehearsals we were brainstorming to think of ways we could build on what we had and how we could used the space when we finally made the choice to utilize the box- once we made that decision, we had a vast array of options and ideas of how we could use it which led to Pandora's box.

I'm not entirely sure how I can build more into the background of our piece, so I shall sign out for the last time. Naomi.

Week Eleven (performance day)

Six hours to go- and I'm feeling good about it- we have our props- we have our costumes- everyone is here!

In fact, apart from a couple of ill castmates, it seems to be pretty damn good :)

I'm going to go now, but there will be more on today at a later date!

Signing off 'til next time. Naomi

Week Ten (dress rehearsals!!!!)

This week was dress rehearsals all day. We ran through our piece a number of times, made some tweaks to little parts that weren't working and managed to find a television for the opening part of our piece. 

By the afternoon we went around and watched every piece and then received feedback from the lecturers of things to think about for the final performance in a week.

Hysteria

On the 2nd I, along with several of my classmates went to see  hysteria at Stratford Circus. It was performed by the company Inspector Sands and revolve around a couple on a date with a, rather strange, waiter serving them.

From http://www.inspectorsands.com/hysteria.html

Inspired by T.S. Eliot's poem of the same name, HYSTERIA is a play about panic, the apocalypse and table manners.

The world is ending. And it's happening at table 9…

A man and a woman are on the most awkward dinner date of their lives.  He is an academic whose research into modern day neuroses is threatening his sanity. She is an events manager who's terrified of missing the party. Caught in the middle is their mortified waiter, haunted by visions of global catastrophe.

Bursting with irreverent humour, visceral sound and lighting and a vivid physical style, HYSTERIA draws the audience into an arresting world where the main course is a fight for survival and a banana can reduce you to tears.

This play is now heading to New York, so if you're nearby I recommend seeing it- as its terribly funny :)

Week Nine (and becoming a log)

This week we were responsible for our own warm up exercises, and then we laid on the floor to become a log. The logs rolled slowly 'through the years' and it took a great deal of focus to ensure we didn't roll too fast- and also, getting onto your side from your back *without the use of arms or legs* is very difficult.

After we'd been logs we grouped up and became a clump of seaweed moving 'with the water' and as one with the rest of our group.

once these exercises had been done we took a short break- once we came back we danced to music- not anything structured, but rather going with what our bodies wanted to do. We started off very involved in what everyone else was doing- sometimes we danced in groups and 'went crazy'- it was all very reminiscent of my year six disco  when we had a large space and jaunty music to dance like crazy people. It then morphed into very personal dances- we were told to focus on ourselves and ignore what everyone else was doing around us- to think of  a memory or imagine something and dance how we wished to- my thoughts and dancing was very private at that point and I found myself dancing in the wings of circus 1 rather than on the main stage as most other course-mates.

By the end of our dancing our bodies were in conflict- we forced ourselves to dance against the music- or our bodies wanted to dance waltz but we wanted to dance hip hop (for example)

Following another break we broke down into our working groups and continued in our preparations for our final performance on the 13th.

Week Eight

For this week, I went into Stratford circus so that I wouldn't miss any more of my group rehearsals- unfortunately, I was still feeling rather ill- so I couldn't stay for the rest of the day when the workshop began. A lot of constructive work happened in our group rehearsal- we added a whole lot more to our structure and made some decisions regarding how certain roles were to be played out. 

regarding the afternoon/evening workshop

From what I have learned from members of the class... it involved a scale on the ground of 1 to 10, in which people defined themselves in terms of, for example, sexuality or religious belief- and there was a part in which they partnered up with another person with whom they felt was the opposite to them. One then closed their eyes whilst the other touched them in various way and smelled them etc. I confess, I cannot comprehend what went on during the workshop- so, I have decided to disregard any thoughts I have negative or no, regarding the workshop unless I can glean a more comprehensible explanation. I have probably missed out on a lot that could have been learned, but I will continue to work forwards to the best of my abilities.

signing out 'til next time. Naomi.