Devising:

This last week, we have been threading all our scenes together and fine tuning pieces we feel weak on. There isn't really much to add as all we have been doing is rehearsing pieces and making sure we know what we are doing and when.

Most of our time this week has gone on more technical aspects. We spent more time completing our lighting and getting the music we needed. We re wrote the monologues for the gang as the original one didn't include enough about the gang members lives and childhood to elaborate on their past events in order to build up more of a connection and understanding to the characters and audience. We re shaped the monologues which now, include much more content. In addition, we recorded our voices for a broadcast scene at the end of our piece. We will edit the recordings to have white noise like a radio in between the three voices. The voices will be reading out articles fro the newspapers projected onto the ceiling above. We did want to put the projection on the wall, however, we would need to walk in front of the projector, hence blocking out the projections, so decided to keep it on the ceiling.

For next week, all we have to do is perform a run through a limit mistakes. Also timing it would be a good idea so we know if the piece is too short or too long. We need to sort out costumes and playing the music but at the moment, our piece is looking very good a near completion.

Devising: Day 15

Today we carried in trying to block the rest of our performance. We began with the split scene of the gang and tess with the boss. We cut each other's scenes up in order to jump from place to place to emphasise the fact that the safe is split and these two events are happening at the same time. I also suggested that myself and Ellie mimed the door between ourselves to show how close that Finn and tess come to each other without knowing that they are there. We hoped that this would pull at the audiences heart strings even more as they were so close to seeing each other but the gang is pulling them apart. We then quickly blocked a scene where Finn goes to see Tess at the bar they have a little spat about not wanting to see each other effort realsing that the gang was trying to break them up. Finn gets angry and storms out to find the gang members to seek revenge.

Now, we knew that this was the scene in which the gang members are killed by Finn but wanted to make the acne more significant, instead of just running in with a gun. But at the same time didn't want to use stage combat again as we had used it already. So we opts for another technique of more stylised movement. We watched examples such as the movement pieces in year 13's performance of Let The Right One In that was performed only a few weeks ago and thought that they were incredibly effective and that we could certainly use some aspects. We picked a piece of music and made a small sequence of movements and repeated four times. We tried to add a lift where I was spun around off my feet vertically but it didn't look smooth at the time, not did the lifters look very comfortable. So we cut it out and devised other pieces.

The performance is beginning to take shape now and soon we will e able to video more pieces that we have worked on to show how we have progresse as the weeks have gone on. For the next couple of lessons we need to make sure that all of our alternative endings are completed and that everything is in place and blocked for us to perfect and run through

Devising: Day 14

Again. We split into different groups and worked on individual scenes. We began with a little discussion on what to work on next as well as discuss new ideas for future scenes. Myself and Ellie worked on the break up scene. We wanted to make this very short and snappy to make it more effective and potentially more of a shock to allow the author to take centre stage. We began the scene with tess discovering Finn laying on the floor after being beaten up by the gang, she is in tears at the state of Finn who merely pushes her away before breaking the news. We then moved onto setting the scene in which we use the technique of split stage. We split the scene between the gang playing cards and the boss lying to tess about Finn having disappeared. The gang play cards whilst this is going on with Finn distant before suggesting the group plays the card game kings. To symbolise the fact that he has morales and the emotional high ground over his gang members. It turns out that none of them have any cards and Finn has an ace. Which he is told can mean two things, high or low, symbolising his choice between te gang and tess. Again not all the scenes were filmed or finished to a state of perfection, but soon we will have a few videos up of various scenes as well as knowing what we need to work on next

Devising : Day 13

Today, we finished off the scene where Finn and Tess start to talk. This was a relatively simple task as all we had to do was make up some small conversation about our lives and backstory. I really wanted to show my characters awkwardness so focused very hard on my body language and tried to grow in confidence throughout. Tom and Theo continued to write their monologues, while the two Dan's worked on lighting and the drumming separately. We really focused hard today to get things done and that will benefit us in the long run.

We struggled a bit with how to make the conversation as we didn't really know what to talk about. We wanted to link in as much of our backstories as we could, like jobs, dreams, childhood and so to give the audience a better idea of who we are. I think we really need to press on now and film what we have got so far to show the work we have put in over the duration of work. The scenes are starting to tie together very nicely and hopefully we will have a full piece roughly blocked out soon, so we can select scenes that we need to work on.

Devising

Devising

I took this research from Dan Mckay's blog in our group, as it would be pointless and inefficient to research the same things. I do agree with everything said and think the hairstyles for men are easily achieved, all we need is a comb. The women hairstyles look perfect but again, it will be hard to achieve such a look so we may have to tie her back. In terms of clothing it will be hard to find such attire and potentially expensive, but it does give us an idea of what we would be looking for. I think the ladies fashion will be harder to find as a dress would limit movement so trousers would be more sensible to wear, but hard to find, so we may not end up with the costumes we had our hearts set on.

1930's Hair

As our devised piece is set in the 1930's we need to research the HAIR styles from that time period. 

Men- As you can see from the photos below the hair style back in the 1930's is a very simple yet a very smart slicked back to one side style. This look will be easily achieved, no matter what length your hair it will probably be very possible that you would be able to get this look and I know for sure my other group members will be able to achieve this look. The second photo shows some facial hair, obviously he only has a moustache and the is clean shaven on the rest of the FACE, this looks could easily be achieved with make up if needed or a fake moustache as no one in my group would be able to grow this moustache.   

                                                                          
Women- Even though the majority of the research I did showed that the style for 1930's women was short and either curly or finger waved the girl in my group does not have short hair so I tried to find some photos with long haired hair styles, clearly these photos weren't taken in the 1930's they were probably people creating 1930's inspired hair styles, this is helpful as it still is quite clear what time period its from but it allows our female to have long hair. The first photo is something I hope we could achieve with our girl but none of us are hair stylists so it may be difficult, the main thing we want is for her to have her hair off her FACE so we can clearly see any facial expressions during the performance, we may decide to have her hair in a simple pony tail but we do need to have her hair free at the back as in one scene she gets dragged across the floor by her hair. The second photo looks VERY similar to the first photo but the first photo seems to have a finger waved front where as the second photo seems to have a very small victory roll front, both styles show the hair going backwards off the face. 
Another thing about these photos we can gather about 1930's style is the make up, very simple yet elegant and beautiful, something I'm sure our girl could achieve.

1930's Fashion

As our devised piece is set in 1930's a lot of research needed to be collected on the sorts of clothes people wore back then. 

Men - As you can see below that suits were quite popular back in the 1930's. It is also VERY clear that there are no skinny or tight fitting suits, all the trousers are pleated and quite baggy and straight, even though two of these photos aren't in colour it almost seems the suited are a navy blue or beige colour. 
Another thing about the fashion is the how you can work with it, for our devised piece the gang members can all have similar suits but how they wear them is personal, some could have the jacket on or off, with a waistcoat or without and they could also have braces, this created quite a few looks just from one style of suit, this could also help the fact that we have a years time lapse during the performance so the story doesn't seem like one week, having  a suit and being able to deconstruct certain elements of it will almost create a whole NEW LOOKS. the men's fashion will be a lot easier to source as there are loads of suits around, the only issue will be finding suits that aren't slim fitting as this is the current fashion for the present year. 
   

                                                                        

Women- Below I have three photos of different styles of clothing our girl can wear. one issue we have with the our femalecharacter is she works in a speakeasy bar as a waitress but when she meets Fin, they have a dance that involves a lot of lifts, she would need to wear something easy to move in but also in keeping with the 1930's style, I feel if she wore something like the first photo it would be VERY easy for her to move and yet still looks feminine and elegant. In the story we have a years time lapse, this means we may need various costumes and hair styles for each of our characters. 
One problem with the women's fashion of the 1930's is then trying to source is and put it together. 
As you can see just like the men the trousers the woman is wearing isn't tight fitting at all and is extremely flared, the blouse is also quite baggy and free flowing giving the look a very soft look. The last two photos are more girly outfits as they aredresses which is what we want our female character to be, the last photo is something I feel the character would wear as its quite simple and I don't think it would be that hard to source or even make from scratch, the second photo however seems a very complex design and maybe more hard to source but is probably something out character wouldn't really wear if she was only a waitress. 

Devising: Day 12

Today, we split into different groups and worked on ideas for scenes that we were involved in. For example, Theo and Tom took my research from the 1930's dust bowl and started working on creating monologues for the the gang members to give the audience and idea of who they are and a back story to their lives. Dan Smith, went up to music with a video of the attack scene to begin work on composing a drum piece, Dan M started on the lighting ideas and worked on the colours and how intense the light would be, whilst myself and Ellie worked on the scene in which Finn stays behind at the speakeasy and begins to talk to Tess. We started by brainstorming ideas for a topic of conversation. We researched popular jobs for women in the 1930's and found that 80% of teachers were female, therefore settled on the idea that Tess dreams to be a teacher. We also wanted a reason for why Finn is so silent and decided that when he was younger his father abused him, which wasn't uncommon either, this idea also lead onto the fact that Finn joined the gang in order to learn how to fight and protect himself and also seeks solace in the gang as they are the most fatherly figure he has ever had. Our ideas are below. We wanted a common theme between the two, so decided that they both moved from Oklahoma and found themselves in New York and both had aspirations whether that be a teacher, campaigning for equal rights or wanting to set up a buisiness.

Then, we all came together in creating the scene in which Tess and Finn get to know each other. We wanted to make the scene quite awkward but a bit humorous at the same time. We only got the first couple of lines done, but will continue working on it for the next lesson and will hopefully have a video to put up too.

Devising: Preparation

Over the last couple of days we have been starting to try and compose the lighting plans for all of our scenes. We played with the LEDs we have at our disposal to assess what colours we had and what mood they would create. We also looked at the positioning of the lights to see what the best way to place them and the safest way to avoid tripping over the long wires. One downfall was that the LEDs can only be the same colour at the same time so we couldn't mix colours, however, this was easily solved and didn't affect us too much.

One of the members, Dan M, constructed birds eye views of some of the scenes we had created as well as add a few new ones in too. The main aim is to show how the lighting portrays the mood of the scene. Hence it being red in scenes of aggression or switching to a more gentle pink in the proposal scene to show love and tenderness. Also the green in the monologue scene is very different to what we have throughout, perhaps symbolising a freeze in time and an out of body experience.

Devising

A plan was devised today to show what we want to happen before leading into the alternative endings. The author didn'nt really have anything to say so a small section was written for him.

Gang set in 1930’S  Author Set in 1965

The Opening 

Author walk’s in and turn on lamp, sit down at desk, Gets pen and paper ready. 

Starts writing on paper, pauses a little, cautiously looks up at person above him.

1965 is nothing exciting, think back…. Think back, 1800’s? No no that won’t work. I need a happy ending, happy ending, happy ending, happy ending, happy ending... I don’t care what happens I just need it to end happy, on a high. He’s watching me, I need to be the top selling author again, I can’t let him down, I need him to be pleased. (Whilst talking about him the author is looking all around him as if someone is there) 

Sound Scape 

Sound scape in the gang’s warehouse – Flashing images of the gang and newspapers.

Monologue and Story Telling

Some more talking from the author talking about his back story and life. 

Get to know the gang with a monologue split between three of the gang members and the author

Speak Easy Scene 

The Gang then started discussing their next big idea, as if this was the only conversation that they had - money and power. They wanted to go bigger and leave their mark on the streets of New York - aiming for the big bucks.

The young and beautiful waitress that had brought over their drinks had caught the eye of the silent member of the Gang, Fin. He had never seen a woman so delicate and radiant with purity.

Tess takes over some drinks. Everyone freezes 

Happy endings, Happy endings, Happy endings, Happy endings………… Love!

Tess drops the tray; Fin helps her and picks up the tray together gazing into each other’s eyes

Love.

Author takes away tray.  The gang move to the sides of the stage and freeze   Tess and Fin dance. Dance finishes and the gang come back in to place as if nothing happened.

More talking

Fin stays at the speak easy to get to know Tess

End of scene  

     

Relationship Grows 

- Kiss…

- Tell some of the story 

A Year Later

Tess and Fin are walking somewhere, Fin proposes

It’s been a year Tess and I have never been as happy as I am now, you have changed me so much but only for the better, I have something to ask you 

Fin Proposes 

We also worked on the projections of the newspapers today, we made them ourselves and are pretty proud at the moment they are not finished as we need to include pictures and articles. We also made projections with different dates on them to show that time has passed.

 The above is what we want to have on the far right of the stage. Blocks build up to a section of scaffholding. It will act as a podium for the author to read and act on to show the separation from him and the story and to show that he has control over the events. Below is a plan of the lighting plans we have. The 5 lights we have are able to change to any colour in the key and are fixed for the performance.The black is set and is fixed permanently and allows us to build around it.

Devising: Day 10/11

Yesterday, we were made to sit down and think about the style of our piece. We had to think about what we wanted to achieve in our performance and what kind of style we wanted to give off to make it seem original. Our ideas are below, sorry that it's upside down.

We want our style to be a dark and clever one. We want to get the audience thinking and draw them into a really sophisticated and intelligent piece in which they build up real connections with the characters, but at the same time, maintain a sense of the time period. We were also asked to consider what our style would be like if he were a person.

   It is obvious from this that our piece will be very sick and violent. It will be dark and sinister, but slick and refined.

Baring this activity in mind, we went onto creating the attack scene further. We toyed again with the idea of introducing music to the scene, but all decided that composing a drum piece would give something different and favoured that idea more. We allowed Tom and Ellie to compose the attack scene themselves, whilst offering second opinions for a movement or how we could stage a section of it. I think an important aspect of the piece is that we wanted to combine movement with more naturalistic pieces and have a very much mixed style of the scene that portrays the brutality of the attack, but shows it in not just a simple way of beating the living daylights of Tess. There were many ideas that we came up with but it was important to pick the best pieces to allow the piece to look as effective as possible and not immature, which is why we cut the rape aspect out of the scene. We simply did not have the facilities like strobes to stage such a scene. It was a very difficult topic and as we couldn't think of a way to stage the scene without making it look silly and immature. So we decided to get rid off it and move on, killing Tess instead of a rape and kill.

The next twenty minutes or so was spent on running through the argument scene again as we were to show it to the rest of the class as we needed to make sure we were comfortable with it. We set up lighting very briefly and performed it. At the end we recieved feedback on the lighting and discovered that the red wash concealed our faces so our facial expressions were not seen, so in future we will use a lighter wash to allow our faces to be seen.

The next day we worked extremely hard on the attack scene. Tom and Ellie focused very hard on the movements they could use where myself and Dan considered the lighting for the scene. We thought that we wanted a spotlight on Ellie (Tess) to keep the rest of the stage in the shadows as we wanted to have noises coming from offstage to add to the tension and to reveal Tom sitting in a chair as soon as he speaks to make him flash up quickly and add to the fright. We decided that a blue wash of LED's would look quite metallic and add to the cold look we were going whilst adding an extra layer of light to the scene. We set up red lights in the back corners and pointed one up the wall to give the whole corner a deep red colour to symbolise the danger of the gang and to foreshadow a violent death. We kept the main lights very dim throughout to aid the darkness of the scene, the lights only come up slightly for the actual attack as do the red lights as you can see below. 

We do have music to the scene, composed by our drummer who came up with a piece to play in the scene, of course this may change but I think it would be very effective as it is. We also looked at a piece of music to play over our argument scene called There's A Good Reason These Tables Are Numbered Honey by Panic! at the Disco. We think an instrumental version may work for the upbeat pace of the scene, but it will mean that we would have to re jig the scene to make it fit the music.

Devising: Day 9

We decided to move onto a completely new scene today as we felt that we needed to press on and get more scenes set. After some deliberation we decided that we were going to work on the scene in which the gang commits the rape against Tess, inspired from a Streetcar Named Desire. Now, this scene was always going to be difficult in the fact that we are dealing with a very sensitive subject and that we had to think of a way that we could portray the horror of such an ordeal in a sophisticated and artistic way.

We began trying to come up with a beginning to the scene. Finn has left the gang to go off and live with Tess, which is the gang leaders motive for attacking Tess. He feels cheated by her and sees her as the sole reason that Finn has decided to do the unthinkable, breaking the laws of Omerta and leaving the gang. We have decided that the gangs stronghold is an old abandoned warehouse to which Tess arrives at looking for Finn. However, he is not there.

We toyed with a few ideas for a good while, trying to think of the best way to set it. One of our group members was against actually being in the rape scene and, despite our best attempts of persuasion, had to cut him from the scene. This, meant that the rape changed to being committed by only the gang leader.

The build up will be one of the main features of this scene. We thought about what music we wanted to have but couldn't find anything from the time period, but luckily, another one of our group members is a drummer in a band. So we thought it would make sense to utilize such a skill and incorporate it into our performance. For example, the build up could be a slow rumble of the symbols, then a crash very quickly to build anxiety and tension and hopefully make the audience jump too. I think it would be very good to create our own sounds or music as we can tailor it to our pace and rhythm instead of having to fit a piece around a song ready made. It will also show that we have considered a range of ideas, whether to use existing music or make a piece up. This also gives us the opportunity to tailor changes in lighting to the music and as the music is live, it can adapt to the changes as we go. I think it would be a very good idea.

The main problem we came across was the actual setting of the rape scene, we struggled with trying to make it seem artistic and brutal at the same time, without it looking awkward or immature. We thought that we could have some strobes or blackouts to create a moving picture image, where on each light up there is a freeze frame of the rape. Another idea was that we could have a split stage, when the other gang members are playing cards whilst such a thing is happening. This would really portray the cruel nature of the gang and relevance to the time period in the way women were just thrown around as objects.

Our main focus is to try and make the rape as harsh and brutal as possible, but with a sense of flare and sophistication about it. We have a long way to go and a lot of work to do before it is finished, but have made a decent start. Lots more thought needs to go into the scene before we finish it. It will be hard, but as the subject is so sensitive we have to think very carefully about what we are doing and what the best way available to portray it is. I suggest, as this is one of the hardest scenes we will create, that we spend a good amount of time on this, if this scene is weak, it could ruin the good scenes we have already created and may put a bad tone on the whole performance should we fail to prepare it properly.

http://revolutionarts2016.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/work-in-progress-theo-ellie-dan-mck-dan.htm

Obviously, once we have added the drums to the scene it will sound and look a lot better. The rhythm will assist the effect of the lighting and create a very uncomfortable atmosphere.

Devised: Day 8

Today was the first day back after the Christmas holidays so, of course, things were a little rusty. One of our group members had researched a little about the role of women in the 1930's and discovered that our piece would be more realistic if Finn met Tess when she was working as a waitress, as single women would more than likely work in speakeasy's as eye candy for men, as well as cheap labour for owners. We also looked at the way the owner speaks to Tess, now it is a lot more harsh and realsitic for the time period. Before, Tess was actually in the bar and known by the owner, we thought this was a little inaccurate. Also, instead off Tess and Finn bumping into each other, they meet by Tess dropping a tray of glasses, to which Finn goes to help her, again making it seem more realistic and not some predictable, cringy meeting. One thing we also done was to give the author more control over the scene. For example, he may say, "How can i make this happen?" and actually interact with the scene, whilst we are frozen, to make it even more obvious that we are his characters and will follow his lead, but also because it is a nice delicate touch and shows that we have thought about the scene in detail.

We then went onto our argument scene again just to run over things and to make sure we knew what we were doing. Still the same issues of making the stage combat look realistic keep coming back. It is certainly something we need to practice on.