To develop the groups devising skills, we will be looking at various ways of creating a performance using different techniques and styles. The first way we looked at is 'The Plague' situation created by the famous practitioner 'Artaud'.
We started off the lesson in the office space, we were given a slip of paper with a quote and we then had to enter the space with a character that we decided would have said the quote.
My slip of paper read 'I won't let you fall as low as I have before.' This made me think that my character attempted to be optimistic towards other people, but had the gift of empathy, therefore when other people came into the room, I was able to react to their troubles by trying to offer support. Matt was the first one to enter, and he often started to fall to the ground, this meant that I would attempt to support him up. A lot of my group we very distant when I attempted to walk over to them, this meant that I would become more persistent to help them as I did not want them to feel alone.
Doing this activity made me think more spontaneously about reactions, as there was no story line and only character interactions, it gave me a chance to challenge different ways my character would respond. I attempted various ways such as becoming angry that they would not respond to my help, I just walked away, looked around until I found someone else who needed help. I knew that it was my job to keep everyone up.
The next part of the activity was to create an image using the set of frames Mr Chipp had left for us that also fit to the quotation. We had to create this image whilst in our characters, to do this I went over to the others offering my hand as a guide to show them it was safe. I decided to place myself in the center underneath the frame pushing up, by doing this I was 'not letting them fall.'
Mr Chipp then introduced the idea that our characters had an infection. The infection would start off as a small rash, as we itch it would bleed. Our internal organs would start to collapse and we then we start to die. We had five minutes to make this transition whilst in our characters. I decided that my character would still continue to look out for others and probably try to forget that I had even contracted the plague, this meant I underplayed my symptoms, instead of itching the rash, I would hold my arm harshly to show the rejection of the idea that I have the plague. We then had to die in the same positions we had created for ourselves in the frame.
We then had to redo the exercise backwards, by doing this it allowed you to analyse the transition differently, I noticed that the bleeding part of the exercise was hard to show, and I realized it would show more on the face. This also gave it challenge, as you had to tone down the fear and pain rather than build up and it was interesting to reverse the typical process.
We then advanced the exercise to being one person with the plague but we were unaware of who this person was. We had to figure it out. I noticed that Chris was scratching his hand but yet still trying to approach people. He then walked towards Matt who was in the corner and then grabbed his hands and put them around his neck so that Matt would kill him. This is because we were told that it was common knowledge that the disease would not be able to spread from a dead body with the infection, the result of this activity meant that people were pushed together to form relationships complex or simple. After Chris was killed I went to the body as I felt he shouldn't have been alone. We then all knew that Matt had this infection, so we were all weary. I then made it my cause to look after everyone. Emily then suspected that I was a carrier, she then ran at me, and because I was unaware of her thoughts it was unexpected and as a character and personally I was confused and scared as to why she was running up to me. In the moment my reaction was completely linked to Stanislavsky based 'what if?' as I had to truly think how i would move in that situation.
I can see how this sort of exercise can bring out idea's and space for creativity. It's interesting as everyone has their own back story just from a piece of paper. Not only did it create a unique atmosphere but everyone was reaching out of their comfort zones as we were only certain of ourselves. This was then used to help us create a 30 second speech that followed the story. Being able to produce this much drama within an hour helped us realize that even though we had a vague stimulus, we created our own story lines with the relationships and character developments that could be the basis of a unique drama piece. Although, there are limitations of using this method for devising such as not being accessible to all situations.
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