26|2|14 - Site Specific - 'Find Me' - Stairs

This scene was for myself, as the second stage of Verity's mental decline. To continue the theme of Verity breaking rules, we decided that the idea of her putting up paintings on the wall that gradually become more eerie would be a good way to look into aspects of Verity's life outside of the hospital that may have affected her. 

I decided that I would go through my half of the script and find lines that were actually used in scenes, and instead paint those scenes and say those lines. The images would progressive get worse bringing up bad memories that 'haunt' Verity. the progression of lines were: 

'I wish I bought my party dress, I love dressing up. I just want to look pretty' 
-this relates to how Verity is an ordinary girl and still has these ideal wants in her life while she is stuck in a hospital nightie. 

'Has the enfant got her napkin on her lap? because that is the polite thing to do! oh good bon bon!' 
-this talks of her time in france with her family, she misses the memory of being able to go to places with her family. 

'Regardes regardes everybody, mums drunk! look everyone! mums drunk!' 
-Using the french shows way the france memory might not be so happy. It also helps to develop the memories Verity has of her family and her mother being an alocholic is not a good sign. 

'Dad! I'm here! Did you miss me?! Dad I'm here did you miss me?!' 
- showing that she feels distant and ignored by her father, the relationship is no longer close and she wishes for it to be closer. 

'You go first, you have to catch me but ahha you can't catch me' 
-this idea of a childrens game is given a new meaning when it becomes the thought of them chasing Verity to be put inside the hospital. To her, she feels as if everyone is chasing her away, to her is feels like no one is trying to catch her. 

'I don't want to go'
- we decided this could mean the parents discussing her being put into the hospital, and Verity not wanting to go. We decided this should be said sincerely, to make the audience sympathise with her and not see her as just a stroppy child. 

'The fire! the beautiful fire! they're going to drown me! they're going to kill me! the bastards are going to drown me!' 
-This will have an image of the chair - the final straw before Verity was admitted to the hospital. At this point we will have the doctors dragging Verity off, to use the Site, I will reach my arms through the bars to show them struggling to contain Verity. 

We also thought about Alex being sat as her doctor, accepting Verity doing wrong with sticking paintings to the walls, asking her questions. Showing their desperation to alter Verity's behaviour in comparison to the last scene. 

Here is the scene in it's first 'draft': 

Development:

With Alex there, we found there the question idea worked, this also meant I was able to work a lot more on my expressions and how I feel towards the answers of the questions and the doctor himself. I felt this created a more eerie feel to the scene as I never answer any of his questions, only progressively become more mentally unstable. 

I decided to work on a variety of tones in order to create a more interesting performance as the movement is limited. I also developed this because I didn't want it to be to static, this meant I worked on using the bannister and the wall in a to and fro creating a zig zag movement up the stairs, which without being too distracting is more interesting to watch. 

We also decided that after I am taken away, the audience will be lead the same way I went. We thought that it would be interesting if we did a 'flashback' moment where we see the younger Verity draw a picture and place it on the wall as a sort of reverse foreshadowing to show that these aspects of Verity's behaviour are a regular occurrence. 

This is the video after the second week: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vM1F7RMJBIs

and a vlog including the whole of my cast discussing these scenes.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9HK3EA7UQA

19|2|14 - Site Specific - 'Find Me' - Village

We decided that as a cast we would have three Verity's, this would mean that in each cast: 

Cast One: Kelly and Chris guide 

Emily: Verity One (first admitted, slight behavourial difficulties) 

Poppy: Verity Two (tantrums more common, behaviour uncontrollable) 

Alex: Doctor One (focused on the look of the hospital rather than the patients themselves) 

Matt: Doctor Two (kind towards the patients with a hint of sexual luring) 

Cast Two: Alex and Matt guide

Abbie: Verity Three (lost control, suicidal) 

Chris: Father and Doctor

Kelly: Mother and Doctor

Mia: Nurse

Richard: Doctor

Using the script, we saw a part that we liked where Verity isolated herself by creating her own world around her. In doing this, we wanted her to have toys surrounding her. We decided to use the space outside the music department as it was wide open, it was also at a junction just near the entrance meaning it would be a good place to start the performance. 

We wanted to show Verity as a younger child, and by using the toys it was reflected. When the doctors enter, we see how this attempting of controlling Verity is unsuccessful. We wanted to develop two types of doctors that would show the failure of the hospitals job on the patients. This is why Matt's approach, seeming like the correct approach, of kindness, it later undermined in the second casts when Verity says a doctor raped her. Alex's approach is harsh, and it is clear that this abrupt and harsh nature will only spur Verity on rather than allow her to calm down. We decided to use the space further and unnerve the audience by having her run through them to use the Site further so she can run up the stairs that are situated behind them. This leaves the doctors on the 'set' to dispute their methods. This also gives a chance for us to break the wall, as we decided to have Chris cough (one of the guides) to stop the argument, as if the hospital puts on a front for the visitors. 

Here is a vlog done with Matt and Emily on blocking this scene and the stairs scene.

Vlog Village&Stairs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VggwVQJ9Kww 

Development: 
We decided that as the audience walk down the first part of the corridor before they turn onto Verity, that all they should see is a lego house that is perfect. This house will be the 'perfect' of ideal house, but it won't have any windows or doors, representing Verity's inability to escape. 

We worked on ideas of Verity's tone, and when she would be angry, and trying to show anger though different tones. A slow and steady tone that happens when Verity is grabbing the doctors arm holds a lot of power as it shows she's holding back more anger. 

We were able to develop the use of violence and the language between the doctors and Alex had returned for this lesson, in this the clarity of their being a 'head' doctor, and that doctor we decide to portray as the more unfriendly one, we are more understanding of how Verity may not be contained easily if it is not handled by the right person. 

We also decided that having the entire floor covered with toys would be a lot more interesting, especially linking to the line 'you've nearly filled the whole floor'. This shows that there is limitations in Verity's life that she enjoys breaking, is ignorant to the rules or needs of those around her and this can either make the audience dislike her, or take pity as she shouldn't have been taken to such extremes as being placed in a mental facility. 

Here is the Village scene after the two weeks of working on it: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUu9lyt3Wro&feature=youtube_gdata_player

12|2|14 - Site Specific - 'Find Me' - Introduction

Today we decided that we would be using the script 'Find Me' as a stimulus for our site specific piece. We were all excited and positive about this as we felt out of all the workshops we did, the Find Me task was the most successful and engaging piece. We were split into two casts, myself working with Alex, Matt and Emily and the second cast consisting of Abbie, Kelly, Chris, Mia and Richard. Sir gave my cast the first half of the scrip and the second half the last half. As our separate casts we read our parts of the script then as we were using our school location as our site, went to find places we thought could work to give the feeling of a mental institution. 

The story within 'Find Me' follows the story of the girl Verity Taylor who was admitted to Broadmoor hospital after reoccurring acts or tantrums that became uncontrollable. To fit this into the play, we decided that the first half (my half) would create the background stories that progressive lead up to the second cast, which show reasons and answers to Verity's behaviour and the consequential effects that has on the ending of Verity's life. 

Character Workshop:

Group: Verity's cause for being institutionalised was breaking and setting fire to a chair. The first activity we did was to create 4 freeze frames, for my group it was the idea of what happened before she was placed in the institution. We started by having Verity ignored at the dining table, then moving into her brother and father dragging her on the floor, this then moved into the mother showing desperation into wanting her to be helped, or to become 'normal' and the fourth was the mother being pushed out and verity's head being pushed into a bath. 

We then joined with the other group who worked on what happened to Verity in her time in the institution which consisted of her being raped by a doctor. We were asked to merge the two images, by this we brought in the idea of 'duality' through this we had two Verity's - Abbie and Emily. We made it so that everyone else was a doctor, and through this we could adapt the mother to being a doctor that actually wanted to help and support, but there were restrictions to this. We liked this idea of physical theatre were Verity had no control over the constant analytical pressure she was under and how this might of effected her suicidal ending. 

Individual: Mr Chipp asked us all to lay down and think of a time when you lost control, he then asked us a series of questions that made us develop why we lost control and if we right in that. He then put a chair in the centre of the space, he told us to one at a time come and sit in the chair, from this, he would then ask us a series of questions. The questions had a strong connection to Verity's home life, and in the way they would have dealt with the issue of the broken chair. There was an apprehensive nature to sit on the chair within the group perhaps because we were unaware of how the activity would play out. Sirs tone of questioning changed with each person, focusing on a different aspect, and it was through this that were able to see a variety of ways that doctors or family may have handled the situation. As we all had the emotions within us, when Mr Chipp was asking Matt the questions we all became emotional and they made us feel the guilt and the unknowing nature of the lack of control. From this we felt the three main points were medication, entrapment and blame.  

The idea of medication felt like a way of placing help that should maybe have come from family members with verbal support was being subsidised for drugs that only temporarily become the solution and can be done forcefully. The idea of locking the patients with mental health in an institution raised the point that being removed from society hindered them from making progression to achieving a 'normal' lifestyle, and through this their mental health might actually deteriorate due to the confined space and lack of emotion connections that would be able to make within the hospital. 

Through this we saw entrapment, this idea of being imprisoned physically, mentally and emotionally. By linking to our emotions we felt that loosing control was breaking free from this feeling of being trapped, linking to why Verity might have broke the chair. It is through this we saw the possibility of negative affects the restraining nature of the hospital might have on her as being trapped may only cause her to feel more enclosed resulting in more moments where she feels she must loose control and consequently cause damage. This is because she feels mental imprisonment and her inability to get better whilst in the hospital. Using the hospital itself is a physical place where she cannot escape, and we wanted to reflect this nature in our piece, which felt right when the architecture of our school was actually similar to those of prisons.  

Blame is also a running theme, the parents act as if Verity is the only one to blame which is why they remove responibility completely by putting her into Broadmoor. Verity often finds any opportunity to place the blame onto other people but what we find interesting if there was an aspect of her that knew she was partly to blame. 

Site Exploration:

While walking around the school we identified various amounts of places that we thought were interest, we knew we wanted to use a staircase but we didn't know which would be best, after moving around the school we realised that staircase 2 would be best as it is the most enclosed and dark staircase from where it is situated, as it is near to the entrance of the school building meaning it wouldn't be a far walk for the audience. We liked the space outside of the music department as it had a 'crossroad' feel, applying to the start of Verity's time and the number of directions in which her mental health could've gone. We decided to then use the main staircase in order to transition with the next cast as it allowed the next cast to get there as well as being an accessible point to go to the next place within school. It became apparent that we now had places that we had a clear connection with, it was now the characters within the story that needed development. For this we did workshop. 

4|2|14 - Directing - Final Performance

We brought the cast in for a couple of full run throughs, even though one of our members Sam could not attend them. We went through make sure everyone's lines were slick and ready for the final performance. 

Here is a link to the final performance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcqdRL4lahg 

And here is a Over-vlog of the final performance: 

29|1|14 - Site Specific - Inspired Corridor - Research

At the start of this lesson we were shown a video of a site specific piece of drama done on a single corridor, it showed many places of office work, transporting you to different various locations but the camera angle was fixed. We were given the task to use the voids, and we must use all 3 layers, and the camera had to stay in the same place and could only tilt. This helped us work on our ability to place an audience in order for them to see everything which meant we knew where we could direct our acting. 

We decided that we needed to create a reason for the three different layers, we thought of progression and deterioration. Through this the idea we all felt interested was the decline in mental health. As the camera would tilt down through the voids, we'd see the mental deterioration of the patient as if they'd been admitted from a hospital. 

We had to be aware of the space in which the camera would view, this meant Matt would look at tell us while doing a mock run of our decided parts. This was vital in being able to understand the audiences point of view and the fluidity of the actions. This is the full video: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64woxrC2x28

Reasearch: 

From doing this, I knew that looking into other site specific theatre company's, I'd be able to have a wider knowledge of what happens and if there are reasons for the theatre and the effects. 

'Red Earth'

One company mentioned was 'Red Earth', this company uses large and vast landscapes to inspire their performances. They work throughout the world in places such as Japan, Europe and Mongolia exploring the world live in and altering our views and perception on topics such as climate change and the complex relationship we have with nature. The pieces are a variety of interactive and non interactive. 

What I find interesting about this company is the effectiveness and the incredible nature of the piece, as when we did a small workshop using the outside ourselves, we found the factors very tricky, and these as a company are successful in creating effective pieces of drama. The nature of their pieces often seem exaggerated but in comparison to their stage being so large, their movements hold a lot more power in this way as they carry more meaning. 

'RCINY' 

The Romanian Cultural Institute in New York created a site specific piece called 'The Window' 

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzUv4EedXWU 

I was really intereged by the idea of how it was presented to passer byers, and they were allowed to chose the amount of time they watched the performance that actual ran every 20 minutes between 7.30pm to 10.00pm. This broke the traditional theatregoer tradition as it was their personal choice. 

The idea that there is a physical fourth wall, and from the video presented, we can see that the actors are actually speaking, making it all the more interesting as the audience cannot hear - allowing them to make up their own stories. 

I like that business and unpredictable nature of this piece and think it can say something about society and what we perceive to be happening with just what we see. 

Health and Safety 

From this research were told to think more about Health and Safety aspects of a performance. 

This involves actions such as stunts or large movements, making sure we are on a stable support and that there was no harm of injury. 

The idea of lighting, thinking of the outside condiitions and where the effects of the lighting would actually be necessary as we need to think of the audience and how they will be transported. 

The buildings or sites outstanding rules such as fire exits being blocked or other activies or jobs that may be occurring else where in/on the site. 

22|1|14 - Site Specific - Trees

We decided after last week, we needed to create more development of visuals of the script and story in order to create a more in depth piece of theatre that manipulated the surroundings. So for this, we studied '                  ' a piece of Greek Theatre. We did workshops such as freeze framing 3 points within the first part of the story, developing our understanding of character relationships and effectors. 

We were then lead to our site, which used a part of the tree and land section in our school's playground. He gave us a coil of string which we then had to use somehow. By looking at the site we were told to consider the audience and what we'd want them to see. We took pictures of our section of trees and moved back to the drama space. We used chairs to represent trunks of the trees. 

Our group used to the string in order to bind people to the trees and show the spirally downfall and effects that this one event caused. Our ability to use the setting was a struggle at first as we found finding a connection between the story and the surroundings hard to make, so instead we had to focus on the visual impact we could make with story. What we tried to focus on was that the trees were really trees, we did this by making Richard run through the forest, as scripted, as if hiding or getting away from something, the physical interpretation came in to Me Chris and Kelly who were able to play the characters he affected. Every time he passed a trunk, he was holding the ball of string and he could then unravel this as he met characters, there we could do a tiny piece of physical theatre showing the small story they have together, and how they would then get wrapped up into that string. 

By doing this we were able to incorporate the surroundings with our performance and by engaging the fluently we could give a short physical synopsis of the character and his effect on other people. 

As this site specific piece would be held outdoors there are many factors that we would have to consider in order to pull of a strong performance. 

There would be wind that could obstruct volume and effect the movement of props. 

There is also the unpredictable nature of the weather, that could effect the audience, the surroundings and difficulty to move. 

Health and Safety, if the weather effects natural lands and grassy hillsides, slipping may become an issues for both cast members and audience. 

This is where we were told about the legal sides of Site Specific Theatre, and the considerations into Health & Safety that would be necessary. 

15|1|14 - Site Specific - Find Me

We were given sections of the 'Find Me' script and then split into 2 groups to work on the section of script. My group consisted of myself, Chris, Abbie and Emily. For this we had to find a site that we thought we could manipulate for our script. The characters in our script were the Interviewer, the Dad, the Mum, and Verity herself.  We adapted the script to give a feeling of suppressing Verity's thoughts and reasons. The Mother was also very protective of the family reputation, this was also shown in the Dad. We did this by making it so we would finish each others sentences, as if we were changing the end of the sentence in order to hide wrong doings that were happening behind closed doors. 

We decided to start spotted around the staircase, we chose the staircase because the clear links to development and progression. It has links to where people stand and that the higher they stand the more knowledge they have. This is why we decided to have the interviewer start at the bottom and then throughout the piece, as they discovered more about how Verity was handled, she moved up the staircase, this then mean that the mother and father moved further down, as their power standing and how they were viewed meant they moved down the stairs. Verity remained on the centre piece that combined the two parts of the staircase. She attempted to move up to be with her mum, but her father dragged her back down with her violence. The only way she successfully moved up was when the interviewer took her away from her parents to move up whilst the parents moved down.

Because we weren't inspired by the site to use 'Find Me' we found it hard to create a scene that could fully manipulate the surroundings. But what we did find was after watching each others short performances is that the school contained a very institutionalised feel. We discussed other ideas of how we could possibly stage this piece, with mention of a promenade theatre style, where the audiences would be lead round the school. We felt that we all needed to develop our ability to use the surrounding to comply to a piece of theatre in an perceptive and innovative way.