This week we all worked on blacking out the drama studio in preparation for our newest drama piece. Then me and Emma worked on getting the sounds sorted for my nightmare (the flying lesson one) We worked on getting the dialogue sorted and recorded with all the right vocabulary and so on. 
Whilst we were getting on with this, Chloe and Meera worked on getting the cardboard plane made, here is their semi-finished plane: 

Here you can begin to see the plane parts being made. The idea behind this is that we would construct the plane around the audience to have them feel as though they are closed into the space and really part of the dream/nightmare. 

This week we also managed to get the spotlight set up and working properly. We performed our Frantic Assembly style piece with the spotlight (check Chloe's blog for the video)
We also used the strobe lights which helped to create a very flashy fragmented look to the piece. 

Fridays lesson I began working on setting up the theatre lanterns with Mr. Jones from ICT. 
These probably won't be used in our current piece because of the size and the wiring that goes into putting these lights up. I would however like to use these lights in another performance some other time as I think they could bring a good design element into our pieces. 

Tuesday 8th December 2014

In this double lesson, Harry and I recorded some sounds and voice recordings for manly Harrys piece. This, as technical stuff usually does, took around 25mins to just get the microphone to work properly! Everything took a lot longer than I thought. I then went to mix all the recordings together but the files were not working with the program. I decided to try at home, and again- nothings working, I am looking for different sound mixing website e.g audacity and mixxx but nothing is working together for example our school laptops are Microsoft (windows 8) and I have a mac at home so the two softwares don't compute with each other. This is extremely frustrating and Im getting pretty nervous as we are doing a full rehearsal soon and I just can't get it too work.      

Chloe and Meera created the 3D plane for Harrys piece:


We also started blacking out the room.

Thursday 11th December 2014:

This hour we spent figuring out the lights, how they worked and what they could do. We then incorporated these different settings into which piece it would fit with most, we tried out our Frantic piece with a blue background:


I would have liked it better if it wasn't a circle but these are the only lights we have available. The strobe lights worked much better with this piece as it looked very fragmented and broken, much like nightmares are like.

Friday 12th December 2014:

Meera brought in her face paint and we tried out things like scratches, bullet wounds (?chloe?) and blood stains that we are going to paint on our audience faces:




9th December 2014
Today me and Meera worked on the set design (creating a plane) while Harry and Emma worked on the sound.
Me and Meera decided to create a plane out of cardboard and to give it a 3D effect so it will surround the audience and make them feel enclosed when they're sitting on the floor and the actors assemble the plane during the performance.
Creating the plane was tricky as the cardboard was hard to shape and stay upright. However, we decided that it didn't have to be perfect as the whole idea of Artauds performances were to reveal what wasn't perfect.




This photo shows the plane when we'd just began making it. The audience will be placed in the middle.







11th December 2014
Today we worked with the lighting and colours. We decided for our Frantic piece we should have blue lighting to symbolise the water that the plane falls into. By having the lighting as a circle it allows us only to appear in the light at certain moments. This could symbolise the flashes that people would see as the plane is crashing. Below is a video demonstrating what we did.



We also set roles for eachother when on the train;

Me; Business Woman
Meera; Stay At Home Mum
Emma; 
Harry; Chav

I have also ordered some masks offline for our performance. 









In our double lesson me and Chloe used the time to create a plane made out of cardboard for Harry's nightmare while Emma and Harry worked on getting the sound recorded. We had already decided that we wanted the plane to be something that enclosed the audience to make them feel slightly claustrophobic, it also needed to be easy to move around. We started by using big pieces of cardboard to create wings and a tail. However the cardboard was hard to use as it was too heavy and didn't do the things we wanted it to. In the end we managed to make it work. We also decided to change the wings from being 2D to being 3D as we felt that it would be more enclosed that way. In the end we decided that it didn't need to be perfect as the idea of it not being perfect fitted more with Artauds style.

On Thursday we all worked on lighting and blacking out the windows so that the room would be darker. We played around with coloured lighting and talked about making certain parts in the piece different colours to create different atmospheres, eg. Having the red light flash on and off when the plane is going down in Harry's nightmare and having a blue light in Chloe's change to red to reflect the change in atmosphere. We also ran through out Frantic assembly with the blue light on, however in the real piece I think we're using strobe lights.

On Friday we continued blacking out the hall and working on our separate jobs. I brought in some face paint to practice doing the face paint in Chloe's dream. It was harder than I expected, however with some practice I think It will be okay. It was good to actually try it out in person.
This week we started by some of the group leading a drama warm up exercise, the ones we did were: 

  1. Messages (very relaxing) 
  2. Emma's really tiring dance thing ("hip, shoulder, air, clap, shoulder, hip, thigh, clap") having to do this on the spot as well as jumping back and forth. 
  3. Pushing back to back with out partner, then going up and down so both of us sat on the floor and then back up again. 
After finishing the warm up games, we moved on to developing the final "scene" in our drama piece. 
This part was based off of Chloe's nightmare which was being around a swimming pool for part of it.
We used this idea of a swimming pool and used a large round blue sheet to act as our pool. One of the four of us would sit each side of this. We then decided that we should bring the audience members around the pool sitting with us. 

We decided to have four stages to talking to the audience, which would alternate. The four stages were: 
  • General Chit Chat 
  • Anger 
  • A Confession 
  • Seducing 
We were put in pairs to just try and improvise these mini scenes on the spot. I found the general chit chat ok but at times I was running out of ideas to say or I would keep repeating myself. I also found I was trying to listen to what the other people were saying and almost trying to copy them. 

At first when doing the anger scene, I was quite timid. I did not want to really make much noise and so wasn't really coming across as very angry. Then when Mr. Fearenehough said it was ok to shout I decided to shout. I feel this came across much better as being angry (sorry Emma) and i feel i may have slightly scared my partner. 

Mr. Fearnehough said when we were doing our confessions, it would be easier if we included a little bit of truth in them and just blow them out of proportion almost. I used the truth of keeping change when a store gives you too much back, I then escalated that into me stealing about 100 euros a week from different shops around Toulouse. 

Seduction .... This was probably the hardest one to do. The hardest thing I found in this was knowing what was too far. For this mini scene I worked with Chloe which at times made it seem slightly awkward. One of the main issues we all faced with this was trying not to laugh, it was hard to try and stay focused when we were doing this scene. 

Now the whole pool thing in the middle begins to get a bit weird. We decided that to create the musky smell that Chloe wanted in her dream, we could wrap the audience in the "pool" (with them all lying down). This is what it would look like (this was with all 4 of us inside): 
I have chosen the role of sound design in my group and over this past week I have been putting sounds together.
http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/video/designing-sound-for-theatre
this

Meeras Dark Corridor  

  • The first record sound we hear the doors opening and closing- symbolising life choices and opportunities in front of you but you can't see them or reach out and take these opportunities.
  •  The next sound is dripping, it echos around the room making the audience unsure of their surroundings and it also sounds really creepy, they dont know whats dripping.
  •  I also have a heartbeat sound mixed with heavy breathing, i want to create something like this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWKFovmuoQs   i like the dripping and the voices in different languages. 

Harrys Plane Crash:


  • I wanted the crash to sound so loud it almost sounds of nothing.
  • A lot of this one is also live sound.
  • We also have the sound of a radio that Harry will then talk over to sound like he is talking to the tower  

Mine:


Chloes By the Pool:

I have a couple songs that sound very fun and pop-y. Because this one starts off as naturalistic.


We started the lesson by doing some warm ups that were taught by other people in our class. We started by the massage warm up which we had done previously. We also did:

  • Pushing backwards together and moving up and down without falling (I taught this) - I thought this warm up game made me focus and also acted as a trust exercise. 
  • "hip, shoulder, air, clap, shoulder, hip, thigh, clap" game, we had to jump up and down while doing these actions. It was really complicated and definitely needed a lot of focus.
We then went on to develop the final nightmare (Chloe's nightmare), we settled on the idea of having everyone take an audience member and sit around the pool separately with their audience member. We then decided that to involve the audience member we would talk to them, but not expect a reply, we came up with 4 different types of conversation and spent the rest of the lesson practising them. They were: 

  1. General conversation 
  2. Anger 
  3. Seduction 
  4. Confession (I suggested this) 
I found doing the Anger and seduction ones the hardest as I just couldn't think of anything to say, I also found it hard to not get distracted by the others who were talking. I found this much easier to do when there was no one in front of me, although I will probably have to work on this because in the real performance there will be someone there. I found the easiest to do was the babbling on general conversation because it didn't involve any thought and I could just say anything and it would be fine.  

 At the very end of the lesson we decided to make the audience members into the corpses by using makeup and maybe costume. We also decided to lie them down on the blue sheet and wrap them up in it, this also created the musky smell as the blue sheet smelt musky. By including the musky smell we are also working on our piece as being total theatre.    

 On Thursday and Friday we took the time to work on our separate elements of the piece, mine is costume and make-up. I started looking up ideas for the corpses makeup in chloes scene. Some ideas I came up with were: 




Obviously we would only focus on the actual wound areas and not anything else. We would also need to make them slightly more simple, but I like the fact that they are all slightly different. For costume I decided that I wanted a clear difference between being in the train (naturalistic) and being in the dream. I decided to have 4 clear different characters on the train. These were: 

  • The schoolgirl/boy listening to music - headphones  and phone/ipod 
  • The housewife - lots of shopping bags 
  • The businessman - briefcase and tie
  • Sports person - sweatband and tennis racket
I wanted to have costumes that were easily changeable, but really fitted with each separate character. After discussing this with the group we also decided that when moving from the train to the dream we would give the costume/props to the audience, this would enforce the idea of specactor and give them the idea that these nightmares could happen to anybody. 

 For the actual dreams I wanted to keep the costume plain and simple. White T-shirts and black leggings/trousers. This would also fit really well with the idea that in a nightmare you usually don't know who you are with or that no one is actually real. Wearing white also means that it's possible to have projections on us.    
We started todays sessions with three warm ups;
  1. Massages
  2. Pushing back to back with a partner and trying to sit down then stand back up without touching the floor
  3. "hip, shoulder, air, clap, shoulder, hip, thigh, clap" in which you had to do this sequence jumping on the spot, jumping side to side, and jumping back and forth.
These activities were led by people in the group which allowed us to practice our teaching/presenting skills.

We then went on to develop my/the final nightmare. 
We decided that we should each take an audience member and sit them down around the pool and then directly speak at them. We played around with the talking by doing it in four different ways;
  1. Blabbering on
  2. Trying to seduce
  3. Anger
  4. Confession
At first I found blabbering on the hardest as I wasn't very good at improvising while there were many other people speaking at the same time as I found myself listening to what they were saying.
However when we went on to practice seduction I found this very awkward as I didn't know to what extent was too much. I may have found it a bit awkward as I was actually carrying out this part with Harry whereas the other pair was two girls. I found that everyone was laughing a lot while doing this as we all found it awkward. 
Mr Fearnehough told us that for the confessions its easier to add an element of truth into the confession, however exaggerate it. For example someone may have stolen a pen they found on a school desk once, but they exaggerate by saying that this lead to bigger thefts and they couldn't stop as it was almost an addiction.
I found the anger one the most easiest... I don't know why but it may be because its easy to express that you're angry by facial expressions, hand gestures, shouting, swearing and long pauses. Long pauses are very effective as when we do this to an audience member it will leave them confused and on edge, trying to figure out what they "supposedly did". 

We then decided that to make our performance total theatre we should include smells. In my nightmare there was a musky smell. We left the smell idea to one side and discussed how we are going to disfigure the audience members face by using makeup and then lay them down in a row on the sheet we used for the pool and then wrap them up. This will give a sense that they have died and are now part of a burial. We found that that sheet had a musty smell so this is definitely what we'll do.

At home I did some further research into masks.
For this scene, when we're burying the audience, I think we should use red doctors masks to represent the paramedics and to clearly portray illness and death.

I also found ideas for masks we could use in Meeras nightmare as she expressed how she didn't know who or what was chasing her. The use of these masks robs the actor of their identity and also leaves the audience thinking what they're representing- a human? a spirit? an object? etc.




I prefer the last mask as it doesn't contain a nose or mouth hole so it doesn't represent a human face. The fact it has no mouth hole will also create a muffled sound when we speak. This highly links to Artaud. The design around the eye draws attention to the eye which will make the audience feel like they're being constantly watched and will make them feel uncomfortable when the actors give direct eye contact to the audience.

This week we started to develop our Artaud piece. We started by using nightmares that we had each experienced and then transferring them into a piece of theatre. 

 The four nightmares we had were: 

  1. Emma's - She is in a plane with her family when the plane drops and all the windows freeze and the plane crashes into the sea, then she swims to an island where her mother can't remember who she is. 
  2. Meera's - she is in a long narrow corridor with an endless amount of doors, she senses there is someone chasing her but is not quite sure who it is and then she falls down a black hole and then wakes up. 
  3. Chloe's - she is with her friends watching a football match then ends up near a swimming pool where everything goes black and then she only sees the colour red of ambulances and paramedics. Then it goes silent and bodies are carted out of a house. 
  4. Mine - Having a flying lesson at night, you can see the lights of the city. Suddenly the plane fails and all the city lights go out, then you see flashes of light and the ground gets ever closer. Then wake up. 
Below are our ideas and initial brainstorms for our piece: 





Surrealism: 
We were each given a piece of surrealist artwork and told to depict what we thought it meant, the term used was "initial brain farts". This means just write anything that comes into your mind when you see this image. 

This is the image that i was given, my initial thoughts were: 
  • Imbalance 
  • Stress
  • Socialized Self 
  • No emotions 
  • Family life being overpowering 
  • Fantasies 
  • Things becoming to too much to handle 
  • Things piling up on top of you 
  • Above Reality 
  • City life 
  • Misery 
  • Raising a child 
In class we decided that this image was designed to represent the struggles associated with city life. And how raising a child can almost be too much to handle. 


ACID TEST: 

Apologies for this image being the wrong way round (you will have to thank apple for that).





1st lesson:
In our first lesson last week we were given the simple task of maintaining eye contact with one other person from the group, without fidgeting or doing anything. Although the task was simple enough, I did actually find it quite hard. I found it much easier to do it with some people than with others. I think I found it hard because it was just so unusual and slightly awkward.

We then built on this idea and were told that we had to run around the room while maintaining eye contact with the other person. I found this much easier than the first task. I think this was because we were moving around and I had something else to concentrate on and not just starting into the other persons eyes. The game was meant to show that sometimes doing nothing on stage is good. It also showed me how uncomfortable constant eye contact was, this could fit into our Artaud style piece really well.

For the last task one pair was told to maintain eye contact while the other pair had to try and split them up. I found it very hard to split up the pair and wasn't very creative, now looking back on it I probably could have been more creative with my ideas for splitting them up. I found the staring at each other much easier than the splitting up.

In the second half of the lesson we worked on our third nightmare which was Emmas. We decided to do this nightmare in a Frantic Assembly style. We picked out the key words in the piece and started working on them in pairs. We started by doing the squeeze exercise and then adding in lifts. I contributed the idea of putting in the twist lift to match with the word 'flying'. I also contributed the idea of breaking apart from each other at the end. We fitted our pieces to music, which went really well with our idea and then decided to add words. The words were "mum and brother" as they went with the main theme of the nightmare. At the end we all say "who are you" to the audience with eye contact. The idea is to make them feel uncomfortable, just as we had when we did the eye contact game, We also introduced the idea of making the piece faster as the music got faster.

Lesson 2:
In this lesson we reflected on the piece so far. We also talked through how a real exam piece would be marked and thought about it in terms of our piece now. We were given the task of privately creating a pie chart to show of how much each person in the group we thought had done, including ourselves. This made me feel slightly awkward. After completing our diagram we talked about ways we could make each persons contributions equal. We decided to give out different roles to everyone in the group, so everyone was in charge of separate things.
Emma: Sound
Harry: Lighting/Projection
Me: Costume
Chloe: Puppetry

These jobs tied in with the notes we had made when planning our piece, and we went back to them to get ideas.






On Friday outside of our usual lesson we had a chance to teach the year 10's some of the thins we learnt when working with Frantic assembly. I actually really enjoyed doing this however I did find it hard to explain some of the movements. 


In our lesson on Friday we spent a long time talking about how we could use our separate elements to improve our current piece. Some things that come out of this were: 
  • Masks in the first nightmare (Chloe) - show that we have no specific identity, makes it stranger/scarier for the audience. More contrast between on the train and in the nightmare. Full masks make sound come out muffled which is perfect for the nightmare.  
  • Costume ideas (me) - Use of normal clothing when on the train, but changes when in the nightmare. White clothes in the first nightmare to show that we aren't individuals, no specific identity. Can have things projected on it. 
  • Lights - Flickering on and off when going into the nightmare. Having the nightmares slightly dimmer than the scenes on the train. Changes in lighting intensity, depending on what is happening on stage.  
  • Use of strobe lights in the frantic assembly bit, not so repetitive. 
After sharing ideas we worked on the final nightmare, Chloe's. We decided to use a large blue round sheet for the pool and have the audience sitting around it. We would then give the audience sunglasses, straw hats and sun cream to set the scene. I had the idea of shining a light onto the blue sheet to create the effect of shimmery water, this could change during the nightmare as things get more creepy. I would say change the colour to a red light but I don't know how that would work. I also had the idea of introducing some kind of red into the pool as the dead bodies start coming out but I don't know how that would work either. There were also Ideas of having movement under the sheet. 



25/11/14

Today we started the lesson with an activity based on eye contact. It was fairly straightforward, all you had to do was look at someone else straight in the eyes with your face and body in neutral. However we found this quite hard as we felt awkward, threatened, vulnerable, etc. 
This activity shows how actors feel more confident on stage when they are moving about doing something and they feel less comfortable when they have to stand still. As an actor we feel powerful when moving about and less powerful when not doing anything.

We developed the idea of the importance of eye contact with a game where two people had to keep eye contact at all times and another person would have to break the eye contact. At the start we didn't show perseverance with a tactic and we would hesitate to try our best to achieve our mission however by the end of the activity we were very physical and were determined to achieve our objective in the game. This taught us how we have to put our all into drama.

We then went on to develop out Artaud based piece. This time we were working on Emmas nightmare. We decided to split into pairs and create a piece based on what we learnt from Frantic Assembly on the TAPS trip to London. We used lifts, rolls and jumps. This piece is very different from the other nightmare based pieces we created as this one is very physical theatre, however we do incorporate aspects of immersive theatre in by breaking the 4th wall and creating strong eye contact with members of the audience to make them feel uncomfortable and vulnerable.

 26/11//14

 Today we decided to have a very reflective lesson on all the work we did so far. We each had to privately make a pie chart which contained who had contributed the most/least in the group. I felt very mean while doing this as when you're growing up you're told not to undermine peoples abilities and what they do. I also felt very awkward in case someone looked over and saw what I'd given them. 
We then decided that we should all have equal roles in the group. We decided to split roles to help develop our piece.

  • Me; Puppets, Masks and Props
  • Emma; Sound
  • Harry; Projections
  • Meera; Costume 
By doing this it will also allow us to practice for our directors notebook that we will have to create in Year 2. 
I now have the task of exploring how Artaud uses masks, props and puppetry. 




the photos above are what we initially brainstormed but can help people achieve their different roles.

 28/11/13

Today we helped teach a year 10 class about lifts we learnt from Frantic Assembly.






















I found this quite challenging as some people would understand the lifts better than others and trying to teach lifts that could end in injury (example; me and harry) was risky.
However it was a fun experience teaching the year 10s and they seemed to enjoy it.

 In class we spoke more about how we could develop out pieces.
I contributed;

  • We could put paper over the windows to create blackout then give each audience member a torch. When it was the train scene we would have the lights on and when it was the nightmare scene the lights would turn off and the audience would have to put on their torches.
  • We could each wear a mask in the first nightmare (meeras nightmare). The mask should be long and cover our mouths so our speech sounds muffled. I have asked some students from art to help me create these masks and we are currently in the process.
We then went on to work on the final nightmare (my nightmare). We decided that we should have a blue sheet in the middle representing a pool and we should sit the audience members around the pool.
  • I contributed that we should sit next to the audience members and speak directly to them. 
  • I also contributed that we could have puppets on a trolley with distorted faces and later on in the nightmare we surround the audience members with these trolleys.
We are then going to apply suncream and sunglasses/hats on them. 
Next lesson we are going to develop the nightmare further.

In the lesson I made a prop list that we need for all 4 nightmares;
  • X4 suncream
  • X4 sunglasses
  • X4 hats
  • Lilo
  • Beach Ball
  • torches X4
  • water pistols X8
  • Masks X4
  • towels
  • flip flops
  • pool sheet
  • puppets
  • sugar paper
  • whistles
If people could look at this list and bring in any of the props they have that would be appreciated:-)
What a week! We finished off the week before by creating Acid Tests, where you record your scorch moments from a performance. We did ours to Curious Incident:
  • The circle in the middle is the face that Christopher draws at the beginning of the play. Siobhan, bottom right saying right left for when he was panicking in the train station, teaches him how to read peoples emotions using these drawings.
  • The two people at the top represent the scene when he is on the train. A memorable quote is "is this train going to London?"
  • The square on the right depicts the stage and how when he walked, red lights on the stage would light up where he walked. 
  • I wrote a bunch of prime numbers as Christopher loved them and knows them all up to 7507, he counts them in his head to calm himself. 
  • I used metallic colours to show the technology used in this production and representing the music which was very 'techy' this link will take you to one of the songs.

This is an image that really stands out for me. This symbol of touching palms shows TRUST, FORGIVENESS and LOVE. Christopher does not like being touched, so to show affection he simply touches his fathers palm. Even when I read the book when I was 12, it stood out. I find it so beautiful and touching, such a small gesture really creates a huge emotional response. 
I used this clothes line to show characters costumes. I remember Christopher wearing a green hoodie, Christopher's mother blue spotted dress and the police hi-vis jacket are some that I remember vividly. The old lady behind is a friendly neighbour or Christopher's, the houses behind represent the community Christopher lives in. 

Surrealism:

I was given this imagine (The Persistence of Memory- Salvador Dali) and told to write the first few things that came into my head:
  • Time
  • Bending time 
  • heat/melting
  • baron- no people
This painting is oneric meaning it is dream like perception of surrealism. Surrealism believed dreams reveal work of the unconscious. In class, we discussed what SURREALISM meant:
  • Words should be used differently 
  • Sound quality can be used to create different atmospheres
  • Not just saying the obvious 
  • Not seeing things for what they are 
  • Words should be super charged- having different meanings. 
Brekt's political theatre is a good example of surrealism as it provoked thought. 

We started work on out devised piece: 

Here are some brainstorm ideas we had a couple weeks ago about things we wanted to involve in our piece: 
 
 

We are using our nightmares to stimulate this piece, we are using 4 totally different styles because nightmares are not structure and usually dont have much sense or meaning. 

Meeras Nightmare: running away from something down a long dark corridor, doors are opening and closing and then suddenly falling.

Harrys Nightmare:Flying lesson at night, he sees the city lights below fail, and then suddenly the plane is falling out of the sky.

My Nightmare: Flying in a big airplane with my family and friends when the plane crashes into the sea, black. I am swimming towards a pillar where my brother and mum are stood, I go to hug my mum she does not know who i am. 

Chloes Nightmare: Her and some friends are in a swimming pool when suddenly a bunch of ambulances arrive and are rolling dead bodies out on these trays. 

Tuesday 25 November 2014

We played an eye contact game where all we had to do was look into each others eyes and hold the eye contact. Sounds easy right? It was very difficult, I found it awkward, strange, I felt vulnerable and exposed. I found trying to keep a straight face hard because staring into your friends eyes feeling really awkward, it just made us all giggle. Something our teacher mentioned was that i tend to fidget. No surprises really! I always move wether it be tapping my feet or moving my fingers, I cannot stop moving. I dont even feel myself moving I just do it naturally. We all found out that we felt a lot more comfortable moving around than standing still and keeping a moment paused. We then played another game were 2 people had to keep eye contact and another person had to try everything to get them to break eye contact. We learnt that us, as a group, did not take enough risk and we didnt really leave our comfort zone.

Thursday 27 November 2014  

We spoke about who contributed ideas to the group, we all found it difficult to say anything. Throughout our lives, we are taught to not say people arent doing anything in the group and we are taught that saying you have come up with the most ideas is wrong and rude so our teacher made us individually draw a pie chart with how much we thoughts each person had contributed. We were then each set a role in the group to do, I choose sound as I do have an interest in it.

Sound for the scenes-

Meeras:
  • doors opening and closing 
  • drips 
  • uneven breathing  

 Harrys:
  • Plane taking off 
  • Cabin sounds 
  • Crashing, a lot of sound, crunching metal, very loud, messy sounding
Mine:
  • dream like, frantic music
Chloes:
  • new pop song
  • heart beat on a machine sound in the background 
  • song begins to distort 
  • beeping gets louder more uneven 
  • flat line.


Acid Test Response To Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime

 An acid tests show scorched moments of a performance. I decided to have my acid test in the shape of a circle to represent the face which was always projected onto the back of the stage to show how Christopher was feeling.
  • Train track- I decided to draw a traintrack with a train going round as this was key in the performance. Christopher was continuously trying to build the traintrack which then represented him travelling to London to find his mum.
  • Paddington sign- this makes me remember the scene where Christopher overcame his anxiety in the train station and overcame his fear. It also reminds me of when the wall moved forward to show how Christopher felt he was going to fall into the tracks.
  • Animals- the use of live animals on stage created a happy emotion. Christopher felt like his rat Toby was his only friend and took him everywhere. At the end he is given a puppy which he finds an attachment to too.
  • Letters- this shows the turning point in the performance when he finds the letters from his mum and realises she is not dead. To show the amount of letters he found they fell onto him and other actors held letters all around him.
  • Hand signal- this shows something very precious to Christopher. This hand signal made him feel at ease and showed his trust. It is also his his parents told him everything was going to be okay.
I was given this painting produced by Magritte and I had to write down absolutely everything that popped into my head no matter how stupid it sounded. The things I thought of were;
  • calm before the storm
  • nature
  • mysterious
  • endless thinking 
  • sweet but sour
This painting is a clear example of Surrealism. There are two types of Surrealism;
  1. Automatism/Free Association 
  1. Oneiric/Dream Like
We allowed our new found knowledge of surrealism to develop our Artaud inspired work.
  • words should be used in different ways due to their sound qualities
  • you shouldn't just see things for how it is"ceci n'est pas une pipe"
  • words can be supercharged and exaggurated to have more than just one meaning
  • we physically trap the audience in cloth to show they're trapped in their dreams when they're asleep
  • doors opening and closing relate to the many choices we can make in life
  • the significance of the blindfold is related to the fact people are blind to their future
We then went on to talk about Brecht;
  • his pieces were not for entertainment but to provoke political change through thought
  • he tried to make the familiar unfamiliar by seeing past the obvious 

Working With Dreams to Develop Our Work Everyone in the group had a task of telling their nightmare to another person while that other person scribed down everything they said. We then got back together and shared everyone's nightmares.
  1. Meera; Being chased down a long corridor with lots of doors and then finally falling down a black hole.
  1. Mine; With lots of friends watching a football match and then deciding to go into the pool. Suddenly everything goes black and you can only see the red colour of paramedics going into a house. Everything falls silent and then lots of dead bodies are wheeled out.
  1. Harry; Having a flying lesson when suddenly the lights of the city go off and then the plane fails. There are then flashes of the ground getting closer and closer. 
  1. Emma; In an aeroplane with her family when it crashes. She swims to shore and sees her brother and mum but her mum doesn't remember her.
We decided that we would create a train and bring an audience member onto the train with us to experience each persons nightmare when they fall asleep on the train. We created a train using soundscape.

Meeras Nightmare;We blindfold the audience member to rob them of a sense which makes them feel vulnerable. We then surround them while whispering uncomfortable words into their ear. This whispering gradually builds up into a shout of the word "run". This makes the audience member disorientated and scared. We then fall into a silence which will make the audience member confused and onedge. The actors then wrap up the audience member in a big cloth to give them a sense of being trapped in this dream. I then run up to the audience member and push them back while the other three actors catch them. This shows the falling in the nightmare. We then remove the blindfold and allow the audience member to return to the audience.

Harrys Nightmare;The audience members will sit together in rows of two like in an airplane. The actors then create a sense of the plane taking off by live soundscape. Recordings of the pilot speaking to the control centre then come on while the actors build a plane around the audience with sugar paper and fairy lights.









What is Surrealism? 
a 20th-century avant-garde movement in art and literature which sought to release the creative potential of the unconscious mind, for example by the irrational juxtaposition of images.

 The fist thing we were given to do was look at a picture/painting and write down anything that came into our mind while looking at it. My picture was of a metronome with an eye on the ticking part, some of the words that I came up with were: 

  1. Music 
  2. Ticking 
  3. Beats 
  4. regular pattern

Afterwards we found out that the pictures/paintings were examples of surrealism. I learnt that there are two different types of surrealism. Dream like and automatism. Automatism is free association (revealing the unconscious minds of others). We learnt that surrealism really linked with our own piece of work. This was because Artaud, the practitioner we are basing our piece off, was greatly influenced by surrealism. Examples of how they link include: 
  1. Words should have more of a sound quality- sound which is charged with a subtext. 
  2. Artaud was interested in provoking free-association with his pieces. Wanted to make his audience think about the play after it was over. Giving everyday objects a different meaning.  
Surrealism also links with Brecht, who we have not studied yet, his idea of the 'Alienation effect' links with surrealism as he wanted people to see things differently. 

Surrealism in our work: 
  1. Being trapped - the idea of being wrapped up in the sheet gives the feeling of claustrophobia, this could link with the idea of being trapped inside our own thoughts, or being restricted by society. 
  2. Voices in the head - This could link with over thinking things or again being trapped inside ourselves. 
  3. The sounds of doors opening and closing - The choices in life. Confusing. 
  4. Blindfolded - Blind to what happens in your future, do you really get to chose which door you go through? 

Working on our piece: 

In the first lesson we were told to think of our nightmare and then say it out loud to another member in our group who would write it down. The nightmares were: 
  1. Running through a long corridor with lots of doors along the edges. the feeling of being chased. falling down a hole. 
  2. Swimming pool. At a party. Coming up for air and seeing all the police lights flashing on and off noticing that dead bodies are being carted away. 
  3. Flying lesson. The lights of the city fail then the plane fails. View of the ground getting closer. 
  4. In an aeroplane which crashes. On the beach with her family. Mother doesn't remember her. Crying. 
We started by creating our train setting, which would be the link between each separate dream. The idea is that the audience members would experience the dreams going on inside the head of a passenger who has fallen asleep. We sparked ideas for the train by creating a train sound scape. we each had to create a sound that we thought a train would make, we then put all the sounds together to create our train sound. 

The first scene: 

1st nightmare: We invite the audience member onto the train and to stand in the middle of the stage. We blindfold them. The idea is to make them feel uncomfortable and trapped like in the first nightmare. We then surround the audience member and start whispering words like "run" and "they're right behind you" this whispering starts to get louder and louder until right at the end when we all stop together and scream "run." The idea here is to make the audience member feel disorientated and claustrophobic, it also gives the illusion that there could be someone/something chasing them. After this there is a pause and all the actors back away. The audience member should be confused. In this time there will be sounds of opening and closing doors and dripping. This sets the corridor with lots of doors scene and the dripping gives it that creepy atmosphere. Then we all take a large white sheet (so we could have projections) and wrap it around the audience member. This will enforce the feeling of claustrophobia. 1 actor noisily runs towards the audience member and pushes them back, the other three catches them. This gives the feeling of falling that is described in the nightmare. The blindfold is quickly taken off the audience member and they are lead back to their seat. 

The second scene: 

3rd nightmare: We discussed many ideas for how to do this nightmare but we finally settled on having the audience members inside the aircraft which would slowly be put together during the performance. The audience members would sit together while all the acting would be done around them. The scene starts with the plane taking off this will be done by using a sound scape. We decided to rattle chairs and create a humming noise. After this we would use recordings of us to imitate talking to the radio tower. While the recordings are being played we will make the aircraft using sugar paper and red flashing lights. We will show the city lights below using fairy lights. We have not yet decided on how we will do the plane crash. 

Creating a response to The woman in black using acid tests: 

The stage curtains: This is because the play is set like a performance within a performance. (The characters are actors running through the performance)

The glasses: The moment when the older man puts on the glasses, he transforms into an amazing actor. 

The door: The door is seen several times during the performance and is the door to the nursery. It is locked up until the middle of the performance when there is a really tense part. 

The candle: All the scary moments are done in the dark with only the small light of the characters candle. 

The outline of the building: There is a projection of the house whenever the character is outside, the projection always had fog. 

AAAAAAAaaaAAAa: The two moments where there were high-pitched screams. 

The lines on the curtains: Lines or parts of lines that I remembered from the performance. ex. "So who is she then?"  

   
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