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.

• 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.