This weeks we worked of the three different ways used to produce a response to the three different theatre performances we had seen while on TAPS/in London. Charlie and the Chocolate factory, Electra and (for me) The woman in Black.

Using TEAM: 

Team is Tension, Emotion, Atmosphere and Meaning. Basically what we had to do is take a large piece of paper and split it into four different sections labelling them with the words above. We them took different coloured sticky notes for the words and wrote down moments in the performance that fitted with the words. For me I found that emotion and tension were the easiest ones to write moments for. This is because I mostly just used my scorch moments. For example for Emotion I used the moment in which Charlie found a golden ticket which was a happy moment. For tension I used the moment that Charlie begins unwrapping the Wonka bar he has received for his birthday. I would say that the tension moment at this moment would be a level 6 this was done by making sure that all the focus was on Charlie (spotlight on Charlie and no music). I found Atmosphere more complicated as I kept getting it mixed up with tension and emotion. In the end one example I found was when the children all entered into the main room at the chocolate factory. There was a joyful/magical atmosphere, this was achieved through the intricate set design and the upbeat signing and dancing. Meaning was the hardest of the four to do. This was because I didn't really know whether to do the overall meaning or pick out small details. I put that the meaning of the performance was that family matters more than anything. After having a chance to look at what others put I added on that the character Willy Wonka gave the meaning of never growing up. He did this by behaving in a sort of childish way eg. walking like the children and only staying interested in things for a short amount of time.

Using movement: 

In this lesson we were told to chose one specific area of the body and create a movement with this area leading. This movement had to convey an emotion we felt at a specific moment while watching a performance. It was important that this movement was not a gesture, as gestures are usually very limited. I chose to base my movement off a moment in the woman in black when the main character goes to open the door. My emotion was fear. My leading body part was my forearm, we created two movements and were then told to choose the one that we liked the best. We then had to add a sound to our movement, I was much more careful and reserved with doing this. My sound was a scream. After watching everyone's we were told to stand in a line and do our pieces at the same time. Finally we were told to put out movements together to create something. It was interesting the way we decided to put each of our movements together and use the sounds. In the end it looked as though we were some sort of machine. I thought this response to a performance worked really well as by the end it wasn't even possible to tell that it was in fact a response to a performance. Our end product could've even been a starting point for another performance.

Acid tests: 

Creating an acid test is this weeks homework. What we have to do is create a sort of mood board on a performance we have seen. We can do this in many ways, using colour, textures, smells, pictures and words/phrases.

The dog in the night time interview:

Although I haven't actually seen the dog in the night time, I still found the interview quite interesting. It was interesting to see how the actor, director and play write, took their separate ideas to the final performance, and how everything came together. The interview also showed me how all the different roles linked together. For example all three of them use a great deal of imagination, focus and creativeness.

"(I knew I could) combine the forensics of real drama with the liveliness of a gig." Play write
"(I thought) I have no idea how I'm going to do it, but I've got to do it!" Director 
"(because it's) such an emotional journey!" Actor