Developing Nightmares
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We started todays sessions with three warm ups;
- Massages
- Pushing back to back with a partner and trying to sit down then stand back up without touching the floor
- "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;
- Blabbering on
- Trying to seduce
- Anger
- 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.
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