Devising Week 7

The performance week!

Again today we were a member down but worked on all scenes that could on the day be easily performed with just the four of us excluding Nyakeh.

This morning we began from the beginning of our piece and worked on incorporating more physicalised elements into each section: starting with the opening 'diagonal' scene which involves all four/five of us. Originally we had created a simple piece in which Frank walks past us all in the line and reacts subtly to each client/patient but my suggestion was to change up the way in which he reacted or change the way we approach Dr Joe- I didn't want it to be repetitive nor uninteresting so we created a more physical outlook. As Frank reaches Matt, Matt grabs him and holds him tight to his chest to show Matt's nervousness around strangers and his behaviour issue. As Frank reaches me I wave him over with the picture frame in hand and do the same as he moves on to Hannah. When Frank has completed the line Hannah says "Good bye Dr Joe" and raises her hand. It was then her idea to cannon this and all over enthusiastically wave good bye to Dr Joe, and then in cannon effect lower our hands. We got Frank to watch this from the audiences perspective and his feedback was really positive and that the wave looked child like which captured my character perfectly! 

Franks 'drinking out the flask' movement diagram. 

I then suggested instead of finishing the scene here we continued it with another physical theatre element to it- I suggested that Frank could bounce off us almost like a teacup ride at a funfair. The motion of the ride is that the teacup continues in the same direction but spins whilst doing so. I wanted Frank to spin off each of the three of us as though he is juggling his thoughts and problems with all of our problems that he has to deal with- this will imply that he has a lot more on his mind due to his depression. Now this scene has become more physical it makes it more interesting to watch, we tried this scene with all the new physical movements and dialogue and it seemed to work really well together. Frank, again, sat in the audience seating to see from their perspective the scene and he said that the stage balancing of each of our positioning was really effective. His only comment was for me to be more like a CBB presenter: over enthusiastic about everything and over dramatasise the wave I do. As Frank reaches me I do a large wave with the picture frame in my hand to embody the CBB presenter type characteristics.

Returning to the diagonal line physical piece: me and Frank created a spin tug of war then when we get nearer Matt we use the tug of war styled movement over the picture frame. For Matt's physicalised piece he pushes Frank off of him (in case he has a 'wire' that's recording him...) The fall to the ground was originally more like an action movie roll which I thought gave off the wrong impression so I suggested that as Frank rolls up his back into a standing position he is drinking out of the hip flask he owns. So he goes from crouched down and then as he reaches standing position he is already drinking out of his flask and then he bends his back backwards to take a more dramatic approach to drinking out of a flask. This now looks really intriguing as the audience are immediately told this guy has a drinking issue but they want to see where it will take the piece and what it will effect etc. The slower Frank does this means that the audience can really read into the motions and the tentativeness of the section. 

We went straight into the triangle interview scene and added in a repetition of our last words 5 times which now helps to build the noise level and atmosphere and as said before when it reaches its loudest point Frank stops us with the quiet noise of the dictaphone and although the noise level drops the atmosphere is still really really tense and we barely give the audience time to take it in as Frank begins his piece. And this is exactly how we have all conjured up Dr Joe's thought process and brain at this time- he has too much to think about and too much to concentrate on. The repetition of the last words was my suggestion purely because- we repeat our last sentence 3 times and this just didn't seem to build the atmosphere I was so hoping we would so adding in more repetition allows us to do so and also allows the audience feel it. 

       This repetition of words etc has really been influenced from the Berkohivan style that we have aimed for in this entire devising project. We wanted a mixture of Frantic Assembly and Dv8 (Two almost-dance-like Physical Theatre companies) and Berkoff. This repetition is something Berkoff uses a lot in his pieces and he uses noise volume to again create the perfect atmosphere. Us repeating the last word is unusual in the naturalistic theatre world and Berkoff does exactly this- to move as far from being naturalistic as possible. 

Our next section which needed work was to add Matt into the OCD questioning scene which ends with us all fighting over having Franks attention. Originally both Matt and Nyakeh were going to have two separate interview scenes but this made us slide into a more boring scene with little physical pieces, So including him into this scene not only allowed us to give Matt an OCD interview session but it also added to the hecticness of the piece with each of us overlapping each other and fighting over Frank- which adds to Frank's depression. This section was quite simple as we had the layout and the structure of the questioning already set out all we had to do was ensure that we asked relevant questions to Matt about his obsession. I am really pleased with this piece purely because it took us the short amount of time that it did which meant we can pull off good work under the pressure of having one less member: a member who has become quite dominant.  

The mannequin scene: the whole idea of the mannequin representing Frank and I getting married is really really strong and I can see how well it works and how well it fits etc however I find it incredibly difficult to act to this non-reacting, human-shaped object. I really do like the scene but I have to force myself to pull out all the stops to follow through. And by that I mean I get to some points in the scene that perhaps I don't put all my effort into making look really realistic and perhaps forget to take the movements with the shirt sleeve slowly to represent being in love- and this is just me being honest with myself and something I know I will need to work on before Thursdays performance otherwise the message will be wrong for the audience and it could so easily become comedic. My personal homework/research I set myself is to re-watch the Enter Achilles Dv8 scene and pay close attention to how the man moves the blow-up doll and the pace in which he does so and also how he looks at it etc. This scene is our influence for the mannequin so this means I can take all notes I make from this and use it into my scene. 

Another suggestion of Hannah's was for her to be Dr Joe's wife so it becomes a split scene between me and the mannequin & Hannah and Frank. All the movements were in sync with both sides of the stage for example when the mannequin/Frank puts his hand on our left shoulder at the same time so from the audiences view we all move at the same time because we are playing just three different characters. This worked really well- and it also made me feel less awkward acting with the mannequin because the audiences full attention wasn't just on me. But at the same time this is a negative because the mannequin is a strong 'figure' in our piece and my characters obsession is taken to the next level which needs to be seen by the audience so at the moment I am torn between keeping it as just me on stage or to have Frank and Hannah. However I'm thinking it shouldn't include Hannah at all because from the audiences view it makes Hannah look like she is playing my character-which makes the entire scene unclear. 

Photo taken during our rehearsal performance

In the middle of all this devising work we performed our pieces to the class including Deborah and Kirsty and got some really good feedback. We only showed, again, the short pieces we'd worked on without Nyakeh but this was still really difficult to perform and get feedback on such a small piece without an important member of our group. So this performance, for me, was really daunting. 

I gave feedback to the other groups:  To the left is the feedback I gave to the 'Family group' which consisted of Lewis, Pheobe, Luke, Joe, Donna and Kennedy. Their piece is really strong and powerful. It is a very clear mixture of Berkoff and Dv8 and the choreography is fantastic. Part of me thought whilst watching it that my group still has a lot to work on to even get close to their level of brilliance and another part of me was that we have got to push ourselves and beat them because a bit of competition could really help and give us the motivation we need. The feedback I gave them was all construction criticism and only things that they should improve on: because at this stage I think that telling them the points that I thought were good isn't going to help them improve.


The second group is the 'Game Show group' which consists of Sophie, Frankie, Nathan, Brandon, Jake and Milo. Their piece, again, is very Berkohvian and they have taken a very dark route. Their piece is at a really strong level but there were some points that the improvised talking was involved that I felt were not necessary such as swearing and Brandon's hosting speeches. Their piece has really really improved because only three/four weeks ago their piece was unclear and had really breached away from the stimulus and physical theatre was at the bare minimum. But they have really taken on board the changes and feedback they got and have now, a very interesting piece. I gave them comments that involved them only improving on their piece, like group one.

The feedback we got was minimum despite asking for only comments to improve our piece because we are at the stage that we have a very short and messy performance with one less member than expected. 

• "The first scenes physical elements were lovely"
• "Frank don't have your back to the audience in the interviewing scene"
• "All characterisation for all the characters were lovely"
• "The beginning was fab- but make the movements more precise"
• "Humming was nice"
• "Characterisation was 'divine'"
• "Split scene really worked and the use of the mannequin was amazing"

The feedback above was from our peers/friends. The feedback was all very positive but as a group we were in desperate need of things that we should improve on. 

Whilst performing we got a lot of laughs during the mannequin scene... This put me off whilst performing and hugely knocked my confidence. I find this scene really difficult and the reaction we got blew it for me. I now understand that they were only laughing because they know me and not my character and I can see why now but as friends I would expect them to be mature and understand that this is a character and not Issie and not laugh even if they do find it comedic? For me this really did put a downer on the piece that we had even though we did have good feedback. 

On the bright side both Kirsty and Deborah gave us some really good feedback and plenty of things to improve on which is exactly what we wanted/needed. Joined together their feedback was: 

• To start our entire piece with a more serious tone to avoid making the mannequin scene come across remotely comedic
• Issie- sharper movements with the picture frame in the triangle scene
• The skip-hoping, stepping on the cracks, scene was unclear
• Frank- to project when facing the back
• More physicalisation and spacing
• Frank and Hannah being in the mannequin scene was unclear

^^ This feedback was incredibly resourceful as once Kirsty and Deborah had taken us through the feedback they were giving us we had a good long afternoon session to work purely on all the feedback we had been given from everyone. This afternoon session was really useful and talking from looking back onto today's work we managed to target all the feedback and change it to fit the relevant comments.

Tuesday we were back to a full group today with Nyakeh turning up!!
So our first job was to incorporate him into all the short scenes that we would be involved in. This began with the diagonal scene that opens the piece. We also made all our movements more precise in this scene- following the feedback we got yesterday.
Me and Hannah breifly worked on our 'stepping on the cracks' scene to make this clearer. We did this by taking two steps, pausing, looking left then right and then stepping another two steps to reach Frank. The pauses meant that the audience had time to see and understand what we are doing and it also made it look more like we were taking in the pavement and choosing carefully where we could tread without stepping on the cracks. Matt and Nyakeh worked on a short sequence that portrayed the OCD of germs.
We then worked the interview scene with Nyakeh involved: and again as we had more characters to 'fight over' Frank the atmosphere picked up a level.
We decided to rid both Frank and Hannah being a part of the mannequin scene: with in mind Deborah offering to help me devise a short sequence with the mannequin tomorrow. I think scrapping the two of them is for the better of this scene because as I previously mentioned the mannequin is a strong point in our piece and it being just me and the mannequin on stage will really bring this home to the audience.
We created an ending to our OCD section with us all knocking off stage to enter stage (like knocking to enter an office) Frank being already on stage is torn between which 'door' to go to first and again this represents his mind being manic and overloaded. We all enter, in neutral, and walk towards Frank almost like ganging up on him. A fair few weeks ago we created some freeze frames (mentioned in earlier blog posts), so we have rectified these and used them to end each act/section. And to me this is a really strong way to end each section. I am also pleased we managed to use the freeze frames because they do look really effective and give off the right message.
We rectified all the dance pieces that Hannah, Matt and Nyakeh had created back when we were working on the love triangle pieces. We refined all the existing work and thankfully we didn't have to add anything to the relationships section! Whilst they were doing this me and Frank worked on a short scene which revealed mine and Franks relationship. Frank suggested that I just circle him sat on the chair and this is how the scene starts and ends- this purely mixes up just sat on chairs and there was no real reasoning behind this. This scene, as suggested by Kirsty and Deborah, should be more tense and confrontational to put a spin on my character and this relationship with Dr Joe. As this scene ends and Frank goes to leave the others all enter and we again gang up on Frank to form the second freeze frame. I loved doing this scene as it starts to open my character a bit more than just me playing a overly obsessed person. And this was another scene that we both created and developed in a short amount of time which gave us more time to focus on the larger scenes that included more physical aspects.

We then created a scene which would be section 3, secrets. I have to admit the dialogue and content of this scene isn't as strong as the others but the physical theatre aspect over run it. Matt created a wide and spread-out chair layout (we are all sat in the furthest corners of the stage with just Frank in the center) We then improvised with some questions and then as soon as Matt (the last to answer) says his final answer the three of them (or two) drag their chairs to join Frank center stage. They all then stand in neutral.
I then slowly and drawn out, drag my chair and slam it down next to Frank. This scene is quite tense and fully shows the audience my characters real feelings- the deep and meaningful ones. Me and Frank improvised a short dialogue piece and then brought in the physical theatre sequence we created a few weeks ago. Back then the meaning of it was that Frank didn't want me to leave, so we did a full role-reversal so it meant that I didn't want Frank to go.
     Nyakeh suggested just as Frank was about to exit I run after him and start to shout at him, slowly (as though my words were pushing Frank towards the bridge- made from chairs that were pulled together earlier on in the scene.) Frank reverses onto the chairs and I stand behind him. We, as a collaborative, begin to chant "JUMP, JUMP" I push Frank off of the chairs (off of the bridge)
The end... I am so so pleased with this ending scene because the tension has risen slowly throughout the piece and finally my character explodes as does Franks-his in a different way-suicide. This will, hopefully, leave the audience stunned because the ending isn't something that you expect from a therapist- someone who spends all their time helping and thinking of others.

Today was one of the best days of devising purely because we managed to get so much done- and by this I mean we created pieces that we are all proud of and they fit with the sections and our characters and we know we are definitely going to use them so they have been developed and refined all in one day. And we also had a full group which hasn't happened for a long time now and even though he had to leave early and the news was broken to us that he can't attend the evening performance this Thursday we still knuckled down and got a lot of good work done.

The skills I have developed during this devising project is firstly working as a team- a irrelevant one but something I have definitely gained a lot of experience in now seeing as we have had plenty of changes to our idea and group in itself.
My devising and imaginative skills in general have definitely developed. In my very first blog post I mention how I previously did a devising piece at school and as a group we really struggled with settling on an idea and bringing it to life so I was apprehensive about this project but as time went on I found myself suggesting different both physical and content ideas that have been used. Some were little and subtle things such as stamping our feet to enter the interview scene and other larger ideas such as the content of mine and Franks scene in which I circle him- and compared to the devising project I took part in at school I feel that these skills of mine have greatly developed in the physical theatre sessions we have been taking part in since January.

As an individual I have been influenced by a range of different practitioners throughout this project however the main ones are Berkoff, Frantic Assembly and Dv8. Berkoff has given me the ideas for a more sound scape effect to some group scenes which involve more dialogue than physical. The repetition of words and sentences have all been things that I have suggested to bring Berkoff into our piece more. Berkhovian is definitely a favourite style of mine and even though we could fully include this style because our piece wasn't made for the grotesqueness that he uses: I/we have incorporated influences of his style. Frantic and Dv8 are the Physical Theatre 'practitioners' that our piece mainly revolves around. The scenes that involve a more dance based sequence such as mine and Franks sequence nearing the end of our performance has been influence by Frantic Assembly's devising method- they used this concept of stopping one person leaving the room and this is exactly how we created our piece. Dv8 gave us the sharper dance like movements that Nyakeh and Matt have created but also the stepping on the cracks scene both me and Hannah worked on together. Dv8 also gave me the mannequin idea and movements.

Creating my character was heavily influenced from the researching OCD and watching the videos linked to this disorder. They gave me an insight into what goes through someone with OCD's mind and how "i must wash my hands" keeps repeating in their minds. The Enter Achilles clip heavily influenced me with the mannequin purely because they have a very similar scene with a blow-up doll. 

Character profile

My characters name is Alice Coles. She is 26 and born on the 7th of February 1989.

Her occupation is a simply office job, filing papers to folders. The hours are inconsistent and she rarely shows up to work as she would much rather spend time at Dr Joes office.

She has been in a long term relationship with her boyfriend for 6 years now and they own a dog together and no children or sign of marriage.

Less than a year ago, Alice began visiting Dr Joe therapist sessions due to an abusive relationship with her boyfriend. The boyfriend would often threaten Alice and physically abuse her. She had a nice selection of friends who persuaded her to go and see someone about her relationship issues and with much persuading she did. Dr Joe really helped her and as Alice began to open up more and see Dr Joe more the affair happened. Dr Joe is married which meant the affair was always kept a secret and was kept in the confines of the office. Alice had brushed off the abusive boyfriend so she is single and really into Billy (Dr Joe). Billy played by Frank, begins to realise where this is going because each time they had their 'session' Alice became more and more obsessive over how her and Dr Joe should make it official, and that she really did love him, and why they couldn't ever meet up outside of his work etc etc. 

Things then began to get overly obsessive. Alice has become more of a character whom fell in love but now that Dr Joe doesn't take much notice of her she feels the need to try even harder. This obsessiveness lead to Alice loosing out on normal social life with her friends so now she still has people to talk to but noone really close to her as a friend; apart from Dr Joe of course!

Alices home life was fairly normal, however her nan had serious OCD and this rubbed off on her mum and then onto her- as OCD is often a genetic problem. But her OCD wasn't obvious until the obsessivness with Dr Joe appeared. Her mum worked in a pre-school and her dad a car salesmen which meant her family had a good wage to live off of. Her house, and nice three bedroom and decently sized. Alice was an only child with no pets to grow up with just her imagination.

She was a very imaginative child who was always happy to be sat alone playing and amusing herself-she wasn't always that sociable but she adored her dad. (More fond of the male side of her family)

     Home and childhood environment can often heavily impact a child which has lead Alice to be very fond of Dr Joe as he reminds her of her dad. She is happy alone but that only lasted through her childhood, being alone can be boring so when she found both her boyfriend and Dr Joe she was quite content. 

Alice is a very obsessed character and everything and anything is about Dr Joe. Everything she does is about him or thinking of him or for him. Her relationship with her previous boyfriend was fairly normal into the abusivness kicked in. She looked for protection and real love with Billy and as soon as that fantasy was taken away she was determined to get it like what she had with her father. 

Both her parents died when Alice was out of the childhood house and living and managing alone so this wasn't a huge lifestyle change for her. 

Alice is a really interesting character and I think the more I make her obsessed the more her childhood and background will become apparent to the audience which I think is key for them to understand why she is like this...

My costume was originally going to be all black like the others (excluding Frank who would be wearing a white shirt and black tie.) But coincidentally I was wearing a white shirt and bow-tie (a casual outfit for me) Deborah insisted that this should be my outfit- copying Franks outfit. So my costume is now the women version of a shirt and tie. I can definitely see the link between the two costumes and it just highlights the obsession my character has even more which is great. 

Devising Week 5

Mondays session was only short so we spent this time working on two short pieces we wanted to include later on in our piece. To bulk out our piece we are including a therapist session for Nyakeh. He will begin opening up about his issues and Matt will appear and lead them into a second Physical Theatre sequence. We discussed how we wanted Matt to appear and Nyakeh came up with the idea that Matt will sit in the audience and when its his time to enter the scene he will stand, and take small, slow steps to reach center stage where Nyakeh will be waiting. We have chosen to do this to bring the story a little closer to the audience physically and not theoretically! We want them to notice this actor has just sat next to them and then when we gets up and walks, he will remain in full actors neutral which will set the audience on edge.
This lead us on to us using masks. The masks will be used by all of us until we reach our therapist sessions. This means it will help us portray that as humans we often don't open up and release our feelings so as soon as we get to the therapist  the masks are taken off and we open up and show the audience who we really are (again physically and theoretically.)
The masks will all be identical but painted black to show that we keep all our emotions to ourselves and they pile up and create a darkness mess of contained emotions and feelings. The masks are a good way to portray a sense of secrecy to what the characters behold and that is something we want from the audience...

Mask use
The mask is worn over the face to hide the identity of a person by using its own features to create another being (commonly known as a character). Masks, over the years, have varied in appereance as in their use and symbolism. "A mask is an object normally worn on the face, typically used for protection, disguise, performance or entertainment." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mask However masks have been known to be worn all over the body and not just over the face. The image on the left is a stone mask dating back to 7000BC and is probably the oldest mask in the world.

The word mask originated from the French word 'masque' which means to cover,hide or guard the face. Masks were used in rituals and or ceremonies in ancient practise across the world. The evolution of masks has hugely changed from creating decorative masks to not be worn to masks we are most familiar with nowadays which are safety masks for machine work and in sports. More stereotypical mask use we are all familiar with now is mask use in theatre. The Greek Theatre and Chorus often used masks especially when this sort of theatre became popular. It began with street artists performing. These street artists often performed pieces that would make-fun of those higher up in the 'society tree'. The masks meant that their identity as street performers was kept private. Masks also often feature in contemporary theatre we know today with their uses varying widely.

Using masks in our piece will show the audience that we all (humans in general) keep our emotions to ourselves and find it hard to open up to anyone. The masks represent us covering up from the world and keeping everything to ourselves but when getting into the therapy sessions we begin to open up and then allow ourselves to rid the masks privacy.
    The masks will be worn until the therapy sessions which will keep our identity hidden until we take them off. This means our speech could become harder to hear for the audience as we will have our mouths slightly covered. This lead us to the idea in which we cut the masks in different ways. For example mine would be cut so the mask just covers my eyes and Hannahs mask would cover one half of her face.
We wanted them all to be the same colour (black) and have Franks mask worn only in the scenes he portrays his depression and saddness a bright white colour; to show that he puts on a front to all his clients.
I think we need to experiment with the masks to really know if we should use them or not as there are ways to show what we are trying to show through physical movements instead of the simple use of masks.


Secondly we worked for a short amount of time on a monologue/physical theatre that I will perform alone because my character is less involved in the 'love triangle' but just closely knit with Frank. Some questions we put into the equation to start my thought process off was "I really like my therapist because I hate my home life, its shit." I came up with the idea that my character is in an abusive relationship at home which began her sessions with a therapist and it escalated from then on.
This is something that we covered really briefly and I will work on building up my characters background story and will also work on the monologue/physical theatre sequence but for now we had dusted over the ideas and used the short session we had to do so.

Thirdly, we put our piece structure down on paper because we have the tendency to veer off the set ideas. So our piece begins with the all cast interviews with the police. We will have a large projection of the questions behind us and we will all be wearing the black masks. It leads straight into Hannahs therapist session and here will be where she reveals her face. After Hannahs physical theatre sequence including Matt and Nyakeh it will go into Nyakehs therapist session which is where Matt appears from the audience. My monologue/sequence fits in here. Matt's therapist session follows. Then mine and Franks argument scene,  and then reaching the end we will return to the all cast interview scene and ending with Franks suicide death scene...

For our Thursday session we only had

50 minutes to work on oir devising pieces. We wrote up some objectives to reach in this 50 minutes:

 

We wanted to focus this 50 minutes in Matt' therapist session. We began to discuss what Matts aim was and what we needed to tell the audience in this scene. We wanted Matt to be attending these sessions because of his sexuality but it became really difficult to choose how we wanted Matts character to be. We tried with a 'chavvy' cocky character and it switches to this bold character being insecure about his sexuality. This really didn't work- I think this is because it felt to much of a cliché'. We tried him as a very gay, gay guy and again this didnt work! In the end, we still hadn't settled on  a character trait for Matt' character so we all set off for the weekend with homework to create a character profile so we could come back Monday knowing more about our characters.

Homosexuality is a big thing in our world today and it always has been. It can also be a hard and touchy subject to use to entertain (in theatre) We wanted Matt to come across normal. Not overly camp because most gay men are not like that! Matt would just be this ordinary guy who happens to be gay but hiding it from his friends and family- because even in the 21st Century people still don't agree to those whom are homosexual. So this meant it was really important that yes we portray Matt as a normal. ordinary guy who is finding it hard to tell others about his sexual orientation. 

       This is why when we got Matt to act slightly camp; it really didn't work! Getting someone to act camp purely just to show the audience that he's gay has massiviley phased out and we also wanted to move away from this and their stereotypes. 

Devising Week 6

Today's session began very positively with a brief discussion of what bits we could show the class. Each group performed what they had so far to the class and it was the audiences job to write 2 stars and a wish for each group. This was extremely helpful for us because we needed to hear, from the audiences perspective what worked and what didn't- and also things to include to improve our piece. The common feedback was to incorporate more physical theatre into it-which is a fair comment seeing as we showed them a bit without physicalised movements to ensure they get to see as much of our piece as possible. Another reappearing comment was to express emotions more: such as when Hannah says that she is angry in the beginning interview scene, she needs to really show this to the audience. She needs to fully embody being in that mood which will instantly give away her emotion before she answers the question.
        Watching EastEnders Live gave me some inspiration for Hannah: Ian Beale had just found out who killed his daughter which it was revealed to be Jane Beale (his wife) but later revealed the truth as it to be Bobby the 11 year old son of Jane. Being live the acting skills really, really shone. And Ian's reaction to the death of his daughter was caused by his 'half son' was intense and exteremely realistic. Our situation between Hannah, Nyakeh and Matt is a lot less serious and dramatic but it would still 'break Hannah's heart' making her loose confidence in Nyakeh and other men in her life in the future. As a lot of our feedback was for Hannah to respond better to the situation I suggest that she should act more distraught and sad rather than angry. Her response would open up her characters story more for the audience and then when they do find out the real reason,

After all the groups performed we sat and looked through our feedback and listed those that we needed to work on the most (the most common feedback.) Kirsty came over to extend on her feedback she'd given us and she suggested that we change our idea slightly. She suggested that we should all play a range of different characters. So for the opening interview scene each time the spotlight flashes onto us we are one character. The second time round we play another character etc. She also suggested that we have three different therapist sections the first one being OCD the second being all about relationships and the last would be secrets. For relationships we would keep majority of what we've already devised and just create two other sections. I can totally understand why Kirsty implemented this idea because our idea we were working on wasnt going anywhere nor could we take it further. So this new idea would mean we could open our piece up more. However at the same time I can see why we shouldn't be changing our idea so close to the performance due to creating, devising, developing and refining all in two weeks...
Our devising process slowed down after one of our members got upset about the but we tried to get back on our feet and really tried setting in stone this new idea. My idea was to begin the opening interview and get Frank to ask the questions, with his back to the audience. We moved straight into Deborah's lesson and continued this but it immediately became dry. Being, maybe, one of the quieter ones in the group-meaning that sometimes my ideas are easily brushed off- the ideas I was suggesting to get the group running again were simply brushed off with "no its got to fit" or "no that doesn't work". Deborah brought us some more ideas and we got up on our feet and tried these ideas out. I got all of us to pick an OCD like manner. Mine was rubbing my hands as though I was trying to make them clean. I would also rub them on my clothes, I did this repeatedly to show the 'obsessiveness' of the disorder. Deborah suggested to make it a really Berkohvian style so I began to make it much more robotic-like. This (to the left, is the only image I could find to demonstrate the hand movements I used in our piece.) In the image his hands are place in an odd way. I tried to use this aspect to Berkoff style in our piece by: when rubbing my hands at odd angles and using really sharp, short movements. Each movement of my hand I pause for a second and then move my hands again to incorporate more of the Berkhovian style.

Metamorphasis

Hannahs OCD trait was un-zipping and zipping up her coat jacket, as though it wasnt right the first time she did it. Matt's was how paranoid he was being followed by 'imaginary' people. Nyakehs was everything should be clean, and when he cleans that bit of floor he will have to do again to make it perfect. Mine was being utterly obsessed with Dr Joe.
I wanted to start the piece with Frank talking into his dictaphone, almost like a reporter or narrator of his own life. As this is happening we are all stood around him doing our Berkhovian OCD traits.

OCD is Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and it can affect anyone. Traits often include

• Fear of deliberately harming others or yourself. Only a fear and thought that you might attack someone. 
• Fear of harming yourself or others but accident such as forgetting to turn off the oven or iron for fear you may set the hour alight.
• Fear of contamination or disease which leads to obsessive cleaning of hands or just cleaning
• A intense need for symmetry and orderliness wherever you are but mainly in your home environment. Such as all tin cans must all be facing the same way in your cupboard. http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Obsessive-compulsive-disorder/Pages/Symptoms.aspx

OCD can be a serious disorder and is fairly common. OCD is yet to be researched into why people have it or get it but it is to be said that environmental, genetic, cognitive, or microbiological factors all trigger the disorder. This is a disorder known to a lot of people and usually people can keep it to a minimum but at the same time the disorder hugely affects people. We know that we have to approach this subject correctly as people are fully aware of it and understand what it entails. If over done or not done well enough it could be seen as comedic which is something we need to step away from. All of the disorders we have chosen are fairly common and I think with practise we can master what its like to have an OCD issue. 

This little clip gives us an insight into what its like to be OCD, the video gets quite irritating which can only be what those with OCD feel like a lot of the time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBkveiaKfBk 

This is another brilliant clip, it broke down the means of OCD to easier terms which means we, as actors, can embody these thoughts and the sensation of constant nagging into our characters to master being OCD. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6fMiK_ahdk

This research has given me a full insight into what its really like to have OCD. I would class myself as a very tidy and organised person and some people have said that I, myself, have OCD. But I can now identify how intense it is to have OCD and the unbearable thought of having to move the picture frame, for example. I can now understand that although I am very tidy and like things clear of mess I am no where near OCD behaviour. 

We came to a big stand-still when all the ideas we had all mentioned and experimented didn't work. This frustrated time led to one of our members going home and another getting upset-which neither helped our matter. I understand that changing our idea at the last minute is probably too stressful, mentally I think when one of us suggests an idea we hear it and think no its got to be really good because we have two weeks. We are too set in stone that someone needs to suggest an idea and it needs to be brilliant and we all start working on it and-voila. But our method needs to change to someone suggests and idea, we try it and stick with it. We then ladder it up and bounce off new ideas and add to it. Steal from things we've experienced or seen etc and use all this to gather large knowledge and release it into our piece...

So today wasn't as successful as we had hoped but another knock down only means we can come back fighting on Wednesday and see how we go from there. We need to, as a group, be a lot less respondent to ideas and be more open minded about what is suggested...

Wednesday was a lot more productive: Nyakeh wasn't in today to devise with us however we still made a good start. We created a brief structure for our piece starting with Matts line idea. We would stand in a diagonal line as Frank slowly walks past us. One by one we all start talking to 'Dr Joe' and then fade out as he continues walking. Almost like he is tuning each and everyone of us out of his thoughts representing that he has more important thoughts i.e. depression.
     Depression, again, is a hard subject to master on stage. We want short scenes with Frank alone for him to portray his depression with alcohol. This is a simple touch and clear for the audience. I also think if we try and do more with Franks depression we could be at chance of over doing it which isn't necessary on this occasion and subject.
Deborah suggested to have us all fade out as he walks past each of us which gives Frank the more professional look: brushing off patients outside of the work environment. As many teachers would do to students etc. I then got Frank to react to each of us, but looking back on it now I don't think it works because it makes it too repetitive so this is something I feel we will need to change or adapt or even get him to do something more physical to show what's going on in his head.
From Mondays session we had briefly created a triangular shaped physical piece so today's session was an extension on that idea. The three of us (Matt, Hannah and myself) thought of 5 short sentences that our characters would say, this was my idea because as we say our sentence we walk to the next point in the triangle. My five were;

• I've brought you some flowers today
• I was thinking of changing the frame colour
• Your hair looks nice today, do you like mine?
• I've brought you a packed lunch x3

On the last sentence we all say it once and then at the same time repeat it three times, getting louder and quicker. This brings the effect of chaos and hecticness onto stage-representing Franks mind.Walking on each sentence created a very messy looking scene so we decided to walk after we had all said our sentence. So in total we move four times instead of more. This still creates the right chaos we were aiming for but this way means we can plan how many steps we take precisely before we speak.
This effect will almost be like the nagging of the picture frame in the clip above. But switched around so that we become Franks OCD issue. We begin to irritate Frank because of his depression which leads to him being so depressed it leads to suicide. 

Today was mainly dedicated to mine and Hannahs 'interview' scene. I really didn't want to fall back onto the almost stereotypical chair, office-like layout so I got the scene up on its feet instead. Frank stood in the middle of me and Hannah-the scene turns out to be more of a fight between myself and Hannah to have Franks attention. This theory is to show the audience Franks feelings-he has a very hectic mind and the fighting between the two of portrays that he cant focus on one. All this pressure and chaos he lives through day-to-day causes depression and suicide.
Our main feedback from Monday was to have much more Physical Theatre included into our piece and this is what we did in this scene. We created a short movement piece including Frank and the dialogue we already had from earlier today. This is something I think we need to adapt because even though we have steps backwards and out to the side etc. I think it could be taken a lot further and have more physicalisation added to it. This is also the case with a short scene of Franks; we want to briefly portray Frank being an alcoholic and depressed and I think we should show this purely through movement- including some obvious gestures to show that he is drinking and kicking a chair to show his anger. This will allow us to be more creative physically and how we portray this is completely up to us instead of following simply guidelines on clearly showing the audience his depression. I had in mind something similar to the pub scene in Enter Achilles by Dv8: 

In this scene you see the men moving around and with a pint of beer. I had an idea similar: Frank does a similar movement sequence with the alcohol he's discretely drinking. This incorporates the physical aspect we need and also the representation of Franks drinking problem.




Finally I think we are really progressing on this new idea: reality hit home that if we don't like an idea we discard it or add to it to make it to the standard we like it. We know we haven't got the time to waste sessions discussing seeing as we have less than two weeks til' show day. The feedback and changes that happened on Monday have really helped as we are now fully set on where we our taking our piece which is the main thing.

We all met early to get some extra rehearsal time and it was extremely beneficial. We showed Nyakeh everything we had incorporated him into the 'triangle sequence'. As an audience perspective, we noted that we should make it a lot more Berkhovian by turning, walking and turning back to the front. When we reached the overlapping of lines the atmosphere we created was brilliant. Even though we had no audience members the room felt quite tense and as soon as it went silent Frank began talking. Going from really loud to really quiet helped us create the perfect atmosphere and I hope we can do the same to our real audience.
Me and Hannah continued working on our physical theatre piece which fits alongside Franks dictaphone dialogue. Frank stands center stage and similar to the actual question asking scene me and Hannah enter on 'our' side of the stage. Coincidentally Hannah and I were singing a pop song when I suggested we should hum or sing as we are doing the physical pieces. In some ways this will show that mentally we are not stable.  Hannah now hums 'You are my sunshine' to her jacket-the jacket her OCD behaviour revolves around. I hum the same song to link me and Hannah in some ways and I perform my box-step dance with Frank in the picture frame. Immediately the audience will understand my characters mentality and understand the obsession for Dr Joe is intense.
We rehearsed this with the dialogue and both Matt and Nyakeh thought it looked really effective. We took a short break and admittedly we were messing around with our characters and I was pretending to walk down the aisle to where I had placed the photo of Frank. I then said "why don't we have a mannequin and I dance with it and marry it?" So that's how that idea came about-so we fetched a mannequin and put a white t-shirt on it and will hopefully put a bow tie on it too to represent
So independently I created a rough piece of a scene in which takes place between me and the mannequin. I wanted to include me humming or singing the 'wedding tune' to physically show the audience the scenario. Frank places the mannequin at the front of the stage allowing me to walk up the 'aisle' and reach the front of the stage also. Kirsty recommend "lalala-ing" the tune to make it almost more like a little girls fantasy wedding dream type. She also said that I should reel off some wedding vows and then go into a conversation with the mannequin. Like a phone call conversation-the audience only get my side but they can still clearly understand what's going on. I found this scene really difficult to do mainly because it felt so abnormal to be talking to nothing. To become this quite crazy, obsessed character is really difficult but my aim is to fully embody her and be that obsessive person because if not there is the danger that my character will be more cringey.

The mannequin inspiration comes from the beginning of Enter Achilles by Dv8,the opening scene takes place between a blow-up balloon women and an actor. It is 'bed, make-out' scene with the blow up women. This represents that the actor is lonely and wants someone to love, or even that he likes someone but knows he can never have her. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PFR2OXf9iQ
He moves the doll so she looks extremely realistic. The slow movements look really love-felt and then the faster movements again look very real. He never leaves eye-contact with the doll to show he is in love with her. He strokes her arm and messes up her hair all with slow movements.
     This clip has taught me a lot: I know that I need to keep eye contact with the mannequin to 1. show me that he is so very real to me and 2. to show that I am in love. Physical contact was used throughout the Enter Achilles scene so this is something I need to incorporate into our piece. In this clip he doesn't talk to the doll but in our scene we do- and I think this still works because like I mentioned before its like a phone call conversation which shows the audience my feelings and emotions towards Dr Joe.


^^ The mannequin is my height and light enough for me to move it etc. To represent a wedding scene we will put a white t-shirt and either a bow tie or a tie. The blue t-shirt can be used if we do use the manikin in other scenes. The mannequin is a strong point in our piece because the representation of it is so clear for the audience and it also gives them an insight into my character.

This is unfortunately all we got done today but it is a huge step up from the dilemmas that took place on Monday. I am pleased with how the piece is coming together more now and the new things we've included are massively improving the piece-which is a good sign! We know where we are taking our piece now so all we have to do now is put it all together, devise the rest of it and take the Tuesday and Wednesday of show week for development and refinement process which includes showing our piece to our class and lecturers etc.