Devising Week Three

Week Three (Monday/Wednesday)

This week we had been in full swing trying to polish, develop what needed to be develop and tried to tie it all together to try and give the best performance we could. We were working with lights, music, different dynamics, changing levels and space and all the while still trying to get it all finished.

Things we did this week..

-Added speech

One of our overall weaknesses were that some of our scenes didn't have enough or were to dull. We looked at our scenes in which had speech and which did not have speech and we decided on the scenes we don't have speech to either add music or something more to make the scene a bit more engaging because we found with the more silent scenes, if they were all silent it felt very long, and that something was missing.

-Looked at our physical theater

We re visited our tableaux and decided it was a bit bland and could still be developed. So we took the opportunity in our movement class to ask Kirsty for her opinion. She gave us a few ideas to work with, one being to come in contact with the narrator more, and so we took that idea and become the tableaux of the house but instead of staying still we came to life when Paige moved us. This made it a lot more effective as it had a lot more to look at and take in than just a tableaux  We also added the idea of 'The watcher' which came from one of our initial ideas from the painting which was the feeling someone was watching 'Anna'. So we used Reece to play the watcher and he also got involved with the moving tableaux. The idea of the watcher came from the inspiration of the painter who didn't actually help her, he just watched her. We also decided to add more levels by positioning yourself differently, for example we put Paige on a chair behind the tableaux so it no longer felt we were up staging her.

-Added music

We ended up adding music to a number of our scenes, the first being to the chair scene, and I was asked to play a drum beat in time to the movement, and so for the majority of monday morning we were working out and fitting these drum beats to the movement. The drum beat worked really well with the movement as both worked really well together to create tension. The second scene we added music to was to the puppets which was straight after the chair scene, and so both scenes lacked the same properties. By adding music to the puppet scene, it also created tension, but also opened up a new perspective. The puppet scene at first seemed quite humorous but adding the music allowed it to create the atmosphere we wanted to pursue. This atmosphere was quite manipulative but gave across a simple message. The emotion we wanted the audience to experience was along the lines of sympathy, caged, a sense of restriction. The puppets mirrored how Anna was dependent on others. The third scene we added music to was the dream scene, we wanted something quite magical and soft to take a more hopeful and positive side to create a contrast to the more tense scenes shown before. We asked Zac who wasn't in this scene to play around with a few pieces of music, Zac played an original piece that worked amazingly well with the scene, it also added just that extra touch to create a sensual and dreamy scene. The fourth and final scene we added music too was a very last minute addition. Even though it may have been last minute it was worth the struggle to get it finished on time. I had found a piece of music that had just the right amount of time to not change any dialog that had already been created, and to only include simple, easy but effective choreography. The music was by Marco Beltrami, and the piece was could 'suite' it is a ten minute piece of music written for the film 'soul surfer' but I edited it down to the time starting from '3-40' and ending at '7-49'. This added more time to our piece and showed a clear build up in the climax too. The music ran over for two of our scenes which were ' The Race' and The Finish Line' we needed a piece of music that was gentle and touching enough for the race but also changed to a strong a fierce sound for the finish line to show the struggle of Anna's emotions. I thought this piece of music fit just right for this as at '5-04' the music changed rapidly to a speedier tempo. I feel this music really brought out our ability when going for the struggle.

Link below is the music described:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2EOBJ2QB3I

-Added Choreography

The choreography we added this week was to the 'Dream scene' where I came up with the idea to create a small but meaningful dance to go with Zacs music. The choreography consisted of small dainty arm movements which Anna would copy from me, Elle, Paige and Charlotte. We also were the characters which helped Anna into the 'light'. Another piece of choreography was in the race scene where Charlotte and Paige were on the blocks doing movements in time with the music and that flowed well with the music, but also reflected supporting Anna and cheering her on. This linked on with the last piece of choreography, which I had choreographed the night before the performance just in case the others decided they liked the idea to add it in. The choreography consisted of a sudden change in dynamics as; the music indicated the changing of scenes. Joe and Reece ran on and used the finish line to wrap around Anna. This indicated the restrictions of not only her body but her emotions. I thought of the idea of her emotions struggling with her and so I choreographed everyone struggling in their own way, using big movements and breathing heavily to show the struggle in sounds as well as big body movements. Then whilst we were struggling we were urging her on to fight against it, this created a sense of guidance, which we felt showed Anna's battle. A piece of choreography I added was at ‘6.22’ where I thought a powerful move would be to suddenly stop struggling and do a strong movement by moving the arm back whilst looking at it, and this happens when the music accents. The movement was powerful because everyone did it and no one was afraid of the stillness. She finally ends the struggle and defeats her own emotions, and this was shown with a powerful 'NO' at '6.50' in the music. The build-up stops and everyone stands to copy Anna, who was in fact walking, as if she has taken her first steps. Anna is still in her dream world at this point. The movements finished at '7.49' where the chorus faded out and Anna was at the front looking straight ahead, and the music also fades out with the center of attention on Anna, (played by Abbi).

-Made movement bigger

We made movements bigger in the race, during the choreography as described above. This is because when we previewed it, the feedback we got to improve on this scene was to make our movements even bigger to show clear and powerful dynamics used to represent the struggle.

-Discussed costume

We decided to wear all black but with either something unique to show our different characters and/or have our faces painted. I chose to have my face painted with silver and pink to show off in the dream scene where my face would be mainly lit by my torch. Another example would be Paige who wore something pink to fit with the sort of fairy characters we were trying to bring to life.

-Discussed Lighting

This week we discussed and played, and ran the lighting. On Wednesday we skipped through scenes and plotted lights with Karen. Being in the theater and seeing our work being ran with the lights and the proper working space really enhanced everything and made it look already ten times better. The lights we chose to work with showed off our creations as well as we could. We worked with Imogen and Rae-Anne who did our lights. An example of how we had our lighting is in the Finish line scene, with the sudden change to Anna’s struggle, it went straight to red which I think is quite a controlling colour which was really effective and went brilliantly with what was going on.

-Worked on beginning

We decided to use an idea created by Karen, to use petals to be put into the box. The petals were scattered around at the beginning by me and a petal was put into the box by each character before each scene. We enhanced the box by putting a spotlight on it every time someone did this. This also gave us the opportunity to make a smooth transaction while the audience is being distracted by this movement.

-Worked on ending

We needed to work on the ending since we needed to explain the point of the petals. The petals reflected a sentence in which uplifted Anna, and were created to go with each scene. Each character had a line that was put into the box at some point during the show. So the ending revealed the meaning of each petal chosen by each character. The ending also showed a purpose for our performance name 'Box'. We added levels to this scene to try and make it seem a bit more engaging, as it was our final scene after all. We were slightly lit but had the main focus on the box and Paige who was playing Anna at this point.

Our main focus before the show was to smooth out our transitions because we didn't want to over use black outs as this would take away a lot of the energy from the piece. We achieved this by running it over as many times as we could, and adding in suitable and neat transitions. For example the transition from the race scene into the finish line, smoothed into each other and no one came off stage, but we showed the transition, by the dynamic in the music, the atmosphere became more tense, and the lighting changed to red. We made the atmosphere more tense by using more scared and struggling faces to show we were in trouble and couldn't move. 

Our final scenes:
1.Chairs
2.Puppets
3.The Watcher
4.Dream
5.Duality 
6.Race
7.Dance
8.Box

Lighting.

The lighting played a huge part in our final performance because it helped lift scenes where they needed to be lifted and darken more sinister scenes. For example in the race scene, where Anna is happy there was a pink wash as it really reflected the emotion and also could relate to her pink dress. It gave a nice contrast to our costumes which were black and also contrasted with the next scene which turned to a blood red, to show Anna's sudden change in emotion and that she was in trouble. The black costumes also worked well with this as the black went well with every colour. Who ever played 'Anna' wore a ribbon in their hair.