Trestle theatre (seminar/compilation of research)

Trestle theatre presntation from Lexia Tomlinson

Areas of Research: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-20856525 http://www.trestle.org.uk/about-trestle/support-us/ http://www.trestle.org.uk/mask-shop/ http://www.trestle.org.uk/about-trestle/

Turn around Thursday

Thursday 11^th October 2012

 By today we were definitely at stage 4 and 5 in the devising process, which are distillation and presentation; we focused on editing, reassessment and creating more tension to heighten the performance. We also did shake-ups (drama games at non prescribed time when people are getting groggy and restless to get focus back into the work) and make people feel more energised; I found that these shake-up pumped fun back into our group and made us enjoy the devising/rehearsal periods. And because these shakes ups are drama games they also had a practical purpose to hone particular skills or get people thinking more about their physicality and verbal abilities, which they would be marked on.

The most important thing we got done today was coming to an agreement how many scenes would be included in the play and what we would be showing those scenes and the impact that it would cause to the audience watching it.

The play is one act with three scenes, and two linking scenes in which the Narrator narrates about mundane periods in Alex’s life, I say mundane however they are an important dialogue between my character and the audience informing them about small changes that lead to a big incident with our protagonist.

When taking on this character, I didn’t quite realise the scale to which I would have to interact with the audience, to keep the audiences attention I think will be a difficult task, also because I will be travelling with a large amount of people, outside I will have to use my voice a lot, to project so audience members at back can hear me, I also have to use inflections to raise tension and drama. It’s a challenge I look forward to seeing if I can pull off on performance day.

During the day we rehearsed from the scenes that we had and what we would fit into them, however I thought it would best to have a concrete piece of script so that when we came back on Tuesday after the weekend we would all know where we were because as of the past two rehearsal days it’s all be improvised and picking up from where we left off sometimes magical lines got lost/forgotten.

Since I have experience writing plays I volunteered to write a full script for my group, each actor is to send me the gist of what their characters say and I shall take it from there. 

Tuck In Tuesday

Tuesday 9^th October 2012

Today saw my group coming back from a weekend full of research, which we decided was null and void because we would like to move into a different direction, gone is the school idea we were back to square one of devising and trying to create our own stimuli. 

This was because we did not feel that our old idea would connect well or how we would stage it, because it lacked dynamic tension and we simply could not find a fitting storyline to make the audience entertained and learn anything. And theatre is there to entertain people and make them learn something, depending on what you are aiming for, we did not want to risk our performance being a flop, a flop that we did not believe in or that our audience did not get.

My group had been communicating over the weekend via a group on a social networking site asking their field of research, we weren't completely without a new focus subject. At the time because of a high profile death cause by suicide we decided we wanted to focus on suicide a topic that would we raw in the mind on the general public and our peers that would be watching.

One thing we were definite about is the fact that we wanted a promenade performance, quite a lot of my group are kinetics people, and we didn't want to go with conventional proscenium arch theatre, this is because we did not want to create a distance between us and our audience we wanted them involved, theatre staged within a proscenium always seems to create a fourth wall which instantly, I feel, creates an audience actor dived.

Once we had that component decided we started to discuss triggers that could be the cause of a person to commit suicide: 

Danny - "drug abuse"

Zoe - "death of a loved one" 

Sinnead - "school environment"

Jon - "Stress"

Those were all valid reasons why a person would like to take their own life, but as a group we decided we wanted something that wasn't a conventional reason, well it could be a conventional reason but portrayed in a unconventional way. 

In the end we decided that the catalyst for our protagonist decent into a deep and dark depression was the end of a relationship that they valued very much. 

In our morning to afternoon session we reached generation/exploration/distillation stage in our devising process. 

We had generated the topic that we wished to portray to our audience; as a group we tried to cultivate as many ideas as possible from each other and our research sources. We then began to build the bare bones of our piece. 

Which was deciding which style we wanted to perform in, because we had already removed the fourth wall with the idea of a promenade performance and we wanted to make it as interactive as possible we thought that we would go for the non-naturalistic approach and look to Bretch for our stylistic elements.

Things we knew we wanted in our performance by this stage :

• A Narrator - To slightly remove the audience from the piece emotionally because we were going to be portraying a very sensitive subject. 
• Multi-rolling - This was because we knew we had the largest ensemble of actors and that everyone needed as much speaking time to be fairly assessed on their use of voice, so this was a practical and stylistic need in our performance. 

We even got as far as doing picking the locations we would like to use, when we were travelling with our audience, the initial place we wanted to use was the Cafe of the MAC, however once we had gotten down to the Cafe we recognised how implausible and disruptive it would be using that space; also the confusion it would cause members of the general public. 

So we scrapped that idea and went back to the drawing board for a space that we would like to be our starting point. However we were definite that we would like to use the Bench beside the disused fairground and the far away bridge. 

I went away feeling happy with the new developments, but I was still had one nagging question, what was the risk we were taking/portraying? 

And so the adventure begins...

Tuesday the 2^nd October

Today was the beginning of the HND in Performing Arts course, the session took place at the Matthew Boulton campus; in the morning half of the introductory seminar we were introduced to our lectures: Paul Garnault, Ellie Darvill, Ruth Morgan, James Madison and Amy Taylor. We were given a brief on appropriate behaviour, as well as a brief of what subjects units we will be covering in the first year of the HND. This was helpful because I can now be resourceful and find out what units I will be covering and research into them, so when we do begin those segment I will be knowledgeable and be able to contribute more to discussions. The appropriate behaviour (although I’m sure it wasn’t needed) was also helpful because I think it helped to establish to everyone that we are all on a level playing field and that respect is a must in any working/learning environment.

In the second half of the introductory seminar Ellie gathered the group to their feet and begun a physical warm up.  

The Drama warm ups and games included:

·         Blood circulation – The continual shaking of the hand and fingers/ gentle stretching of the body. This activity was done to warm up the actors bodies to prevent the pulling of any muscles.

·         Wish Wash- This game took on two stages. First the wish had to be received from the sky and passed on with a sound and body action (the more ridiculous the better) the purpose to let go of inhibitions and just feel comfortable with a new cohort of people we’d never met but would be working with for the next two years. The second half of this game is like the traditional drama game “ZIP ZAP BOING” Its purpose was to bring focus after the excitement everyone felt from being silly.

·         Alliteration Name Game – The group stands in a large circle, one member steps forward and says their name with an adjective that begins with the same letter as the start of their name, they step back and then the group has to copy everything that was done e.g. “Lovely Lexia” whilst doing a courtesy. This was done by all members of the group. Its purpose to help us all remembers each other’s names. It worked.

·         TICK TOCK- Is a dramatic game I have never played in my life! But it was fantastic to add to my memory bank. Two balls are passed around the group at one time in opposing directions. A “Tick” one way and a “Tock” another. When either is passed on the receiver must ask “A what?” and the passer must ask the person who gave it to them “A what?” this will be repeated back to the first person who gave out the ball until the answer is received and passed down. This action continues until a junction when the tick and tock collide. At first there was a lot of confusion but once we concentrated and where supportive as a group we got the balls around just fine. I believe the point of this game is to encourage group work.

·          The Present – This game was all about imagination as actors and our ability to make an audience feel and see something that is not there. We received a present and turned it into something else.