The 100 Years Photos

Follow this link and you will be able to see all of the photos taken from the 100 Years show:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ad6s6qejvg5ozth/2xv5R67j2p/100%20years/100%20years#/

Our Final Two Shows

On Thursday, we did our final two physical theatre shows of, "100 Years", they both had bigger audience's than the first night, which was great. The 4.30 show went really well, the audience all seemed to really enjoy it and I took on board all of the notes that I have been given.

I made sure Cameron and I used the space and extended our movements in the Recruitment scene. I was also very aware of timings and made sure I took my time in everything. I used the space in the trance-like scene and walked right to the edge of the stage where there was a gap and I also made sure to use the space in the Fat Cats scene, even though, for some of it, that meant standing on my own, but I could play with my money and develop my character further.

It went really well and I was really excited to perform it again later in the evening.

The 7pm performance went really well too, it was the last time we were all going to be together and perform, so I was determined to make it the best performance I could. It all went really well and I kept up my character, the back stories behind all of my characters, my emotions and I stayed focused and ready back stage.

There was a technical fault where the music didn't come on for the last scene, but I spoke to my parents and friends who came to see it and they said, they didn't notice, because the silence was really effective.

In the section where we have to look at the women, as they go through the boxes, and we stand at the back watching, there was a minor setback when Gus collapsed next to me on stage. At first I thought it was part of the physical theatre piece and he was improvising, but I looked at him and could tell he was over-heating. I picked him up of the floor and he told me he was fine, but I told him to go and get a glass of water, so he quickly went off stage, where Sean in TTA looked after him. It was a little scary, as I wasn't sure what to do, but again, my parents said that they thought it was part of the piece, so I guess it looked effective.

Apart from this minor setback, we were able to continue and go on with the rest of the piece and make it effective and moving for the audience. Who all seemed to love it.

I have really enjoyed being a part of 100 Years and it has been so nice to work as a year group again after not seeing people for ages. It was our final performance in the New Theatre as a group and I feel like we all did it to the best of our ability. I feel like I have worked really hard this term, both in rehearsals and in shows and that I have had a positive and appropriate attitude throughout this process and I have worked hard to make sure I performed to the best of my ability, whilst having respect and staying aware of the subject that we're performing about.

First Show Notes

The show on Thursday night was really good. I think we all put physical theatre to the back of our minds, while all of our individual plays were going on, but I think it went a lot better than we all expected. We had quite a small audience, but we expected that because none of us were going to be in the audience. It would have been nice to have a few more people there, because the whole show went so well.

Nothing went wrong and it was really great to see and hear people's reactions to it afterwards. They all seemed to really like it and the teachers came out teary eyed. They said that most people in the audience were crying and that it was so good and moving. It was so nice to hear positive feedback for all of the hard work we put into making this piece and I can't wait to perform the others.

These are the notes that Simon gave to improve even more:

- Slow the exits from the first moment. After Tuwaine talks, listen to the recording, don't just run off stage.
- There were some lovely moments, expand them- make these moments last longer.
- Explore more details of the piece.
- Fat cats, make sure they're noises and not words and have no more than 3 people in a meeting, or it looks crowded, use the space.
- We need to just work the ending a little more.

These notes will really help to make our final two shows, as good as they can possibly be.

Thursday: Run 1: Notes

These were Simon's notes for our first run through of the show in the New Theatre on Thursday:

- Good, moving, thought-provoking.
- It's going really quickly, feeling a bit rushed, slow down - you have a lot of time.
- Everything needs to go slower to allow people to watch it all.
- When you're all on stage at once, it becomes cluttered - use the whole stage space - go right to the edges.

- Opening: our talking should be low level noise, focus on the house lights going out. Tuwaine judges when to come forwards. It took too long, as soon as he steps forward we need to be silent and attuned to what is happening on stage.
- As he moves the silence drifts down the rostra, like a ripple effect. Do not shush anyone. Wait for the silence, all attention on T.
- Make sure you fill the space, there were big gaps with no-one in them and a lot of us clumped together upstage.
- When we speak at the beginning - deliver those lines, speak loudly and clearly and let yourself be heard, "When I think about the First World War, I think of..."
- Listen to the recording like you've never heard it before. Take a longer time to leave the space. Actively listen to the recording.

- The Recruitment: Space your chairs out and use the whole space. Stay until the change in the music happens. Wait until it stops - until you leave. At that point Cameron and I were the only two left on stage, when we should have all still been there.
- Enjoy the moment, don't panic and rush off stage. You know what comes next and you can take as long as you like to get there. Slow everything down. Remember to keep telling the story as you leave.

- Bar Call: look left, look right, then move - take your time. You know the distance you need to travel, so move to the appropriate speed to get there.
- Keep your back or profile to the audience, do not turn around and look at the audience.

- Marching: It's too fast, slow it down or it goes way too quickly.
- Harrison shouts the orders too, or it's too quiet.
- We'll have a whistle for the real performance.
- Hold your gun left to right and drop it for the women's section.

- Boxes Section: Leave slowly, come up very slowly and watch the box.
- When you take the box do it slowly, place the box back and go off stage.

- Fat Cats: No words - snorts/laughs/giggles/noises, but no spoken words.
- Animalise it - snorts, belches, burps- make it horrendous/grotesque/animal like- the line between human and animal is blurred.

-Line at the end: Shuffle yourself, move and line yourselves up into a line and make sure who is in your next line.
-Go when the people next to you go, it goes down a line at a time.

These notes were really helpful and they're really going to allow me to improve my performance for our first show.

Wednesday's Notes

On Wednesday, we ran the show fully and then Simon gave us notes on how we could improve it and what could be done better:

-We need to have more of a filter on at the beginning for the recruitment scene. Develop a back story and put some emotion behind your actions and what you're doing.
- When Layla reads the poem the girls need to not rush their movements, keep focused and be slow. Don't start moving forward until Layla says the word, "return" in the poem.
- Soldiers in the bar - look left and right then move to your place, when you do the look, put a story behind it. You're desperate, the women have gone, so you look at your friends and run to the bar. Use it as some sort of emotional story telling.You're merry, but you want to get to the bar. Put your whole body behind it and make your movements bigger. Let James speak - there's a beat - and then you go.
When you get into the line, it's stereotypical beer drinking. Put your elbow up and out and your hands up. You need to prove to the audience that you're drinking. Hold your pint glass and visualise it, don't let it change size.
When you're in the line, it's heightened movement and slow motion. We can have some levels of low talking/noise/laughter/drunk conversations, but don't pull away from the action at the front of the stage.
- Marching - think about the quality of your movement. Use some precision and discipline to do the moves. Stay in straight lines, make it more accurate. Lock your arms out and make it less camp. Make your movements more precise.
-Rise up with your boxes - you're rebuilt as a human being. You're being pieced back together. You're looking at your sweetheart and trying to reconnect and you can't. You're trying to establish a connection, but you just have to watch.
- No spoken lines in fat cat scene, nonsense sound and not words. Leading from various body parts, use what you know about commedia dell'arte. Use high pitched, flirty noises. You're characters in the extreme. Greet each other and replace words with sound.
Jordan is a ghost, when you see him, he's a reminder of all of the bad things you have done - making profit out of the war etc.
Go to a jacket, pick it up in front of you. Look from the jacket to Jordan and realise what you have done. Leave with the jacket and act like it hurts, you've had an awful realisation of what you've done. Remain as you're character, find your back story and make the audience think.

These notes were really helpful and I have taken them on board and will try to improve my performance from them.

Devising The Ending

On Tuesday we had a rehearsal where we refined things, ran them, did a rough ending, which we changed a few times and generally just cleaned bits up.

We changed the ending a couple of times because we were seeing what would work better and how we could visually create more of an impact on the audience. Our first ending was that Tom, Liyah and Dee would read out the poem and we would sit dotted around in our couples, watching Molly and James do their physical theatre piece.

This was an average ending, but it didn't really feel like a definite ending, so, on Wednesday, Simon devised us to do something that felt a lot more powerful. We then came up with the ending where we file on in lines and line by line we drop to the floor. This was really powerful, but took a long time to figure out. We put our heads down as we lowered ourselves to the ground in a kneeling position, to make it look like we were grave stones. The women then come and look around us, as if trying to find the grave of their loved one. They then lower themselves next to us and kneel next to our graves, mourning. This looked very powerful and happens while Molly and James keep doing their physical theatre piece and at the very end poppies fall on them from above.

This was a very beautiful ending and although it took a very, very long time to be able to kneel line by line, once we managed to get the timings correct, it looked very powerful and moving. Perfect for the ending of our piece.

Rehearsals in the Theatre

On Friday, we started rehearsals in the New Theatre. I was a little nervous, because I had missed the last run through due to a University Interview and I couldn't remember much of what we had done before Christmas. However, it seemed that everyone was in the same boat and was struggling to remember.

We went through each section really slowly and ran bits that we could remember, it all came back to me really quickly, there were a few new movements, but they are really simple and I was able to pick them up very quickly.

I think we were all a bit worried about how this Physical Theatre Show is going to come together, because no one could remember much and a lot of our focus has been on our separate Common Ground plays, however, I think, despite some talking and messing around, rehearsing it in the space was really productive and with a few more rehearsals and if we keep running it, it should be in good shape for Thursday's show.

We still need to develop some sections, some transitions and an ending for our show, but I think at the moment, it is looking like a rough outline of something good and if we focus and work hard, it will look really good by the end of the week. I think Friday was definitely needed, especially for the soldiers, to really go through and remember what we had done and now we can work on cleaning it and making sure that it is ready to be performed.

Rehearsals

We started off our lesson, by walking around the room in neutral and pretending we were a flower opening up to the sun, when Jack said "open". We then carried on walking and when Jack said, "close" we had to get as small as we could on the floor and fold up to become tiny. We did this a few times and Jack told us that he wanted us to imagine that when we opened there was a harsh light that we were blinded by, that hurt to look at and when we closed it was us as soldiers taking our last ever breaths and slowly dying on the floor.

It looked really effective when people did it properly and I think it would work really well at the end of our piece.

We have been trying to attempt to do the Japanese precision walking, by getting into groups and Harrison was teaching us how to do the marching and when to turn. It was going ok, but we really need to concentrate and focus if it is going to work.

We also have been looking at different characters in the war, so after being soldiers, we looked at becoming rich people at home. We focused on leading from our nose, chest, stomach and hips.
When we lead from our noses we were cold, rich aristocrats who were very harsh and cruel and have a lot of money.
When we lead from our chest, we were very upper class, posh and snooty.
When we lead from our stomach, we were very fat, very greedy, rich and mean.
When we lead from our hips, we were sexy women, who were persuading and tempting the men at the bar.

We practiced doing all of these different characters, so that we could become them at the end of the piece and develop our movements to become the rich aristocrats at home, after we have all died in the war.

Japanese Precision Walking

Jack told us that the majority of the rest of our piece will be marching and emotional sequences. He told us to research Japanese Precision Walking.

This type of walking is so precise and needs to be done without anyone going in the wrong direction or doing anything wrong. It looks so effective and works so well, when it is done right. It can also create a menacing image, as well as a softer, funnier one. Which is why some armies choose to have it.

I found it really interesting to research and now I will have a really good understanding of what it is supposed to look like and the effect that we are trying to achieve.

More Devising

In our lesson this week, we ran what we did last lesson, with our 5 moves and really cleaned them to make them flow nicely and look good. We then worked out how to bring on and take off our chairs in an appropriate way. So I walk on with Cameron and at first I am scared, hiding behind my chair and to take them off, we were able to make the movement of our hands moving towards each other, into a turn, which made it possible for us to turn and carry each others chairs off. I carry the chair off looking brave and ready to begin my training.

We then got into groups with the people we finished sitting next to, so I was with Sacha and Tuwaine. We had to devise a comedic section of contact improvisation and develop this to become a scene that is set in a bar and shows our last night of freedom.

We started off with me walking into the bar and both of them wanting to be with me, until Jack came over and said we should just stay as men, so we then devised a piece, which Jack helped us with, where T and Sacha are taking shots and I'm trying to get through to the bar by going around them, standing on their knees, going under their legs and jumping. Eventually, I get through and they let me have a shot with them. Sacha then falls to the ground, we help him up and then all of us fall to the ground. 

We wanted to make it quite comedic, as Jack has said that the rest of the performance will be emotional and sad and have a lot of emotion in it.

Term 2 - Performance Rehearsals

At the start of Term 2, we have been put into separate groups which relate to what our performance was based on, so I am in the group for soldiers.

We started the lesson by warming up and then getting into pairs and creating 5 moves each that showed one person working in the conscription office and the other person being a soldier trying to sign up to fight. I was with Cameron and we came up with a handshake, then me looking nervous, as the soldier, and him stroking his chin, sizing me up. Then he puts his hand under my chin and pulls me up and then I follow where he moves his finger with my eyes and then we salute each other.

Jack saw our moves and gave us some feedback to make it more interesting, with different tempos and different strengths to our moves. So, we made the handshake a bigger movement which we follow with our eyes and when our hands touch, we make eye contact. Then we quickly move our hands and face different sides, so that we appeal to the three-sided audience. We then made the chin movement quite slow and changed it, so that I follow where his fist goes. He then pushes me back down and then we salute to each other quickly.

When we performed our moves to the rest of the class, we got some really helpful feedback. Jack has told me that I need to work on my masculinity, so I look more like a soldier. The class told us to just make sure that I know where Cameron's fist is going to move, so that it is clean and precise and we could add different paces and strengths to the actions, apart from that, they really liked it.

We saw everyone else's moves and they were really good, but everyone needed the same note to make it clean, to change the pace and strengths of the movements to make them interesting and captivate the audience.
This is our opening scene to our performance - I think it's strong and will capture the audience's attention, especially when we're all doing our moves at the same time.

Pavel Semchenko

We also studied the practitioner, Pavel Semchenko, at the very beginning of this project, where we spent our first lesson looking at how an object can influence a whole piece.

We spent a while studying and just looking at one of our stimuli, we chose the picture of the soldiers who had been gassed, and we sat in silence taking in every aspect of it. The colour, the background images, the facial expressions, the intricate details that you might not normally see. We really focused in on the picture and then shared with each other and wrote down our initial thoughts, which we ended up reflecting on, when we started to develop our movements, based on what we'd seen.

This was a really helpful exercise and really emphasised to us, Semchenko's ideas that a whole piece can come out of a single object, if you take the time to study it and focus your complete concentration onto it. We also then allowed the object to become the key part of our performance. For example, in the picture, the men have bandages over their eyes, which gave us the idea to use the scarf, which the majority of our piece revolved around.

Complicite

We looked at Complicite to explore the space. We did an exercise where we had to become a character and get into a lift. One by one in our groups, we had to enter the tiny lift as our characters. Then the lift broke down and we had to decide how our character would react or move in this tiny space.

It was interesting to see how even if you are left with very little space, you are more than capable of still moving a lot and create an interesting piece using just small gestures and mainly your facial expression. This exercise made me very aware of the use of space, but also how important your facial expressions are, as you are still in a performance and you need to convey emotion towards the audience.

We then did an exercise where we had to pretend we were on a busy, packed train and we had to all be as tightly woven together as possible. We then had to move together all in the same direction at the same time. This was a very comedic exercise, but also made me very aware of how we can use our bodies to create interesting shapes and move in an intriguing way.

Magdalena Tuka

We also looked at the practitioner Magdalena Tuka. In this lesson we focused on exploring the space in a more playful manner. We really experimented and explored the room we were in and all of the ways we could move around the space. We did this in a cat-like way crouched down, using our hands and feet to contact the floor, which allowed our flexibility to be heightened and allowed us more freedom to experiment with the room. 

We explored the boundaries of distance and closeness. We got into partners, I was with Nora, and we had to move around the space, never breaking eye contact. It was like a trance-like dance between two people and the connection between you was lost if you broke eye contact. We had to try to keep our balance and experimented with different levels, such as moving on the floor, crawling, walking around the room, including turns and spins - always keeping eye contact, which allowed us to find the ability to play and create an atmosphere in the room, which would be perfect for our piece. 

Our Performance

I think that our performance went well. We rehearsed more and incorporated all of Tim's notes into our performance. We made sure that we were always moving and doing things in a certain way to explore what we could do with the scarf. I thought that our piece went well, although I was happy with our mark, I think it could have been higher, if we'd started devising in classes earlier, so that we could just start making our pieces, so that we could show them to teachers and other students to get lots more feedback and really improve our piece, but we were ready to perform our piece and I think it went well. The movement just could have been a little more developed.

Rehearsals

This is a video of our first rehearsal together where we started to come up with some of our piece that revolved around our stimulus. We chopped and changed the majority of this and added a lot more to our final piece, but it was an effective start, which led us to complete the rest of our piece. We also incorporated a scarf into our final piece, which was my green one, because it was meant to resemble the gas.

Tim's Feedback

We performed our piece to Tim, so see what we could improve on for our actual assessment. He really liked the majority of our piece and thought that the music juxtaposed well with the gas and was really appropriate for our movements.

He gave us some constructive advice, just to make sure that we were always moving and using our prop, the scarf, when possible. This would allow our piece and our movements to flow more, whilst also creating more meaning out of simple movements. This will also leave no sections of our piece looking like we haven't spent as much time on them, or that they look a little under-rehearsed next to some of the sequences we have.

This was really helpful advice and it has definitely benefited our piece. We will work on making sure that our piece is as effective and relevant to our stimulus as possible, whilst using our prop effectively to it's full potential.

Music and Sound

For the music and sound in our piece, Nora suggested that having a happy and cheerful song, might juxtapose what we're doing quite well, but we wanted our piece to be taken seriously, so we decided to have a mixture of songs.

We also wanted the sound of gas to come in at some point, so that it made it obvious to the audience what we're talking about. I went home and downloaded a program I have used before to mix songs together and add sounds over the top, so we have a sad piece of music and the sound of gas playing throughout and at the end, where our piece is quite deep and emotional, we use a cheerful sounding song, "It's a Long Way To Tipperary" by John McCormack.

We chose this to juxtapose the sadness of war, with the proud, happy moments that soldiers felt during some parts of the war.

Gas sounds:

These are the sounds that I cropped and altered to fit together to play over the music and to fade in and out.

Sad Music:

This is the sad music that I found to juxtapose with the more cheerful song at the end. I think the music sounded effective and really added to our piece. It felt a lot better when we ran it with the music and created more meaning, so should connect to the audience more.

Final Rehearsals

Today, we had a rehearsal to finish up our piece and to try to get the final thing polished. We both brought our stimuli with us and we were able to have a productive rehearsal, due to what we brought with us and the knowledge we acquired from this research.

We figured out what we are going to both say for the part where we speak simultaneously, and figured out how it will effectively juxtapose what the other person is saying. The idea is that I am getting stronger and stronger as I speak, until eventually the horrors of war that I am talking about overcome the happy and persuasive words of  the radio broadcasts and posters, trying to recruit people to join the army. So eventually, I am shouting at her. I am saying:

The heavy coloured vapour poured relentlessly into the trenches, filled them, and passed on. For a few seconds nothing happened. The sweet smelling stuff merely tickled their nostrils, they failed to realise the danger. Then, with inconceivable rapidity, the gas worked and blind panic spread.

Hundreds, after a dreadful fight for air, became unconscious and died where they lay –with the frothing bubbles gurgling in their throats and with twisted limbs, one by one, they drowned.

Which are just a few lines that I have taken and put together from the diaries that I found, which highlights what it is like to be gassed. It is really effective to highlight the horror of gas.

We then changed and altered "Dulce Et Decorum Est" by Wilfred Owen, so we have just the lines that are important and vital for describing what it is like to be gassed. We decided to allocate certain lines to each other, so after Nora has read the telegram, we speak the lines. I march behind her, so it is as if I am a soldier marching to war and she is describing what it must be like. We then say the last line together and salute to show that we are soldiers and to show our respect to the soldiers who gave their lives for our country.

Devising

We had another rehearsal today and decided to cut some of what we have come up with so far. We have decided to take out some parts and change them.

We were able to use a scarf today and develop further into some ideas on how we could make our piece even better. We've now decided to include a section about Nora searching for her sight, whilst I am trying to get the gas off me. We also use a scarf to represent the gas and use it to blind Nora and choke me.

We have included a section with a telegram and a woman who's husband has been reported as missing and we have taken real accounts of soldiers and new stimuli, such as the poem and motivational posters, as well as news reports and broadcasts convincing people to go to war.

As Nora talks about convincing people to sign up for the army and what a great thing it is that we're doing for our country, I am talking about what it's like to be gassed, by quoting the diary entries mentioned earlier. By saying these two things at the same time, it really highlights the juxtaposition between the two speeches and how people at home were "blinded" by the reality of war.