In todays lesson we got put into our final performance groups and as a group discussed what practioneer we wanted to follow by, we then chose Physical Theatre and out of 4 choices decided that the main plot would be 'The importance of DNA' Zach is the main storyline character and we would follow his mental illness. Me and Lauren thought of this main idea and then discussed it thoroughlly and planned it as a group further.
We choreographed our first physical theatre dance movement and realised there were alot of Frantic Assembly influences within it, in 'Beautiful Burnout' a Frantic Assembly piece we have seen previously the used a lot of manipulative, sharp contrasting movements and this is something we thought would compliment our DNA plot influence.
18th October:
Today for the first part of our lesson we wanted to look into the research part. We looked on youtube at chair duets that Frantic Assembly have done, James then had the idea of to make it more individual and suit our plot we could to a bed duet instead to make it look more hospital and DNA themed. We wanted all of our movements to be unpredictable because it makes it more interesting for the audience and it also has the Frantic influence.
We talked about our main storyline today and how and where bits of dialogue would come in. We want to make all of our dance pieces flow and not look out of place within order and structure of our piece, we decided having one main physical theatre dance as our main point and we could maybe repeat this within the piece.
23rd October:
Our objectives for today were;
- choose music for our piece and rehearse with these.
- Keep blog updated and start to think about set and lighting.
We thought about our props and costumes today, and decided that for props we will be needing a hospital bed, spinning chair, skipping ropes and fitness equipment, and costume wise we will be wearing throughout these; everyday clothes, white lab coats, fitness clothes.
25th October:
Our objectives that we set as a group today are;
- Set music for dance piece's we have started choregraphing.
- Choreograph a dance piece for when zach reaches the paradise.
Zach had a good list of songs on his phone that would fit the theme for our dance piece's, so as a group we walked the dance through using each different music and decided on Gorillaz-feel good inc.
Lauren then had the idea of using a white sheet and projecting two silhouette's onto it to show what the paradise is about. We as a group decided that using this white sheet would show how the 'paradise' is closed in and the white sheet symbolises a blank wall and that nobody actually knows what the paradise is about or what it can do to a person. Me and Lauren will be the ones dancing behind the sheet.
6th November:
Our objectives are;
- Start titling our devised movement scenes, we decided as a group to sort out all of the dance piece's as we have a few at the moment and we need to set where and when they will come into our piece.
- As a group we will start planning a storyboard, but not let ourselves get to frustrated by it, as it can sometimes take away our motivation.
This is the main storyboard that we are sticking with, it took us a while to finalise it but as a group we all agreed on it. The marching dance will be what we are starting with, which gives a strong definite start to the piece, we will then repeat this again as this is something that Frantic Assembly do quite often.
We started choreogrphing our 9-5 dance, which will give the audience an insight into what Zach's everday life consists of. The music we are using for this is 9-5-Dolly Parton, but we will be using a remixed version of this to show that our drama piece is set in the current time period, but it is also a timeless piece.
Today's lesson we wanted to have a look at where our story could go in the end, and what we wanted our ending storyline to involve. We looked into stimulus' such as Dissocia where at the end a bed could be involved to do some movement involving it. We then thought we could use the idea of Zach ending up in a hospital bed similar to Dissocia to leave the audience to make up their own version of an ending and whether it would of been just a dream or not.
We also thought as a group we could use tables and cover them over with a white sheet to make them look as if they were a bed. The purpose of this would be too confuse the audience into thinking that the whole time it could have been situated in a Hospital and Zach could have actually gone insane and dreamt about the Paradise.
Lauren also had the idea of using these tables for our interrogation scene with Zach, and Lizzie will be shouting questions about the Paradise, and me James and Lauren will respond acting as patients of the Paradise.
13th November:
In today's lesson we wanted to spend the first half an hour working on the lighting and seeing how effective it looked agaisnt our movement we have already choreographed, we looked at our ending scene with the bed duets and here is a rough idea of what it will look like with the lighting;
After we had agreed on the colours for this ending, we chose red and neutral blue for this because they are neutral colours and red works well for non-naturalistic plays and as we are doing physical theatre this compliments it well. We then as a group started discussing the ending and what the stage would end up looking like; in a semi circle all facing into eachother as the above picture. We then thought to incorperate dialogue to the ending and to tie up piece, we would all say a paragraphs worth of speech to explain our personalities and views on the paradise. Each of our last lines would be the following persons first line; the order of this goes Zach, Me, James, Lizzie and then Lauren. Lauren's paragraph involves rounding everything up and involving the importance of DNA within our story which refers back to our stimilus we chose at the beginning.
