08.02.20 - FEST - Mrs Williams

WARM UP

For our warm up, we played Zip Zap Boing to get our brains working and our bodies moving.  We started very early and a lot of us were very tired so this helped.

NEW STORY LINE

James then introduced a new story line which is closer to our original stimulus, the play Art.  He has replaced the plain white canvas with Meredith.  It starts with three friends from university, like Art, and one of the friends doesn't like Meredith and the other is more of a people pleaser but also wants to keep everyone together.

IMPROVISATION

Louis, Tristan and James tried to improvise a fragmented monologue.  It started off strong and effective but I think it started to go downhill as there was no proper aim for what they wanted to.

FRAGMENTED MONOLOGUES

Louis, Tristan and James went to write their fragmented monologue.  They started with writing their own monologues and then finding places where they link so they could fragment it.  It worked so much more after they did this.  They included some choral speaking which was really effective and I also liked the touch of dialogue when James described something that happened in the past and Louis acted it out.

NEW STORY LINE

There were still some aspects of the story line that we thought needed improving so Amelie, Seth, Silvana and I worked on completing it.

London

• 3 friends - Harry, Fred and David - friends from university
• Harry meets Meredith and they fall in love
• David gets mad and thinks that Meredith has taken Harry away from the friend group
• David and Harry almost get in a fight but Fred calms them down
• David then meets Jane
• Everyone is a happy family again
• Harry proposes to Meredith
• She then suggests moving to Hawaii and Harry thinks it's a great idea
• David and Jane act like they're happy
• Behind Harry and Meredith's backs, they plan to split them up

Brighton

• Meredith's brother, Jeff, his roommate, Charles and Charles' girlfriend Marie
• Charles suggests that they all move in together when they go to London
• They all agree
• Jeff goes house hunting 
• Jeff finds a place but they can't move in for a couple weeks / a month
• Jeff calls his sister Meredith and asks if the three of them could live with her and Harry
• Meredith says yes

London

• Marie gets angry because Jeff and Charles are messy
• Jeff overhears Jane and David plotting to split up Meredith and Harry
• Their plan is to tell Harry that Meredith is cheating on him with Fred
• Jeff tells Meredith that they're plotting something and she doesn't believe him
• Jeff tells Charles and Marie
• Marie then tells Jane that she shouldn't do it and she agrees 
• Jane goes to David and says they shouldn't carry on 
• David says they should break up if she doesn't want to carry on
• They break up
• David tells Harry anyway
• Harry believes Jane and David and Meredith gets annoyed that his friends aren't nice so they break up
• Jeff talks to Fred and tells Fred to talk to Harry whilst Jeff talks to Meredith
• Meredith tells Jeff that Harry thinks that she cheated on him with Fred
• Jeff runs to stop the fight between Harry and Fred
• Jeff says that Fred couldn't have gotten with Meredith because he is gay 
• Fred says he isn't gay and Jeff is confused
• Harry and Meredith understand the misunderstanding
• They get back together
• Jane and Marie are best friends
• All is good

Pool (no water) by Mark Ravenhill - Mrs Williams

SCRIPT DETAILS

From what we read, I didn't understand much of the context, being that there is group of so-called 'friends' who go to one of their friends (Sallys) pool.  Sally gets in an accident which results in her getting in a coma.  There are no specific characters so this text is very abstract and could be performed in a vast variety of ways.

WHAT DID YOU DO WITH THE TEXT

Our group took the first half of the first page and divided the lines between us to create characters that would make sense.  We had 5 characters, 1 of which we gave lines to to make them appear to be slightly crazy and also very attracted to money.  The character I played took more of a malicious role where they thought that Sally would be better dead so that they could make their fortune off of her. The other 3 characters were more sympathetic and were trying to make the other two understand why killing her would be an awful thing.

WHY DID YOU MAKE THOSE CHOICES

The lines, supported by body language, facial expression and tone of voice, made more sense by splitting the lines in this way in our opinion.  It was very challenging to do so but we persevered.

WHAT WAS THE IMPACT

We made the characters intentions clear to the audience but also still left that mystery and suspense, leaving them guessing what happens next yet giving them just enough context for that half of a page.

WHAT WOULD YOU DO NEXT WITH THIS PIECE OF WORK

Hot seating each character would be a good way to portray these roles more effectively.  I would like to expand it a bit more and experiment with choral speaking, setting and proxemics.

SETTING

We set our piece in and by and empty pool with our audience in the round.

The setting we agreed on for our piece