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

Things I Know To Be True

PLOT/THEMES

• Rosie comes back from her trip in Europe to see her family who live in Adelaide.  We are then introduced to her overprotective mother, loving father, business savvy sister, brother who wishes to transition and criminal brother.
• Rosie's sister, Pip, decides to move from Adelaide to Canada to take up a job for 12 months and has to leave her entire life behind.  We then find out she'd been having an affair.
• Rosie's brother, Mark, tells his family he wants to move to Sydney and transition to Mia.
• Rosie's other brother, Ben, has been stealing money and spending it on cocaine.
• Rosie's parents, Bob and Fran, try to help all the children with they problems.
• The children don't appreciate their parents' concerns and excessive worry which is why they needed to move from Adelaide in the first place.
• Rosie then decides to take up a creative writing course in Brisbane.
• Soon after she left, Fran with all her stress and fatigue, fell asleep on the expressway and flipped her car and died on impact.  
• The family then reunites in Adelaide to attend her funeral and support Bob.
• Relationship, family, marriage, heartbreak, sense of belonging, tragedy.

STRUCTURE

• Naturalistic and non-naturalistic - moments of dialogue as well as moments of direct audience address and physical theatre.
• Linear timeline - chronological, with ellipses - shown through physical theatre, direct audience address monologues, music
• Sort of cyclical structure - Rosie talking about the things she knows to be true before coming back to Adelaide and after her mother died.

SIGNIFICANT MOMENTS

• The first scene of Rosie explaining her trip to Europe - heartbreak she felt foreshadows the events in the play.
• Meeting the family - sets the base of the play, we get some exposition on the relationships of the characters.
• Pip explaining she wants to go to Canada - after she's left, Fran reading the letter Pip wrote admitting to having her affair - Fran lies to Bob about the letter - foreshadows lies that the family keep from each other.
• Mark telling his parents and Rosie about transitioning to become female - a lot of selfishness is shown from both parties - Mark wants the entire conversation to be about him coping and doesn't think about it being hard for his family to deal with all this information at once.  
• Finding out Ben is a criminal - see a scary and threatening side to Ben - "I want mum" shows he relies on his mother for help but almost abuses it 
• Fran dying - so tired from trying to help her entire family and just as things appear to be getting better, she falls asleep on the expressway and dies.  

ACTING / MOVEMENT

• First scene physical theatre - shows relationships between family members and portrays the way Rosie was feeling without her needing to say it.
• Table when Rosie gets home - transitions from garden to kitchen in a smooth way.
• Physical theatre - showing the passing of time.
• Fran and Bob dancing - the proxemics of how close they are emphasises the love they have for each other (even if it wasn't always there).
• Monologues - providing exposition on the play and also showing the situation from a different point of view.

TECHNICAL DESIGN

• Different lighting - sometimes a low light with a spotlight (usually during monologues) - sometimes a brighter light covering the entire stage (when the family were in the kitchen in the beginning) - sometimes a blue light (usually during times with physical theatre).
• The garden - signified the passing of time (through the seasons with the rose bushes) - at the end, when Bob had lost everything (his wife dying and the children all leaving him) ripping out the rose bushes.
• Bridge - only used once for Mark's monologue - water signifying rain drops coming down on him.

Bullying Piece full run through - Mrs Williams

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22.10.19 Peter and the Wolf - Ms Trono

WARM UP
In this rehearsal we did the warm up game Chinese Whispers but with actions to get our bodies moving.  We had to use movements from the characters from Peter and the Wolf and it would go down the line until we had a movement that should have but didn't look anything like the movement at the start.  For example, I did the duck's waddle, Peter's skip and the hunter's walk.  This then had to go down the line of people in our theatre company and see how the movements turned out at the end.  Some people had a hard time recreating the movements as they required some skill, e.g. I struggled to recreate Amelie's bird motif as it was too difficult.  Some other people had a hard time to remember what movements were done.

PROCESSION
We then looked at the procession and watched some videos online to help us figure out how we want to choreograph this section.  We looked at contact improvisation for ideas on how the characters could interact with each other as there is no dialogue.  We didn't do too much physical work this
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We also looked at some procession videos.
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Bullying Piece Ideas - Mrs Williams

WHY CHARACTER IS BULLIED?

• Single parent, dad
• Bullied about mother (bullies make up stories)
• Has to care for parent at home - always late for school
• Don’t judge because you don’t know what’s going on

TIMELINE1

• Mel goes to teachers (who don’t help)
• Teachers snitch to their child who goes to that school
• That child tells the bullies and then bullying gets worse
• Go into hospital - parent seriously ill
• Bullies realize what they’ve done

TIMELINE2

• Boy moves to new school
• Gets in with wrong crowd
• Gets dared to do things in class
• Gets suspended
• Comes back to school and doesn’t want to do anything
• Bullying gets reported and stops

EXPOSITION

• Start with tragic ending
• Mel in hospital - mum has passed away
• Mel stopped eating - having treatment for anorexia

BEGINNING

• Mel’s first day at new school
• Comes in late - nothing prepared
• Nice students 
• Gets detentions after time
• Detentions turn into suspension because he can’t go to them 

• Gets taken around school by bad person
• Gets into wrong crowd
• Everyone bullies so he feels he has to as well
• Lies about background and family life

MIDDLE

• Keeps bullying because feels he has to stay that way to stay in group
• Gets suspended for bullying (victim tells teacher)
• Friends go to his house - discover he was lying about his wealth and his mum 
• Has argument with mum so goes to park 
• Friends bully him
• Gets phone call that mum is dead
• Goes to hospital

ENDING

• Stops eating - becomes anorexic
• Physically bullied as well for dead mother
• Hospitalized

DEVISING STRATEGIES

• Improvisation
• Physical Theatre
• Writing in role
• Verbatim - direct audience address or dialogue