We started off with a run through of our performance and added in extra details along the way. One of the sections that we added was everyone going into the back room to collect a balloon. Everyone then has a pair that enters the space with them from the opposite side. The pair go together and then run within the audience, lie down into a fetus position before moving to the side of the stage. Once everyone else has done this, we go up to an audience member and tie their memory to the balloon before setting it free out of the window. In order to get to the windows a curtain is pulled back and a wall of photographs from the audience members memories is revealed. This works well because it is so personal and so it’s extremely relatable to the audience. If we were performing to an audience that didn’t consist of family members then our performance wouldn’t have such a powerful effect on the audience.
There are also voice overs of family members that are played. It's weird hearing peoples voices when you know that they are so close to you and hearing about their experiences with such a horrible thing is almost heart breaking in itself. My mum'd done a voice over Which will be played and when I listened to it I felt quite weird because even though you are there with this person or you know then on such a personal level, some of the things she said I didn't even know. There will also be a voice over from one of my peers which almost represents the fact that dementia can affect anyone of any age.
Sunday, 29 January 2017
The Mind - Lesson 3 - Tuesday 24th January 2017
We managed to construct most of our show today. We began by watching a video ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hRBPrfDQVI ) where a man was testing a women for dementia. We noted some of the questions such as:
- What is 100-7?
-What is your name?
- Repeat after me: Apple, Penny, Table
- What year is it?
Things we added to our performance:
- What is 100-7?
-What is your name?
- Repeat after me: Apple, Penny, Table
- What year is it?
Things we added to our performance:
We placed ourselves behind a curtain and sat with our naked legs and toes sticking out. This gave the piece a morgue type look which created powerful imagery and in my opinion represents how we all end up, whether we’ve got dementia or not, we all have one inevitable ending. To add authenticity to this section, we are also hoping to get little tags to place around our toes.
We added sections to our physical piece however there’s not much teamwork within the group and only one person's ideas seem to be being echoed throughout our piece. The whole thing is also quite messy however we have plenty of time to tidy it up. Although I’m not completely sure that the piece has any relation to the vietnam war. Overall it looked good however it’s relevance was slightly amiss.
We then went on to constructing our piece by creating a moment in which we got into pairs and one person had to imagine that they’d forgotten how to put on an item of clothing. I chose to try and put on a shoe. At first I studied the shoes and then played around with it, pretending it were a baby, tying the laces around my wrists, putting my hands inside of it but never quite allowing myself to understand where it was meant to go. Next our partners came out and helped us put our item of clothing on. At first I was hesitant and reacted in the way that a child might if you tried taking their favourite toy off of them. I moved away a bit and moved the shoe away from them. Slowly I allowed her to take the shoe off of me and help me. My partner put the shoe in front of me and indicated towards my foot and then the shoe so I naturally lifted my foot up and put it straight on top of my shoe. This made me think about how we’re all so used to doing complicated tasks like putting on shoes that we forget about how the mechanics of it can be difficult. For instance I know that it took me an extremely long time to learn to tie my laces and so for individuals suffering with alzheimer's putting on a shoe could be the equivalent to that. The brain doesn’t understand things it doesn’t know and I think it’s very scary to think that at any age you could potentially forget to do what seem to be the simplest everyday task.
We form the brain at the back of the room by clustering together and intertwining our arms and weaving in and out of one another. We plan on having fairy lights wrapped around our arms as we do this which will help to emphasise the pulsing of the brain and symbolise it’s power.
Thursday, 19 January 2017
The Mind - Lesson 2 - Tuesday 17th January 2017
Today's lesson was completely experimental with the construction of what might and what might not work. We began the lesson by having a cardboard box in the middle of the room, one by one we then went up to the box and opened it. There was a torch inside the box and so when it was opened this light just comes rushing out towards the person's face who has just opened the box. As we looked into the box we imagined our favorite and most valuable memory that we would never want to forget. This looked extremely effective and was also quite reflective as an exercise and I hope we manage to somehow put it into our final piece.
We also all had the oranges that we were told to bring in because 'A brain affected by the disease can weigh around 140g less than a healthy brain. That’s about the weight of an orange' (taken from: https://www.dementiablog.org/the-future-of-dementia-is-orange/ ). Because of this, we have decided to use oranges in our piece as a symbolic gesture and a wake up call to our audience members. During the lesson we were each given a post it note and told to write our dearest memory. Surprisingly I found this harder then I thought I would, actually trying to think of a memory I found really hard even though there are thousands that I have. It also allowed me to put things into retrospect because it's one thing to not be able to think of a memory at a certain moment in time, but it's another not being able to remember a memory virtually ever. After we'd written down our memories we took someone else's and improvised the other persons memory.
The memory that I tried to recreate was about someone's granddad's birthday party, he made a speech and talked about how beautiful his wife was and how he was so lucky to have her. The actual experience of reading someone else's memory was quite overwhelming especially when imagining that one day that memory could decay until it no longer exists at all. I normally find it really difficult doing improvised work, but having such a meaningful stimulus, I was able to create wok that I was proud of, really quickly. We then had to add the oranges into our improvised solos. I didn't find it difficult to incorporate the orange either, in fact it added an extra layer to my piece. For example, in one section I dropped the orange from a high level and then caught it at a lower level which acted as a transition. I also help the orange out during one section, admiring it as though it were the most beautiful and loving person that I knew before pulling it to me chest and into where my heart is located.
Rose was then introduced to us, and we had to perform our memories to her as though they were her own and we were trying to make her remember. Then, one by one, we sat by her and read her the memory from the post it note. Rose then got us and began to peel the orange,watching her do this was very sad and no one really knew what to do. Whilst she was doing this, I really wanted to do my improvisation and then leave the room because it would have looked her memories were being peeled away from her until she was left with nothing. However, I didn't do this because we were in a lesson and it would have been weird. After a while of her peeling the orange, Miss came in to the scene with some wipes and took Rose away to get cleaned up saying 'did no one else help you?'. We all of course felt extremely bad for not helping at this point and of course would of if we knew that was an option. Although, the scene turned out looking really nice and it would have been interesting to see if the scene would have benefited or not from our interference.
After lunch we created a timeline of Rose's life:
9
We then chose a section of the timeline and got into groups so that we could create a physical piece to represent the part of the timeline we have. My groups section is about when she protests about the Vietnam war. We rehearse Here's a video of what we created:
Our group was really good at lifts and being able to create a quantity of work, however we need to work on quality and transitions. I was really happy with the amount of ideas put forwards, now it;'s just a case of making everything fit together well. I really likes Tara's groups memory piece because it is very syncranised and technical however looks very simple yet effective. Justine's groups piece was also amazing and their use of physicality worked well.
We also all had the oranges that we were told to bring in because 'A brain affected by the disease can weigh around 140g less than a healthy brain. That’s about the weight of an orange' (taken from: https://www.dementiablog.org/the-future-of-dementia-is-orange/ ). Because of this, we have decided to use oranges in our piece as a symbolic gesture and a wake up call to our audience members. During the lesson we were each given a post it note and told to write our dearest memory. Surprisingly I found this harder then I thought I would, actually trying to think of a memory I found really hard even though there are thousands that I have. It also allowed me to put things into retrospect because it's one thing to not be able to think of a memory at a certain moment in time, but it's another not being able to remember a memory virtually ever. After we'd written down our memories we took someone else's and improvised the other persons memory.
The memory that I tried to recreate was about someone's granddad's birthday party, he made a speech and talked about how beautiful his wife was and how he was so lucky to have her. The actual experience of reading someone else's memory was quite overwhelming especially when imagining that one day that memory could decay until it no longer exists at all. I normally find it really difficult doing improvised work, but having such a meaningful stimulus, I was able to create wok that I was proud of, really quickly. We then had to add the oranges into our improvised solos. I didn't find it difficult to incorporate the orange either, in fact it added an extra layer to my piece. For example, in one section I dropped the orange from a high level and then caught it at a lower level which acted as a transition. I also help the orange out during one section, admiring it as though it were the most beautiful and loving person that I knew before pulling it to me chest and into where my heart is located.
Rose was then introduced to us, and we had to perform our memories to her as though they were her own and we were trying to make her remember. Then, one by one, we sat by her and read her the memory from the post it note. Rose then got us and began to peel the orange,watching her do this was very sad and no one really knew what to do. Whilst she was doing this, I really wanted to do my improvisation and then leave the room because it would have looked her memories were being peeled away from her until she was left with nothing. However, I didn't do this because we were in a lesson and it would have been weird. After a while of her peeling the orange, Miss came in to the scene with some wipes and took Rose away to get cleaned up saying 'did no one else help you?'. We all of course felt extremely bad for not helping at this point and of course would of if we knew that was an option. Although, the scene turned out looking really nice and it would have been interesting to see if the scene would have benefited or not from our interference.
After lunch we created a timeline of Rose's life:
9
We then chose a section of the timeline and got into groups so that we could create a physical piece to represent the part of the timeline we have. My groups section is about when she protests about the Vietnam war. We rehearse Here's a video of what we created:
Our group was really good at lifts and being able to create a quantity of work, however we need to work on quality and transitions. I was really happy with the amount of ideas put forwards, now it;'s just a case of making everything fit together well. I really likes Tara's groups memory piece because it is very syncranised and technical however looks very simple yet effective. Justine's groups piece was also amazing and their use of physicality worked well.
Gallery - Lesson 2 - Thursday 12th January 2017
In today's lesson, Mason joined Nick and I. Together we explored how different things make us feel, and then compared how we sometimes shared different feelings towards the same thing. We had: 'Anger', 'Sadness', 'Happiness', 'Excitement', 'Jealousy' or 'Fear' to pick between for each of the statements that we came up with. It was quite interesting because something like 'gang violence' seemed to anger me because in my opinion it was pointless and ongoing, whereas Nick feared it because he wanted to avoid it completely, and it made Mason sad because of past experiences and stereotyping that coincided with it.
The statements that we came up with will be written on pieces of paper which the audience will have to take and then read aloud. We will then put the paint that represents the emotion that we feel, on our skin. Something we realised that we will have to think about is whether or not to have the coloured paint labeled so that the audience can clearly see what colour represents what emotion, or whether to leave it unlabeled so that it's all down to each individual audience members interpretation.
Towards the end of the lesson we performed our showcase to the class however we had to say the emotion aloud rather then use paint and so the powerful imagery that we wanted to use was lost. I really like the idea of doing it in silence or without words at the very least because it's almost like a leap into the human mind (we are showing the audience how we react on the inside by showing them colour on our outside. It's quite private and personal in a way).
When watching other people's show cases, I found Alabama's and Francis' because it was them standing shoulder to shoulder, looking each audience member in the eye and then asking them 'who do you miss?'. This created a certain atmosphere which proved that it was really effective. I feel as though if they'd asked more then it would have ruined everything and changed the atmosphere completely but with that as a question, it gets the audience thinking and feeling within seconds.
Below are annotations of the photo's that we chose to use as stimulus:
The statements that we came up with will be written on pieces of paper which the audience will have to take and then read aloud. We will then put the paint that represents the emotion that we feel, on our skin. Something we realised that we will have to think about is whether or not to have the coloured paint labeled so that the audience can clearly see what colour represents what emotion, or whether to leave it unlabeled so that it's all down to each individual audience members interpretation.
| A few of the notes of the things that we feel strongly about. |
Towards the end of the lesson we performed our showcase to the class however we had to say the emotion aloud rather then use paint and so the powerful imagery that we wanted to use was lost. I really like the idea of doing it in silence or without words at the very least because it's almost like a leap into the human mind (we are showing the audience how we react on the inside by showing them colour on our outside. It's quite private and personal in a way).
When watching other people's show cases, I found Alabama's and Francis' because it was them standing shoulder to shoulder, looking each audience member in the eye and then asking them 'who do you miss?'. This created a certain atmosphere which proved that it was really effective. I feel as though if they'd asked more then it would have ruined everything and changed the atmosphere completely but with that as a question, it gets the audience thinking and feeling within seconds.
The Mind - Lesson 1 - Tuesday 10th January 2017
We started
the lesson off imagining that we were walking along straight lines.
Automatically I was able to imaging a grid of pipes that overlapped, I was able
to use my imagination to turn the exercise into a game that didn’t allow me to
fall off of the pipes otherwise I would fall and die. This meant that I had to
place my feet in particular places in order to not fall. By doing this I was
able to carry myself around in a more precise and exact manor. When turning
corners my movements were sharp and quick. I also had to be aware of my peers
that were following their own paths. Using my peripheral vision I managed to
avoid bumping into them most of the time. However the few times I did bump into
someone, it ripped me completely away
from my focused that I had created and I found that after bumping into one
person I often ended up bumping into a series of people immediately after until
I was able to gain control of the situation once again.
During this
exercise there was music which also helped movements to be synchronised and
allowed a pace to be kept. As a whole class, there were moments in which we
allowed ourselves to fall behind in terms of pace when we should have continued
to push through and kept a constant energised speed. In respect of the exercise
relating to the mind, I thought that it would look very effective as something
that was continuous as audience members entered the space because we were all
like little impulses on our own individual missions. If we were to add
something like torches which we switched on and off every once and again as we
moved around the space then it could have built upon that image and closed with
either one light disappearing at a time or a build-up of lights to reveal
something spectacular.
After this
we got into partners and were given the aim to hit the back of our partners
knees but to avoid our own from being hit. This was the most exhausting task
for me because being active whilst interacting made me want to laugh which
meant that my body could maintain the energy that it required for as long. I
found myself wanting to give up a lot of the time. However, having a partner
worked two ways because it also brought out my competitive side and I was
willing to put in as much effort as my partner because I wanted to make sure
that I beat them.
We then got
into different pairs and stood opposite our partner. We took it in turns of
either playing the fisherman that was trying to fish the fish out of the water
or the fish that was trying to fight the line that it was caught on. During
this exercise, I think the music was a huge part of the atmosphere that was
created. There was very dramatic but slow music playing which was fed through
our movements and translated in the slow motion and exaggerated movement and
facial expressions that most of us used. At this point in the lesson, we were
all so tired that we didn’t even care what we looked like or the fact that the
exercise was a bit strange, instead we just went for it. It was at this moment
that I understood why Grotowski liked exhausting his actors, it was because a
shield that is unconsciously there is then removed and a fresh rawness can be
revealed and delivered in its juiciest form.
We then did
an exercise that I really liked that included having a partner and then having
to get away from them. This is a good exercise because it really forces both people
to put in all of their effort and strength to either escape of trap a person.
My partner wasn’t as strong as me and so I was able t escape quite a few times
so it wasn’t actually that effective for me personally but I can see how it defiantly
would be so long as the partners are equally matched physically. The exhaustion
also seemed to get rid of awkwardness or insecurities; it allowed pure emotions
to be awoken from the dead. My mission to escape meant that I hate my partner
and needed to escape their grip in order to survive.
SCRIPT
Gallery - Lesson 1 - Thursday 5th January 2017
| Taken at the Tate Modern Gallery |
This is the first image that I chose to use to represent the brain. It symbolizes offering yourself up in order to help others. It allows a person to be kind hearted and to understand that sometimes others need certain things more than you might. This part of the brain allows a person to offer themselves to another person in need and give them a piece of their heart. The individual would do this because they want to help others and know that they can live without what they've given of themselves however know that the other individual in need wouldn't be able to.
| Taken at the Tate Modern Gallery |
The art piece was actually made in a paper mache styled way. The fact that newspapers were the material used to create this layered affect also adds to the meaning. It gives the art a deeper meaning, as though information is being covered up, and those words are what is causing the individual harm. But now the secret is out.
| Taken at The Tate Modern Gallery |
This abstract painting represented every possible example of stress to me. It shows an image that is top heavy and so although it looks elegant, the bottom half must be under strain. It also reflects a 'too much work, not enough time' scenario and I can feel as though there is only a matter of time until everything collapses and ends up broken on the floor.
Actual meaning:
This image relates to a plan for a sculpture, which Bellmer never completed. The peg-top was intended to symbolise a woman turning the heads and hearts of men. Bellmer was interested in ideas of fetishism, drawing out sexual associations between inert objects and the body. His best-known works were a series of constructed dolls. Bellmer joined the French surrealist group in 1938, having left his native Germany to escape the Nazi regime.
Gallery label, October 2016 (source: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/bellmer-peg-top-t00713)
| Photo taken at the Tate Modern Gallery |
To me, this sculpture represents slavery but not in the stereotypical sense. To me it shows manual labour and the struggles that create modern day slavery. A slavery that isn't literal but still forces individuals to be owned by certain organisations and the state as a whole. There is also an element of blindness to the slavery that occurs in today's society.
When translating this into my own piece, I will use this image to represent how an individual can be a slave to bother theirs and other people's opinions and judgement.
I'm doing my gallery piece with Nick and together we came up with these ideas and mind maps which will hopefully help us to shape our experimental piece. I really liked the idea of creating a distorted image, so maybe including the use of mirrors and either have the half of our face that is facing the mirror look distorted and the half facing the audience to look normal. I also considered painting the half of our faces that would be reflected for the audience to see.
Eventually we came to our conclusion and overall idea of what we wanted o do. We are going to have a line of different coloured paints in front of us and each colour will represent an emotion. The audience will then read us questions and we will respond by choosing a colour that reflects how we feel towards the question before painting ourselves with it.
By the end of the piece, we will be an assertion of colours that reflect what emotions we feel most of the time.
Our piece is experimental because it is trying something new and exploring how one thing can make different people feel. Also, by giving our audience a visual, it makes the piece more powerful because it can be seen in retrospect and reflect how most youth are left to feel on daily basis.
Research
Not everyone knows if they have dementia, one of the ways to catch the early signs of dementia is by taking a SAGE test (example of a SAGE test: http://www.itv.com/news/2014-01-13/dementia-test/ ). A SAGE test, tests the mental abilities of an individual. If it seems as though a person does in fact have those early signs then the individual can be put forward to take a 'mini mental state examination' (MMSE) which usually confirms the query. It's good to get checked out if you're in doubt because although dementia can't be cured, there are many different medications that can help prevent the rate at which an individuals are affect by the disease.
Antonin Artaud
"We do not intend to do away with dialogue, but to give words something of significance they have in dreams"
Here is a video on Antonin Artaud, his life and influences on theatre:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuQAS57I-qQ
Diagnosed as schizophrenic, Artaud spent the next nine years in mental institutions. (sourced:http://www.encyclopedia.com/people/literature-and-arts/french-literature-biographies/antonin-artaud )
- He was a drug addict
- His parents put him into a sanatorium, he stayed there for 4 years
- He suffered with depression
- Has meningitis when he was young
- During his final years he was committed to a psychiatric hospital
- He was thought to be delusional during some of his life
- He got testicular cancer
- But he died of an overdose (wasn't confirmed whether this was purposeful)
- He believed that words were incapable of expressing the meaning of things. Instead music and movement would be used
- His Theatre of Cruelty used emphasized music which would evoke certain audience responses such as them discovering the sublime
- Artaud's ideas were not popular within his time
- Peter Brook was the main person who brought back Artaud's work and used his Theatre of Cruelty effectively. He regenerated it and made it popular like it is today.
( http://www.thedramateacher.com/theatre-of-cruelty-conventions/ :)
Theatre of Cruelty aimed to shock the senses of its audience, sometimes using violent and confronting images that appealed to the emotions. Text was given a reduced emphasis in Artaud’s theatre, as dance and gesture became just as powerful as the spoken word. Piercing sound and bright stage lights bombarded the audience during performances.
Artaud experimented with the relationship between performer and audience, preferring to place spectators at the very centre of a performance surrounding them. His intention was to trap the audience inside the drama.
Following 3 images taken from: http://www.slideshare.net/jcrane66/the-amygdala-julie-eva-d
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