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Dan Negative Scene

We decided that this scene would be a turning point for Dan, when he decides that he no longer wants to keep drinking like he used to and doesn’t think that Jack should. We originally experimented with the frantic style, creating a sequence where the objective was to remove the beer bottle from Jacks hand. However we were struggling to create movements and found when we looked at it in comparison to the other scenes, the frantic style didn’t really fit in with the more realistic aspects of the other negative scenes. Instead we decided to retry the method of making stages of development, asking what we wanted each of the characters objectives to be at different points in the scene. Once we had this we know that our milestones would be to have Dan to stop him from drinking, to see Jack react to this, and then to build this into a point where one is physically aggressive to the other. We came back to this rule of three in order to do this, building irritation by having Dan stop Jack fro...
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Work and Emily Scene Revision

Emily Negative Previously we had only worked with improvising for this scene, so whilst we had some key movements we didn’t really have an understanding of the flow of the conversation. Therefore we decided it would be important to define some set phases of the scenes development for each of the characters.   Emily Jack Stage One Upset Stress Stage Two Avoid Anger Stage Three Anger Ignore   These helped to us to concentrate more on the accurateness of gesture of the mask style, by providing markers to hit throughout the scene. In some ways this reflects some of the things we learnt when looking at the commedia style. In commedia, much of the work is improvised, but small moments and ideas such as gimmies and tricks are already pre-set. In this case each of our stages was an example of on objective which we would have to switch to at different points of ...
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Emily Positive and Work Positive

Emily Positive We decided that we would flow straight from the club scene into the montage of Jack and Emily’s relationship, helping to separate them through the use of a music and lighting shift into to create a distinction between the two. We thought that a montage would be the best way to show the development of their relationship and build a connection and understanding of their relationship with the audience. By doing this we thought we could make the audience more invested in the relationship so that in the final scene, the argument and ending of the relationship would have more of an effect on the audience. In this way they would be able to empathise more with Jack. We picked out key moments that we could use to make repeating motives, such as the meal and Christmas memories where they both shared a drink together as well as the engagement and the final scene where Emily would give back the ring. Work Positive We wanted to develop Nasifa’s character and also change th...
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Establishing Structure

Today we looked at refining the work scene, as we felt we were missing some of the things we wanted to convey. First of all, we altered the conveyer belt so that instead of using computers, we used paper instead. This allowed us to create a more simplistic paper shuffling movement that we could use to create a beat. The organising of the paper made a much louder and more easily controlled sound than the keyboards, so the repeated sound was more defined which I think helped that sense of monotony we wanted to give the audience. Two of the cast also created a night out scene between the main character Jack and his best friend Dan. The scene had an upbeat and fast paced energy which I think well reflected the chaotic nature of nightlife culture, although I think a few aspects concerning mask technique could have been more defined. For example, sometimes it was difficult to tell what it was they were doing, such as when listening to music on the jukebox. I think this was just a case...
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Formulating Specfic Scenes

Today we formulated a list of specific scenes that we wanted to include in this piece. We recreated the work scene, which we have established as the opening scene to our play. We explored ways in which we could create this office space, incorporating different parts of the new set to create desks. We looked at creating a conveyer belt of movement, having the workers move from one station to another, as we thought this would reflect that machine like quality of work, as well as the dull and monotonous repetition of work life. Furthermore, we wanted to establish jacks alcoholism with a scene that was fun and light hearted and would therefore contrast the later scenes. We decided that we would have Jack take a sip of a hidden drink and that this would introduce the music of the scene, Frank Sinatra’s Blue Moon. By having the other workers begin to dance to the music whilst they continued the conveyer belt, it created the sense that all the other workers seemed to be having a positi...
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Key Ideas

Based on a mind map we created from the last lot of work, we highlighted two things in particular that we wanted to explore further. These were: -Idea of being trapped -The “in-between space” of the mind We initially began with the idea of being trapped, looking at how we could represent this physically using parts of the set, but struggled to understand how we could present this in a non-literal sense. Instead the movement of the set inspired us to consider the two contrasting worlds we had created and how perhaps we could use the idea of being trapped as a way of interlinking the worlds through the mind. We decided to create a bigger set, including places where we thought we could explore better “trapped” as well as present this idea of the addicts mind bleeding into the real worlds around him. We therefore decided on a more chaotic set for the realistic worlds to be set in, so that the audience would be reminded that they are seeing this world through Jacks eye...
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Creating A Concept

Using the mundane scene from last lesson, we decided to expand this by introducing the contrasting setting of night time. We experimented doing this using a split stage, looking at the character running in-between these two different worlds.   We created a nightlife scene within a tiny area, and this emphasised a sense of a crowded bar without the need for loads of people on stage. The two actors made a physical sequence which explored the different areas of the bar that you would use on a night out. The fast pace and close movement emphasised the heightened atmosphere of a night out and formed a really nice contrast with the repetition of the mundane scene. By creating this split staging, we began to think about this journey the main character made from one side of the stage to the other and this introduced the idea of this in-between place. We decided that rather than being a physical space, we wanted to link the two extremely contrasting worlds by this area where we could...
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