Other items we explored in the early stages were for instance, the possibility of starting the piece off with an up to date news flash, reporting on the battle of Worchester. This involved more intense research, as we needed to find accurate and factual information for our news report to be informative. We explored and improvised with formal and informal ways of presenting the news flash because we wanted to experiment to see what style would mostly suit our project. One experiment we took on board was the introduction of comedy into our piece, by imitating existing newsreaders of today. This worked well as it gave our overall piece more depth and variation, preventing it from becoming two-dimensional. This technique added a further twist to the project whilst increasing its episodic nature.
Another element that added to the uniqueness of the piece was that it included a montage of time to take the audience forwards and backwards in their understanding. We thought this syncopated structure would again be Brechtian and make the audience ponder due to its abstract content.
The final component we explored was charaterisation. We researched how villagers of the era would have lived and acted and tried to portray them with improvisation and hot-seating. We then decided as a group that I should take on the role of the King, so again the character had to be developed. I used many techniques to do this including, acting in front of a mirror, and spontaneous monologues. The first of which helped me to improve any faults that I feel were present in my portrayal, whilst the second improved my confidence and enabled me to gain more knowledge of how to present the character of the king. Hot-seating from other members of the performance group also helped a lot with exploration of the character.
As there were a lot of different venues around Mosley Old Hall where we wanted to perform, we decided it would be a good idea to turn our piece into promenade theatre. This was an idea we had been considering from the beginning. Another reason for this decision was that we could remove the fourth wall to keep with the theme of Brecht, whilst maintaining the obscureness of the piece. With this knowledge in hand we could then go on to develop the project further and produce a detailed structure of the ‘episodes’.
Development:
Once we had decided that the promenade method was the best way to go we had to produce a structure and route to the piece. So we produced a script outlining the order of the scenes we wished to carry out. We then returned to Moseley Old Hall and drew out a birds-eye view of the venue similar to that of appendix 1. The route we would take was decided by the structure of the episodes. The route is drawn in red pen on the birds-eye map shown in appendix 1. Once we had a structure to our piece we had to go on to develop it further by using more techniques until we were ready to start intense rehearsing.
First of all on our scene structure was the up to date news flash in which we continued to imitate existing news readers and their traits. We produced a script and added in lots of extras for comedy effect and start the piece off in a lighthearted manner. For instance, we researched the way in which news readers ruffle their papers. By using physicality we decided to exaggerate these to there optimum. We even decided to record the ‘news at 10’ theme from the TV and recreated the ‘gongs’ for the headlines. We wanted it to be funny whilst remaining informative.
Next on the agenda we composed a poem to inform the audience and contrast with the uplifting opening scene. We wanted to allow audience interaction whilst creating an eerie atmosphere. We thought of the use of candle light to promote this. The poem finished with an invitation to join us as we moved out of the barn with our instruments ready for the song. In doing this it removed the 4th wall, which was another characteristic of Brecht’s work.
The Renaissance song we had created in the exploration stage seemed a perfect link for the promenade between scenes. We added relevant words to the ‘modal’ melody created earlier, to incorporate subjective narrative. The style of song we had created was called a ‘recitative’ because it told a story. Another characteristic of a recitative is a simple texture and our piece only used two instruments (recorder and guitar). It also contained long chords, as we didn’t want the music to take the focus off the important words. The relevant lyrics and simple manuscript of the piece can be viewed in appendix 2.
As you can see from the map (appendix 1) the song would lead the audience to the wall where the ‘Thomas and William’ scene would take place. We developed this scene into a more believable piece of theatre by producing a set script and used body language and facial expressions to reflect the cold weather the children would be feeling at that moment.
We developed our ‘hide and seek’ dance by dividing it into two halves. In the childlike first half we developed the characters the dance would be performed by and their gestures and movements by carrying out an exercise that involved us hiding. We improvised ways of travel using childlike skipping and clumsy movements whilst keeping them stylised. We experimented with the use of various techniques such as delivering movements in cannon to create a game of ‘Tag’ and revealing ourselves to the audience in unison, peeping around trees. The use of these techniques was an idea taken from a previous improvised piece of samba drumming that taught us how to use them and we created a link across the art forms by adapting them to influence our dance. The second half of the dance took on a more sinister feel as we wished to portray the king in hiding from the deadly clutches of Oliver Cromwell. This provided a shocking contrast between the two halves and confused our audience. This was a Brechtian inspired aspect, as he wanted his audience to think about what they were seeing. We used exaggerated movements and physicality to create short solo pieces, a process we developed in previous drama workshops. Drama also taught us about spatial awareness and how to use proxemics in our work; this awareness of space was present throughout our dance. We then decided the music should change from playful Renaissance courtyard music to up to date dance music with a threatening vibe. This allowed us to use contemporary dance, which we had used in previous showcases to great effect. After we found suitable music, the idea seemed to work well as it continued the montage of time technique to baffle the audience.
After the dance we proceeded to the gazebo for a devised monologue given by the king (see Appendix 3). As I had been doing a lot of intense research and character building to develop my role of the king, we decided that a monologue in the form of a soliloquy would be the best move. In the scene Charles would be speaking to God whilst indirectly informing the audience of his true feelings and emotions. To make it more believable we used period language. This again would remove the 4th wall and allow audience interaction whilst again creating a totally original scene in the context of our project.
For the villagers scene we decided that our original idea of a simple reenactment was not stretching our abilities and would not suit the abstract nature of our piece so we came up with an idea for a more contemporary style. As we used hot-seating in the early exploratory stages of the scene we considered using a similar theme in the actual performance, whereby the action was stopped and questions were asked of the characters in a freeze frame scenario. In this scene we also used many techniques including the dynamic of crescendo when chanting. With increase in volume and tempo of the chant made the victim feel very uncomfortable and claustrophobic. The dynamic of crescendo was yet another technique incorporated from music workshops. It also carried a strong political message, that despite being outnumbered and threatened the royalists stayed loyal to their beliefs. Then we agreed that a click of the interviewer’s fingers should reverse the scene back to reality. This worked well as it again get the audience to think.
After another short promenade back to the barn we thought a fitting end to the project would be to include another narrative poem to leave the audience with a closing thought to process and go away feeling that they have learned something and could research the subject further. A reference was even included to researching on the internet in the closing line (‘the internet will make it clear’) as this had been the starting point for our own research and we found it was a very good source of information. The purpose of this closing narrative was to sum up the piece and bring it to a solitude end. Brecht often did this at the end of his plays, for example in his play ‘Mother Figure’.
It was during this performance process that the group decided on using nominal set and costumes. This was down to two reasons. One, that it was Brechtian and kept to the theme of our project, and two, it was sensible to have little costume when dancing and promenading.
Rehearsal Process
Now we had a clear structure to our piece, we needed to rehearse. I believe we left this very late. All our intensions and development of the project had been done, but we had to put this into practice. During the rehearsals we were continuously improvising and adding new parts to improve the piece. A technique used when doing this was trial and error, where we identified areas we could improve and adapted them accordingly. We had to continue to use character building to develop our different characters even further. We also used intrinsic and extrinsic criticism to review our performance and improve it. We did not have much opportunity to rehearse at Moseley so did most of our rehearsals at school. This was a problem as we had no real idea of the spaces we had to work in, this was worst when it came to performing the dance. We had rehearsed it in a small space and had only a vague idea of distances between the trees. This resulted in us having to rework parts of the dance to enable us to cover the space. Another factor we failed to allow for were the low branches of the trees. This resulted in us crouching lower than usual and lost us our momentum, we allowed for this in rehearsals therefore it didn’t effect our final performance.
Initially in the ‘Thomas and William’ scene the actors were going to sit up in the chestnut tree to make use of the natural setting. When we came to rehearse this we noticed that the tree was far to high and unsafe to climb, so we had to make do with sitting on a wall. I felt this made the scene far more unconvincing and removed the realism that would have been present. However, having this scene just before the ‘hide and seek’ dance proved effective as it set the mood and we could remain in character.
Learning lines, for example in the Kings monologue (Appendix 3) became a problem, so we had to incorporate this into the rehearsal process. This also allowed physicality and the projection of our voices to be improved. Overall the rehearsals made us develop our characters more thoroughly and deliver a more rounded and fluent performance.
Performance
The final performance was very successful, with the cast becoming a lot more focused than in rehearsals. An example of this focused attitude was in the dance when we peeped around the trees. The group responded perfectly in unison and showed great awareness and timing. A reason for this focus was probably due to performing in night conditions for the first time. The change of atmosphere along with an audience being present really bought the best out in our performance as we were anxious and had a lot of adrenaline in our bloodstream. Having the whole day rehearsing at Moseley also enabled us to adapt to the surroundings and fall into character more easily.
Prior to performing the dance we knew it would be tricky due to the poor light and it became more of a problem than we thought. Visibility was more or less non existent so we had to focus even more. However, the darkness bought out the full effect of our torches, producing a mini light show to the audience’s delight. The night gave the dance a much more menacing feel, especially the sinister second half. After the performance the response to the dance was a confused one. This meant we had achieved our goal, like Brecht we wanted our audience to question what they were seeing and make them think about the true meaning behind it. It was interesting that some of the children in the audience understood what had gone on, more so than the older viewers. This proved that our childlike theme related to the audience it was aimed at.
The unexpected traffic noise from the M6 motorway nearby unfortunately played a big factor in several scenes. For example the important lyrics in the promenade song (Appendix
2), could not be heard clearly over a combination of audience footsteps and rush hour traffic.
One thing that I personally found hard was the ability to adapt from one character to another in quick succession, due to the episodic nature of the project. I overcame this by concentration and visualisation techniques. During my monologue (when portraying the part of the King), I was a little unsure of my words, so had to keep referring to my prompt sheet. This wasn’t very professional and although I covered it well, I feel it prevented me from delivering the role to my full potential.
Their was no lighting in the barn, just candle light, so this made the piece seem very abstract. We had no table for our news report, but we used this to our advantage as it made the setting very unnaturalistic.
Something I would change given the opportunity to create another community project would be to start the rehearsal process a lot earlier, and try to rehearse as much at the performance venue as possible. This is so you could any necessary changes early on if needed.
Apart from the sub-zero temperatures, which were not ideal, especially for the elderly members of the audience, I have really enjoy devising and performing this piece. It has helped to learn a lot of new techniques whilst increasing our historical knowledge of the society we live.
It seemed to be a great success as we have even had an article published in the local paper regarding our exploits.(see Appendix 4)
By Luke Hopson
Candidate Number: 7265
