Of the few weekend rehearsals we had, one was particularly successful. We virtually devised all of our play in the 3 hours we spent in school. This meant we were able to work on it every night after school over the following week to push forward each section.
Before we started to think about devising a piece we all gave ideas of what we wanted to do, which ranged from life in prison, and levels of the social hierarchy to, showing whether men have actually evolved or if they are still primates, and what we finally ended up showing which was the endless corruption of men by women.
With all these ideas we all brought in research/material, which we had gathered from many resources such as TV, psychology textbooks and the Internet. We all read through the others ideas and decided that our final idea was one we could show to the greatest effect.
4…
How were your acting techniques and your use of knowledge of dramatic forms used to consciously achieve the intended, overall effect of the play?
We used many different styles of acting in our play. In the opening scene we wanted to show a very physical and strange picture for the audience, so this led us to show Adam being engulfed by the tree (which was made out of actors) and seeing him being handed an apple by the moving tree which led him to his doom.
We showed other physical skills in our acting in the scene that followed this. We went to the zoo to film a pack of Gorillas, to see how they moved. This helped us to show more effectively how we could physically be like Gorillas. We showed in this scene the mating pattern of men, but as if we were gorillas.
We then moved in to a motorcycle chase. Which saw both me and Tom being the motorcycles and Elliot and Brady riding on the back of us, this hopefully showed to person marking the play that we could come up with a number of good ways of manipulating our stances and general body angles to become a number of different things.
The last way in which we showed versatility was having to act like women to seduce a man. This was very hard and we had to work on this for quite a while, as we were more like very camp men than women. I’m not sure how well it cam across as I felt this was the weakest part of our play.
Overall I felt that we did show skills in many physical styles, which enabled us to put across a play that hopefully made the audience, laugh but also think.
6…
How did rehearsals and production process contribute to the final performance?
When we rehearsed we had lots of conflicts of ideas, this led to there being lots of arguments and squabbles over who was right, and what was right for the play.
I felt that the only time we really rehearsed well and worked well on the play was the week and a half before the night of the performance. We worked solidly on a Sunday afternoon and for an hour each night of the week to make corrections to the bits we had thought up.
Although the rehearsal process was not particularly good, our ideas and thought process wasn’t too bad.
We sat down for the first two weeks of the process and talked about what we were doing, we all brought in information about our ideas and did workshops for each other about what we thought. This showed effort and ability on our behalves and I think that we did make an effort on that front of the process. This mass of ideas did help us to incorporate each other’s thoughts into our play. The physical opening scene was thought up by Tom, the scene in which we acted like Gorilla’s was the idea of Brady and I, Elliot thought we should show the continuous corruption of men by women by including our end scene and Terry though we should show how women have corrupted men in the work place by including the scene in which we had to flirt with a male colleague. All these ideas came from different places but we linked them all together to make a play that was built of lots of bits from plays we individually wanted to make.
7…
Explain how you gathered and used research material throughout the process.
At the beginning of the process in the first two weeks, we gathered information that as to do with what we individually wanted to do, we then brought all this information together to make handouts for each other to explain what we were talking about.
We drew these talks from previous knowledge such as psychology lessons and textbooks, and communications and media forms. Some of the group went away in their own time and researched information on the Internet, to gather enough information so they would be able to talk to group about certain ideas with the correct information.
At one point we were considering basing our play around the idea of what prison and the penal system can do to a person. To help us see what courtrooms and the justice system was like we went to the crown court for a morning to see people being sentenced and tried. This was both very moving and also informative as it showed us how people acted when they were judged in a court of law. Although we decided against basing our play on this idea, it was still a good thing to go and see.
9…
Explain the impact on your play of any social, cultural or historical influences.
There are a number of influences on our play. For instance the opening scene was taking from a passage in the book of Genesis, in which Adam takes a bite from the forbidden tree in the Garden of Eden.
The influence of TV was very strong as we tried to imitate adverts that we had seen and twist them in certain ways.
Being in an all male group, it was obvious that our play would have some sort of thing to do with the way women or men have played a part in life. This is quite a strong social influence as it shows how certain members of the group feel and how they would want their opinions to be expressed.
Other influences in our piece include such social issues as, women in the work place and, how men will challenge each other to look good in front of a woman.
We also included a scene which showed how men have become more manly over the years, a sort of before and after of what happens when a man comes home from work. This is heavily influenced by social factors as we can see this change of how men don’t get “food on the table” and women at their beckon call any more.
10…
Explain the influence of playwrights, directors, designers or actors on your piece of work.
There are not many influences in our play from playwrights, directors or actors, in fact I can only think of two.
The first is that from the play “east is west” by Stephen Berkoff, where there is a motorbike chase, we looked at this bit in the play and decided that it was a clever way of doing the chase. This was to have two people crouched down with there arms up like handlebars, and person riding each of there backs. They would simulate all the dips in the road, and the corners as one. We decided this was a really nice way of showing the race and this way we could adapt it a little to be more relevant to our play with a few more testosterone fuelled words and some more movement.
The only other influence on our piece that I can think of is that of the Cirque D’Soleil. I was watching a performance by this very physical circus/theatre group and suddenly had an urge to do something very physically based in our piece. I think this led me to suggest changing the opening scene, which tom also wanted to be very physical.
