Finalising A Performance

For the final last weeks of the module, we managed to finalise a complete run-though performance. The entire piece sums up the main elements of which we have been building upon throughout the module: love, family, fear, loneliness, night, day, dream, father, daughter. It was such a good feeling to be able to do a finalise the piece by putting everything we had done over the past two semesters together. The class morale boosted massively - we felt so proud that we could perform and finish such a powerful and imaginative piece.

The piece finishes with the powerful reality that the whole story of the piece was just a dream. The daughter makes up, and everyone else in the piece walks casually off stage talking in rhubarb - it appropriately mirrors the opening of the piece. This truly highlights the imagination behind both the characters and the performance; all in all the power showing within the daughter's feeling towards her father, which is portrayed all in the dream. This piece of theatre had been imaginative, powerful, physical, emotional, and effective in the way that it has provoked such a strong response to both the performers and audience. I want to truly thank my module leader, Anna, for introducing to us such a entrancing area of theatre and performance. It brought the group closer together, both physically and emotionally, and overall gave us in return an excellently magical performance.

Composing A Score

As the next few weeks went on, the story of The Tiger’s Bride became more evident in our performance. Scenes evolved from the previous material, i.e. songs, dance routines, gestures we had devised. An overall structure looked like this:

VC2908 Performance Project

SCORE

Step 1: Everyone goes around the piano

Step 2: Everyone speaks in rhubarb

Step 3: 3 movers around the piano that alternate places, 4 positions – each moves at separate times, one after the other; the last of which comes after the second position

Step 4: Boys introduce bass

Step 5: Gestures explaining the story, i.e. “day”, “father”, “daughter”

Step 6: Introduce Marin and Aleksi as Daughter and Father and partner work in centre of stage.

Step 7: Chorus move in huddle around the round eventually forming big group

Step 8: Laura moves the chair to centre, Aleksi begins father work ‘karmodabill’

Step 9: Choral work in the corner beside Aleksi, i.e. “lonely”, “father”, “family”, “love”

Step 10: Chorus move around Aleksi copying his gestures, chair gets moved to corner and table gets moved for gambling

Step 11: Boys follow Aleksi, girls put Marin to sleep on chair with gestures, i.e. “night”, “dream”, “Sleep” “gambling”

Step 12: Boys starts gambling, Lindsey runs interacts with gambling telling the girls – build up tension/noises around scene

Step 13: Daughter wakes up after the girls use a heightened version of the word “gambling”

Step 14: Eee-eeeeh…….. girls come into semi – circle around gambling scene, Daughter looks in from afar

Step 15: Pause, intake of breath into breathing beats of ‘Dash Boq’

Step 16: This leads into mutation of gambling scene – Build-up of sounds (George)

Step 17: Manipulation of the relationship between father and daughter – ‘gillom, gillom’ – lift Marin, chorus drop her infront of David and disperse

Step 18: Aleksi come on as servant in shirt, Aleksi’s monologue as chorus repeat his gestures moving to piano

Step 19: Chorus quietly hum waltz song as they watch the scene with Marin, David and Aleksi unfolds

Step 18: Everyone morphs into animals

Step 19: ‘Island’ song, (‘sweat dreams’)

Step 20: Neutrality sifting into the clockwork line, line breaks off in individual sections, Aleski struggling to maintain control

Step 21: Beast and the girl (moment of silence) “reveal”

Step 22: Waltz singing

Step 23: ‘Coming of Age’ – dance – Gabi’s motif accompanied by chords

Step 24: Move Marin to chair, falls asleep. Chorus scatter/ depart

Step 25: Marin awakes, with Aleksi by her side – Father/daughter moment

Step 26: Chorus come and join, massive reprise of sweet dreams as a choral family (bows)

 

                                                                                    FIN

 

 

Incorporating Further Choral Movement

Coming back into second semester, we were able to throw ourselves straight back into the project. We began to develop on the starting material that we began working on previously – a new dance routine was introduced, named ‘Coming of Age’, in one of the first sessions. The idea of the routine comes from this sense of evolution – we use gestures and choral work to express the development of human nature and routine. It is in such a manner of us coming as one. The routine involved low and sensual floor movement, accompanied by choral chords in four voices. The leader of the choreography begins introducing a solo vocal motif – As a choral piece, this fluid movement and sound creates a moving and sensual image.

Closing The First Semester: Finalising A Full Project Idea

The next following set of weeks we began building our devised to a more complete piece – sections such as rhythm, ‘gilom gilom’, ‘coming of age’, ‘old pools’, began to fit in together, and we blocked it so that we knew the running order (although this was altered over the final weeks, it fits better and feels more finalised). As a group we worked to improve and make our harmonies for the songs tighter, and finalised any details within the piece such as direction, levels and even props.

As we reach the final week of this module this term, I feel excited to perform this piece – it really shows how we can work efficiently and creatively as a group. From this module I feel like I have become more confident in being able to speak out and devise, musically and practically. I am looking forward to how we can progress from this next year, in Performance Project 2 next semester.

Looking Into More Individual Expression And Material

In the fourth session we really focused on more individual tasks – from this we were going to apply these to a bigger devised piece for a future session. My focus was to look into Ancient Greek drama, particularly the story of Iphigenia and Agamemnon, which was great as I studied Classical Civilisation to A Level. I also suggested that I took a look into composing a short piece to perform on my flute, which would accompany and compliment a sequence that looked into the classical drama. The instrument is also significant as it played a large role in Ancient Greek society – a lot of the vases found dating back from that time depict a Greek musician, even the Gods, playing the instrument (as you can see the God of Love Eros, or Roman Cupid, playing the instrument:

 

I was partnered up with David to then look into further detail of the story of Agamemnon and Iphigenia – to summarise; Agamemnon sacrificed his own daughter so that his ships could sail to Troy. The story is similar to that of ‘The Tiger’s Bride’ by Angela Carter – The father loses all his possessions in gambling, and his last option to get everything back is to hand over his daughter to the Beast, who is in custody of all the man’s belongings. We were suggested to read and begin devising ideas around the story The Tiger’s Bride, since David came up with the idea. I really enjoyed the detail of imagery and description that the book holds – the themes ideas that came out from the class discussion was intriguing - this is the beginning of a large devising piece that will progress over the next coming weeks.

Moving Forward Into Further Practice

In the second session we were introduced to a guest workshop leader, George, who is renowned for physical theatre training and performance. He introduced us to a dance sequence known as the ‘Coming of Age’ – the idea comes from evolution, and it gave us the chance to execute a synchronised story of movements with poise. This performance was much more, not held-back however maybe, composed than the previous session. Dance isn’t entirely in my favour, however the movements were simple enough for me to follow through with them – I rather enjoyed the final performance of it at the end. George was a great director in the way he joined in easily with the group to put this performance together. I’m sure we will use this dance sequence as a guideline for further devising.

The third session again similar in the way we warmed up to energise our bodies – Anna had us run around the room, and then fast sprinting on the spot, followed by stretching and vocal and breath sighs within a circle. Anna introduced us to more Greek sounds and actions, which we had to then imitate - these gave us the chance to explore different levels, whilst applying a variety of intriguing sounds to actions. After this, Anna recited some words such as castle, island, king, come, you, speak etc. Differentiating movements were again applied to such words, and we were instructed to take it in turns to lead the group within a story of such words and actions – we had to use the whole room to perform and present our ever-evolving story, and this task gave us practice to lead, as well as listen to each other; the foundations to working well as a group. We then split the class into smaller groups, and within those groups took created further individual stories, following the same previous approaches. It came about that our different stories then collaborated, and a further and more respectable piece was devised. Overall, this session again highlighted the idea that we as a group can work impressively well together – the approach to devising pieces out of simple yet effective words and sounds gave us a new, fresh and exciting look at further sessions within the module.

The Methods To Performance Project: An Introduction

The first session of this new module was definitely adrenaline-charged, and really threw everyone in without holding back. First impressions were securely concluded around the idea that this module was not going to be motionless, in fact as soon as we walked into the room we were kept on our feet – this was a good way of energising the whole class for the rest of the session, perhaps for the rest of the day in effect. We began the session by energising our whole bodies, vocals included. This was an important warmer and introducer to what we were going to be doing throughout the rest of the module. We perhaps spent a good half an hour running around the room to warm ourselves up, then after moved to the floor to copy and execute sounds and actions that Anna was providing (I suppose this was to introduce a task that we would follow up in the next couple of weeks). I really enjoyed and appreciated the way that the group were enforced to collaborate together efficiently straight away – I feel we work well as a group anyway, however this encouraged a better grounding for the team as we moved together and involved ourselves with each other around the room. Overall, a very good impression and introduction to the module – the energy was kept positively high throughout the session.