Lessons

               WEEK ONE 

This term we will be making a performance that consists of short scenes in different locations and different locations and different times in England. In particular we are looking at Phillip Larkin's going going.

"  Going, going

I thought it would last my time -
The sense that, beyond the town,
There would always be fields and farms,
Where the village louts could climb
Such trees as were not cut down;
I knew there’d be false alarms

In the papers about old streets
And split level shopping, but some
Have always been left so far;
And when the old part retreats
As the bleak high-risers come
We can always escape in the car.

Things are tougher than we are, just
As earth will always respond
However we mess it about;
Chuck filth in the sea, if you must:
The tides will be clean beyond.
- But what do I feel now? Doubt?

Or age, simply? The crowd
Is young in the M1 cafe;
Their kids are screaming for more -
More houses, more parking allowed,
More caravan sites, more pay.
On the Business Page, a score

Of spectacled grins approve
Some takeover bid that entails
Five per cent profit (and ten
Per cent more in the estuaries): move
Your works to the unspoilt dales
(Grey area grants)! And when

You try to get near the sea
In summer . . .
        It seems, just now,
To be happening so very fast;
Despite all the land left free
For the first time I feel somehow
That it isn’t going to last,

That before I snuff it, the whole
Boiling will be bricked in
Except for the tourist parts -
First slum of Europe: a role
It won’t be hard to win,
With a cast of crooks and tarts.

And that will be England gone,
The shadows, the meadows, the lanes,
The guildhalls, the carved choirs.
There’ll be books; it will linger on
In galleries; but all that remains
For us will be concrete and tyres.

Most things are never meant.
This won’t be, most likely; but greeds
And garbage are too thick-strewn
To be swept up now, or invent
Excuses that make them all needs.
I just think it will happen, soon."

This poem will be our focal point for our piece so I did some added research on the poem. The title ‘Going, Going’ is the key to the whole poem. In Larkin’s view, what is ‘going’ is the landscape of England as a green and pleasant land. It is being replaced by shoddy development, summed up by the auctioneer’s excited cry of ‘going, going’ as another piece of the old heritage falls under the hammer. Going, going, but not yet quite gone. Larkin once thought it would ‘last his time’. Now he doubts that. Right from the start he has a disillusioned air about the future of England. ‘I thought’ – past tense – ‘it would last my time’. There is a comfortable public belief, which he once shared, that traditional England will not be overwhelmed by ‘development’; there will always be an England that even ‘village louts’ – not just those with special discernment – can enjoy.

The question that plays on my mind is that Larkin wrote this in 1972 so how evocative is this now to us in 2014?

This poem is forty years old. So much of what Larkin feared then, has happened. Nevertheless, I’m slightly uneasy about this poem. Decisions about where people live, and what their built environment looks like don’t in my view, just happen. They are a product of a set of choices made by people who control the resources of a society, with more or less input from the people who live in that society. Larkin despises both the young people in the M1 cafe, and the financial types with ‘spectacled grins’. But I don’t think they bear equal responsibility.

We discussed fundamentally what experimental theatre might be. In my view experimental theatre is every theatre, in such a broad range. Everything is experiemental, everything provokes a reaction, allows the audience to feel emotions that you wouldn't think they could feel. However has a seperate genre in terms of out of the average, experimental theatre to me is a piece of theatre that either provokes a reaction or an emotion using different means that both audience and 'theatre' have never seen before. Or rebels against the normal conforms of theatre, leaving an unpredictable reaction from the audience. I think experimental theatre does well to let you have your own personal connection and imagination. It's much more open to interpretations than conventional theatre. 

Following this we worked on sound and gesture. We used the room to explore each other's bodies, by the end of the lesson I found this was a concept we could explore further. When we created a sound cathedral it was almost another side of me was awoken. Half the group repeated 'crave' 'lust' 'loath' whilst the other half of us sat with our eyes closed in pitched darkness. This took away my sense of sight and because of this my ears were alert more than ever for every sound. I got to the point where I felt uncomfortable and then started to feel scared as, the more the sound scape continued I started to lose my awareness of the space even without light. The unpredictable nature of body proximity and the sound in self suddenly then put me in a mind state that I wasn't too understanding of myself. My senses had been taken away and because of this I started to forget I was in a rehearsal room and this was just an exericise. My imagination and the sound made it seem real and this exploration of my imagination is something we need to get our audience to feel. They need see past it being a performance and engage directly into the piece. I think as well what we need to do is use sounds to create other emotions not just uneasiness and being uncomfortable. 

             WEEK TWO 

Today we did vocal warm ups and stretches and cardiovascukar work to get our energy up and to really focus us. This got out heart rate moving as well. We later laid in the floor and created a sound scape - we explored different parts of voices and then discussed what made it specific to the chosen location. We then developed the idea of how we could change it to the mood of the setting. I think that by developing the skill to play with sound we can evoke a human sensory and give the audience a unique and unusual experience using raw and natural sound.  We then started to spell our names using our body parts in a box. When I sat down and saw the other group perform this I created my only storyline and own theatre. So I can see this exericise that was very simple can be developed to demonstrate different things/ideas and concepts. We then played with the form of this exercise, this was done by being placed in different areas in the room and being put in different groups and facing different directions. I think this further established an imaginative storyline, through use of body and movenent. I like how I could create a piece of theatre in my head without a distinct script or direction.  

Following that we explored set tabloid images and then things that were harder to get a grip of for example ice, explosion, bomb, drowning. These were hard to explore because these aren't generic things we can just be. This meant that we had to think outside the box and actually think of it with meaning or relation in order for us to incorporate it into our bodies. As a result creating a tabloid piece representing the concept because we cannot be an explosion literally. This helped me to understand that you can express anything, however sometimes you just have to find an alternative route to expressing the idea. 

We then read through this quote from Alber Bernel on Artaud's theatre of cruelty. 

'Life has in it a lot of ugliness and evil which are both natural and man made. Instead if shielding spectators from their impact he would expose them, putting them through the experience of the danger, then free them from it. Artaud's theatre was not a form of torture but a facing of the worse that could happen, followed by a freshing realising. At the end the spectator would feel relieved as if awakening from a nightmare evil and until until it clensed away. This was intended to be a cathartic process from destruction to a new set of understanding truths. Artaud insisted that we recognise the inherent ability for cruelty in all of us. We are capable of being cruel and all capable of being victims. Artaud encourages us to accept the darker side of our natures that we daily try to repress and that society encourages to repress. He wants to draw on such ideas within the creation of theatre. Cruelty has nothing to do with cruelty we practice in one another but the far more terrible essential cruelty objects can practice on us. We are not free and the sky can fall on out heads and above all, is theatre is made to teach us this. 

One of Artaud's things is to deal with breaking taboo subjects in terms of matter and the conventions of staying in the theatrical terms. So we then did an exercise exploring the taboo nature.

We first picked a scenario. The idea that was established was a boys and girls changing room. We talked through set rules that society condemns as normal in this space and started to abide by them. Then we started to break these rules. We headed showered in the boys changing room, asked people to shave for us, walked around with no towel. When watching these rules being broken, you can't help but at first be shocked but then slowly you come to except that these rules are being broken and start almost enjoy the performers going against society's norms. 

             WEEK THREE 

These are voicenotes that have been attached via email. 

              WEEK FOUR

This is also a voicenote that I have attached via email. Also there is a video via Google plus. 

We looked for a distinct performance space that would make the best out of the promanade pieces. 

We wanted to make sure these spaces reflected on our promanade performances, the space had to set the scence for our mini worlds. Also the overall space we wanted to ensure we took the audience on a clear journey leading into the big space. 

               WEEK FIVE 

These are voicenotes that have been attached via email. 

This was my drawing that I imagined in our imaginative exercise. I saw Britian in 1921, the old large roads that were bumpy. There was this guy dressed in black and was smoking wearing a top hat. 

Our groups pictures. 

                   WEEK SIX 

This is a voicenote that have been attached via email.