DEVISING WORK

DEVISING WORKDEVISING WORK

 Devising a piece of theatre can be a stimulating and exciting journey towards the development of a performance which is a fusion of the unique talents and creativity of the group. It is not a direct journey, but one in which you will encounter well-trodden paths, blind alleys and sudden surprises. In order to prepare, the group needs to have a good grasp of improvisation skills. The following exercise helps students learn to accept each other’s’ ideas – a concept which is not only useful in improvisation, but essential in developing the dynamics of the group throughout the devising process.

Divide into pairs. One person begins by making an “offer” (putting forward an idea) and the partner replies with a sentence that begins “Yes, and…”. Try not to block your partner’s ideas, which can so often happen in improvisation. Instead, build on each other’s suggestions. As soon as confidence develops, you can add in actions. Use the space as much as possible.

 A: It’s raining

B: Yes, and I’ve got a large umbrella
A: Let’s shelter under it
B: Yes, and the wind is blowing us into the air
A: We are flying over the sea

And so on. It can be a very liberating game, especially as we don’t often get the chance to say “yes” to everything! A key concept is that participants should avoid trying to push their own idea at the expense of their partner’s. You can also try the game with both of you saying “Yes, and…”. The literal “Yes” can be dropped completely as soon as acceptance of each other’s’ ideas begins to become more automatic. In contrast, it may also be worth briefly exploring what happens if one of the partners always says “No”.

Devising Play, 22nd November

Everyone in the group was ready for the performance, which it gave us more time to run through the whole play. We still need improvements in our scenes, because sometimes we rush through them and mess them up.

I play the character J. Krasniqi and I'm the captain of America. Some people do not wish for me to be a captain because I’m not a true American and I have a accent. Therefore its my duty to prove them wrong and do my work as its meant to be. I will have to act in such way to think that I have control over all my work and that no one can take my place.

In the beginning of the play, I play a 'hood' character to give the audience like a little preview of 'if im the killer' in the scene. Our play is about Detectives and a killer, and we trying to find who the killer is, which the killer is one of us.

On Tuesday we started lesson at 11 in Dance studio. As we came in the room, we had 20 minutes to run through our play to practice and then my group had to go first. While practicing we had time to memories some of our lines so we can perform better. In the performance we done it really well, we were all happy because it turned out the way we wanted. While looking at the other two group, we really enjoyed both of them  because they had really nice beginning and ending which it made the audience want to watch more. With our group we made it really hard to spot the killer because it would have been easy if it was a easy spot. The killer was Stephanie and the way she killed D. Mary was by putting a pill in her coffee and she handed it to her while she gave me another glass but with pure coffee. This was really hard for the audience to see because it wasn't easy to look at.

 At the end of the performance we got the audience involved in the play to asking who the killer was. Majority of the people said that it was Brunilda (D. Monica) or Isaiah.

The last group was really interesting because it looked as if the man had all the power in the play. Jireh was the boss and it seemed as if the play was sexiest because they kept hurting Zulaiha only.

I really enjoyed both groups because they were entertaining and had a nice plot to their play. Their structure was really nice and everything they done made sense.

Monday, on Monday I had an appointment with the Dentist, to renew my retainers. My friends told me they done a play based on 'A Model Student'.

 Tuesday: Sharron wasn't in, which we had to be an audience for level 2 and level 3 students for their performances. The level 2 work was based on Devising and they done 'Detention' because they said they all had different ideas for that specific play. Which they didn't do badly at all, but they just need to take their time while performing and when they saying their lines, some of them were just saying lines, they didn't have the meaning behind those lines.

 Wednesday: We started the day with some practise for our speeches, Rob gave us about half an hour to be prepared for our monologues. Our audience was the level 3 first year, and everyone had performed their two monologues, their Classic and Modern monologues. I enjoyed everyone's monologues, and the only feedback I would give is for us to take our time while performing.

 

 

 On Tuesday, we had a little presentation/introduction about the second year and what we could expect from the college. As well as the safety of the college, of what we should and shouldn't do. The kind of clothing we should be wearing, and no inappropriate clothing.

Devising Work

 On Monday, we were given a sheet by Sharon, and we had to write how confident we were about Devising peices, it was from 1 to 10, i was at about 7 or 8 because, i feel like I can understand the devising pieces and I can share my ideas with everyone else, but I have yet to get better and improve my confidence. We were then put on groups of four actors and our task was to do a one minute trailer. My group had the following actors, Jamie, Grace Dulce and Myself. Our trailer was about 'MONEY' and my role was the thief, that's how I was making money, by stealing them from other people. The trailer turned out to be really good and funny, we as a group were really impressed. Sharon then told us to extend our one minute trailers to five minutes, which it took us about forty minutes to recreate a whole five minute trailer. It led us to the following day on Tuesday. On Tuesday the first lesson we had it in the Dance floor, Sharon gave us a solid twenty minutes to get back to our plays. We worked hard on it and then we had to perform it in front of our friends. Every play was really well, and at the end we gave each other feed back on what was really good, what we enjoyed about the play, as well as what does it need to be improved so the play is better.

The next Week

 On Monday, our first lesson was Acting with Sharron, as we came in the class, we were told to do the 'Grandma footsteps' game, this was done because it makes us more energised and concentrated in the lesson, This lasted about 10-20 minutes. We then walked in the free space around the room, and Sharron was giving us things to be doing. This was for us to be concentrate and be focused throughout the whole day. We were then given a title 'The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing'. We were given groups to do a devised play on the title. My group had Peter, Tarkan and Dulce. Our piece of work was about bullying. I was the victim, Tarkan and Peter were the bullies and Dulce was a helper that helped the victim out. We carried with the scenes and extended them longer and improved on them. At the end Sharran told us to perform our Devised plays, and everyone's play was amazing, I was really happy about everyone's play because they were all nicely thought and done well. We told that we will carry on with the same play's in tomorrows lessons in Dance floors.

 On Tuesday, we carried on with our work. We started with Grandma Footsteps again just to warm up and be concentrated in the lesson. We then carried with our work, we had about 30 minutes to work with our work. We were also walking around the free space and Sharron would say get in pairs, and we would randomly pick someone and we would play a game' Lets play football, and the other person says, 'yes, lets' and we act as if we playing football. We then started our work from last lesson on Monday, and we were missing Peter, which we then done three still images to show the whole piece which everyone done it really well. We then done the same thing but without talking, we had to perform the whole play without talking, just miming. We then showed everything at the end of the lesson, and we had feedback for the plays and how we could of improved or what was really well done in separate groups. The lesson was really fun and enjoyable.

FINAL

I really enjoyed our devised performance. I reckon that if we had worked a little bit harder, the whole performance would have been performed really well. I believe that we didn't rehearse enough for the play to turn out the way we want it to be. While rehearsing in classes, everything would go really well, and everyone would share their ideas and the way they wanted to perform, because it’s their role and they can do pretty much whatever they want and add whatever line they feel comfortable with, but of course it has to be about the play and make sense into it.

 The whole devised play, turned out well but I still don't believe that, that was the best of us. We needed more rehearsals. Another thing, during each rehearsal, we would always miss someone, which it leads us to not focusing as we meant to be because, one of us is missing, and we would sit and write ideas down. Which, if everyone was there, we would have been acting instead and that would have been much better. The thing that I really enjoyed about my play was, at the end of the play, we got the whole audience evolved because our play is about murder and detectives, which at the end 'Mary' dies, and it doesn't really show it in the play. Therefore the audience had to pick one of us, and see who the actual killer was. In the play 'Stephanie'. The way she killed 'Mary' was during my scene The Captain and Mary talk, Stephanie enters with coffee, and she had put a death pill into her coffee which killed Mary. This is really hard for the audience to see because they cannot see the pill, they only see, when she gives the coffee to Mary (Dulce).

 In the beginning of the play, I play as a 'bad' guys, only to confuse the audience and get them thinking that I may be the actual killer. ONE, because I got arrested at the start of the play. TWO, because I was wearing a hoodie and I looked like a killer and THREE because I'm not 'American' therefore they will think that I killed her. Which at the end of the performance, when Dulce said put your hand up if you thing 'The Captain' is the killer, there were 9 hands up, which I had the most, and then when Dulce said put your hard up for Stephanie, she had won, she got one more vote, which I think it was a really close call. Even though there were no signs of Stephanie being the killer, the audience still chose her, showing that the whole audience was concentrating during the performance and they knew what was going on.

Overall, I really enjoyed the final performance, even though we all think we could have done it 100 times better, but we still didn't give up, we gave it our best shot.

Workshop

During acting classes, we would write down each specific thing about who's going to do what and what their purpose in the workshop is. I was chosen to do Vocal and Physical warm up, which what I done was, the person is meant to say their name, then their hobby and then do a gesture to finish it off, for example, (My name's Marion Tasic, I love boxing and then I would throw couple punches), we done this throughout the whole circle. This was a really easy and simple warm up to complete.

The second one was Brunilda, her Game was 'The Wink Murder'. Students gather around in a circle and you choose a detective. The detective goes outside whilst you choose the murderer. When the murderer winks at you, you must play dead. The detective then must try and catch the murderer. Another element my class likes to add the 'dramatic death' where they are allowed to act while they dying.

The third one was Isaiah, his game was the splat game, asks the group to make a circle, when everyone is ready, He will clap towards his right side, and everyone has to follow the clap, and the purpose of it is to focus on the clap and see how fast we can bring it back to him. Our best time was around 1.8 seconds with around 25-30 students.

The fourth one was Tarkan's 'Guess the movie name' where you make a group of four people, and Tarkan would give you a movie name for example 'Titanic', then that group has to create a really short scene from the movie titanic, but before that, a person is sent out and when the groups are ready to perform their little scenes from different movie names, then the person tries to guess which movie they were playing.

The fifth one was Dulce's game, which was very similar to Tarkans game. Dulce gave them a way of death. How the incident happened, like was it a death by gun, knife, curse, etc..

She gave them the word death because our play was about death and it was she who died in the play.