1. How is the initial material being researched and developed at significant stages during the process of creating drama?

Our initial research was heavily based around the idea of secrecy. Therefore we spent a lot of time researching potential secrets people may be hiding, as well as common everyday secrets most people have. Within our research we discovered that secrets are most commonly based around love, family, money and addiction. Through this, we were able to devise several improvisations using these themes within secrecy. For example, I played a character that had been secretly in love with their best friend or years and could no longer hide their feelings. Despite this, we found the theme of secrets difficult, as we found various ways in which to reveal the secret a struggle. However, when creating our own secret scenarios, rather than focusing on the topics we had found in research, we realized the idea of the unexpected contained a lot of humorous potential.

Influential Workshops

Before coming up with a theme behind our piece of theatre, we each created our own workshop based on our trip to New York and the personal experiences we each had. The main task that I found the most helpful was during Hazel and Elizabeth’s workshop. The task was solely based on snappy creative improvisation through small pieces of information we were given at random. We all wrote a character name on a piece of paper, as well as a secret they had and wanted to conceal, e.g. an affair, or the fact that they were famous. We all swapped our papers around the room, meaning we did not know what character we would have to play. We were then given the scenario of being on a flight and trying to conceal our secret, whilst trying to discover the secret of the person next to us. However we could only talk in questions. This was challenging, as we really had to think about what to say to retain information. Furthermore, improvisation allowed us to become a character spontaneously, meaning we had to respond to one another creatively as we did not know how their character would react to certain questions. This was helpful as it allowed us to become familiar with reacting to the unpredictable on stage whilst maintaining a character. The plane setting also fitted with our theme of New York, the idea of the “Cover Up” through the secret, relating to 9/11.

Within Elizabeth and Hazel’s workshop, the characters created revealed various dramatic potential, such as Sheldon pretending to be a famous person in disguise on a flight was under the constant pressure of questions conveyed a possible trigger of tension in a storyline as the audience would be waiting for her character to fall apart under the constant strain of concealing her identity. The idea of having to conceal a secret under pressure appealed to us the most as it contained various situations that could arise under pressure. For example, as ‘Trev’ (Shirley) tries to remain calm on her date, desperately trying to conceal her identity from Jackie with Maurice prying over her shoulder, she nearly let’s vital information slip that only the two women would know (‘three years actually, I mean if you let me finish, I was going to say three years is a very long time’). Also, under the shock of Jackie suddenly becoming sexual attracted to her male date, Shirley screams for Maurice, who comes running in only to trip with the drinks and cause Shirley’s secret to be revealed.

We made the decision for the theme of our piece of theater based heavily on our trip to the 9/11 memorial in New York. Whilst there we were overwhelmed by the emotion within the memorial and the dramatically life changing factor behind the traumatic event. Looking closely at the names written around the memorial, we discovered just how many ordinary lives were tragically brought to an end, for example a young woman and her unborn child. As well as this we met several interesting characters when travelling around the streets on New York, such as a man playing the clarinet who caused an outbreak of song between strangers on the subway. Meeting characters like him, as well as visiting the memorial caused us to realize the “ordinary” lives and stories behind extraordinary people. Subsequently we made the decision to create a comedy based around ordinary, relatable characters and their lives all coming together to achieve on one goal, the goal being a “Robbery”. This was due to the fact that we were overtaken by emotion at the memorial, however it was revealed to us, that everyone involved had their own ordinary lives behind the event, as they themselves are ordinary people. We made the decision on a comedic piece, as we believe behind “ordinary”, stereotypical characters there are situations and stories in their lives that could be humorous.

Improvisations

I found the “Bus Stop” improvisation was very helpful in discovering potential characters for our pieces of theatre. For example, I played a pregnant woman, who suddenly goes into labour.  Created dramatic potential to our storyline, as it would introduce an “unexpected” element that we could use to create humour for the audience. We decided that the best way to enhance our performance we should play to our acting strengths. Therefore, the best way for us to find possible plots for our piece was to play the moulding improvisation game. This allows us to think spontaneously, responding to our physicality that has be ‘moulded’ by a member of the audience. For example, Raye found herself taking on the role of someone with a secret infection, as she was to bend down, trying to show her best friend 9played by me) what the problem was, whilst I stood disgusted, with exaggerated facial expressions as I gagged at the ‘sight’ of her infection that the audience were forced to imagine, creating humour.

Raye played a mother in the middle of labor, her daughter breaking the news that she too was pregnant and had left school, unexpectedly right at that very moment. This immediately stuck a cord, as we were able to link this idea to the unexpected element of 9/11. Nevertheless, we are able to create humor of a situation such as a robbery through various characters' reactions, the fact that they appear “ordinary people” making them even more relatable to the audience. After completing several improvisations, we decided to create a comedy montage for our piece, in which we’d develop short storylines out of the most successful improvisations we’d devised in lessons.

Pia and Elizabeth found themselves playing two ‘common’ builders spying through a hole in the door, at what they described to be a woman. This was funny as it created a double act with humorous banter as the squabbled over who’s turn it was to look through the door, the sneaky mischievous element to their spying creating quite a childish atmosphere. This idea of a double act lead me to do some research on comedies. I found double acts such as The Chuckle Brothers in which Paul, the older brother is bossier, and trying to control Barry in situations he has created. This helped us to develop our piece as we came up our last scene in the montage, consisting of Bob (an older, dodgy plumber) and Terry (a young dopey apprentice) who stupidly does and believes whatever Bob says. This created a good dynamic for comedy as the contrasting ages created an opportunity for conflicting ideas and banter. For example, Terry has never heard of Peter Andre ‘a living legend’ according to Bob.

New Characters: 'The Office Affair'- Jeffery & Margo

22/10/12
Due to us changing the style of our performance, it was necessary that we created a variety of contrasting characters for our series of 5-minute improvisations. Before we did this we looked at the research we completed on possible secrets people might have. From this we created two possible plots, the first being a secret affair, and the second a blind date. For the secret affair we created two characters. Jeffery, a man in his 70s that own his own pencil factory, who is having the affair with his secretary, a feisty women quite a few years younger than he is, potentially in her 30s. The person who discovers the affair is Jeffery’s 'girlfriend' Margo, a middle class 'posh' character roughly in her 50s who appears to think very highly of herself, creating an over the top persona. We decided that we would base the style of acting behind our lessons used to study Lysistrata for the other side of the course, in which we looked at the Carry-on films to understand the slapstick witty performance style and the humor used within it. This meant we were able to use sexual innuendos to create humor and well as exaggerate each characters' personality. For example, Elizabeth (Karen) uses very suggestive body language, fluttering her eyelashes and walking seductively to his desk to 'sharpen his pencil' before handcuffing Jeffery to the table.

4/12/12

Lysistrata & Carry-on

Furthermore, we found we were able to our work in the second area of our course to help develop the humor within the two performances. The play we are currently studying is a comedy originating form Ancient Greece that using the issue of woman stereotypically being an object of ‘sexual desire’ to their husband’s to prevent Greece from going to war. The woman, all of contrasting elaborate personalities go on strike, refusing to have sex with their husbands and taking charge of the Acropolis. Throughout the play there are both subtle and obvious sexual innuendos and references, combined with the use of exaggerated costumes such as phalluses to emphasize the issue of sexuality in the play and to enhance the visual comedy on stage. As a result, we decided to make sure we included lots of suggestive lines that highlight Jeffery’s high sex drive that contrasts the expectations of his elderly appearance. Within Lysistrata the woman often leave a lot to the audience’s imagination, hinting at underlying sexual desires etc. For example, Myrhinne asks if the subject behind the meeting is ‘big and meaty’ to which Lysistrata replies ‘yes, very big and meaty’ to which Myrinne questions, ‘then why on earth aren’t they here already’ to connotes to the audience that they are sexually motivated, the phrase ‘big and meaty’ possibly linking to a male’s ‘assets’. Similarly to this, we adapted the scrip as a group to come up with a mini monologue for Jeffery, in which he uses the metaphor of a journey and ‘flying a plane’ to subtly reference the closing f his affair with his secretary.

2. How effectively are you personally exploring and developing your role(s)?

24/09/12

We have designated specific roles within the performance and have decided to develop the individual characters as much as possible in order to fit them well within the plot we create in the next week. Furthermore, we have made a strong decision to have a robbery at the center of our story line. 

We made the decision through our own acting ability as we wanted everyone’s character to “play on their strengths”, making their performance as believable and enjoyable to watch.  In order to secure the plot ideas we all completed research on past robberies and qualities certain archetypal characters would have. We found that the most common robbery to take place was revolved around a make or influenced by money in some way. Therefore, this lead us to come up with the reason behind the women wanting to commit the crime; the reason being they believe they have been “cheated” out of a bingo win, and feel they must take it upon themselves to claim their prize. When looking more closely as potential characters in our research, we discovered several “traits” that appear to come with a stereotypical personality of a certain individual. For example, “the strong leader” would be overly confident and self-absorbed (their perception of themselves often being less “superior” than they think). Characters such as “the chavy pregnant teenager” often appeared to be naive and oblivious to potentially serious situations, due to her young mentality. This would generally be reflected by constant, “dumb” immature comments and stereotypical teenage behavior.

27/09/12

We developed our understanding of our characters by watching everyday people similar to those we were playing on stage. I watched the film Juno in order to be able to see visually what my character may potentially look like. Juno herself is of a similar age to Kayleigh, her “chatty” naive personality reflecting the fact she is still young at heart despite about to become a mother. Due to her small frame the bump created an obvious restriction to her movement, as she waddled around, supporting her back as she tried to walk faster. Therefore, I decided that my motif must be highly exaggerated to constantly emphasise the physical pressure Kayleigh is under. In addition after analyzing Juno I felt it was important that even though being under strain, my characters “youthful” teenage personality must be constantly present. This will help to form the comedic stereotype of a “Teen Mum”.

26/11/12

In today's lesson we continued to devise our 'sketch' involving two best freinds at the bus stop on their way to school. We begn wih some hot seating to develop personal elements to our characters through creating a 'back story' to how they know one another and how they have ended up in their own current situations. During the questioning process we encountered a 'stubbling point' when exloring voice. As a group we made the decision to create characters that are eachothers opposites, on 'posh' and one 'chavvy'  to keep to the chosen performance style as we were creating a farcical peice based on exagerated archetyopes. To help Hazel develop her character we watched clips from the reality T.V show Made In Chelsea, studying characters like Millie Makintosh for ispiration as her character is a prime example of the 'posh tottie' archetype. To help 'combine' the two opposing personalities on stage as well as make their differences as obvious as possible we set up a mock interveiw, in which the girls answered qusetions about their friendship. This was beneficial as it allowed me to almost act as Hazel's reflection, however emphasising my 'ditsy' and stupid personality along with my 'chavy' manerism such as rolling my eyes and slouching in my chair. As our characters were both 15 and at school, it created a reason for the contrasting persoanlities to come into contact. Subsequently, we decided 'Tracey@

Exercises we used to develop our characters

Hot seating each  character was beneficial, as it allowed us as a group to gain a deeper understanding of the more “personal lives” of the specific character, sometimes revealing reasons behind their “current” attitudes and behavior that will be performed in the piece of theater  For example, Elizabeth conveyed the “serious leader” (Jean) to be a woman or 23 (supposedly) with no qualifications due to her careless, egotistical attitude towards school, resulting in poor education. This provided us with a possible explanation for her over the top behavior, and big headed attitude. We also learned that she once worked in Salisbury  however she was fired and did not appear to care she received her money from the social. A crucial factor within her life Elizabeth revealed was her affair with a married man, on which she stated, “he is having the affair, not me” when questioned if she pitied his wife. This conveyed a lot about her character and inner feelings, as the fact she is having an affair, but almost refuses to think about the other woman, implies she herself has a desire to be loved and wants someone to be devoted to her only. Elizabeth adopted a very flat, emotionless tone when playing Jean. This created a serious atmosphere and made her appear very “disconnected” and unhappy to answer questions. When asked about her qualification she took as breath as if to speak, then remained silent. This was significant as it indicated a sense of realization that she has not fulfilled her potential in life, suggesting a sense of failure, not helped by the fact she lonely as she lives alone.
 

3.How did you and your group explore the possibilities of form, structure and performance style?

After deciding on the theme of secrets when looking at our research from our New York Trip we originally decided to create a 30 minute peice of theatre based on one contsnt running storyline, subsequently adopting the simple play format in which the audience will follow the same set of characters through on story told generally in chronological order. However when we began 'getting the first scene on its feet', after designing roles fitting sepecifically to our personal acting strengths, we encountered a few problems. The first was that the montage at the beginning of the play to help establish the characters was too long, cutting down our time to tell the story behind them mimicking a secene from an Action Adventure film. The second was that we found creating scene simply through on the spot improvisation was a challenge, as respomding to one another's lines appropriately to create humour as well as elaborate on their extravegent plan of a bank robbery was hard without having a set script, something which we did not want.

16/10/12
As we all felt that the comedy behind our performance was the most important thing to us all, we made the decision to change the performance style in order to enhance our chances of creating humour for the audience, as well as make sure we were able to all use our own acting skills to our advantage. Therefore, we cast our minds back to before we began devising and when we began the year as a new class. During this time we played around with pair improvisations in which their was a 'sculptre' who moulded the two improvisers into starting posistions, from which they created storylines. This was something we found 'naturally funny' as we discovered being moulded into a shape to adopt an intial character, enabled us to create 'over the top' exaggerated senarios. As this was a technique we felt confident with, we all agreed the short spontaneous improvisation technique was the direction to go in with our performance. As a result, we are now changing our peice of theatre to a series of improvisations based on a variety of characters and secrets they are keeping.

Structuring the piece 
Spontaneous improvisations were key when structuring our piece of theatre as it allowed us to create a large number of characters that played to our personal acting strengths. For example, Raye was able to showcase her ability to mimic accents as she played someone with  South African accent, as well as someone from Australia. We were able to create a fast pace series of interactions with different on stage personalities through the Bus Stop improvisation exercise as it required us to think quickly, devising a short conversation to portray a snippet of a storyline, before having to 'leave the bus top' unexpectedly to introduce a new character. This helped us to gain a feel of what a farcical comedy in the form of a sketch show would be like to perform, as we would have to adapt to each new set at a fast pace, taking on a different role each time that completely contrasts our previous character. For example, i found myself playing a women that suddenly went into labour, however I then became a little girl of about 5 years old, sitting with her friend. Due to this style of performance being a way we could all play roles that we personally created and were able to portray to our highest ability, improvisation was the devising method for the whole piece.

27/11/12
As the style of our performance fitted within the comedic genre, due to it taking on the form of several splackstick orientataed sketches, we decided it was important to make the characters' enterances as humourous and exaggerated as possible, in keeping with the over-the-top acting style. To help us come up with some enterance ideas, we carried out some reasearch based around characters in well-kown comedys. I looked at BBCs top ten comedy enterances, on the BBC website in the 'Comedy Collections' section. http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/collections/p0069r6w
I found watching these extrremely helpful for generating ideas for our third scene. Each enterance fitted perfectly to the exaggerated comedy style of our performance, may of the features of particular scenes suitable to incorperate within the structure of our peice. For example, Rodney's enterence in Only Fools and Horses focused more on the sound of the doorbell to create a humourous element to the situation, as Del made Rodney ring the new doorbell even though we could see him standing outside with his key, shouting 'I've got my key!'. this simple exchange between the two brothers was funny to watch due to the fact Rodney was shut outside, shouting through the glass door to Del who pestered him to ring the bell, mimicking a bossy older brother stereotype. When the bell eventually rang, the theme tume was extremely high pitched and elaborate, creating an exaggerated situation as the over the top bell contrasted the little flat on a council estate.
Furthermore, some openings concerntrated more on costume to create the comedy in the scene. Little Britian relied on the fact that Davith was an archetypal gay character to emphasise his lether skin tight costume that shocked the audience as it highlighted his dillusion in the fact that he thought he looked extremeley attactive, when in actual fact the constume did nothing for his 'flabby' physique. Also, Two pints of Larger used the idea of the unexpected to create shocking humour as Jonny suddenly enters wearing an adult sized nappy, after compalining that he has 'been neglected' since the baby has been born. This is extremely visually funny as Jonny looks ridiculous dressed as a baby, and his childish attitude is emphasised. As a result, we were inspired to use costume to created a visually funny, as well as physically funny scene through using exaggerated unexpected constume that restricted our ability to move.

4. How did the work of established and recognised theatre practitioners, and/or the work of live theatre, influence the way in which your devised response developed?

12/11/12
On the 7th of November we went to see the play 'One Man two Guvnors' for some inspiration fpr new characters. As the play was a Farce, the genre linked directly to our idea of creating a comical peice of theatre, meaning we were able to look for techniques used within the script to enhance the humour in our own. For example, stereotypical characters such as a 'Blonde Bimbo' were exaggerated through the constant use of the catchphrase 'I dont understand' in an over the top ditsy accent, something which the audience became fammilair with. Furthermore, 'everyday' characters within society were presesnt in the play, an 'old man' named Alfie using elaborate elderly body language to emphasise his age, e.g. shaking hands and unsteady on his feet. This highlighted to us the importance of the characters' physicallities to convey aspects of their lives that will be humourous for the audience. As a result, Raye made the decsion to build on her character of Jeffery to really portray the elderly man stereotype through her physicality, exaggerating features that come with age such as his bad back and shaking knees when Karen begins to flirt with him.
We discovered that the key to constant humour is to keep the senarios fast paced to keep the audience captured in the ridiculous events unfloding in nfront of them as the play was very rapid, with one thing happening after another, creating a 'joke after joke' affect. Therefore, we have made the deciion to build up to the unraveling of the secret within the situation through a series of inuendos that will 'keep the audience laughing' throughout, making sure the breakthrough of the secret at the end is as comical as possible.

13/01/13
Influential Practioners 
Brecht: As our piece meant that we would have to constantly take of new roles at a face pace, it was important that we knew how to get into character as quickly as possible. We found the Brechtian technique of 'stepping into character' using his method of 'Gestus' useful as a result. Through stepping into role from neutral we were able to really focus on the varying physicalities of the characters to show the dramatic change of personality. For example, Raye plays Jeffery, an elderly man. This meant that she would have to adopt a stiff, slower way of moving in contrast to her vibrant character of an aggressive Traffic Warden. Her crooked back and slightly confused stutter, combined with her stuggle as she is awkwardly bent across the desk immediately communicates her old age to the audience. I found this helpful when becoming my character of Terry, the builder, as I had to adopt a more manly stance to show that I was playing a young man, pushing out my chest slightly and becoming more heavy footed. The technique helped me to feel the transformation from my own body language into that of my character, meaning I could then exaggerate the character as much as possible in keeping with the over the top, farcical performance style.
What did we take from Year 12?
Year 12 taught us some valuable techniques that we found we could use to help us devise our piece this year. Stanislavsky's 'Emotional Memory' technique could be surprisingly useful at times, despite our piece not taking on the from of a dramatic play based around an emotionally driven play. We found that the technique allowed us to look at a specific emotion, for example, the anger Margo feels when she discovers the affair, and think of a time we too, felt that same emotion and all the other thoughts and feelings that came with it. However instead of channelling the raw 'natural' emotions into the performance, we looked at how we could portray the feelings in such an over the top manner that they became unrealistic, subsequently creating humour for the audience as the character's 'emotional reactions' appear overly dramatic in a sense that you cannot connect emotionally with them.
Max Stafford Clarke 
The transitive verb technique was something that we found very useful when creating the script for a new scene as a group. When writing the script for the 'P.E scene' with best friends Stacey and Tracey it was important that we knew what the desired effect each line was going to have for the other character to show a 'back and forth' nature to their relationship, that contained both a caring and at times conflicting atmosphere. Using transitive verbs such as 'educates' when Stacey is informing Tracey of the reasons behind their plan to steal the equipment remind us that Stacey is somewhat more 'clued up' that Tracey, who later 'illuminates' that she loves the Spice Girls, forgetting all about their hidden motive. Furthermore, Stafford Clarke's method of 'Actioning' a script was useful when deciding on key moments of humorous action in the scene. For example, the first unit of action is the girls entering the class, the second being interrupted unexpectedly by a teacher, being forced to join in with the class. This is the main opportunity to create comedy for the audience as the dance the teacher creates causes the girls to become flustered as they try there best to cope with the P.E equipment hidden under their clothes. At one point, the tennis balls Tracey has under her jumper fall our all over the room, Stacey going into a blind panic and sprawling herself across the floor in a desperate attempt to hide them. The scene is extremely physically challenging, yet the challenge is clearly presents becomes funny to the audience.
'Rule of Three'
As well as researching comedy entrances we looked at the 'Rule of Three' concept that often features in comedies. Sometimes known as the 'Comic Triple', the concept suggests that the audience consumes information better in threes, each time becoming funnier, leading to an unexpected ending. For example, in the Dinner Date scene between Shirley and Jackie the waiter makes three trips to the table, the third ending in disaster as 'Trev's' true identity is revealed.