Grenfell Group Piece - Using my solo

Representing the community of Ladbroke Grove & Latimer Road in the fight for justice is very important to me, therefore I wanted to do it right. Working this piece into a class piece was really challenging, there was lots of disagreements and things got quite heated a points because of the political nature. One thing I found particularly difficult was how someone people would be pissing about during these rehearsals. I understand that too a lot of people its not important and in terms of resolution 217 as a whole lots of people didn't see the point in it or want to be a part of it. In terms of this, I think fair enough if you don't want to be a part of it, but then you should make that clear and leave. I don't its good to force yourself to be in the rehearsal room and then not honor the fact that these are very serious & personal topics to some people in the room.

The breathing at the beginning of my piece was originally so that I could take a moment to get my head around doing this piece, as going straight in would be very challenging. I was glad that this part was able to stay in the group piece and find meaning in other areas of the issues. The breathing was able to become the relaxed breathing of your normal average person, the type of breathing that every person in the tower should have been allowed to have for the duration of their natural life. It also echoed the breathing of someone who was asleep, a factor made relevant considering that the tower caught on fire during the middle of the night, a time where everybody would have been sleeping peacefully.

A bit of the piece that we struggled to work out today was the camera and media section. This part went through many different ideas and ways of working because nothing felt quite right. The general essence of the section was to have news reporters reading out quotes by the people of the community, people speaking their opinions and their truth honestly and not because they want to get a good story. One of the ideas we worked with was having two people create a camera, the front person embodying the camera and the back person being the one who maneuvers it. A news reporter would then speak into it. Although this seemed like a interesting idea in theory, when put into practice it was very hard to carry out and became quite akwared. As time was running out, we ended up having to create something not particularly interesting but that was clear and efficient in communicating our message. This was to have everybody carrying out typical news reporter gestures while other people speak their quotes. Although this worked on stage I would have liked it if we were able to work with it more and create something a bit more unique and artistic and thats been created and devised by us.

Grenfell Group Piece - Using Eden's solo

Eden's solo is a beautiful piece of physical theatre. I think it does an amazing job at encompassing a

much larger picture of what is going on within Ladbroke Grove and Grenfell Tower. Watching her piece has reduced me to tears on many occasions. I think what is so powerful about Edens piece and the piece we created from it as a class is its simplicity. There isn't much fancy abstract movement or interpretive elements, it is simply displaying the facts and her experiences of the tower. In a topic area like Grenfell tower I think this is important because its not something you want the audience to not understand or get lost in due to it being so prevalent in our world at the moment. I also feel like because it is Grenfell Tower you don't need to dress up the issue in impressive devised physical movement to have an impact because just an image of the tower alone has a huge impact. It is one of the only things within the play as a whole that is happening right now in this country, although things like law and health care are relevant for us all I don't think its as recent as the events of Grenfell. The text and music in her piece are really effective. In the moments where her piece has made me feel something very deep its often been because I tuned into the words she was speaking and for me it conjured up some very really and visual images. Another thing that I really appreciate about the piece we have created out of Eden's is that it doesn't just focus on the events in the tower. It looks at the rich/poor divide, the swarming media and the neglect and all these other features that all play a important part in this issue.

I though Jack's staging of having everybody on stage siting around Eden was very effective. It is a good way to have everyone on stage ready to enter into the piece but not distracting from what is going on with Eden in the centre. I found it very difficult to be in this rehearsal because it was the first one I had been in about Grenfell since the solos which were a very long time ago. Therefore, I wasn't able to input much into this piece and ended up just sitting on the edge or going through the motions of what we were working on. I do wish that sometimes I was able to interact more with these pieces and I hope that when it comes to the perform this isn't something that hinders me.

One thing we really struggled with today when creating Edens piece was saying some of the text as an ensemble. This is partly because the wording is very specific and lots of us aren't able to learn it straight away. I think if we were able to say it together it could be very powerful to fill the space with these loud, powerful words, however if we don't take the time to practice and learn the lines then it will sound awful and not contribute anything to the piece. If that happens it will be a shame because it is an effective piece of text that potentially could become a joke if not taken seriously.

Resolution 217 Final Evaluation

Despite the devising process being very chaotic and difficult, I thought we ended up with a very good piece of physical theatre. The material we had created had purpose, flow and a large interpretive element so that the audience could take what they wanted from it. It successful combined spoken word, music, images and our physical body’s to create a statement & a comment on the world in which we live in. The visual images that were made on stage with bodies and props were thought invoking and ones of power. I know that as an onlooker at the side of the stage there were pieces that were performed that made me have a such strong emotional reaction to what was portrayed, I felt anger I felt sadness and I felt hope. All of these aspects only helped fuel my performance more because I was able to carry those feeling onto stage with me. As a whole the performance had strength, a quality I think is massively important when creating work about the fight for human rights. Without strength your statements might not hold power and therefore won’t be as sparking in what it provokes in the audience. The best moments of strength in resolution 217, in my opinion, came out of stillness. The picture of Grenfell projected onto the back in silence, the holding up of the crosses on paper and the punch of a fist into the air. All these moments, amongst others, were the ones that most resonated with me because it was bold and fearless in what was presented on stage. These moments seemed to echo a punching gesture, it was unapologetic and filled with defiance and that was definitely felt by the audience. 

I feel like this strength and power could have been present the entire way through resolution

217, but we held ourselves back by not committing. A lot of the movement wasn’t respected by us as a cast and it was viewed as stupid or worthless. This really let us down because I think it was evident in our performance, the lack of commitment from us showed that for a lot of people their heart wasn’t in it. This was because for a lot of people they felt as if the work they had created didn’t reflect what they wanted to fight for, and this I can understand. However, I think by the time your at the final performance you might as well give everything you’ve got into the piece because you are going to have to do it anyway. I felt like the second two performances were a lot better and more effective because as a cast we go a lot of good feedback. The confidence and pride this gave us in this piece meant that it was taken a lot more seriously and a larger element of commitment was present.  For me, I felt the last performance was the best because I really felt the tense atmosphere that was created on stage. Possibly what also let us down in the other performances was not being able to fill the space with our thoughts, feelings and ideas. There were moments were I felt the action going on on stage felt quite small in this big space, and when this happened I think the significance and strength of the piece was diminished.  

Education - Combing Work Development

One of the main concepts we took for the original pieces was the ideas of putting your hand up, something that featured in two of the three pieces. There was a number of ways in which this was presented in the original pieces; firstly there was the robotic abstract way of raising your hand, and then there was the actions of raising your hands and that being pulled down by others next to you. We decided to use both of these elements. The robotic raising of hands was improved when Ben suggested that our actions resembled a machine. This enabled us to develop it by incorporating a sound scape that went with the raising of the hands. Also helping us to create a rhythm so we were more able to carry out the gestures in times with each other. The sound scape enables us to build another layer to the picture in which were trying to create. The ideas around machines involve continuous work that is repetitive without any room for individuality or personalisation. These are all themes which we are trying to communicate and therefore by adding the extra dynamic of the sound scape the message become clearer giving a greater impact.

Something we all agreed we needed to have in our piece was the section from one of the other groups where they were unable to spell any creative words but could easily spell funding. The issues this pieces touches on I loved. I think its so important to look at how the welfare and growth of young children isn't always top priority. As someone who watched their carefree abstract primary school, although it had a bad ofsted, turn from a creative hub into an 'ark academy' when students were a blazer and shirt type uniform from year 1 onwards and take mock exams every term I was proud to include something on this topic in our piece. This was really good for me because i was able to use what i have experience to connect with the work were creating and therefore allow more truthful and passionate feelings to surface during this piece.

What I loved about the sequence they had created was how they had managed to include the message within a class setting with us a children. The ideas presented were clear and simple just as they would be in a primary school class, making the audience feel as if they too are a part of this class setting potentially reminding them of what it was like to be a young person in school at our age. Our closing sections, depicting the militancy of some school was devised as a group and didn't come from the material we already had. The key aspect to this was the sounds in breath and voice that went with each gesture. This was helping us to communicate the feeling behind the actions. For example the tucking in of a shirt was done on an in breath and the pulling down of our skirt was done on an out breath. The sharp intake of breath resembles that which you might do if you were trying to put on something that was too tight for you around your waist, already starting to communicate a message of being uncomfortable and forced into the uniform. the sharp outtake of breath also conveys a panicked or quick action, thus starting to outline the rigidness around these rules.

Education - Combining Work Difficulties

Devising material with all three of the education groups is really challenging, mainly just because of the size of our group. There are so many ideas going around that conflict is easily sparked. However, the process is made easier for us because were not devising from scratch. We have a huge resource bank of material from our individual pieces and so theoretically its just a case of putting them into one group piece.

Education isn't something that I would choose to make a human rights piece about, of course its still an issue i care about especially as it has a direct effect on me as a student and therefore I have opinions and views on the matter that im able to put into the work. But its not something that i feel as passionately about as Grenfell. Because of this the devising process doesn't come as naturally as im not able to tap into those inner feeling that push into the work i make. Therefore I found myself staying silent for a lot of the devising because there were so many voices going on it would only be unhelpful to add to the noise and chaos of what was going. However, i was quite sad that i didn't have more of an input because devising is something i love and there were many moments in which i had ideas but choose to withhold them. I think a lot of other people in the group possible felt the same way, and this was reflected in how we would make work. I felt that as a group our care and love for the piece wasn't present and this would only make the process more difficult. A lack of commitment & desire to create something good and effective was reflected in the small amounts of work that we made, making little progress because time was frequently wasted arguing amongst ourselves. 

Physical Theatre Solo Evaluation

Although I feel like this possible wasn't my best work, I'm very proud of the final piece simply because of how hard I found creating it. There was a point in the devising process where I thought I would have to change to a different topic because delving deep into the issues around Grenfell brought up some intense emotions for me. There was a lot of emotional moments but in hindsight I feel like these only enriched my performance. I was able to connect to my material on a very deep level and therefore everything I did was done to my fullest because i was so emotionally caught up in that world. It meant that I didn't really have to do any acting because everything i was feeling during that piece was real to me. I found the whole thing to be quite a healing process as it brought up everything that you have a tendency to ignore to the surface and therefore confront. As a result of this I believe my perform was very powerful and hopefully would have had a large effect on the audience because I was using that piece as an oppurtunity to stand for something i truly believe in. I wasn't just performing for the sake of being told we had to make a physical theatre solo on human rights and therefore the topic on which i created my work by wasn't a random human rights issues that only exsits in a place i have never even encountered or could ever understand. For me it is something ive seen with my own eyes and experienced, therefore I would like to think I'm not ignorant in this issue.

However there was also a downside to this. In my opinion my final piece was very messy and chaotic  because of the fact that there was still a sort of block within me. Although I'm sure the emotions displayed in the piece were effective and a positive influence I wasn't in control of that, and there were a few times when rehearsing where I would just stop halfway. Fortunately this didn't happen in the performance but it could have because my own personal experiences and feelings were in charge instead of me as an performer and actor.  I also think that the work i created wasn't my best. Potentially i could have created a much longer piece that was far more physically representational and less text heavy, this would have been more like what i wanted to create. instead of this i ended up filling a lot of the piece with speech and much more naturalistic movement due to the fact my focus and mind was never quite on point while devising. Breath was also something that became uncontrolled as my emotions took over, and although I am a believe in connecting your breath to your physical piece it became a problem when I started to struggle to get the words out due to loss of breath. 

As a piece of physical theatre I felt a key strength was the flow. In my opinion the piece didn't stop and start while it was going on and therefore the continuous flow of movement meant the story and feelings were able to be woven and interlinked together. This in turn means the piece is more effective because the audience can all be fully immersed in what is going on because the world isn't broken. I also tried to vary the pace quite a lot because I became aware that the majority of it was a very fast pace which made it hard to understand for an audience. This links back to the piece becoming quite chaotic and frantic because of how it was effecting me. During the devising process someone pointed out to me that the frantic fast pace started to lower the quality. To change that I made sure some moments of stillness were included and I think these moments were particularly strong and powerful. 

PHYSICAL THEATRE SOLO LOGBOOK

This was originally done as an actual logbook but I started to do the rest of my logbook online so Ive uploaded pictures of the original book. (If some are hard to read I can always bring in the original book but i thought it might be easier to out it all in one place)