Movement and devising

We discussed our ideas for the show and characters we wanted as a group. We chose the characters of

The Ringmaster
Fortune Teller
Man in the mirror which we changed to an escape artist stuck in water cage
The Caretaker
The lost child
The beast

Ideas and characters

We discussed about our different ideas for the halloween themed piece and settled on characters we all wanted in the performance. We decided on a circus freakshow walkthrough like what they do at frightmare and borrowed ideas from that. After characters we discussed how we wanted to layer it out and what the set could looked like. The set went through many layouts and we eventually set on a tunnel like layout with the ringmaster character showing off his attractions one by one.

For character scenes we discussed ideas on what to happen for our scenes and for my scene we were going to have one of the cast in the audience but we decided to have my character chase down the ringmaster through the set of the performance.

We all decided on our own characterisation and how we ended up in the circus. Since my character is the beast I decided he was part man/beast and was found near the circus when it started over 100 years ago. He was found by the original ringmaster and has stayed there ever since. He is not to fond of visitors at his attraction and will attack on site.

My characters movement involves walking around on all fours and sometimes standing up to threaten people. The movement on all fours is mainly on the CCTV video for when i'm chasing down the ring master and the standing up is when i'm threatening him. To do this I used techniques I learned from the workshop with a scare actor as it gave me good ideas for how a wolf like character would move and the sound he would have. I also used the seven levels of tension to explore how my character moves. My character started of at alert state when the audience arrive as he is being wary into passionate state when he chases the ring master through the hallways.

We did hot seating to explore our characters and get to know everyone else's characters. We also looked at where our characters fit in the story line.

My characters mask and ideas on how my part of the performance would go.

We also looked at other horror walk throughs to see how ours could be developed and what style they went with.

An example of a horror show we looked at.

The workshop with an experienced scare actor helped give me ideas for how to make my character move around and act. For the wolf it gave me the ideas for my animalistic movement when chasing the ringmaster and moving at a speed that makes it more creepy. It gave me the idea to hide my arms when the audience were in the tunnel to make my shadowy figure seem less human and scare them with my appearance.

VR Performance

Each rehearsal brought new ideas to the piece with everyone giving new ideas like using a prerecorded video after I escape, of my character chasing the ringmaster through the set while the audience watches it from a screen at the end.

Our performance came quite far from our set ideas and how we wanted to perform the themed piece. Our ideas all worked well together and the group all helped with experimenting with ideas and seeing if they would worked with the performance.

Performance ideas

The show was really fun and enjoyable. Everyone's parts of the performance was really good with there characters movement and interactions with the audience especially Jamie as the ringmaster and the audiences reaction to Jonathan's jump scare. The audiences reaction to my character was varied but the biggest one was when someone got close to my cage and I jumped at them and they jumped back.

In the beginning I thought the idea of a horror walkthrough as it was a new and unique thing to do for me and would give me more experience in other types of performance.

First thoughts

The Set

We discussed as a group ideas for our performances layout which settled on a frightmare like walk through attraction.The layout went through different ideas with the character order. The end and start characters location weren't changed with the beast cage and fortune teller box staying the same locations. We originally had the escape artist just before the cage but we decided to have him second as we had more space in the section just after the fortune teller box.

The set went through multiple different designs to accommodate different character movement and the audience. We had an idea for a ramp into the tunnel with people underneath scaring people but we didn't have multiple ramps to accommodate wheelchair access so we decided to have the tunnel on the ground.

We looked at stuff we already had in the prop cupboard we could use for our set. We found a box that had a gap in the top that we could've used to make the fortune teller box. We all agreed this would work with some slight edits to make a bit more space to get in. The scaffolding we found was used as the beasts cage at the end of the walk through. The roof of the scaffolding had a hatch which we used as the way I escaped as the beast.

One of the ideas for the layout of the performance.

The finishing of the scaffolding

lighting desk view of set.

Looking at set we had on hand

Set walk through while in our positions for the performance

Movement workshop + Strengths and weaknesses

For my movement workshop I worked on flexibility for an actor along with character movement. For the improving flexibility I did the ten second object game where I called out a animal or object and everyone made the item in a short amount of time. This game also helps with teamwork between performers. For character movement I got everyone to move around in a circle and think of character and how they would walk around and interact with other characters. I also got them to work in pairs and work on a piece with their characters from the previous workshop game.

My Workshop

After the workshops I think I have improved in my weaknesses with help from other peoples workshops. The yoga workshop Jamie and Jonathan did really helped with flexibility and core strength. The workshops also taught me more about practitioner workshops especially Commedia Dell'arte. The Commedia workshop taught me a lot about the stock characters involved and the differences in there personality's and how actors perform these characters.

Strengths

Quick character thinking- Improv circle: group goes into circle. Two people start and given a theme to act out and after a while someone says stop and takes someone’s place and makes a new scene

Confidence: Confidence for an actor stops them from getting scared when they perform in front of an audience and other actors. Having a lot of confidence helps an actor sell themselves to casting directors.

Character movement: For an actor character movement helps them get a feel for the character and how they might walk around on stage. This is a strength of mine as I find it quite easy to think of how a character moves by just imagining myself as that character and thinking like they do.

Weaknesses

Flexibility- Stretch warm up. Flexibility for an actor helps them with doing complex movements for performances. Improving flexibility stops them from injuring themselves during performances.

My flexibility is not strong as I injure easily when doing specific movements and is one of my weakest points in performance. This weaknesses is because of injury's I've had in the past more specifically my ankles as I've landed on the side of them and pulled a ligament out of place. To improve this I need to work on my joints by doing bits of yoga to help my joints get more flexible.

Strength: Strength for an actor helps them do certain movement pieces for longer. My physical strength isn't good as I'm not physically active enough that there not much for my body muscles. To improve this I need to start exercising and building up my core strength so I don't stress my muscles when doing lift like work.

Stamina: Stamina helps an actor keep up with doing multiple performances in a single day and stops them from being out of breath mid performance. My physical stamina is a weakness because i'm not physically active enough and not built up my stamina.

We worked in pairs to create a short chair duet piece and worked with different forms of contact with music playing in the background. As a group we looped our individual pieces so each of our performances can move into each other. Chair duets is a frantic assembly work that they use to get actors thinking of moves. They also practice different group lifts which we looked at and did as a group.

Frantic workshops

Devising practitioners and History

There are multiple different practitoners in devising with them all having different techniques and methodologies to how they devise a performance.

Laban was Hungarian dance theorist. He developed a method of movement in which movement is determined by a number of characteristics and stimulating thought derived from movement. His technique was to breakdown into it's simplest forms to allow a performer to experiment with the movement. He divided movement into 4 separate categories with them being body, effort, shape and space. His techniqes were really effective for my character as I felt my character should have a inhuman body shape and movement and a lot of his techniques involved actor body shape. He was active from 1913 to 1948.

Devised theatre can be traced back to 16th century Italy with Commedia dell’arte which used stock characters to develop characters in perfomances. The stock characters had a list of how the character should move, how they interact with other characters and what there personality is like. The characters were all built up from these personality types into a performance utilising there movement. There was not necessarily a script and the actors would devise a story around the stock characters. The movement was important as it was exaggerated and told the story without words.

Artaud was known for his performance with theatre of cruelty which utilised the audience and there senses. He aimed to appeal to and release the emotions of the audience. Theatre of cruelty was largely a movement based performance style aimed to shock the audiences senses. Artaud use this to experiment with the relationship between performer and audience. We used theatre of cruelty in our performance as we were trying to scare the audience and get a reaction out of them.

Jacques LeCoq performance style was aimed at training performers creativity. He wanted actors to find faults in there performance not him self. Like Artaud he looked at the relationship between performer and audience. His technique involved using body tension to help with character movement along with tempo and rhythm. The seven levels of tension is used in this technique. The seven levels of tension starts of with catatonic which is a limp like state which then goes into laid back then neutral, from that it goes into alert then suspense into passionate then tragic which is a solid tension in the body. Body tension helped form my characters movement with how quick or slow my character was and how gravity affected him.

These practioners and companies helped develop how actors would develop devising pieces and how we could use to show societal issues and our own performances with there different techniques and how they perform them.