Devised Evaluation

I believe that our “Humanity in Crisis” devised piece went well this year because within our group we had managed to come up with a very effective issue and diverse ways to portray each one of our ideas. I believe that this devised piece went well this year because I was able to come up with many ideas from the devised title, my group managed to come up with multiple ideas to test and research. So I feel our creativity and planning skills have improved as well as been shown during the start of the devising Unit where we experiment with several different ideas, researched them In depth, before settling on the main idea to use. I believe that one of the things we did well was the deciding on our main focus for “Humanity in crisis” because we were all well informed about all ideas we had from research and managed to make mature and interesting choice. Our main focus was education and more specifically behaviour from students, this was a very interesting issue to show to an audience if we can portray the issue effectively even though this was considered to be a very difficult issue because it’s a subject not a lot people other than teacher might find interesting. This is what I believe went well as I think we managed to not only portray our point to the issue we set out to show, we also managed to make it visually appealing to members of the audience who wouldn’t acre about our issue. Another thing we did well was how we made our piece appealing for all types of audiences, we created visually appealing movement segments and thought proving dialogue with humour in to show the relation between student and teachers, what it should be and why it is like the way it is. I also believe that our self-written dialogue was another skill that was well used in our piece. I believe this aspect went well because when we had written dialogue in the past like for last years devised piece we didn’t think much on our dialogue which ended up having written our script in the form of cliché dialogue. This year we had spent more time working on our dialogue so we could achieve a more naturalistic tone, we managed to do this by researching our characters in depth, as our characters were teachers we had teachers look over our script and help us improve them to the more realistic standard.

I believe that what could have gone better with our devised show was the physical theatre pieces we had created, even though they suited the tone of our devised piece and managed to be physically appealing, I believe we could of worked harder to make them stand out more to the audience as most of the pieces had over half of our group sat down in chairs. I would have like to have looked into a way of making our physical pieces bigger and less tame, one of the physically piece we had created was where the students were controlling the teacher, which we had done very well, but the piece was meant to show the decent towards a chaotic future where the children were being destructive which I don’t believe this piece had shown as the execution of the physical piece felt too neat for a chaotic future. I also believe that our piece could have been better if we had looked into furthering our scripted scenes more, what I mean by this is that although we had managed to write effective and realistic dialogue all our scenes were very static or had us stuck in chair, It could have been better if we had looked into a way of getting our teacher characters up and moving around. Another idea would have been too create a few scenes in a classroom or the teachers with their life outside of school so that we could have had movement in our scripted scenes making them less static. Another thing we could have improved with our piece was the choice in staging because although the Traverse staging worked we could have looked further into the types of staging we could have used for the piece. When we talked about staging we originally set out to do traditional staging for our piece but were later inspired by a show called the “Black watch” to try Traverse for our show, which made me feel we had all settled on the idea on traverse staging very early on in the creation process of our show. This meant that we could of experimented with different idea of staging that could of helped set the tone of our piece like we could have had our audience sat on exam desk to help pull them into our devised pieces issues or of had them sat like a classroom to watch the piece.

Last rehearsal

Today is our last rehearsal before we perform our "humanity in crisis" devised pieces. So our objective today is to run through our whole piece as much as possible with props, costumes and lighting. Before we started 2 of us plotted the lighting, 2 of us went to grab of the props needed while the last 2 set the performance space.
I collected the props we needed:
2x wooden rulers
6x books
Glass water poorer
Digestives
Cups

While collecting these props the others set the traverse staging as well as our 6 desk and chairs in opening positions so we can start straight away.
When lighting was in position we started our run through:
Sound scape
Meeting 1
Victorian piece
Meeting 2
Future school piece
Meeting 3
Corporal punishment piece
Meeting 4

We ran through our whole show little to none problems other then just to make sure we know all our lines in the meeting scenes. This was our note for our whole run through so I'm feeling very confident for our performance as I feel we are ready as a group and performance to show of our interesting view of humanity in crisis through education.

Final drafts

Today we decided to finish our script completely today, so we sat down read through as well as perform each script. After this we made little changes to the script in working so that we were all happy with every script except the ending scene where e have a food fight as we came to the realisation that we could hit a member of the audience of injure someone so we wanted to change to a safer ending. Instead we now have meg throw a pen at me  to which we all respond to by getting into a massive verbal argument before Kyle says the ending line we agreed on last lesson. After we were happy with all our script work we looked at one of our physical pieces, future school, then went over it step by step as some of us had forgotten what we do in this piece. After we had managed to piece this together we looked at the opening part of this piece as a member of our group had an idea for the start of the song. At the beginning we all push round our chairs then bang them as they move closer to be he teacher before sitting back down on the chair, this new idea I liked as it made me think of an animal stalking its prey. This was a really useful lesson as we have now completely finished all our scripted work in our devised so our focus is now on the physical side of our piece and as a group we are getting better at collaborating ideas for each other to improve our performance.

Scene 4 + sound scape

Today we sp lit into 2 groups which was me by myself writing scene 4 and the others working on the sound scape that opens our devised piece. Within scene 4 this needed to be the summary of everything we had shown in our piece as well as still containing humour to be appealing to our audience. In scene 4 I needed to write a realistic debate/fight between the teachers, a reason for Meg to get annoyed, my entrance, a food fight and a message to end on. Within the scene I have written that Toby, being the irritating teacher, will start eating biscuits really loud which will annoy Meg but no one else. My entrance I decided would be during the argument where I'd just come in and sit down, not caring about the argument. The food fight would start from Meg, she would have a lecture to all of us about our behaviour which respond to with a stupid comment pushing Meg over the edge to throw a biscuit at me and then everyone joining in. Based around the food fight ending we had the idea that our ending line should "how can we expect the children to behave when we can't". I liked this as it reflects on the teachers we had made during the devised show and is a good message to end on.

The others started work on the sound scape where they decided to just use recordings for the sound scape instead of ourselves. So they have been drained storming and recording noises they can put on a track to set the classroom similar to when we had first come up with the sound scape but having everything recorded.

After we were both done we had a sit down to read through our final script. We all like the ending which now ment we had finished staging everything so for the next couple of lesson we needed to work on perfecting our pieces. So for nest lesson we our going to take one last look at our scripts and make any final changes before going on a polishing our physical pieces.

Production meeting

Today we decided to change our plan we had before this lesson to sit down and talk about the production itself. We decided to write down our running order for the show and staging:

Classroom sound scape
Meeting 1
Victorian school
Meeting 2
Future school
Meeting 3
Corporal punishment future
Meeting 4

All the staging for the meetings is the same with the 6 of us as desks sat in a circle around each other.
We decided to stage the sound scape with all of us sat around the stage in random places and directions.
The Victorian piece we had a desk at the front of our staging with the 5 of us sat in the shape of the 5 on a dice facing towards the desk at the front, we changed this to have the ones of us on chairs around the edge to be facing inwards so the we were each facing audience members.
Future school was stage with 5 of us sat in a semi circle and our teach in the centre of the stage, we change this to improve audience viewing by having the semi circle at the back of our staging so that no view was abstracted.
Corporal punishment future was the 4 desk sat in a square with the guards circling the desks.

We next talked costumes for a characters:
We needed to think about costume changes between students to teachers so we agreed on having black trousers?skirt as the bottom and white shirt for the top with an extra items to turn us into teachers like my was a sweater and another item was a blazer.

Finally we talked about our last scene and what we wanted to happen in the scene. We needed to raise either a clear problem in the world of education or a salutation as our ending note. We also wanted to keep the humour so was inspired by "future conditional" which had a scene where the teachers engaged in a food fight, we liked this and wanted to use it in our devised piece. Finally we also needed to sort my entrance so that it would be comical.
This was a very useful lesson for our group as we have managed to sort out all the extra details in our show we hadn't looked at before today, we also managed to work well as a group suggesting ideas for improvements within our devised show.

Improving scenes 2-3

Today we came straight away and pull out our drafted scripts from last lesson and showed them to two teachers to gather their opinions on how to better the scenes. After reading the scripts they said that we needed to just change the phrasing of some lines as they weren't the exsact way a teacher would respond to each other. Another part we change was a section where Kyle reacted to an inappropriate comment from Toby, we changed this to Meg reacting as we thought it was more suitable wi5h her being the head of the meeting to react to the comment. After letting the teachers read the scripts we made the improvements they suggested before we ran though scene 2. I read in for our absence member in this scene which sets up our Future school piece, he setting was the same as the first scene being sat around a table in a circle so audience could see at least 2 teachers face at once. After we ran this scene we then tried scene 3 which sets up our corporal punishment future piece. This week has been a productive lesson as we have now set every part of our devised show except the ending which we decided is our goal for next lesson. Overall we had worked effectively as a group to get 2 scenes finished today as well as sort out what we can do next lesson.

Script plan

For the next 2 weeks we are absent a member of our devised team so we decided to plan out everything we can do to prepare for the show while he is gone. We talked as a group and said we don't need anymore physical piece as we had a few already. This was good as well because this wasn't something our absentee could learn at home so we decided to talk script work and what we could create. We discussed and decided that we wanted to create 3 more scripted scenes in our devised as the scripted scenes were the centre of our devised story. Within the scripted scenes we wanted to portray a message to our audience about the current problem with behaviour in education. Each scripted scene is going to lead into the physical theatre pieces as the scenes will point out a solution or problem and the physical pieces will show the outcome of the actions. We said that we will decide us so that we can write 2 scripts over the next 2 lessons: me and Kyle worked on the second scene while Meg, Carl and Toby worked on making scene 3. After this we would just have our ending to plan which we said we talk about sorting next lesson. Our goal for the lesson was to get theses 2 scripted pieces first drafts done so we can get a teacher to look at them in our next lesson on how to improve them. Our final discussion came up while writing the script which was my characters entrance to the scene as I had not appeared in the first scene, my character was meant to be the teacher who was late for the meeting so we weren't sure to bring him in the second scene so that I'd have more scene time or at the end for comedy value. We discussed this and I said I didn't mind entering at the end if we all believe it would help the piece so we agreed to have my entrance at the end of the show. Overall I believe this was an effective lesson even though we are now down a member of our group for the next 2 weeks. This lesson went well as we have managed to come up with a plan of action to get our show staged over the next couple of lessons using our scripted scenes. We have also managed to create to drafts for three of our scripted scenes to be looked over next lesson.

Improving Corpral Punishment Future

Today we showed our Corpral Punisment piece to Mr Webb who said he understood what we wanted to try and accomplish but our delivary wasnt the best. He said the guards don't need to be dressed in riot gear or need the shields, he suggested we try the piece with Wooden rulers and that we should use them to move as well as to control the students. We changed the start of our piece from having the students already sitting to having them walking in military style in lines a formation from the back towards their seats. I am stood at the front while Kyle is stood at the back, we will always try to stay the other ends of the class to each other so we can obtain a realistic patrol. When the students reach their seat I lower my hand to show they can sit before moving my ruler left to right to show they can get their books out. We decided that we wouldn't let the guards talk to show a form of power over the students as we don't need to talk to control them. In the piece we show several incidents that happen in classes but how in our future school the guards respond to these incidents.
1. Passing a note
2. Getting out of your seat
3. Lying to guards
4. Arguing against punishment
At the back of the Square Dan trys to passing a note to Meg which I repond to by smacking his hand down using the ruler, Dan then drops his pen so stands up to pick it up at which point Kyle pushes him back to his seat with the ruler. Next Carl shouts out "stop kicking my chair" at which point Kyle extends Meg leg, who is sat behind Carl, then measures the distance between the leg and chair to clear see Meg is to far to kick the chair. Kyle as the guard responds to this by smack Carl's head on his desk. After this Toby stares at Kyle, Kyle goes to hit Toby but he dodges it and tries to attack the guard. Kyle restrains Toby so Dan tries to help him at which I respond by hitting him and throwing him to the ground. After this I gesture Meg and Carl out of their seats to leave before going to strike Toby ending the piece. I now really like this piece as I feel we have managed to create and show a realistic future basses round extreme corporal punishment which will help show the purpose of our devised piece.

Corporal Punishment Future

Today we started to work on our last physical theatre piece we wanted for our devised piece. This piece was going to based round the future where school has become like a prison with guards and extreme rules. We planned out what we wanted in the piece, we decided that we would have 2 guards, 4 students and no teachers to emphasis the fact that they care more about the behaviour then learning. We have the students sat in a square with Me and Kyle as the guards walking around them. For this piece we would like me and Kyle dressed in riot gear holding riot shields, we wanted our guards dressed like this because we wanted to emphasis how school feels like a prison in the future. We started to play Pink flyod "Another brick in the wall" and decided to use this number for the piece. We came up with a three warning idea for the piece where if a student does something disruptive they will get a warning, three warnings equal a taze, we decided that Dan would be the student to get tazed so we started the piece and came up with three idea he could do to get in trouble.
1. Passing a note
2. Getting up from his chair
3. Snezing
While Dan slowly gets each one of his strikes we have the other three hesitantly going to do something like take a drink or ask a question but get a look from a guard which makes them go back to work.
Following Dan being tazed we want the students to get up and start interacting with the guards.
This lesson I feel that we managed to come up with a great idea that works well with our piece but i dont feel like we have done the with creating it as i feel what we made would be rather boring to watch for a audience point of view. Next lesson i feel w eithe rneed to figure out a way to make this piece more appealing or try and come up with another idea to show a corpral punishment future.

Future school, choosing between 2

Today we started by going over what we had created last lesson which was our new version of our children out of control future. We showed our teacher this piece and she asked us why we had changed it from the first piece we made, we told her how we felt it wasn't creative in our opinion. Miss then told us the first one was more visually appealing then our new one which she said was rather tame in comparison. After miss had told us this we sat down as group to talk about the piece and what we can do to improve it. We decided to try and put the 2 piece together to create a very appealing physical theatre piece. We started by using the start of our second piece where me and Kyle have our interactions with Carl and then changed the rest of the piece so that we can get up be more creative with the piece. Meg then gets up and she now takes a control role over Carl where she makes him twirl before me and Kyle get back up. We grab string that are on Carl's wrists and pull them back so that he is restrained while Toby then gets up. Toby runs round Carl playing with the string and forcing Carl into funny faces. Me and Kyle then let Carl go as Dan M starts to make Carl walk towards the empty chair. Dan M then cuts the strings so Carl falls back into his seat, we all get up and leave him there. We still do our piece to the song "shot yourself in your foot again". We like what our piece has become now that we had combined the 2 together. We worked hard this lesson as we have now completely finished this piece and have decided we want to create our last physical piece which is our alternate future piece that's has the extreme corporal punishment.

Change Future school

Today we started to look at our physical piece we created last lesson and how we could improve on it, we ran through the number and we struggled to think of what we could move on to next within the number. We went back to the start and thought about how we could improve the piece as we all weren't liking this piece that much anymore. We started thinking about this piece again and what we could do to make this piece flow more natural to us. We looked through the whole idea we wanted to create and decided to focus on the manipulation of students over teachers, so we started again with Kyle going first in our piece up to Carl. Kyle now turns Carl back to the board and moves his arm to write on the board before walking away. I then go up and we change what me and Carl do from last time to show that I'm more violent and harsh with him, I pull his arms behind him which Carl turn out of which I reopened to by throwing him on the floor. I then pick Carl up by his head to slam against the board before sitting back down. We then all liked the idea of puppetry being used on Carl so we though we would build up to puppetry by using shadow movement first so we had Meg walk up to Carl then slowly lift his arms by moving her arms above him, she would then do the same with walking Carl around before leading to Toby's chair which Toby is standing on pretending to be a puppeteer over Carl as he is lead to Dan M's chair where Dan M cuts the strings on Carl going from, arms to legs ending on head before we walk out ending the piece. I really like our new improve piece and I believe we have stylised the piece in a very unique way.

Future school (children take over)

Today we started to try and work on a physical theatre piece set in the future where the students have become to chaotic for the teachers to control so the students have started to rebel. We started to plan out what we wanted to happen in this piece, we agreed we wanted a big physical piece for this part of our devised because we believed there is a range of possibilities we could create. We talked about who we wanted as a teacher for this piece, we didn't want to use Dan M again as we used him in our previous piece so we thought we would use Carl as he is the teacher in the meetings that favoured the future that had no improvement in punishment so we believed he would best represent the teachers in this 'out of control future'. We started with the five of us sat in a semi-circle around Carl, we started creating our piece to the song 'Arguing with themomiters (Taz Buckfaster remix)'. We started our piece by having Carl writing on the board, he then points to Kyle who walks up to him and turns him back to the bored. I them get up and walk towards Carl and repeat what Kyle did by when I do it I am more aggressive then Kyle was. This is to show the progression of the aggression from the students. Toby is the next to get up but when he does he just stands there and looks at Carl before he kicks his chair back on the drop of the music. We then talk about what we wanted to happen next, Some of us wanted to do a lift with Carl where we would smack him backwards into a lift that would send him flying across the room in slow motion. My idea was for Carl to hit and do a dead drop backwards into 2 peoples hands so that they could fling him back up into a leg lift with 3 people. We tried these two ideas but we struggled to create my idea effectively and we didn't like how the other lift looked. We then tried getting all of us up and moving one at a time towards Carl moving him into strange positions to show power ending with me retraining him. We then split into two groups, Meg and Dan M split off to create a choreographed fight between the two of them. Me, Kyle, Toby and Carl proceed to show a violent approach to Carl where i restrain him and the others take turns beating him. This was the end of the lesson today so we talked and said our objective for the next lesson is to finish what we had started today. I feel that the lesson could of gone better today as we struggled to come with an effective idea for the piece that we all agree on, next lesson we need to be more collaborative to towards each other so that we can get this piece set.

Improving script

Today we had a lesson with Mr Webb who we showed the scripted scene we had created in the lesson priveus to this lesson. He gave his honest opnion on our scene which was that he liked it but said our dialogue was unbelieve as we didn't talk in the same ways a teacher would talk in a meeting so he helped us change our script to a more believeable conversation between teachers who were at a meeting. We went through our script line by line with with the guidance of our teacher where he make small changes to help suit a comedic or believable value for our script. After we had adapted our script we started our run through with the script and agreed that we all like the new version. I feel this was a helpful lesson as it has helpped expand our production creating realistic characters as well as helping us relise that in the future if we create more script we should get a teacher to read through the script. It has also made us relise that we should interview teachers and get their opinons on education, the future of education and what the teachers think is the problem with defiant students.