Unit 18 - Auditions

Contemporary audition piece

Danny - Eight

Classical audition piece

Parolles - All's Well That Ends Well

Risk Assessment

Possible hazard	What we would be ideal to prevent it	What we can do	Would this make it safer?
Someone getting hurt due to the creation of the barricade.	Have a bigger space to move about in, keep objects being thrown very light, and make sure the performers are well rehearsed.	Move all unneeded objects out of the area, try to create the biggest space possible, only throw cardboard boxes, and rehearse the scene many times before even going into the church.	We still won’t have a massive amount of space, but we won’t be able to fall over any unneeded objects, no heavy objects will be thrown at all, and the performers should be able to play the scene out perfectly due to rehearsals.
Limited space to dance to ‘People Help the People’.	The barriers are removable and the chairs can be moved out of the way to create a bigger space.	Take the barriers out and put them in unused pews, and move the chairs to another space, creating the biggest possible space for the performers to dance in.	The performers would have a lot more space to perform the dance and there will be very little chance of hitting the choir pews as they would be behind the area in which the dance takes place.
Fire due to lighting.	Use LED lights as they are cold - unlike normal stage lighting.	Use LED lights.	The LED lights are cold and so there is no risk of fire from them.
Performers falling off the window ledge.	Have lots of rehearsals on a similar material to find the best way to make it safe for them, and get a step of sorts to help the performers reach the ledge.	We can cover the ledge in blankets so it keeps with the theme of the performance, this would mean the performers would not be able to slip off the ledge. We can also move part of the barrier next to it, so they can step onto that to get them on the ledge.	The performers would easily be able to get onto the ledge and get down off of it, also the blankets would make them slip less while they are up there.
Fire due to candles.	Use electric candles wherever possible.	We have a lot of electric candle available to us; however we feel we need to use a real candle for the ending scene.	No fire will be unnecessarily used in the performance and the performers will be briefed beforehand - making sure the risk of a fire is minimal.
Performer getting stabbed due to penknife.	Use a fake knife.	We will use a real knife to make it look authentic; however the performers will have many rehearsals before going into the church.	There will still be a little risk, but due to rehearsal beforehand - this will be minimised.
Performers tripping over in the preparation for creating the barricade.	Walk down each isle at the beginning of the day and make sure they are clear, also brief the performers and anyone in the church and keep the isles clear throughout the day.	Walk down each isle multiple times throughout the day, especially before dress rehearsals, tech runs, and the actual performance.	There will be no obstacles in the way of the performers, and they will all be aware of the dangers - making risk of injury minimal.
Steps being a trip hazard for the audience members or performers.	Put up signs and highlight steps.	When ushering the audience through the performance, extra performers must highlight that there are steps that need to be climbed; also brief the performers of where the stairs are.	This will make the trip hazard minimal as everyone will be aware of the steps around the performance space.

Diary: Day 24 - 17/06/13 (Inc. Evaluation)

It was the day of the performance today and we were all getting a little nervous. When we first arrived, we spoke to the reverend of the church and she was very helpful in telling us what we can (and can’t) do with the space provided. So we spent the first few hours moving things in the church to make way for our props and where we will be performing. Unfortunately (but not surprisingly) we weren't allowed to do much with the alter, so we spoke to the reverend and moved it out of the way – putting a table in its place. We quickly briefed the last of the extras on what they needed to do and then promptly started a run through. This went surprisingly well and so we sent the extras back to school, so we could sort out the finishing touches. We did a final run through, then were ready for the performance in the evening, so had a break. When the audience arrived, there were more than expected, but we managed to fit them all into the spaces provided – other than that, the performance went ahead with no mistakes, a near perfect performance really. It was quite emotional afterwards due to the fact that this was the last performance we would ever do together as a sixth form group – we started with about twelve people in our class and we finished with six.

What went well?

Most things in the performance process went extremely well. Due to the fact that we only had about four weeks to create the performance, we moved at an incredibly quick pace. This meant that very few ideas didn't make it to the end performance as we didn't have time to sit down and evaluate good/bad scenes and we just put them all in – making them better if we felt they needed work. We had all worked very closely together on previous productions, so we were all very open with ideas to put into the piece. This was extremely helpful as we would have many different ideas for each and every scene for the piece – meaning we could try out each idea and see which we prefer.

We were a little surprised at how accommodating the members of the clergy were when we arrived at the Church. They were happy for us to do almost anything – we had tried to keep our piece away from any blasphemous dialogue or actions due to it being a church. The extras also did extremely well – I feel we chose an extremely talented group of individuals and they managed to settle into their roles very quickly and understand their purpose in the performance extremely well.

What didn't go so well?

In a short answer – not much. If we had a little more time to get the performance ready, I think we would have an extremely good performance, but nowhere near what we actually ended up with. The short time span meant we had to experiment with things quite a lot to see if they worked – meaning our performance had a nice balance of dialogue based scenes and more physical scenes. We did have one or two scenes based around the alter which we couldn't use the same way – but we simply changed the alter for a table and used a window ledge instead. I was also ill during the day of the performance, but that couldn't be helped. Other than that, I feel the performance and rehearsals went extremely well.

If we were to do it again?

To be honest, if we were to do it again, I wouldn't know what I would change really. Maybe spend a little more time looking at venues and different concepts, but I think we talk a lot about things instead of actually doing them – so we could easily spend months on end looking at venues and concepts without actually choosing one. If we had a lot of money, we may have had a deal with Rochester Cathedral and performed in there – that would be an equally as good performance, but in a much grander space. But again, it would be a completely different performance and to be honest, I think the audience would be distracted a little by the sheer size of the rooms. It would also be extremely expensive to light the space and get the correct audio setup to perform effectively – so I still prefer our church setting that we chose.

Early Ideas for St Margret's Church

Before we had come up with an idea to go into St Margret's Church, we took lots of photos of the church. When we got back, we all sat down and wrote down things that came to mind for each part of the church in the photos. Hopefully, these ideas would help us decide on one to perform. These are my notes:

An Idea to Start

Audience walk into the church and it's set in the future where there has been a war and everything is destroyed. Throughout the performance, have characters from throughout history that have done things wrong to teach the audience the right thing to do.

Pews

People sitting motionless in the pews. Staring, creepy, candlelit. This all happens when the audience walk in. We will have to black out the windows to do this. A view from the pulpit - people 'dotted around' the church, all motionless.

Entrance

One person, silent and staring, can encourage the audience to come in and sit down.

Cross

Sitting on the ledge (maybe perform a monologue) with light coming through from behind (creating a silhouette).

Archway

People standing/crouching around the archway, maybe hiding? Someone ushering them in.

Pulpit

People standing on the barrier, each side representing a choice and they can't decide which way to go. Maybe someone watching from the pulpit - making them choose either one.

Statue: immortality.

Hedge Archway: a new world.

Diary: Day 23 - 14/06/13

Today we set up the hall as a rough version of the church and did a run through of the whole performance. This was extremely useful as we could test out all of our scenes and transitions and see how well it ‘flows’. Overall, the rehearsal went well, there were only a few hiccups, but we can all sort these out over the weekend – they were mainly forgotten lines and/or transitions. After this we each allocated one or two extras to each member of the group – this way, on Monday we can each brief the extras on what they have to do for their characters. Overall, an extremely productive lesson and it looks like we are almost ready for Monday. Over the weekend, we will all work on the little parts that went wrong today (such as the odd scripted scene), ready for the performance.

Diary: Day 22 - 12/06/13

We focused on doing a run through today. After quickly looking at some videos of the earlier scenes, we ran through the performance up until Millie’s song where she sings and we grab things around the church for the barricade. This was surprising as we moved pretty easily through the performance and rarely forgot parts that we put in. We have decided to create the barricade out of cardboard boxes, so will need to get as many as possible over the next few days (we used chairs today as they were close to hand) and for each scene we had to quickly make a rough version of the space that we will have in the church. Today was extremely helpful as we went through scenes we hadn't looked at in a few weeks, so we just need to run the whole thing a few more times and we will be ready for Monday. The scenes I am most uncomfortable with at the moment are the first scene and the scene which involves our argument just before we dance to Paramore – ‘We are Broken’. Tomorrow we will most likely continue with the run through until the end and then go over scenes we think aren't strong enough.

Diary: Day 21 - 11/06/13

Yesterday, Joe and I went through our scene and tried out ‘God and Satan’ and managed to get it to a standard that we liked. We will now learn the scene at home and the next time we do it, we should know it enough to perform it properly. This was extremely useful as it was one of the very few scenes we hadn’t quite finished. Today we all discussed the building of the barricade as we had experimented a little with it, but hadn’t finished it entirely. We decided the best course of action would be to get a lot of cardboard boxes to create the barricade out of, so we will have to do this another time. We then moved on to the ending as we desperately needed to decide how we wanted our characters to end up. We finally decided that Dave’s character would get up after the quiet scene where we all talk about what we wanted to do when we were younger, and he would then explain that he wants to fight for his life. One by one we would join him and eventually we would all sing ‘Us Against the World’ by Coldplay as we slowly band together and leave the church. This was extremely good as we left the audience inside the church, while also having an emotional way of ending the show. We then showed some different scenes to year 12 students and got some feedback – this was mainly good, but they didn’t quite understand the relevance of our dances to ‘We are Broken’ but we felt this would be more clear if they had seen the rest of the performance. Today was extremely useful as we went over a lot of different scenes that we hadn’t done in a while, whist also finishing the ending of the performance and showing some scenes to an audience. Tomorrow we will start running through the performance and start making sure the smaller details are being taken care of (such as props and maybe have a look at costumes).

Diary: Day 20 - 07/06/13

Today, we first ran through the dance for ‘We Are Broken’ due to the fact that Dave hadn't performed his with all of us and Jay had made his dance slightly shorter than last lesson. This went well and so we moved onto working on the piece of dialogue before this. This posed some problems as we each didn't know our characters well enough to just improvise speech and so even though people had brought in ideas for the scene; it took a while to start creating the scene. But we ended up with a fairly long scene that explored quite a lot of our characters thoughts/feelings on different matters. After this we decided that we were going to kill Stevie’s character (by her leaving the safety of the church) and this would shock our characters into coming together for the last dialogue scene and the final song. We tried out this final scene and it went extremely well as we used a lot of silence in it and told a little of our character’s back stories. Finally, we started to come up with ideas for how to actually end the show (with Coldplay – ‘Us Against the World’), however we ran out of time for this and said we’d each come up with ideas over the weekend and bring them in next lesson. This lesson was extremely useful as we created the last few scenes and now have a good idea of the show as a whole – not to mention feeling much closer to our characters. Next lesson, we will hopefully finish the show and start to possibly run some of the scenes we haven’t done in a while to get used to them again.

Diary: Day 19 - 05/06/13

We focussed on the dance that we wanted to create for ‘We Are Broken’ by Paramore today. This was because we had each created a small piece of movement to go in the song, but we needed to find a way to make them all fit into the song and space we had. After deciding where everyone was going to perform their dance, we ran it a number of times to try and get the best order – as some pieces worked better with a certain part of the song. During this, we realised that the dances finished after the song, so a few of us made our dances longer/shorter to suit the song. After finishing this, we started to look at the dialogue before this dance, but we quickly ran out of time and so said we would come up with ideas to put into the argument for next lesson – meaning we could come in and start blocking it almost straight away. This lesson was extremely useful as we completely finished off the dance for ‘We Are Broken’ and just need to run it once next lesson to make sure it is finished. We also started to talk about the dialogue before the dance and so to finish the production we just need to create a few more little scenes, which shouldn't take too long. Next lesson we will quickly run the dance to ‘We Are Broken’ and then focus on the dialogue before, then hopefully move onto the final song we will all be singing to end the show.

Diary: Day 18 - 04/06/13

Lots of people were off due to exams today, so Dave, Jay and I sat down and listed the different scenes we had already created. This helped us a lot because we could calculate roughly how long our scenes were and how much we wanted to add to it.  After doing this we thought it would be a good idea to plan out the ending to the performance in detail. So we did the same thing and started a list of sorts to get an idea of how we would end the show. This was brilliant as we could clearly see our ideas taking shape and have a very rough idea of how long each idea would take to perform. We also decided that we would each create a part of a dance to ‘We Are Broken’ by Paramore – this was one of the possibilities to use for the dance that Millie choreographed, and we thought that we could each create a piece of contemporary dance to show part of our individual character’s back stories. Tonight we will each create part of a dance for it and possibly come up with a few ideas about dialogue to go in between the more physical parts of our performance.

Character Profile and Back Story

Character Profile

Name: Matthew (Matt) Alton

Age: 25

Occupation: Schoolteacher

Hobbies: occasionally plays golf with friends, but spends a lot of the time with friends at the pub. However, he does not drink too much because he usually goes on week-days and has work the next day. He also has to plan his lessons for the next few days before going, so it reduces his time at the pub. He spends the weekends in his local church as he runs a kids club and enjoys feeling close to God (so helps out with as many events within the church as possible).

Personality: a very calm person – not much will affect him and he can always turn to God for the things that do affect him in a bad way.

Marital status: was engaged to his girlfriend (Madeline [Maddy]), but she committed suicide from jumping off a bridge into a road about six months before the riots started.

Back Story

Matthew was born on May 1st 1988 to loving, Christian parents. During his time growing up, he spent almost every Sunday at church and remained a devout Christian all the way through school life. Every now and then a peer would mock him, due to the depth of his feeling for Christianity, but his faith in God would overcome his feelings for them. However, every now and then, he would ‘talk’ to Satan as well as God to see the opposite view of the situation and to make sure he was doing the right thing.

He met Madeline at university as she was doing the same course as him. They quickly became attracted to each other and while she wasn't Christian, she could see his point of view of things. They both finished university with very good degrees in teaching in 2009. They quickly found work in the same secondary school and moved in together. However, Madeline had developed Major Depressive Disorder while they were are university (because of the work load) and found it hard to cope with going straight into working in a school after studying. She entered into a downward spiral of stressing about how much work she had, feeling bad because she didn't have the time to do it, feeling down because of that and then not actually getting much done due to the depressed mood she was in. She was often late for work and occasionally didn't plan her lessons for the day. Matthew noticed this and tried to help as best he could – but he had his own work of course and Madeline felt that he was interfering with her job role and didn't like his help too much anyway – making Matthew feel helpless, but again being able to talk to God about his fears in the hope that he will guide Madeline to the light. Halfway through the school year, the governing body of the school decided it was time for her to depart from her position. When she was told this she drove home, in the car she had an emotional breakdown and stopped on a bridge. She got out the car, went to the edge of the bridge, left a voice-mail on the phone at home for Matthew, and jumped to her death. Matthew didn't know about any of this until he arrived home later that night and got the message on his answer machine. Matthew was obviously shocked that it had happened; he also felt sad that she had died and angry at himself for not being able to help her. He turned to God to help him through this time – he took a few days off work and prayed for her safe arrival in heaven, hoping that God would allow her entrance, even though she wasn't Christian. Three years on and his belief in Christianity is stronger than ever; the riots didn't affect him much, until they started to get closer and closer to his home (and workplace), at that point he fled to his church, but when he arrived, it had already been attacked it in some sort of rage (maybe people blaming God for what has happened to them), due to this he went to the next nearest church (St Margaret’s). Due to no-one there being religious – he took up the role of reverend and took responsibility for the people inside. He did regular services to help keep people’s moods up – however, there were a couple that kept distancing themselves from the rest of the group. The woman in the relationship was very kind and helpful with anything he needed, but the man seemed quite anti-social and didn't like Matthew’s company as much. They were there before Matthew, and at first they were both against the idea of letting him in, but they soon saw that they needed to let some more people in to help them all live together.

Information on Jesus' Parables

Themes

A number of parables which are adjacent in one or more gospels have similar themes. The parable of the Leaven follows the parable of the Mustard Seed in Matthew and Luke, and shares the theme of the Kingdom of Heaven growing from small beginnings. The parable of the Hidden Treasure and parable of the Pearl form a pair illustrating the great value of the Kingdom of Heaven, and the need for action in attaining it.

The parables of the Lost Sheep, Lost Coin, and Lost (Prodigal) Son form a trio in Luke dealing with loss and redemption.

The parable of the Faithful Servant and parable of the Ten Virgins, adjacent in Matthew, involve waiting for a bridegroom, and have an eschatological theme: be prepared for the day of reckoning. The parable of the Tares the parable of the Rich Fool, the parable of the budding fig tree, and the parable of the barren fig tree also have eschatological themes.

Other parables stand alone, such as the parable of the unforgiving servant, dealing with forgiveness; the parable of the Good Samaritan, dealing with practical love; and the parable of the Friend at Night, dealing with persistence in prayer.

Another set of early ideas - 06/05/13

Parables of Jesus

Basically, according to the bible, Jesus told a load of stories the help illustrate how the Lord thinks we should live our lives (such as the ‘Good Samaritan’ story). These were called Parables, and there are quite a few to choose from. I have started to talk about this because we are all moving towards a more religious based performance and these allow us to modernise the stories (if we wish) and/or mix some together. This will make our audience think about how they live their lives and hopefully make a lasting impact on them, while also allowing us to create something emotionally engaging and possibly a little quirky at times.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parables_of_Jesus

Also this will link back to Churches if we all decide to perform in a church.

Mental disorders

I know I keep going back to this, but I love the idea that we all see things differently. For example I will see something and think one thing, while Jay will see the same thing and interpret it completely different than me. I feel that mental disorders just highlight this concept. We could find a fairy story and relate each character to a mental disorder (maybe Alice in Wonderland). I got this kind of idea from the fact that I have thought about it a few times and it interests me, plus the fact that Winnie the Pooh was meant to be based on mental disorders: Tigger had severe ADHD, Piglet had anxiety issues, Rabbit was a pedantic loner, Owl had OCD, Eore had extreme depression, while Pooh represented an addict.

This linked to the idea of the AA meeting that we had when we went to Rochester Cathedral – in the Crypt. Of course, we are not allowed to perform in there now, but St Matthew’s church (at the end of my road) had a very similar layout for chairs behind the alter.

Short Brothers Seaplane factory

Somewhere in Rochester, there is a network of tunnels that have been abandoned since the 1990’s. I have done a bit of research and cannot find who owns them. However, there is a website that can organise tours around them and I am trying to get in contact with them – but looks like they may not respond immediately…

After researching some more, I have found out that the entrances to these tunnels have now been built over and we cannot get to them - but there may be similar tunnels around if we like the idea of performing in a similar space to this.

VERY early ideas for a production - 13/04/13

Note: These aren't at thought out - I'm just kind of 'spit-balling ideas' and these can be just inspiration or we can take parts of the ideas.

Production ideas

·         Mental disorder:

o    False reality:

§  Possibly husband and wife in bed talking about the events of the day (one being a psychotherapist in real life)

§  Main character witnesses a murder and this causes the false reality to grow. Other patients in the hospital are used to create the ‘murder mystery’ – the audience thinks it is just a murder being shown from different points of view, when really it is all fake.

·         Influences:

o    Shutter Island (2010).

o    Sucker Punch (2011).

   

o    OCD (or similar personality disorder):

§  Possibly relate it to normal teenage problems also – trying to find yourself and decide your future as well as relationships and friendships.

§  Can relate it to home life – how do the parents/other family members deal with it?

·         Influences:

o    Personal experience.

o    It’s Kind of a Funny Story (2010).

o    After Midnight (music Video by Blink-182, 2011).

o    Tough it Out (song by It’s Only a Story, 2011).

o    Adam (2009).

·         A reflection on the life of a teenager (musical):

o    Showing two ends of the spectrum for teenagers nowadays:

§  Shows the popular kid’s struggling through school life and home life, while also showing the ‘nerdy’ kid’s struggling with the social life of school.

§  Maybe a love story between a nerd and a popular kid to drive the story.

§  Songs:

·         Motivation (Sum 41 – 2002) opening the show, representing the lack of motivation to do something great that is present in a lot of teenagers these days.

OR

The Dilemma (You Me at Six – 2011) then the rest is a flashback from the boy’s POV.

·         Shut Up! (Simple Plan – 2005) teacher shouting at a popular kid and everyone freezes and the song starts (similar to Spring Awakening – The Bitch of Living).

AND/OR

Parent shouting at nerd to do better in school (or someone trying to convince him/her to go somewhere social and they don’t want to go).

·         Makeout Party (Green Day – 2012) a party that possibly leads to the two main characters getting together (while drunk).

·         When It’s Time (Cast of American Idiot – 2010) one wants the relationship, but after song we find that the other just wants to forget it happened (could be either way around, but I imagined the nerd wanting the relationship first).

OR

Little Bit of Truth (You Me at Six – 2011).

·         Thank You (Simple Plan – 2004) maybe a best friend wanted to get together with one of them at the party, and one of the main characters got with them instead.

·         Me Against the World (Simple Plan – 2004) some of the characters are feeling like everyone is against them – friends commenting on what they should do next in the relationship, parents being overprotective, or even teachers adding pressure for exams (similar to ‘Mama, I’m a Big Girl Now’ from Hairspray).

·         Underclass Hero ( Sum 41 – 2007) showing that by the end of the show the characters have developed independence and grown up a little bit – learning a bit more about each other and how to deal with similar situations (a sort of ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’ song).

·         (Maybe an) Epilogue – White Wine in the Sun (Tim Minchin) it has been two years since the events and one of the friends had got pregnant at the party earlier on (reference to this in dialogue previously), the song is sung by individual members of the group (then all members by the end) to the child.

o    Influences:

§  Spring Awakening.

§  American Idiot.

§  My music taste in general.

Diary: Day 17 - 24/05/13

We decide it would be a good idea to try and plan the ending to our piece today due to Stevie and Joe not being in. So we set to work coming up with ideas to create something that can lead into the end of the piece. We decided that it would be really good if at the end of mine and Joe’s scene, I played ‘God and Satan’ on the guitar, while Joe and I sung it, then this went into the quiet that happened just before our soundscape we created last lesson. After the soundscape and the creation of the barricade, we looked at possibly having a movement piece to represent us coming together as a group. We decided on the song ‘People Help People’ and Millie (with a little help from us) choreographed the dance for it. We filmed the dance for Joe and Stevie to learn over the half term (and for us to practice). This lesson was extremely useful due to the fact that we decided on how two more scenes would be performed and we are so close to finishing the piece now. Over the holidays we will all go over the scenes we already have and try to come up with an ending to the whole production, then we just need to go over everything as a group when we come back.

Diary: Day 16 - 22/05/13

When we arrived today, we were set on creating the first scene with all of us in it. In the end we decided a brilliant idea would be to create a soundscape in the church. This would be extremely effective due to the sound echoing around the church. We then talked a little more and said that it would be a good idea to start to converge into the middle of the church to finish off the soundscape – to represent all of us starting to know each other better and work together. We then came up with the idea to build a barricade of sorts to show that the rioters are trying to get into the church, but we were unsure of how to show this. After a quick discussion, we liked the idea of having Millie sing a peaceful song, while we rush around collecting things for the barricade – showing the difference in personalities between us. When she finishes, ‘Angry Dance’ from Billy Elliot would start to play and we would frantically start to throw things to each other to build the barricade. There is a pause in the music and Millie would join in. We started to choreograph creating the barricade by using chairs in the classroom – this was good as we could start practicing putting it all together and try out different ideas for a stylistic way of creating the barricade. Next lesson we will finish choreographing this and hopefully move onto finishing the performance. This lesson was extremely useful as we finished forming the idea for a scene with all of us in and started to put it together.

Diary: Day 15 - 21/05/13

We thought that it would be a good idea to start blocking the next two scenes in the show today. So we sat around and decided that after Jay and Millie’s scene, Jay will usher the audience into the next room – where Dave is – he will then start the scene with Dave and we find out a lot about their characters. After this, we decided that the scene should shift to the opposite side of the church, so the audience simply turned their heads, rather than actually having to move entirely – here we would have a scene that explores Stevie’s character’s background. We then split up into two groups and created the two scenes – Jay and Dave’s scene involved each of them freezing at different times (allowing the other character to come out and perform short monologues) revealing how they know each other; in our group, we explored how Stevie’s character coped with becoming the new prime minister through a flashback, then allowed it to lead onto the scene between me and Joe (that we created in an earlier lesson). After this we thought it would be a good idea to lead onto a final scene involving all of us. We decided it would be a good idea to slowly build up the sounds of the riots outside, and then use the stairs to symbolise a barricade within the riots. Tonight, we will all think about different poses/movements that will show us trying to keep the riot away, and then we will figure out a way to end the performance tomorrow. Today was extremely useful because we blocked two more scenes and we are now very close to having the whole performance ready.

Diary: Day 14 - 17/05/13

Today we developed the scenes we were working on last lesson. They are coming together quite nicely, this is because at the end of our scene (that opens the performance) we link it to Jay and Millie’s scene – meaning that we now have an idea of our continuous performance until the end of Jay and Millie’s scene (approximately fifteen minutes or so). We have had a look at how Dave and Joe’s characters arrived at the Church, but kept the entire backstories a secret (we will reveal the rest of Joe’s back story with the scene between me and him later on). All, in all, we have moved pretty quickly through creating these scenes and we will hopefully have a basic storyline by the end of next week. Today was extremely useful as we went a little further into our back stories, and started to ‘flesh out’ our scenes that we have so far. We have decided it would be a good idea to come in with as many ideas as possible next lesson to try and create more scenes (or even just ideas for future scenes), this way we will hopefully be able to start creating our storyline and get a middle and end sorted.

Diary: Day 13 - 15/05/13

We started today by quickly practicing, then showing our scenes from last lesson. Both groups had gone with a very dialogue based scene – mine and Joe’s dealt with the issue of “why do we pray?” while the other’s had gone with an introduction to each of their characters. This was interesting, as the scenes were from the beginning of the performance and the middle (/end) of the performance – we thought we would favour one or the other. After this, Jay and Millie were put together and Joe, Stevie, Dave and I were put together to create another scene. We created a scene to go just after we had brought the audience into the church – it was mainly dialogue based, but had two sections where we used movement to show Joe’s character’s intentions and emotions. Jay and Millie’s scene was entirely movement based and revolved around an argument they were having – set to a song from Moulin Rouge. Again, this was very interesting as both groups didn’t favour movement or dialogue – we both were almost at ‘two ends of the spectrum’. Next lesson, we have all decided to come in with a possible scene to put into the performance, we will then look at the ideas we have and choose one to work on.

Diary: Day 12 - 14/05/13

We received an e-mail from St Margaret’s church today and they had given us two dates to possibly perform on. One was towards the end of July and the other was the 17^th June and so we had to pick the 17^th June. This meant that we have roughly three school weeks until the performance, so we decided to just decide on an idea for a story and characters in the first period, to create a scene in the second. In the end we decided on the idea that the church was seen as a sanctuary and so the society would be crumbling outside (riots in the streets and similar pandemonium) and we would treat the audience as people who have just escaped from the outside – rushing them in and sitting them down in the warmth. We then decided on a few characters, these were: Prime Minister, Priest, two squatters, businessman and someone who has recently lost a loved one. We thought these characters were quite diverse and so could have lots of conflicts and views on the outside world. We then split up into groups to create a scene: Joe and I were together, he is playing the person who has lost a loved one and I am playing the priest. This left Jay, Millie, Dave and Stevie – Jay and Millie were the squatters, while Dave was the businessman and Stevie was the Prime Minister. By the end of the lesson, we had each created a rough scene, but it wasn’t finalised, so we would take it away with us and work on it overnight (as well as our chosen characters). Next lesson we will start off by showing these scenes to the other group, then make one or two more scenes, this way we are working towards having lots of scenes, but no order – we can put an order together at a later date as we don’t want to have a good order, but no scenes.

Diary: Day 11 - 10/05/13

We started off by talking about our possible pieces today – discussing various different possibilities that we could perform in the church. We kept moving towards the risky topic of religion – while the topic was fine, we would have to be extremely careful with the content of our performance in the church. So we wanted to try and stay away from discussing a few areas of the topic, which we were finding extremely hard. In the end we decided it would be a good idea to look at the pictures from when we went to the church and write down simple ideas for a performance from them. For example: a picture of a ledge behind a cross (and in front of a stained glass window) came up, and I imagined one of us sitting/standing on the ledge, performing a monologue, with the sunlight coming through behind us. After noting all of these down, we started discussing possible ideas, but the lesson was coming to an end, so decided it would be best to take these ideas away and come back next lesson with them (and other ideas) to decide on a rough storyline.

Diary: Day 10 - 8/05/13

We went to St Margret’s church today to look at the possible performance space. We were all very impressed with it as it had many different sections that we could use for different potential scenes. After having a good look around, we all sat in the church and discussed all of these possible scenes. We spoke about so many different possible scenes, some involving the alter, others involving the graveyard outside, we even talked about how the audience would come into the performance. Today really helped us start to decide on the story we wanted to convey in the church and on Friday we will start to write down ideas for characters within the story and start to link all of the parts together – hopefully almost having a full story by the end of the lesson.

Diary: Day 9 - 7/05/13

We all sat around a big white board and wrote down different ideas we had come up with over the weekend today. We had received an e-mail from Rochester Cathedral saying that they would not allow us to perform in the evening, which meant that we had decided the best place to go was St Margret’s church – which was down the road from our school. We thought it would be a good idea to go there tomorrow – seeing as we could give the school notice of our absence. After putting all of our ideas forward, we started to eliminate some and connect others together. By the end of the lesson we had a list of possible parts of stories and themes that were all similar. We will all have a think about these when we go to the church tomorrow. Hopefully we will have a rough idea of a story then. Today was extremely useful as we now have a few rough ideas of stories to work with and we will be able to start to devising the actual performance soon.

Diary: Day 8 - 3/05/13

We set out the tables and had a look at all the different photos we took of the Cathedral and we swapped possible ideas for the performance. This didn’t go very well in the end because we all had a lot of ideas – but they were more ideas for single scenes rather than a performance. We were also looking at the performance from different ways, for example: Joe wants to have something really emotional and leave the audience in awe of the emotion being conveyed in the performance, whereas Jay and I like the idea of making the audience feel as uncomfortable as possible. These two ideas obviously don’t go well together as an audience may not feel emotionally attached to the characters if they are really uncomfortable (physically and emotionally). After the whole lesson, we decided to approach the piece slightly differently – we will go home over the weekend and come up with ideas for the piece and bring them in, creating a mind map of all our ideas, then eliminate parts of them one at a time, until we have an idea of sorts.

Diary: Day 7 - 1/05/13

Today we went to Rochester Cathedral to look at the possible space to perform in. It was really interesting and we took lots of photos to help us once we got back to school. We also came up with some ideas while we were in the Cathedral of possible things to do in our performance. We really liked the Crypt underneath the Cathedral – it was very eerie and had chapel underneath that had seats in that we thought looked quite nice. We also liked the gardens outside – however, these would obviously be extremely weather dependent and if we have bad weather – it may ruin our performance. For next lesson we will think about possible things to perform in the Cathedrals (however big or small) and in the lesson we will look at the photos and swap ideas – relating back to the Cathedral as much as possible.

Diary: Day 6 - 30/04/13

Today we were put into pairs and given a piece of very ‘open’ dialogue. This meant that when I was paired with Joe, we could make this piece of dialogue fit almost any situation we wanted it to. This was very interesting because we all had different ideas about the dialogue and these ideas changed over time. For example we first performed the piece as if we were waiting for one of our friends to come back to us and they were late, so we were getting worried. We were then given the instruction to perform it and always be touching our partner, so we played it as if Joe had broken his leg and we were waiting for the nurse to come back with painkillers. We were then told to do it a final time, but use contemporary dance to show what is happening. This lesson was extremely useful because once we get a rough story for our performance; we can then experiment with different ways of showing the same scene – not just with dialogue. Tomorrow, we are meant to be going to Rochester Cathedral to take pictures of it and possibly get some inspiration for our performance.

Diary: Day 5 - 26/04/13

We were given the task of using a room in the school to create a short devised piece – using the techniques we have been practicing over the past few lessons. So for the first lesson, we worked with Steve to learn a little about contemporary dance – making some simple movements look closer to that style of theatre, rather than being very naturalistic. We then moved into the gallery theatre to create the piece. We liked the idea of using acting while the audience walked into the performance space, and we also liked the idea of using the different levels that the seats created in the room. So we began the piece standing on the tables (three on each side) and each of us reaching across and striking a pose. We had decided to base the piece on violence because we were performing in a school and a lot of fights/arguments happen within schools. The audience would then walk up the stairs to sit down as we all retract from our poses and walk down onto the floor. We then each did an action to represent violence – Jay and Joe breathing heavily, Millie and Stevie stamping their feet and Dave and I were pounding our fists. We all then turned in and screamed at each other – again representing the violence. We all decided on three words to shout at each other, the last word being “Outside” – again showing the arguments that people have leading to the violence happening ‘outside’. Finally, we all turned back around and headed back to our original poses – showing that nothing has changed and people are still violent. I thought the idea was very good and I loved the way we all ‘bounced off’ each other to create the performance. However, I did not like my performance today as I came out of character when Dave and I said the wrong lines. Next week, we will be focussing more on the main performance and settling on a venue to perform in – hopefully starting to create the actual performance.

Diary: Day 4 - 24/04/13

Today, we wanted to focus on creating a more dialogue driven piece, due to the fact that all of the devised scenes we have experimented with so far have been very movement based. So I was paired with Joe, while Dave, Jay and Millie were in a three. Joe and I looked at the picture of Rochester castle that we had and came up with the idea of a King looking down watching a performance. This turned into a gay King falling in love with a performance of Ballet and will be set in the future (as there is a theory that fashion and music and possibly rules/regulations go in circles over the years). We thought our piece was very good, then we watched the other group’s performance and they had come up with the idea of someone trying to choose an emotion and the other two representing the emotions. I think that today was extremely useful because we explored the use of dialogue more within scenes, therefore preparing us more for the real performance later on. Next lesson, we will most likely try to create another piece as one big group, so we get used to working as a group of six more.