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.

Diary: Day 3 - 23/04/13

Today, we showed Stevie what we did last lesson and started to build upon it by trying to create something movement based as a group. After sitting around the table for a while and discussing many different ideas (mainly focussed around emotions), Steve came over and talked to us about a performance he had done previously that was very similar. Eventually he got us stood up and took us through an exercise they used to help them when they had gotten stuck. It involved us immediately reacting to an emotion that Steve called out, so he called out “Love”, “Hate” and “Happiness”. After doing these poses, he asked us to do various things like move in slow motion from one to another, or just instantly flash between them. We then looked at each other and realised that we all we doing slightly different poses and so it helped show us that everyone sees these emotions differently from each other. This lesson was really helpful because it helped show us that by just using movement, we can portray an emotion quite easily, also it highlighted that everyone is very different and interpret things differently from the next person. Next lesson, we will most likely continue creating scenes to help get used to working as a group and creating entirely new scenes from very little at the start, in a small space of time.

Diary: Day 2 - 19/04/13

We were given a picture of a Rochester Cathedral today and split into two groups to devise a scene (preferably with some sort of multimedia being used in it) that we could potentially perform in there. I thought that this was a very good idea as we could start to devise in a way that we keep the venue in mind, rather than just focussing solely on the storyline and acting. I was paired with Jay (as Stevie wasn’t in) and so we went to the hall and started talking about ideas. We decided we loved the idea of having no dialogue in our piece, instead having music played throughout; so we spent a while looking through our phones and choosing possible songs to use. After a while of many different ideas and songs, we settled on the story of a boy growing up with a disapproving father, set to ‘Feeling Good’ by Nina Simone & Hal Mooney. We decided on this song because it has a very slow pace and is about life – life has ups and downs, but there is always a solution and you can move on – for the child in our story however, he feels that the solution is suicide. This came from the idea that there is a long corridor in the picture we looked at and so we imagined the father ominously walking down it towards the son. Next lesson we will most likely be continuing to look at possible places to perform and maybe creating a few scenes from pictures of the performance spaces.

Diary: Day 1 - 17/04/13

We were given the basis of our new assignment to think a little about over the holiday, so today we sat down and talked about all the different ideas we had. We had all had a lesson a few days ago and saved some pictures that inspired us, or were just places we thought we could perform in. Overall, we were all looking towards the ‘darker’ side of performance – we liked the idea of having something really serious and possibly performing in an area that looked like it was abandoned (or close to it). We all also liked the idea of having levels – so, something being performed on the ground (with the audience), then having part of it being performed higher than them, or even, lower than them at points (sort of surrounding the audience with performance to put them in the middle of the emotions or whatever we want to convey to them). We also quite liked the idea of the audience coming away believing all of our characters, but the idea being a little surreal and maybe making them think about events in their own (and others) lives slightly differently. After all of this, we decided that it would be a good idea to get Miss Cordell to choose a venue similar to ones we have described (and we would help her sort it by phoning places and whatever else needs doing), then we would create the performance to put in the venue. Next lesson, we will continue to discuss ideas about venues and possibly start to contact places of interest to us.