Drama and Theatre Studies structured records

‘Use of space' explored the broad topic of social and professional satisfaction and happiness. In order to highlight the universal implications of our piece, we decided that it was necessary to use diverse characters allowing the audience to identify with aspects of each persona's issues. Initially, we brainstormed several different problems that could affect an individual's happiness in the work place, and came up with the fundamentals for five characters. The original basis of my character came from my own anxieties towards life. During devising we were contemplating university choices and starting to arrange our lives after college. As a group we all felt anxious and many felt a lack of direction. This insecurity we felt towards leaving the secondary education system, led to the creation of Pamela (the character I played. ) After discussing Pamela's initial characteristics, focusing on her feelings of anxiety and confusion we had to decide her plot. Her lack of control and direction led us to create her objective to gain a secure role in the work place to solve her anxieties. After creating the fundamentals of each character we discussed as a group their characterisation. The role of Pamela primarily emerged through a series of role-plays. Firstly, I performed as her character in different situations allowing me to develop her personality. The remaining members contributed as supporting characters in the role play and often suggested ways to present her. I feel that my understanding of Pamela's persona emerged during the staging of her box monologue. Through this monologue we hoped to communicate to the audience Pamela's feelings of anxiety and confusion towards her professional future. As a group we felt the most effective way to portray this was through the use of physical theatre, therefore, the remaining members of the group adopted the role of a maze in which Pamela was metaphorically trapped. During the staging of this sequence I had to deliver my monologue whilst struggling through a figurative maze. As a performer I was sensitive to my characters claustrophobic feelings allowing me to successfully communicate her anxieties to the audience. Throughout the staging of this monologue the remaining group members concentrated on the performing space I was given. Although it was frustrating for me to be contained to a very small performing area, it allowed me to sympathise with my characters feelings of confinement and eventually resulted in a very successful portrayal of Pamela. During devising our characters, we were aware that each individual had to adopt a dream persona in the ‘fantasy' scenes. We hoped to communicate to the audience contrasting characteristics in these persona's, to highlight their desire to escape the frustration they feel towards reality. Whilst creating the character Angela's ‘fantasy' persona we analysed the reality Angela. Angela shows boredom towards her monotonous life. Through her character we hoped to communicate to the audience the necessity of having hobbies and dreams. The fantasy Angela emerged through the improvisation of a Latin American soap opera. We created the vivacious and dramatic character Maria who starkly contrasted Angela. As a group we agreed that the performance of Maria should be melodramatic and exaggerated to further contrast Angela's tedious reality. It was important to introduce a character for Maria to interact with to inject more energy into the scene. Through discussion we settled with a clichi love story and decided to introduce a male character who Maria is having an affair with. It was essential for this scene to maintain intense energy levels to contrast with the previous office scene. Firstly, we researched typical novella characters to influences our roles. I suggested that the group members in this scene (Helia and Payam) should highlight the sexual attraction between the characters. Initially this provoked awkwardness between Payam and Helia; therefore, we felt it was necessary to introduce an activity to make the two more comfortable with each other. We used several team building exercises to make Helia and Payam more physically comfortable with one another; the most successful was the leading the blind exercise. Through this exercise the participants were forced to be more sensitive towards each other, in partners one partner was chosen to lead the other blindly by the tip of the nose. Through constant contact and reliance this was very successful in making Payam and Helia more at ease. Similarly, it helped to distance the novella character to the actor. Through exaggerated physicality and melodramatic acting techniques the actor was dissociated with the character. Costumes successfully contributed to the portrayal of my character in the murder mystery fantasy. I played a stereotypical, stock detective character originally based on the Agatha Christie character Hercule Poirot. Initially I struggled to effectively portray this character because it was such a contrasting role to my reality. Physicality was a very important aspect of this character because of the desired effect we hoped to achieve. We had chosen to use melodrama and clichid anecdotes, therefore, it was important that the audience drew parallels between my character and Poirot for comedic effect. Through further independent research I discovered Poirot's defining feature was a French trench coat, and I decided to rehearse wearing this item. Surprisingly, the trench coat allowed me to connect with Poirot's physicality and personality, through wearing the coat my characterisation improved and allowed me to successfully perform as a response to Poirot. How the group planned for a range of responses from the audience. Initially we intended to present a serious production highlighting the importance of life satisfaction parodied through working life, based in an office. However, during the initial devising stages we decided to introduce fantasy scenes to contrast the monotonous office scenes and highlight the significance of dreams and ambition. As a group we showed interest towards comedic genres and felt that these would juxtapose the natural and static nature of the office scenes. However, although many of our fantasy scenes were intended for humorous effect a few were interpreted by the audience as humorous without intent. Fortunately, we decided to perform a dress rehearsal to a mock audience to gain an understanding of the successful aspects of humour the results were unexpected. Through devising the silent movie fantasy scene, we were expecting humorous results due to the slapstick nature of the comedy, however, we had to take into account the clichi and overexposed format of the silent movie. As a group we discussed the possibility that the audience would not react well to this scene due to the lack of originality. Throughout popular culture for the past fifty years in some opinions this genre has been exhausted, therefore we had to be prepared for an underwhelming reaction towards this particular scene. In order for the humorous response to be successful we decided that the content of our silent movie had to be obviously inspired by original content. As a group we decided that we were not going to aim to be original in this scene but aimed to create a polished and skilful tribute to silent films. It was important for us to consider different attitudes towards comedic genres. In particular silent films and slapstick comedy often generate various opinions. Through discussion we discovered that in our group of five alone there were several different opinions regarding slapstick comedy. Personally, I contributed an annoyance towards the genre explaining that I found it tedious, patronising and often crude. However, contrastingly, Payam presented his enthusiasm towards slapstick comedy and defended his fondness towards slapstick comedians such as Lee Evans and Charlie Chaplin. Therefore we were initially prepared for an audience varied responses to the slapstick moments throughout our piece. This discussion led us to consider our target audience. Due to the content of our play we discussed that it transcended a fixed target audience, any age group could respond to the implications and the messages we were hoping to portray. However, because of the universality of our play we discussed different attitudes towards aspects of the play. Firstly, we evaluated that a younger audience would react better towards the humorous aspects especially ages between 12 and 19, therefore we decided to target the humour to this age group. We initially decided to do this by exaggerating our humorous stereotypes and characters physicality to the extreme. However, during a viewed rehearsal run it became apparent that our characterisations needed to be exaggerated, especially in our silent movie scene. Through discussion we came to the conclusion that older audience members would react well to the stereotypes used in out murder mystery fantasy. In particular the detective stereotype took inspiration from the fictional character Poirot. Generationally, we were aware that a younger audience member would be alienated by the introduction of this stock character because they would not be able to identify with the original. The characterisation of the detective also played a large reliance on the audience members, creating a pantomime like effect. Whilst playing the detective character I often made eye contact with the audience and projected jokes to them, therefore their reactions were very important at these stages. We used lighting to gain more audience reaction during this scene by up lighting the audience subtly allowing the performers to see their reactions and in turn play off their reactions to the humour. During the novella fantasy scene, melodrama was employed. An argument between Carlos and Maria the Latin American characters led to Maria slapping Carlos around the face. This prompted a shocked reaction amongst the audience because they were not expecting it. Difficult reactions from the audience- racist generalising Latin American, stereotyping French maids, stereotyping in general we had to be sensitive towards the audience whilst approaching these scenes. Explore the impact of social, cultural and/or historical conditions on your devised piece. – Vicki Marks. Our devised piece ‘Use of Space' is socially and culturally influenced by traditional conventions of popular culture. Foremost, we decided to exploit the familiarity of these conventions to highlight social perils. Most poignantly we decided to highlight the implications of a female in the workplace and comment on the fact that women still earn substantially less from their employment than men. We chose to emphasize this by going against traditional clichis. Primarily, the character of Nicky symbolised an ambitious business women hoping to succeed in the workplace. To highlight her characters struggle to be successful we altered the traditional female clichi. We felt that typical stereotypes of women came from medieval genres; furthermore the clichid format was a damsel in distress being rescued by her knight in shining armour. For this social comment to be accessible to the audience we simply chose to invert the roles of the typical damsel in distress and knight in shining armour. This resulted in highlighting the fact that women are capable of metaphorically ‘rescuing' themselves, in turn reaching success without help, showing the capability of women and hopefully promoting sexual equality in the workplace. Additionally, through our research into the presentation of women in conventional medieval drama, we learnt the historical relevance of female roles. In a traditional damsel in distress story women are patronised and demeaned. To emphasise the inequality between the sexes we chose to use contrasting levels. For example we chose to place the damsel on higher levels than the knight; this allowed the damsel to take a more commanding role. However, throughout we made constant references to the traditional format through humour, by showing the characters awareness of the reversed roles. I feel that this was very effective because we were culturally aware that a modern day audience would be aware of the clichi allowing it to become humorous in itself. Whilst devising another characters fantasies we settled on the concept of a traditional Latin American soap opera. We chose to use this format to contrast the tedious nature of the characters work life. This idea initially was influenced by the popular television series ‘Ugly Betty' showing clips of traditional Latin American soap opera's or novellas. This genre was particularly useful because of the melodramatic acting techniques used, to give this scene authenticity we chose to have the characters speak a few words or phrases in Spanish and maintained a Spanish accent throughout. Surprisingly, the use of accents and clichid Spanish phrases created a comedic effect, the audience reacted well to this humour. To further the humorous effect we exaggerated the Spanish personalities getting inspiration from the Mexican cartoon character ‘Speedy Gonzales' which allegedly depicts a stereotypical Mexican. Through popular culture we were aware of many of the love clichis also apparent through this scene, in particular the over poetic declaration of love using the analogy of the ‘fake red rose. ‘ Initially, we wanted to explore the format of a silent film in order to highlight the importance of communication, but were anxious to use such a challenging convention on stage and were worried that the audience would become confused. However through research we were able to adopt this style very successfully. Silent movies were made before technical advances allowed an audience to view a film with both images and sound. We wanted to make our silent scene as authentic as possible therefore through our research into silent movies we noticed the projection speed and decided to significantly slow the scene down; some scenes were intentionally slowed down further in order to accelerate the action, particularly in the case of the slapstick moments. One of the main messages of our production was the importance of job satisfaction. There have been many recent surveys and articles surrounding job prospects and the amount of people dissatisfied in their current job placements. We therefore decided to show a group of characters that want to break free from the confinements of an unsatisfying job to highlight the importance of passion and dreams. We feel as young adults embarking on our working lives and starting to make important decisions that will shape our futures, it is very relevant that we have shown our anxieties towards working life. Work related stress is also socially rife especially in western culture therefore; through one of our characters we showed the importance of maintaining hobbies outside of a job to hopefully indicate that money is not the most important thing. Use of Space is an escapist piece; the fantasies represent each character hoping to escape the constraints of their tedious, impassionate lives. Dream worlds are a commonly used plot device in fictional works, most notably in science fiction and fantasy fiction. The use of a dream world creates a situation whereby a character (or group of characters) is placed in a marvelous and unpredictable environment and must overcome several personal problems to leave it. The dream world also commonly serves to teach some moral or religious lessons to the character experiencing it a lesson that the other characters will be unaware of, but one that will influence decisions made regarding them. When the character is reintroduced into the real world (usually when they wake up), the question arises as to what exactly constitutes reality due to the vivid recollection and experiences of the dream world. How acting techniques or design elements and the use of dramatic form were consciously employed to achieve intended effect. The dramatic form of ‘use of space' was inspired by abstract theatre. Our devised piece does not follow a typical chronological time sequence; it has a warped sense of time due to our introduction of ‘fantasy' scenes. Dreams allow the repressed parts of the mind to be satisfied through fantasy and let the mind express things that would normally be suppressed in the waking world. Dreams may also offer a view at how future events might proceed; this is similar to running future events through the mind, for instance a work presentation or a job interview. As a group we identified dreams as an interaction between the unconscious and the conscious. Therefore we wanted to highlight the contrast between reality and fantasy. To begin with we discussed using contrasting lighting effects to show an obvious transaction between reality and fantasy. To express the abstract, fantasy scenes we felt the audience would react well to pink colour fill lighting. This was successful because, the unnatural pink lighting allowed the audience to be aware of the abstract format of the scene. We also relied on the audience's familiarity with clichi dream scenes shown in popular culture. Dream worlds are a commonly used plot device in fictional works, most notably in science fiction and fantasy fiction. Lighting is often used similarly when representing a dream, often flashing lighting is used and mists to show the audience the unreality. As a group we took this into account and decided to use soft lighting throughout the ‘fantasy' scenes by using a flood effect to fill the whole stage. Flash lighting was also used subtly during the transaction from a reality scene to a fantasy scene. We decided as a group to only use subtle flash lighting during the transition because we did not want to reproduce the clichi formats of a dream sequence, we felt that this would undermine the intended serious messages we were trying to relay to the audience. Firstly each fantasy scene is triggered by an action and a simple freeze frame to link the office reality to the dreams. This use of gestus was an acting technique developed by Bertolt Brecht which reflects the characters emotional conflict through a brief frozen action. Gestus was employed during the transaction from my characters monologue to her fantasy scene. As a group we discussed our desired effect of the gestus and decided to show an obvious link between the character's emotional conflict and the freeze frame, for the audience's accessibility. We therefore decided to each come up with a simple freeze frame highlighting the principal emotions of my character, due to the lack of direction my character was feeling we chose to physically interpret the emotion confusion. Coincidentally, each member of the group similarly replicated a curled up freeze frame with their hands clasping their heads. As a group we decided that this composition showed the audience the characters basic feelings of confusion. Sound plays a big part in our production. Our opening scene begins with a metronome to highlight the artificial nature of the office scene and the rhythm of a monotonous life. We decided to open with a metronome to cause a feeling of anticipation through the audience; the ticking rhythm exaggerates and builds tension therefore immediately engaging with the audience before the action begins. The metronome rhythm also acted as a beat to keep our opening routine in time. The beat and the routine showed the audience the typical rhythm of an unsatisfying job. Due to the intimacy of our staged environment we decided not to use microphones because we wanted the sound to be raw and natural even in the fantasy scenes to accentuate the fine line between dreams and reality. This also made the audience feel close to the actors and therefore able to relate to the performers more easily. However to contrast this effect we chose to show all costume changed on stage employing the popular Brechtian technique Verfremdungseffekt through using this we hoped to communicate that the audience's reality was, in fact a construction. During the silent movie scene we used clichi silent movie music. We wanted to stay authentic to a conventional silent film therefore we had a pianist. This music contributed to the atmosphere and gave the audience vital emotional cues. Silence is also an important tool in our production because it is in contrast to the loud interludes of music for example in the silent movie fantasy. Silence was often used after intense sections of dialogue or monologue. For example during my characters monologue the volume levels of my voice were used to create intensity building up to a climax. The silence during my characters gestus freeze frame is poignant because when the sound is taken away the audience begins to focus more on the movement and the emotion of the character, the silence intrigued them. There are many different characters and settings in our play; therefore we decided that our set should remain very neutral. We designed our set in a deliberately ambiguous way, so we could move easily between fantasy and office scenes. We decided that altering the layout of the stage and the set between each scene would prove noisy and would distract the audience's attention. We were however very aware that a permanent set would become boring and the audience would lose interest, nevertheless we decided through rehearsals and a practice production that the intensity of the action made up for the lack of set changes. We used two black oblong boxes as the fundamentals of each scene, occasionally changing the positioning of them to create a different atmosphere. We chose not to have a specific setting contributing to the representation of free-flowing images within the characters mind. However, we decided to introduce an element of decaying society preoccupied by work ambitions and promotions through the use of broken computer monitors, keyboards, mice, and disks positioned around the stage. This gave the stage an overall look of disarray and immediately introduced the audience to the conflict within the characters in the production. How research material was gathered and used within the process. – Vicki Marks To begin the devising process our group was presented with five quotes that took inspiration from different aspects of life, this supplied us with an excellent starting point for developing a challenging piece of theatre, however our initial responses to the stimuli shaped our early work and many aspects were later changed as the piece matured. Firstly each member of the group decided separately which quote inspired them and worked towards abstractly analyse the meaning of these quotes. As a group we were drawn towards the quote â€Å"fear is a dark room where negatives are developed. † We felt that this quote gave us enough scope to produce a brainstorm surrounding the analysis of it. After analysing the quote through a brainstorm we decided to focus on the idea of fear. These fear aspects of the quote lead our group to research and gain an interest surrounding common phobias. As an initial response to phobias we decided to explore phobias that restrain and dominate everyday life. As a group we were interested in the psychological effects of irrational fears, through discussion, we realised one of our member's arachnophobia and decided to research real life stories showing the influences of phobias. We began to gain an understanding of the psychological effects of living with an irrational fear, this allowed us to contemplate the way a person living with a phobia views the world. This topic particularly appealed to our group because three of the members were studying a course in psychology and took a specific interest in phobias. Through research we were drawn to highlighting different perceptions of the world, this is initially why we decided to show a dream or fantasy of each character. I was currently studying Margret Atwood's dystopian novel â€Å"A Handmaid's Tale. † And inferred parallels between dystopian societies and living with a life altering phobia. As a group this led us to discuss the concepts of normality and initially directed us to create a dystopian society to base our phobic characters in. However, we felt that through creating a dystopian society we were overcomplicating the piece and decided in order to create an accessible message we would have to simplify the plot. Many of our responses to the quote were detached and impersonal; therefore we decided to take a more personal approach to the analysing the quote. We wanted to create a more abstract approach to analysing, consequently, rather than brainstorming we played a word association game. Our earlier research indicated to us the potential of exploring fear; for that reason we opened by associating responses to the word ‘fear'. This resulted in a discussion of our apprehension and anxiety towards our futures, each member of the group was in the process of applying to university and planning the next step of their lives. It was important for us to follow our dreams and mistakes in choices at this stage worried us and we were sensitive to the idea of being stuck doing something we were not passionate about. This discussion allowed us to infer parallels between our fears towards losing our passion and job satisfaction in the work place. This led us to create a work place scenario, highlighting different characters problems with the way their lives have transpired. Although we had created an initial scenario we had to decide how to highlight the importance of job satisfaction and dreams. This is where our ideas surrounding an exploration of dreams and fantasies linked in with our running idea. How group skills contributed to the development of the drama. – Vicki Marks As an ensemble, we had many different approaches to the production of our devised piece. Firstly, after the initial discussions of the basic structure of ‘use of space' we decided that each member should separately prepare an initial suggestion for a fantasy scene. Subsequently as an ensemble we modified each member's idea to fit the characters objectives incorporating each group member's requirements. Two of the four fantasy scenes required only two characters, therefore allowing the two remaining members to direct. This particularly put pressure on the team and initially certain members of the group did not respond well to being directed, however, we had to be flexible whilst blocking a scene and be open to criticism and changes. Considering the ensemble approach to devising we wanted each member to experience directing each scene, this also allowed us to incorporate more than one member's objective for a particular scene. Therefore, we often resorted to switching roles mid scene to appreciate the way each member would perform certain characters and situations. I feel that this successfully allowed us to create two dimensional characters and by including aspects of everyone's ideas created an overall satisfaction towards each scene. Each member of the group had a monologue allowing the audience to understand each individual characters state of mind. The preparation of a monologue is often very personal, initially, Helia and I scripted each monologue, but we worked as a group throughout the blocking and performing, however, this proved difficult. Due to the individual approaches of a monologue, taking control of scripting them was ineffective. This approach resulted in confusion and the monologues were less emotionally effective, because members struggled to connect with them on a personal level. Therefore, firstly, we each took our monologues separately and worked on the content through closely analysing our characters objectives and intentions. After we were happy with the essential content of our monologues we worked as a group to develop them. Group timing was essential during the silent movie fantasy, due to a lack of dialogue the scene required carefully choreographed action, which required the group to work carefully in relation to one another. At one stage of this scene, Helia was required to jump on Payam's back and knocked to the ground. In order to prevent any injuries we applied a partnering system, involving a free member of the group shadowing Helia, providing support during the initial stages of rehearsals. During the later stages of devising the murder mystery scene we became uninspired with the outcome An evaluation of the ways in which ideas were communicated to the audience. – Vicki Marks Throughout the devising process we focused predominantly on comedic genres, to allow the audience to access the central messages through humour. Although we were aware of the comedic value of each scene it was difficult to predict the audience's reactions, therefore we decided to perform it to a small audience during our rehearsal to evaluate which areas of humour were successful and which were less effective. Consequently, we realised that many of the melodramatic fantasies such as the silent movie were physically being underplayed resulting in a misrepresentation of our desired style. This resulted in a member of our group to employ a technique that we had used on a physical theatre work shop. Performing our characters physicality on levels from one to ten, ten being the most physically expressive allowed us to evaluate which level of physicality was successful. As a group we decided that the audience reacted best towards the silent movie scene when we employed a physicality level of ten. Due to lack of dialogue, physicality and expression allowed the audience to follow the storyline whilst also creating humour. As a result of working with a limited number of actors it was necessary to multi-role; however, through multi-rolling it is often easy to confuse an audience. We therefore decided to employ the Brechtian technique of changing our signifying costumes on stage. This allowed the audience to understand the style of our piece, and the abstract nature of the fantasy scenes. We also decided to place each change of costume on stage from the opening scene to intrigue the audience and allow them to become more involved in the action. We also had to take into account the wide range of characters we used. For example in one fantasy scene Payam took on the role of a Spanish soap character and during the next fantasy scene his character changed to a medieval knight. As a group we realised that a change of costume would not be sufficient to demonstrate to the audience a change in character, therefore we had to ensure that each actor varied their physicality according the role they were playing. As a group we consciously casted many of the characters as stock characters and stereotypes, allowing us to successfully communicate to the audience a significant change in role. Naturalistically it was difficult to vary each member's character therefore by using melodramatic genres we were able to separate each members character. Originally, we intended to highlight the importance of job satisfaction through juxtaposing the office scenes with the fantasy scenes. We hoped to communicate to the audience the monotonous routine of being unsatisfied in a job. In order to convey this to an audience we decided to use opposing theatrical styles for the fantasy and office scenes. We decided on a naturalistic approach for the office scenes to highlight the dissatisfaction of the characters, similarly we decided to use abstract and melodramatic genres for the fantasy scenes to show the positivity. The accessibility of the humour in our piece relied on the audience's knowledge of the common clichis we drew inspiration from. I feel we did not fully take into account the age range of our audience and miscalculated the universality of the clichis. After discussing with our audience their reactions towards our piece many of the younger members did not understand the humorous aspects on every level. For example in our murder mystery fantasy we took inspiration from the popular detective character Poirot, however many of the younger To open our piece we decided to have each character on stage the composition involved my character facing the audience frozen in a spotlight and a visible shadow of the four other characters in the background, to show individual stories and the universal message that applied to each character. t. How rehearsal and the production process contributed to the final performance. – Vicki Marks During the rehearsal process, we encountered many difficulties with the staging of certain idea's and aspects. Initially we had decided to each perform a separate monologue as our office characters to highlight the objectives of each individual, we felt that it was important to portray to the audience an interesting insight into the characters feelings and wanted each monologue to project different forms. After the initial scripting of the monologues, we brainstormed the different approaches to staging them. Fortunately, each monologue adapted distinctive structures which allowed us to manipulate and create visually appealing scenes. During the staging of Payam's monologue initially aimed to block the physical placement, this required him to be free to travel across the stage, and therefore, a remaining member of the group read his monologue whilst he attempted to block it. Surprisingly, this created an interesting effect of daydreaming; therefore we decided to continue having his monologue projected from off stage. At one stage during our rehearsals we were challenged to find an original and inspiring way to present our idea. We had already decided that we wanted to contrast reality and fantasy. We had devised the fundamentals of ‘office scenes' created to depict our original character Dylan's disconnection with a dystopian society. Because we had created a leading character we struggled to introduce equal roles. Therefore, we decided to create a structured brainstorm addressing our themes and the ideas we hoped to communicate. Through this we discovered a situation where Dylan's disconnection with society linked to a modern day scenario. Dylan's alienation towards an unfamiliar society was transformed into a group of office workers unsatisfied with their situations. Luckily, through former improvised scenes we had created characters which fitted this scenario. Throughout the devising process we were interested in developing an interpretation of parallel universes. We were initially drawn to this idea through different interpretations of phobia's and the way an individual interprets fears. This idea led one member of the group to compare parallel universes to dreams, and fantasies. As a group we decided that we were interested in highlighting the importance of following your dreams, therefore began to research different fantasies and dream scenarios. We began to discuss different genres and settled initially on medieval clichis drawing on the typical female fantasy of being rescued by a knight in shining armour. As a group we decided that our acting techniques should mirror this genre therefore we settled on melodrama. Previously, we had only attempted naturalistic acting techniques, and as a group we were aware of the contrast between naturalism and melodrama. In order to familiarise ourselves with this acting technique we attended a physical theatre workshop, it was apparent to us that in order to effectively portray a melodramatic genre we would have to introduce exaggerated physicality. Initially this felt unnatural to most of the group members due to our back ground in naturalism, therefore, the support we received from the workshops group leader was very helpful. We benefited from the group leader knowledge surrounding physical theatre and he introduced us to a technique which allowed us to exaggerate the physicality during rehearsals. How the influence of ideas of other playwrights and/ or directors, designers and performers have been used. Originally, we hoped to achieve a depressing and desolate office scene highlighting the impassionate emotions of the characters. We initially decided that the characters would remain deadpan to express their negative attitudes towards their work environment; however, we wanted to employ a more exciting abstract format to express this further. We therefore turned to ‘Machinal' by Sophie Treadwell which one of our group members had previously studied. The opening scene to Machinal is a powerful expression of a monotonous office scene. Treadwell uses an expressionist form employing repetitive dialogue and action and harsh audio effects to create a tedious and mechanical impression. Inspired by Treadwell's use of repeated dialogue and action we began to improvise scenes using similar techniques. Firstly, we chose words and phrases linked to an office environment and repeated them, overlapping each other and increasing in volume throughout to create an intense atmosphere. Unfortunately, due to the small group, this did not achieve our desired effect. This then lead us towards a more physical representation, as an alternative to repeated dialogue we chose to highlight the routine of the office through repeating typical office actions. The use of stylised actions reminded a member of the group of a performance of ‘absolute beginners' through which the director had expressed the rigidity of the office through women typing in unison creating a routine effect. Considering the size of the group we were not enthusiastic to have each character simultaneously performing one action, we therefore, took inspiration from the over exaggerated nature of each movement. Instead of using a routine we highlighted a sense of artificiality by introducing a metronome to emphasise the mechanical and artificial nature of the scene. Characterization was very important to the success of our performance. Because we had chosen to show many stark and stereotyped characters throughout it was important to exaggerate the physicality of the characters in certain places. Physicality was expressed most poignantly through the silent film fantasy. Because this was such a challenging format to express due to the lack of dialogue it relied fully on each actor's physical representation of the character. Inspiration was originally taken from Charlie Chaplin. Through research we learnt that as a Silent film actor he emphasized his body language and facial expression so that the audience could better understand what his character was feeling and portraying on screen. However, simply watching and attempting to replicate Chaplin's style was not enough. As a group we decided to participate in a ‘Jet' physical theatre company workshop. This not only allowed us to work on our physicality as performers in general but gave us excellent scope to improve our silent film scene. Costumes were not hugely significant in our performance. We did not want to over complicate things and circumstantially our performance consisted of many short scenes and an array of different characters, similar to the conventions of epic theatre employed notably by Bertolt Brecht we decided to do all of the costume changes on stage. These changes only consisted of small variations to costumes such a hats a jackets that symbolised each character Brecht employed the use of techniques that remind the spectator that the play is a representation of reality and not reality itself, which he called the Verfremdungseffekt. Such techniques included changing costumes on stage. Through this Brecht hoped to communicate that the audience's reality was, in fact a construction and, as such, was changeable. Another Brechtian technique used in our performance was the use of song. We decided that this allowed the audience to distance themselves from the action hopefully making the social comments throughout more accessible and setting the abstract theme from the beginning notably the entire performance was strictly episodic and many scenes were in isolation from each other. Each fantasy scene is triggered by an action and a simple freeze frame to link the office reality to the dreams. This use of gestus was also an acting technique developed by Bertolt Brecht which reflects the characters emotional conflict through a brief frozen action. Gestus was employed during the transaction from my characters monologue to her fantasy scene. As a group we discussed our desired effect of the gestus and decided to show an obvious link between the character's emotional conflict and the freeze frame, for the audience's accessibility. We therefore decided to each come up with a simple freeze frame highlighting the principal emotions the character. The initial idea to dress each character in their own variation of full black was inspired by a performance of ‘attempts on her life' at the national. The director Martin Crimp chose to dress each character in their own interpretation of completely black. We adapted this idea to our performance because it allowed each character to show their own individuality whilst still highlighting the monotony and dull nature of the office and their negative emotions towards their situations. We took a large amount of inspiration from the melodramatic acting techniques employed by soup opera's. We particularly focused on the style of acting used in traditional Novella's or Latin American soups. Whilst approaching this style we researched the soup opera ‘Days of our lives. ‘ To help us adopt similar persona's. How the stimulus material was developed through the drama process. To begin the devising process our group was presented with five quotes that took inspiration from different aspects of life, this supplied us with an excellent starting point for developing a challenging piece of theatre, however our initial responses to the stimuli shaped our early work and many aspects were later changed as the piece matured. Firstly each member of the group decided separately which quote inspired them and worked towards abstractly analyse the meaning of these quotes. As a group we were drawn towards the quote â€Å"fear is a dark room where negatives are developed. † We felt that this quote gave us enough scope to produce a brainstorm surrounding the analysis of it. After analysing the quote through a brainstorm we decided to focus on the idea of fear. These fear aspects of the quote lead our group to research and gain an interest surrounding common phobias. As an initial response to phobia we decided to explore phobias that restrain and dominate everyday life. As a group we were interested in the psychological effects of irrational fears, through discussion, we realised one of our member's arachnophobia and decided to research real life stories showing the influences of phobias. We began to gain an understanding of the psychological effects of living with an irrational fear, this allowed us to contemplate the way a person living with a phobia views the world. This inspired us to contemplate feelings and emotions surrounding living in a different mindset to the norm. We therefore decided to create five different freeze frames, abstractly exploring the physicality of emotions.