HIC- Research- Tomorrow when the war began

I recently read a book series called "Tomorrow when the war began", it is about a group of teenager in Australia who go camping but while they are away their country is invaded and all their friends and family are taken prisoner and used as slave labour while the new settlers eventually move in. The story follows the teens as they attempt to fight back and survive the war cased by this invasion.

I really like using the idea of war in our piece but I especially like the way this series looks at how war can affect civilians trapped in it and how the characters change throughout the war. I feel that if we do a piece where we each have a distinct regular teenage character before a war and we have a short monologue each explaining who we are. This will bring great levels of characterization to our performance and we would each have to do some research in the possible effects of war. We then do a movement piece to show the start of war and we freeze to to do some more speech on how we have changed already. Then we do some more movement to show maybe a death of one of our friends and more monologues about how we feel the end with the end of the war and speech of how we have changed. We could do each speech in a for of a short diary entry to quickly get the idea of whats happened since the last speech.

The first book was turned into a movie and the opening and ending have a kind of diary entry where Ellie talks directly to the audience. I'm thinking of our speeches to work similarly to that kind of like and interview. Here is the opening and ending of the movie

Opening
I'm not gonna hold back.
I warned the others that I wouldn't.
Recording it like this
is so important to us.
I guess it's our way of telling
ourselves that we matter.
That we mean something.
Maybe...
some of the things we've done...
and the friends that we've lost...
hopefully it all makes
a difference somehow.
There's only one way to do this.
And that's to go back
to where it all began.


Ending

HIC - Day 4 Voice

Today we looked at voice and how we could use only our voice to get a story/message/feeling across. My group decided to to the Hillsborough Disaster but as a soundscape. We divided our piece into two parts: the first part we each had a line to say and repeat like a football cheer/help or can't breath to show vocally what happened. however we do it in cannon and as each person starts we start stamping our feat so as it builds it sounds like a stamped. Then Meg screamed and we all stopped and let the silence fill the room. the second part was that one by one we tell a fact about what happened like the date, the teams, number of deaths/injuries, what happened.

I liked how the performance turned out, I feel that the build could have been more gradual and the noise and silence could have been held for a bit longer to maximize the effect. But I love the idea and that it worked well. I think we could use this idea of soundscape in our actual piece. If we were to put this piece in our actual performance I would want to add movement to the moment where we are saying facts so it isn't just a soundscape.

HIC Day 3 Contact Impov(perform)

We started today by finishing out slavery piece that we created last lesson, we added a lift and some contact improvisation. Where we left off last lesson we had just dragged the last emotion forward to be "set free" however we changed that now and we lift him up and pull him back to the others. This is where we got into pairs and added some contact improvisation, my partner and I improvised a moment where I was the slave fighting back and he was the owner stopping me.

I like how the piece turned out but I still think we could develop it further by looking more into how each emotion would react and why.

HIC Research the Armenian Genocide stories

Varter Nazarian
By Hagop Martin Deranian 

Varter was born in 1885 in the lively village of Hussenig which, with its population of five thousand, was located in a valley a few miles below the flourishing and more urban city of Kharpert. 
It began with the ominous knock on the door in the middle of the night. The Turkish gendarmes said that they wished to make some immediate purchases in the Nazarian store. Mugrditch was not given time to dress but left his tranquil home dressed only in pajamas. 
Varter never saw her husband again. No one agreed on the precise fate of Mugrditch Nazarian. Some say he was taken out of town a few miles and shot. Others relate that he was among those who were imprisoned in Mezireh and exposed to inhuman tortures so unbearable that he and the other prisoners poured the kerosene from the jail lamps onto themselves and ended their lives as human pyres. 
A few days later, on June 11, the horror began for Varter, all the more frightening since she was nearly full term with another child. Ordered to prepare for “deportation”, she gathered her infirm in-laws, her maid Tamam, and her children, Eghisapet, Takouhi, Nazareth, Yeghsa, Arakel and Avedis. 
She obtained a donkey with a saddle bag with two pockets. In each pocket she placed one of her smallest children. The next day, the gendarmes pushed the donkey with its two children down a mountainside and to their deaths. 
“I saw Varter at noon”, a fellow companion tearfully recalled of that day, “and when I saw her again in the evening, I could not recognize her, She was almost naked”. “Elmas”, Varter said to her friend in utter anguish and pain, “let us find a well and throw ourselves into it”. At that moment of despair, some Arab woman took pity on her and drew some water from the well and quickly gave it to her before the gendarmes saw. They had been traveling in these terrible conditions for a month and a half since leaving Mezireh. 
One morning soon thereafter, Varter awoke with her children and saw that the caravan had moved on. Seizing the opportunity to hide, she descended into a dry well with her children. There she remained safely for two days without food. A passing Arab, some say a Pasha, came to the well and shouted into it, “If there is anyone down there, let him speak, as I am about to throw stones in the well”. “No, don't throw any stones”, Varter shouted, “I am here with my children”. “Very well” the Arab replied, “I will help you out”. Varter was relieved. “Help my children out one at a time”, she pleaded. “Then I will come”. “No!” the Arab emphatically responded. “You come first so that we may pull the children out together”. Hesitatingly and very slowly, Varter lifted herself out. Seeing her comeliness, the Arab seized her and forcibly adducted her. He was totally deaf to her appeals for her children left in the well. Their echoing voices cried after her, “Mother, Mother!” Those infant cries haunted and tormented her the remaining days and dark nights of her life. The dry hole became Varter’s wailing well.

I think we could do an emotional movement piece to a sad piece of music (possibly 'make you feel my love') and do possibly a contact improvisation thing a bout someone taking a picture with their family and the people she holds dear but army officers/soldiers pull them away and kill/imprison them.

Tiruhi Khorozyan
“EH, IT WAS OUR LIFE”: 
Tiruhi’s recollection of escape and resettlement 
Tiruhi Khorozyan, 96, is one of the few living witnesses of the Genocide She was only six years old, but already perceived the words ‘enemy’ and ‘Turk’ as synonymous. She was too little to understand why it was so, but big enough to remember those bloody episodes and atrocities for the rest of her life. 
Tiruhi remembers the day when she escaped the Turkish sword 
Ninety years after 1915, Tiruhi speaks about the events in her native town of Adabazar in a way as if it was only yesterday when she miraculously escaped the enemy’s sword. 
“We were escaping for two days through rocks and gorges and were so thirsty that our mouths had dried, we gasped for breath. My mother went downhill to fetch water from the gorge and came back terrified. The river had become red from the blood of the dead bodies thrown into it,” Tiruhi remembers. 
Adabazar is a town situated in the northwest of Turkey. In 1915 it still had a population of about 30,000 people, more than half of whom were Armenians. They were mainly engaged in trade, crafts, husbandry and fruit-growing. There were four churches there with preparatory schools and gymnasiums attached to each of them. 
Tiruhi remembers that they had a large orchard of mainly chestnut and walnut trees. “We had plenty of sacks of them in the yard,” she says. 
Beginning in 1915 the Armenian population was displaced and killed on the road. Tiruhi’s father, Andranik Arzumanyan, was a fidayi, a guerilla as Tiruhi calls him, who helped people escape Turkish yataghans (swords). 
“One day two Turkish soldiers caught my father who had me with him. He was seized and taken away, I was a little kid, and I lost my way,” says Tiruhi. 
“The soldiers showed me the direction to get to home. I took that way and what I saw was murdered people, blood and deaths on all four sides. I didn’t know what to do, where to run. I was lucky that an elderly woman was passing by with two children, she took me and said she would take me to my mom.” 
On a way seemingly leading to home three Turkish soldiers caught them, and one of them wanted to kill them. “Happily, one of them said: ‘Since they have survived after all this, let them live’.” 
The Turkish soldiers took Tiruhi to a place where there were 15 children. 
“I became the sixteenth. When one of the Turkish officers saw me, he said he would take me with him as his daughter.” 
Luckily, after long searches, Tiruhi’s mother found her daughter the same day and was able to rescue her. Then the mother took Tiruhi and her younger sister and brother to Izmir and later to Greece. 
A year later they were joined by their father who had managed to escape. 
During the short period of peach in 1918, about 4,000 Armenians returned to Adabazar, but not the Arzumanyans. And it proved they did the right thing, as the armistice was of a formal nature and three years later Armenians again had to leave the town for Greece and other countries through the familiar emigration roads. 
“We lived in Greece for about 18 years, until 1932. We worked at a tobacco plant. When Soviet Armenia began to receive repatriates, we came to Yerevan,” Tiruhi says. 
She has seen five generations following her. Today, sitting on the chair, she enjoys the company of her three-year-old great grandchild. 
A few months ago Tiruhi had a brain hemorrhage and she still speaks with difficulty, though she is gradually getting better. 
Tiruhi has no item from her birthplace that would remind her of her native town. “Where should I have them from if we fled from there with lightening speed?” she says. 
The old woman confesses that she would hardly be ready to forgive the Turks ever. “Perhaps the young people will forgive them, because they didn’t see all that, but not me. I cannot forgive them ever,” she says and repeats: “I can’t.” 
And with what seems to be her look cast back at her burning childhood, she adds: “Eh, we lived that life, good or bad it was ours. We will perhaps have a better life in the other world.” 

HIC- Day 2 Contact Improvisation

Today we looked at contact improvisation and spent some time in pairs having a bit of practice with just improvising and playing with it. We then added the idea of sharing weight between each other to add more complicated moves. After playing around with it I don't think I fully get how things like contact improvisation come to look so good and I don't think I have mastered the art of it.

We then created a piece of physical theater around one of our previously discussed ideas of slavery. We incorporated the idea of four feelings (confusion, anger, sadness and fear) that you would probably feel in the situation of being enslaved. We then had a movement piece about three of us emotions try to escape but get struck down by the two guards leaving the last one to be dragged to the front and be "set free".

I like our piece, I feel it holds potential to go further and become something really cool. We never got round to adding contact improvisation but next lesson we can develop and add some to it.

HIC Day 1 - Initial ideas

Today we were told the title of our devising piece "Humanity in Crisis" and our groups. My initial reaction to the stimulus was and still is that of intrigue because I feel that the title is definitely open to interpretation and can be applied to a lot of things. So I'm looking forward to exploring all the possible ideas that we could go with.

We also were given some pictures to help inspire us.

My group consists of Ashely, Kyle, Dan, Meg and Toby. We spent most of the lesson jotting down any words or topics that come to mind when we think of the title and put it in a spider diagram.

For the last half hour of the lesson we quickly created a piece using the topics of war and refugees, I feel our main concept was based around civilians forced into a war zone, due to one of the pictures we received for inspiration. We started our piece with Kyle and Toby walking towards each other then meeting in the centre; after they meet they fall to the ground, Dan M and Meg then enter and do the same followed by Ashley and I. We then rise and stand in a line, only to be shot and we fall dead. We then clump together around Ashley and gently sway together showing that we are on a refugee boat, each person slowly peel away from Ashley and make a semi-circle around the room. Ashley then runs to each one of us and we cover our eyes and turn around when he comes to us, this is to symbolise how other countries turn their backs on people when they need help. The fifth and last person hugs Ashely to show that they are the only kind country who is looking out for others. I feel that for a rushed piece it came together really well and is a possibility to use it in our final performance. I think we could develop it further and make the movement more fluid, I would also add a bit of music to it. The last bit however I would change so that we are more hostile towards Ashely as that is how a lot of countries react to begin with.