Rent day 15 - Finale + you'll see

Today we created 'You'll See', where Ashley and myself explained to the others what we had in mind from the previous lesson. After running it I think it needs a bit of work but first I need to learn the lyrics so that we can really get creative with it. Since with this song Benny is really trying to paint a picture with his idea of them working in his building, doing what they've always dreamed of doing and getting to stay in their apartment. However until I learn the lyrics I can't fully get into the song and portray that. That is why for next lesson I plan on having the lyrics known.

Today we also created the Finale B, choreographed by Dom and Dan. For the scene before the final singing we had Meg on the table dead with Tom at her head and Freya, Toby and Lorna around them they then had freedom to play out the scene how they like and then the singing comes in. For this final bit of singing we bring everyone in and group together for a final look towards the audience and we will end the performance there. I like this staging as it groups us together so we are a close family type thing.

Rent Day 14- Received Act 1 script

Today we were all given act one full script so we had all our lines in one place and so we could each have a copy to make notes on and adapt as we create our performance. We also put people in charge of certain areas:
Freya - costume and hair
Dom - programmes
Dan - lighting
Tom - set
Dan - set
Toby - set + fundraising
Meg - fundraising
Ashley - fundraising
Me - fundraising

We then split of to work on our own things, I listened to 'You'll See' and made a plan of what I would want to do with it. I was thinking of having me walk in through the audience to enter and yell the first line at an audience member. By the time I start singing I need to be on stage and I just sit on the table with Mark and Rodger either side of me. I was also thinking of jumping on the table when I try to convince them to come work with me and cancel the protest.

Rent Day 13 - Santa Fey + Without You

Today we finished Santa Fey by learning the dance the Meg choreographed over the weekend and putting it with the opening that we created last lesson.

I really like the smoothness and relaxed movements that the dance holds, I feel it works really well with the music. We all just need to rehearse it so we all know it and can do it well.

We then worked on Without You, we wanted to show Maureen and Joanne having an argument so Freya and Ashley choreographed a piece for them to do at the back, behind the table. We then needed a bed to be set up for Angel to die on so Dom and I organised what we were going to do to set that up and finally Dan and Toby entered as Angel and Collins for Angel's death scene. Tom and Meg choreographed their own thing to do at the front of the stage while they sing it.

I really like simplicity of the movements, nothing is too dramatic to draw your attention away from meg and tom for too long. I feel that all we need to do is teach Lorna her part and learn it ourselves.

HIC Evaluation

My performance of ‘Humanity in Crisis’ went really well; a lot better than my previous devised piece. I feel that by devising a drama piece based on a topic (education) worked so much better than when we tried to create a story in the previous devising attempt. I really liked our topic of education but I feel that we generally stuck with the sub-theme of discipline in the education system, which could lead to a whole new performance about discipline of children in any situation. This is why I think we should have discussed early on if we are going to open up our ideas to the field of discipline in general or are we going to stick to education in general and only have a minor part of our piece about discipline of students.

The staging of our piece we decided early on to do in traverse however after creating our piece, I feel our future and past scenes didn’t work very well in traverse. We had to alter our past scene so it works better for an audience in traverse and after altering it, I feel it worked rather nicely. However we then had two future scenes facing the stage side of the hall and we weren’t giving the audience behind us a good view of our performance. I feel we should have either rotated one of the future scenes to face the other way (the back wall of the hall) or we should have created the pieces to work better in traverse. ‘We don’t need no education’ scene, I feel, would work a lot better if we had the two rows back to back and facing the audience, especially since we no longer had the virtual teacher projected at the front we had no reason not to face the audience.

I felt that the scripted scenes went well. They allowed the performance to progress and clearly expressed the issues our piece was trying to present. I regret not being able to organise it so each time we revisit the scene we rotate around so the audience don’t just see the same angle each time but we just couldn’t transition back into the scene and rotate at the same time, the tables never aligned in the same way each time so it looked weird. In order to solve the situation I think we should have put little markings on the floor to always align the tables in the exact same way each time, I feel this will allow us to set the meeting scene up and rotate quickly and efficiently. However if I were to do the performance again, I would probably set it differently. I think that having the meeting happen in a tight circle in the centre of the stage restricted the audience in their view of the scene. This is why I would probably move us so we sit with the audience and rewrite the scenes as if we were in bigger meeting and the audience are a part of that meeting. This way we could get the audience more involved in the scenes. I would also move the snack table to the centre of the stage so the stage isn’t completely empty and since we all got up during the scenes to go to the snack table anyway, we won’t leave the audiences view and they will understand why we got up every now and then during the scene.

I would like to have spent time in lessons each of us writing clearer characters together so we understand each other’s characters better and put input on what we each think the characters should be like. This could also help us when we wrote the script, so we have more depth to the scenes rather than just have them as a way to move from one movement piece to another. I would also have liked to send the scripts to other teachers so we get their feedback and opinions on how a meeting would pan out or if teachers would behave in the way we wrote them to behave in.

Next time I create a performance I would like to spend more time discussing the costumes. I think we looked good for our parts but I feel we could have done better. In the future scene where the students in control I think we should have shown the students to be more wild and maybe a bit feral. I think wilder hair and ripped clothing would strongly suggest that the students are out of control and wild. In the next future scene I would have liked the guards to look more guard like, with riot shields and masks along with the metre rulers. This is so we would establish that these aren’t the teachers they are there to simply keep students in line. I am also regretful that we didn’t have an actual teacher robe for Dan in the past scene.

HIC Writing in Character

Dear Mr and Mrs Stevens

I regret to inform you that I have held back your son James for an hour after school today. As you are probably well aware, this is the fourth time this week that I have set him a detention and this is troubling. The reasons for all the detentions are constantly the same, James is disruptive, uncooperative and he never even attempts the work set for him, as a result of this his grades are slipping. This is why I am writing to ask you to talk to him, find out why he is behaving in the way and try to convince him to do better. I would also ask you to please let him know that if he ever needs someone to talk to, my door is always open and that we have a wonderful councilor on the school site, who is always prepared to listen to a students problems.

However if his behavior doesn't improve, I will be forced to take this higher and we will be asking for us to have a meeting with the head to discuss where we go from here.

Yours sincerely
Mr C Tyler

HIC character description

My character is a young English teacher. He has ten years of teaching experience and is in his early thirties. He has recently been transferred to the school so not many people know him well and so his opinion gets overlooked sometimes by the other teachers. Since Meg is the head of the group, she was the first person he met when he first came to the school. She briefed him on what he needed to know about the school and so he trusts her. He is passionate about teaching and doesn't quite understand Toby or Ashley as they don't seem to care in meetings (if they show up). He strongly believes that children are important to the education system and that we need to understand them to better educate them, beating them won't get you anywhere. This is why he argues with Dan, Dan is too dated with his understanding on how people learn so he tries to explain this without much success.

I feel my character wears outfits like this:

HIC Day 28, 29 + 30 - full run through and tweek the ending

In these lessons we spent time doing two full run throughs one without Dan and one when he got back. Once we had Dan back we discussed how we are going to transition from each scene to the next. We decided to use the music from "curious incident of the dog in the night time" because we felt it had a good beat that the audience will enjoy while we transition. We also discussed the final scene and its ending for we felt there wasn't a good enough conclusion. On the final lesson we finalized the finale and had a full run through. I feel the performance is ready and we are as prepared as we can be for next week, show week.