Uptown Blog Week Three

This week we devised a few scenes with members of the groups ideas from the stimulus, experimenting with different types of physical theatre we can use and with ways of improving the scene to impact the audience most effectively with the use of music as symbolism to increase the effectiveness of our performance.

Cathouse Scene

One of my initial responses was that the song was set in a 'cat house'. The term 'cathouse' is American slang for a brothel.

Information about a Brothel - http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/brothel

A brothel is a prostitution business of which allows men to walk into their building and engage in sexual activities in exchange for money. Brothels specific to the 1940's may have been owned or run by gangs or the mafia and was often a place of drug dealing.


       

Images from - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brothel 

This information gave us an idea for setting up 5 chairs onstage and having the males sit down whilst the females performed a type of hymns hand, chair duet with some relevant 'lustful' jazz music and dark lighting. In my opinion, without this information we would not have known our target of lust and passion for sexual activity and therefore our scene would lack era correctness and would have been pointless to the audience.

With this research, we firstly decided to set the chairs into a five dice shape (on the right). We experimented with how we would move the chairs on stage. First we dragged them on but it looked messy and was loud. We then lifted them up and placed them down gently to symbolise the meaning of gentle lust and smoothness of the scenes motive. I believe this small improvement has added the smallest amount of impact but will serve to smoothen this scene off and give it more performance potential.
The females of the group had to then choreograph the physical theatre. Yasmin seemed to take directional control this time and invented some of the interactions with the motive of lust and sexiness in mind. Their was one girl interacting with one boy and they went around, one by one to create their own set of movements which the rest of the girls had to copy. We then ran through and practised this and it was achieving the motive for the scene and therefore we were all happy. By doing this, we have given the scene performance potential and dramatic potential and have thought about staging and theatrical devises through experimentation and improvisation, team work and positivity. Image from - http://images.dpchallenge.com/images_challenge/0-999/339/800/Copyrighted_Image_Reuse_Prohibited_174319.jpg

To further develop this scene, we added some music. To find music suitable, I envisioned jazz because of the era of the 1940's and how it linked in with the stimulus. I found an album of 'sexy' jazz music, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3_tw44QsZQ, from this link. I think this music will make the audience feel like they have just entered a cat house and that the physical theatre will only be enhanced by it.

We decided to experiment with the use of character masks for this scene. Rhys, Logan, Mike and I all chose a tresle' mask each that symbolised a suitable characteristic of someone who is in a cat house. We ran through the scene with the masks on and found that it solved a problem that we had where the boys were not making facial expressions or acting towards the girls movements. The use of masks means that we had a set facial expression which would show a set characterisation to the audience which should allow the audience to understand the motive of lustful love in the scene.

We then experimented with getting the chairs off. Logan decided to cartwheel over the chair for some reason. This random demonstration kind of caught on and then, after much practice, we managed to cartwheel over the chair and then walk off. I think that this will add to the scenes performance potential and dramatic potential as it is visually aesthetic and could represent the happy end of sexual activities that the men would have taken part in inside a brothel. This shows how we have used physical theatre to enhance even the slightest of movement in our scene and how the potential for the scene is increasing and how improvements are being made constantly to better the quality and impact the audience will have when watching.

With this scene, we found that we could develop a story. I came up with the idea of a story where we follow a mafia gang through childhood, to adulthood and the different types of love they would face. The audience would see the different types of love that are in existence through the individual scenes that represent a different variation of the emotion. With this Cathouse scene, as a group, we found that James, wo was in the middle chair, could actually represent a man who has a girlfriend who is in love with him, but she finds him in a brothel and through physical theatre, show her emotions when she finds out where he has been.
In order for the audience to see this motive, Yasmin and James had to choreograph a piece of physical theatre. They devised a piece where at the end of the brothel scene, the prostitutes and gang members would all walk off apart from James. Yasmin finds him there and pushes him away and forces him onto the chair. This physical theatre will hopefully show how Yasmin's character is upset with James' character and how this type of  love exists in the world which in turn, should impact the audience and allow them to be educated on the subject of love itself.
With this in place, someone came up with the idea of Logan and James being in a homosexual relationship behind Yasmin's back. This lead to the idea of everyone being paired into boy and girl partners. The partners were;

• Rhys and Beckie
• Pau and Chloe S
• Chloe H and Logan
• Yasmin and James
• Mike and Becca

With these partners in place, we left the idea until we finished James, Logan and Yas' scene. With Logan being in a relationship with James. We were able to create a beginning to this cat house scene which would aim to show the audience how in the 1940's, homosexuality was still not widely exepted and therefore relationships were secretive.

Homosexuality in the 1940's America

http://www.oldmagazinearticles.com/1940s-Sodomy_Laws-pdf

This information gives evidence to the laws and punishments against certain sex crimes in the 1940's and also information about the rights homosexual people had.

With this research we James, Logan and Yas could develop their small scene at the beginning of the cat house scene. They experimented with Yas and James dancing at first and then finding a way for Logan to interact. This research allowed James and Logan to have the motive of being secretive and careful and cautious and so they decided to use gentle movements, subtle and meaningful hymns hands with Logan pulling James away from Yasmin and Yasmin believing James and herself are in love even though it is Logan and James who are in love. The staging is that they stand in the middle/front of the stage and the audience have a side view of the physical theatre which will show the audience all three of the different interactions and allow the audience to be influenced by the homosexuality law of the era and the different way love has affect which is the motive for the scene.

Overall, with everything in place for this cathouse scene and with the added extra of James, Yas and Logan's scene, what we have all achieved this week is a piece of devising work that, from the stimulus and research, and using physical theatre, finding motives of what we want the audience to understand and creating a story to experiment with, we have all worked as a team, with positivity, to create something which has performance potential, dramatic potential, whilst looking at staging, characterisation and the era of which it is set in.

'Uptown' Blog Week Two

Research of Historic Events

Week two we came back and researched our ideas and found out the historical context and other facts that may help us develop a more realistic and informative piece of theatre to our audience. In turn, giving our performance more of an impact and also educating them about the events of the past and finding out and showing how these ideas relate to the stimulus, 'Let me off uptown'.

The Great Depression Quick Fire Facts

• From 1929 - 1939
• The largest economic downturn in the history of the United States of America
• Caused by the Wall Street stock market crash in 1929
• This meant that consumer spending and investment dropped
• Industrial output then steeply declined
• Failing companies then laid off their workers
• This lead to mass unemployment
• In 1933, 13-15 million Americans were unemployed
• Nearly half the countries banks had failed and run bankrupt
• The un employed turned to the 'American Dream'
• This being the dream of earning enough money so they could afford to live of their own land
• These workers found employment in farms in the country

history.com/topics/great-depression - the link to where this information is from

http://www.history.com/topics/great-depression/speeches - this is President Franklin D. Roosevelt's radio broadcast where he praises a newly adopted works relief program which would introduce retirement and pensions to the elderly therefore bringing more jobs to the youth.

This research about the great depression allowed us to start developing a scene based on the workers on a farm which was developed by Rhys and I. As a group we chose frantic assembly's Four corners as the physical theatre for this piece.

Frantic Assembly - http://www.franticassembly.co.uk/what-is-frantic/

"The vibrant and visceral Frantic Assembly" THE INDEPENDENT

Frantic Assembly is a physical theatre company founded by Artistic Director Scott Graham, Steven Hoggett and Vicki Middleton in 1994. They create 'thrilling, energetic and unforgettable' theatre using their own techniques such as; chair duets, four corners, jet pack lift, wall running and hymns hands.

Four Corners and the Great Depression Scene

The technique we tested for this great depression scene was four corners. Four corners involved me choosing four points in the room and then travelling to these points, and only these points. To use this to create a scene, me and Rhys split the group into four and placed each group into the corners. Then these groups chose their four corners. Firstly we all set off at the same time and just walked to our four corners and then back to the position without any physicality or characterisation or interaction. This was very bland and had no dramatic potential so the group decided to set off in cannon. After setting off we found this added more technicality to this scene but was still lacking in dramatic interest. So, I came up with the idea using the research Rhys had completed about the Great Depression, which shows the social classes that existed around the working farms of 1929-39.

Social Classes on working farms during the Great Depression era

• There were the land owners who had the money and were in charge of all of the workers on their land. They have the highest social class as they have both money and power.
  Under these are the landowners children. Especially the male child due to sexism of the time; (information on sexism during the Great Depression can be found here)-https://prezi.com/hunydkrsud9d/sexism-in-the-1930s/
• ...the male child would have the same authority over the workers as the landowner but has not inherited the money.
• Then the wives of the landowners or their sons. These would be dressed and treated as lady's and have authority over the workers but may be treated unfairly and be powerless to the landowner or their child due to being a woman.
• Then the white workers, these are the 'non black' workers that live on the farm to earn a small living. These men have no power or authority and very little money. They are lower class people and would often be left for dead once sacked of old age.
• Then the black African American workers. These men have no power or authority over anything and were treated awfully due to the racism of the time. They were often kept as slaves on cotton fields. During this period, they still had barely any rights and were often lynched or hung by large mobs of white men due to the completion for work. (Information on racism during the Great Depression can be found here)- http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/english_literature/prosemockingbird/0prose_mockingbird_contrev2.shtml

Back to the Four Corners idea...

So with this information, we assigned Rhys and I the social status of the landowner and his son, Beckie and Becca the social status of the Lady/ wives of the landowner and his son, Chloe Hearn, Chloe Smith and Mike the social statuses of the white workers and Logan and James the social class of Black workers/ slaves. We experimented with the way we interacted with each-other until it told a story and made sure our movements were very physicalized. This meant we had created a short scene with performance potential and dramatic potential whilst thinking about the place, time and events and staging.
To further develop this scene, at the end of a cycle of four corners, we all collaborated into the middle facing the audience, and formed a freeze frame where one by one, a person has to carry out a frozen action whilst making contact with at least one other character on stage in order to show to tell a story or meaning to the audience. I think this really worked because it is a use of physical theatre that is very dramatic and unique. I do believe that this whole idea we created today has performance potential and shows how as a group we have created a suitable scene for our devised work.

This idea links to the stimulus because 'let me off uptown' is a jazz song and the genre of jazz was founded during the Great Depression and influenced by the large black culture in America.

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/modern-world-history-1918-to-1980/america-1918-1939/america-in-the-1920s/ - Jazz in the 1920's

Mental Asylum Idea

This idea was formulated by Sir James Welland. He told the group that 'Let me off uptown' made him picture a mental asylum where the stimulus was playing from a radio with static and mental patients laying on ill stated beds or the floor. So with this in mind, some research was done on what a mental asylum looked like in the 1940's:

Here is a working mental hospital from the 1940's with nurses and patients. It looks very over crowded but clean and medical. For James' idea, we needed something more sinister and dark as we felt we wanted to show the audience the dark reality of the mental issues that some of the patients would be suffering from and by creating a setting that physically objectifies these illnesses would make the scene visually educational and impactful. 
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6hR2l7CH5Iv-d2HaWR0ivvmw9UTKk8RIIsJ-bJV6hg0Lm4oRRFIXlgrlcnOvV9rs5QbPUMBzKujk32639Oi_yk9Vq66JgNtFcznqLxDQXWrHx_-mh5LFBlvdjzPBV3Tfs9n760Rdipvk/s1600/ww2hospital_c1940.jpg
-(link to image)

Here is an abandoned mental asylum. This gave us more inspiration on what our set could look like and fits in with the darker tone we were thinking of.

http://cdn.acidcow.com/pics/20111109/news_inside_abandoned_insane_asylum_14.jpg - (link to image)

To make our set look similar to this picture above, we messily arranged blocks on stage. We then researched some mental illnesses:

• Clinical depression - a low state of being to the point of ending your own life, causes such as low self esteem and loss of interest in activities or pleasure.
• Schizophrenia - the failure to recognise what is real, hearing voices, fast beliefs or confused thinking.
• Bipolar Disorder - periods of happiness quickly into sadness or anger or depression.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bipolar_disorder - (link to information)

 

 Links to images above:

• http://www.apesantsandancestors.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/causes-of-schizophrenia.jpg
• http://www.subconsciouslythinking.com/uses/depression.jpg
• http://bustingout.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/bipolar.jpg                                                                                                              

Physicalization of this scene

As a group we decided we should take a Forced Entertainment approach, using repetition and physicality and over expression to create a tense atmosphere and to make the audience feel they were actually in a mental hospital. We did this by finding a position on one of the blocks or on the floor and laying down. We used energy states to experiment with a feeling of waking up and slowly increasing the amount of energy until it got really loud and the tension could be created.
once at the optimum energy to be sat up and moving, we found three movements that, for me, were based on the bipolarism disorder. I had a coin that I was flicking and I was smiling and then frowning to really physicalize my character.
Our feed back from this scene was that the energy needed too increase a lot more, and that we should experiment with sound effects and larger movements and make it really over dramatic so that it could be really powerful and impactful to the audience. After this feedback, we tried some of Karen's ideas but it didn't really seem to work as I don't think certain individuals were convinced about this idea which lead to the energy lacking and therefore a lack of improvement of the development with the scene. We added the stimulus and used static to add to the scenes potential but as a group I feel we decided that it was too long and lacked the dramatic potential we had hoped. Also, this idea was called a 'cliché' idea and we decided we waned to steer clear from clichés and be more original and inventive.

Forced Entertainment - http://www.forcedentertainment.com/

Forced Entertainment are a group of 6 people that are based in Sheffield and make physical theatre performances. They explore and question aspects of life and art and improvise scenes by throwing ideas out between each other and devise 'until something starts to kick'. They use nudity, masks, costumes, create a mess on stage and use repetition, interact with the audience, break character and improvise whilst on stage.
This company is a great inspiration and educational gift for our group because as a devising company themselves, their techniques can be used to improvise scenes with performance and dramatic potential and that is the aim for our group. By researching this company we have used some of their techniques to create a purpose for our scene, and for our idea to have performance and dramatic potential.

 

Conclusion

Overall, this week has been a very productive week in terms of ideas being invented and brought to life with the use of physical theatre, acting and music which has shown our imaginativeness, insightfulness and teamwork and positivity even when an idea may not have worked for us.

Uptown Blog: Week One

Without Knowledge of the Stimulus

After listening to 'Let me off uptown' and writing down my initial responses, the groups were decided. In our groups we went round and shared our ideas and created a spider diagram.


This is the sheet where, as a group, our initial ideas were recorded. These are the first thoughts from every member of the group.

My responses that I shared to the group were:
. Mafia
. Jazzy/Bluesy
. 1940's America
. Boston or New York
. Cat House/ strip joint
. Black man
. White Woman
. Happy

James said he could imagine being in a mental asylum with the stimulus mixed with the sound of static. Chloe Smith felt like she was in a murder mystery case in 1940's England. Mike imagined himself in the West End show West Side Story, Yasmin pictured a cigarette smoke filled bar with slooty women and a very sexy atmosphere. Other imagined ideas were thrown up like a swing band and gangsters.
All of these initial ideas have been imagined without even knowing the stimulus and already show how; as a group, we have been used productive thinking and teamwork to share ideas which may be used later on down the line.

After Knowledge of the Stimulus

When we were given the knowledge of the stimulus we were able to compare the ideas and initial responses we had. With this, we were able to come up with themes that relate to the 1940's. We came up with themes such as War (ww2), The Great Depression, the Jazz era, Slavery and black rights, feminism and female rights, Mafia and gang violence, British murder mystery and prison/ mental asylum.

British Murder Mystery

Chloe Smith thought of an idea based around the game 'Cluedo'. Cluedo is a murder mysteries board game for three- six players invented by Anthony E. Pratt in Birmingham, UK. The overall objective of Cluedo is to find out who murdered the victim, where the crime occurred and the murder weapon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluedo - link to the research about Cluedo

With this in mind, we went forth and explored this idea. We decided to assign ourselves a character from the game Cluedo and related them to Commedia Del Arte Characters:

Characters from Cluedo;

• Miss Scarlett
• Professor Plum
• Mrs. Peacock
• Reverend Green
• Colonel Mustard
• Mrs. White

Characters from Commedia Del Arte:

https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=commedia+del+arte&view=detailv2&&id=83EA2D8C83F3494681FBFFB6DF0650A043A5CE8A&selectedIndex=0&ccid=AeO22t5O&simid=607990752349127689&thid=OIP.M01e3b6dade4edb16f2e6e8c84a42be5dH0&ajaxhist=0
http://www.shane-arts.com/commedia-stock-characters.htm
http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/backstage/commedia-dellarte- links to location of image and information about Commedia Del Arte

Commedia Del Arte Research

Commedia Del Arte was founded in the 1600's in Venice, Italy. It was a form of improvised street theatre where scenarios were created where stock characters that are based on masters, lovers and servants perform and interact with each other.
It is a very physicalized form of theatre where each character has
their own movements, way of speech and  identity and their own
mask.

This image shows actors performing as some of the characters in Commedia with the masks and costumes that represent their individual habits and traits.

I chose to be Dottore, and professor Plum because they represent a high social class and I felt they shared the most similarities. With everyone having an identity, we walked around the room in character and interacted with each other to experiment with actions, voices and physicality. With this, James sat out and watched.
We found that the characterisation and interaction started to tell a story of 'who was the murder'. By including the use of physical theatre, It gave this idea, performance potential, and could be developed further into a full scene.

Overall, in week one we have collected everyone's individual responses, chosen a few of them to work on and have started to develop them into scenes with performance potential, dramatic potential and physical theatre whilst evolving new ideas.