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.