'Ode To Billy Joe' By Bobbie Gentry - Week 5 & 6 (Half Term) Entry 10: Final Devising Sessions Before Performance Week - Working Upon Feedback

Receiving Group Feedback - Further Refinement For 'The Bridge':

This week was the last time we’d be rehearsing before half term begins. This was the time to show back our devised piece to the other groups for any possible areas of improvement that’ll become crucial to the final result of our performance. The feedback we’d gained was mostly about the pace of the game show. Pace is a key moment within our piece because the audience may lose their concentration on what's really going on, especially where the contestants are concerned.

There was also notes about the relationship between the two hosts of ‘The Bridge’, Theodore and Cricket. Theodore is of a lower status compared to Cricket since Theodore acts as a sort of servant towards his master, much like the Pantalone and Zanni Stock Characters from Commedia Dell’Arte which these two characters were inspired by. It’s Theodore’s job to further explain the games being shown as well as providing some commentary alongside Cricket.

We also showed off our new idea of the monologues to the audience. We’d thought of implementing the use of advert breaks between each game in the show to provide some insight into what each character is thinking at that present moment. This is great as it allows us to break the fourth wall further by actually having a conversation with the audience members. We’ll be further refining these scenes to include more Physical Theatre work since, at present moment, we’re just simply sitting on our chairs. I was thinking that maybe we could play with the lines we’re announcing such as me saying that “being on ‘The Bridge’ feels more like a crazy circus act rather than a game show”, for this I could maybe play around dangerously with my chair such as lifting it up in the air and performing some sort of stunt with it.

It came to our attention also that the contestants are already so scared when starting the first game. Being too scared early on means that the contestants have nowhere to go in terms of emotions. After receiving this feedback note, we had changed the beginning scene to have the contestants appear more excited since they realise that they are now on ‘The Bridge’, which is what they've been waiting for since they had signed up for it. Personally I like the new version of this part of our piece as it is more of a clear structure to follow, plus we have added some physical theatre in the beginning bit instead of skipping to the contestants being tied up.

The Physical style of Steven Berkoff has been added into this piece along with the exercise of 'Four Corners' from 'Frantic Assembly' to make it look much more weird and mysterious because it looks as though the contestants are connected to the letter that was handed out to them. The letter is written to all the contestants saying that they have been accepted onto ‘The Bridge’ and that they have to meet at Tallahatchie Avenue, London. Before this, we show an application video being played introducing our characters and the reason why they want to be in the show, doing this gives the audience something to feel and be a part of for our performance. There is another part of the Physical Theatre piece that introduces the kidnapping of the contestants. Doing this does make the piece have a more grotesque and melodramatic feel for it, which is what we had intended to happen.

We had refined this piece by adding in some sound scape to bring more tension within the scene. The speed of the piece will also grow more as the movements pass on to each one of the contestants. Having naturalistic sounds and grotesque movements blending together really builds up much more suspense and looking back on it from a video perspective makes it look more dramatically pleasing. 

Here is a video of both the Physical Theatre piece as well as the link to application video we’ll be showing in our main performance:

Application Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVFGcB1N8sI&feature=youtu.be

The game show format we have chosen for our devised piece splits into 3 different parts. The introduction to the game show which requires explaining the game show, the rules of the games being played and finally introducing the contestants and who will play the game being shown off. 

Game shows such as ‘The Crystal Maze’ shows off this format repetitively throughout its air time. The hosts are also going to be working the same way as the host on that show as they’ll be providing commentary as the contestants make their way through each game.

I think that this links to the stimulus strongly as the audience will think that this is a generic game show about winning money for your charity and having fun, but they will be shocked when they come to realise that it isn't as they had hoped as its more along the lines of trying to escape and of course survive the show.

When creating the Physical Theatre piece that I've included above, we had wanted to focus on the aspect of fear for ‘The Bridge’, so this is when we all played the game ‘Wink Murder’. The reason we did this was to make the actors feel more uncomfortable in a quiet atmosphere. When someone dies in the game, they give off a loud scream which scares everyone and makes them jump naturally. This is something we had included for the end of our devised piece before the first game begins and I think it looks really effective because it links back to the stimulus in terms of its themes and also to fit along with the Berkovian style we had wanted to use. This exercise also helped the group get to know a little bit about what makes them get scared.

We had finished this session by adding some further refinement on the 'Truth or Dare' game by adding in more Physical Theatre. These were things such as:

Me: Being pushed forward towards center stage to fall backwards into Jake's arms and then pushed back to Brandon to then be brought to the middle finally.

Frankie: Does a little twirl dance with Brandon and then does a fall into Jake's arms sideways.

Milo: Has a moment of being beaten by Jake and Brandon to then be brought into a headlock.

Sophie: Swings around towards center stage with Brandon.

Our targets for our next session are to create a lighting and sound plan and think of cue times alongside. We’ll also be focusing on the transitions for our performance so we can make it more fluid and professional for when we come to perform it to a professional audience.

After the returning to college for the last week before the main show begins on Thursday, me and the rest of the groups had shown off what we had rehearsed and developed/refined more of in our devised pieces.

My group had a great response towards 'The Bridge' this time because of the emotions of betrayal, loneliness and fear revealed throughout the performance. The opening scene with our Physical Theatre piece had created a massive response to our audience since it was so sudden after a calm atmosphere. As a whole, they all really liked the level of energy at certain moments, such as this one. The kidnapping makes the piece much more exciting and suspense filling.The monologues were a great touch but the main feedback we had received told us that that there was too much going on behind the monologues since we had included the 'Swerve and Duck' exercise used by 'Frantic Assembly'. They had suggested that this may needed to be slowed down in order to make it work more for the audience so they are sure to focus more on the monologues. We had instead neglected this idea and just cut the movement piece entirely from the monologue scenes as it may still create a hassle fro when we actually come to perform to our professional audience on Thursday. The audience also picked up that the character Violet, portrayed by Sophie Nickerson, should be played younger that 14 years because Violet appears more innocent and child-like, especially when we reference things such as the death of her dog. We had a suggestion that maybe she should be 11 instead of 14. We had all agreed to this idea and made the necessary changes to fit the character more. Our ending to the performance needed to include more clockwork based movement, especially when exiting the stage, to keep to the style of Berkoff.

Feedback from our lecturers told us that our piece still looked as though it was mostly improvised.

Our targets for the remaining time over half term is to rehearse the whole piece so many times to get used to it and make it muscle memory so it doesn't appear to be improvised theatre. We'll also get the chance to do a tech-rehearsal involving our plans for the lighting, sound and projection we're going to use for 'The Bridge' ready for our main performances later on for the main performances.