In today’s lesson we used the first 3 hours to create and work on our protests in our groups. Since my group is working on the topic of chemical warfare, it has come across as quite a challenge to protest and for people to know: what are the effects? And how we are planning to stop this issue?
We were given 45 minutes to create a section of our protest to be able to perform back to the rest of theatre. Our group went into a different class to discuss this, but had difficulty with this task. This was because only one or two people in our group already knew some things about chemical warfare, whereas the rest of the group were still research and trying to understand the topic.
For about 15 minutes, my group was struggling on how we could present this topic, with knowing so little about the topic, but Leanne told us the effects of the chemical gas going inside the body and what would happen before the person dies. So we thought if we wanted to get at least 30 seconds of performance done we would have to work around that idea. Having about twenty minutes left we really needed to come up with something to show so we were going through possible ideas of how we could show the effects of the gas. We first had the idea of starting off at with three soldiers and three civilians and then partnering up to do a physical theatre of the chemicals spreading and showing the relationship between that. But some people in the group disagreed with that idea and thought the effects wouldn’t be clear. Then another idea came up where we would all scream and then use physical theatre to show where the chemicals were spreading on our bodies and whilst we were doing that we would say things about the chemicals killing us from the inside. However, this idea was turned down due to some people in the group thinking that no one would hear us individually and we wouldn’t be able to do it in unison. So this was an idea that was not going to work out.
Some of the previous ideas were good like the scream in pain that would show the attack of the gas so we decided to keep that. After a lot of discussing and negotiating we decided that we could have Harmony on the floor in pain and about to die and there could be the rest of us around her highlighting the parts that get affected by the gas and then she dies which represents how fast it happens. An idea that was suggested, that we all lay on top Harmony or around her whist we hum the national anthem. This was to represent all the British soldiers that get affected by this. Then one by one we would all wake up hysterically coughing which showed this could affect anyone, then we would hold Harmony down to do that part of the piece and then start coughing to resume back to the start.
Once time was up we used what we had to show the other half of theatre our protest against chemical warfare. We performed it and the fluidity of the piece was really good. The downside of this was when we were done with it, we ended up with dry throats. Overall, i’m proud that my group managed to come up with something in the end because it was extremely hard to agree on something that we all like and could do.
We finished watching all pieces and had a whole strand review about it. Groups that really stood out for me were: one boy group that were looking at mental health and the treatment that they get. Another was a small group that were looking at homelessness and the treatment they get as well. For the first group I mentioned they really stood out for me because they were interactive with the audience; showing drawn pictures and telling stories about themselves even though they were not particularly talking to the audience at that point. Also there was always someone trying to control them which showed that people are still against mentally ill people being around them even though they are not causing trouble. With the second group I mentioned they were very creative when it came to using bins to bang on and spreading rubbish to set the atmosphere of a place a homeless person may stay. It was really touching when it came to a moment where they interacted with me hoping that i would be able to help them, whilst they were being controlled by the people who seem higher than them. It was mentioned by Nina that she was very interested with what we already had as a protest. The coughing was effective and the humming of the national anthem, however, she wasn’t sure what we were protesting about. So our group would have to work on that.
No comments:
Post a Comment