My Brain Hurts - RISK

MY BRAIN HURTS

Today we got down to business and started devising our Risk project.

What is Devised Theatre?

What is Devised Theatre?

Swale (2012 p.16)

"On day one of a devising project, the participants jump into the abyss of the unknown. They may have starting points in mind - a text, an object, music, a space, a concept or issue - but at this stage no one will have an idea of what the final production will be like."

This is a description of 'What is Devised Theatre?', taken from a book on games for devising theatre.

For my group and I our starting point for our project development was a concept – Risk, and this concept was what we would drawing our inspiration from to develop our piece.

I am very fond of the notion of devised theatre as I see it focuses on collaboration, creativity and generating innovative theatre. I feel that Devised Theatre would be especially effective in addressing social issues within a certain group, community, or larger community. As the contents of a devised theatre piece comes from a number collaborative ideas and thoughts from a group of people, rather than a single viewpoint from an individual.

An example of this could be a devised piece on the England riots in 2011. If local authority or community groups wanted to shed some light on the reasons behind the event, or highlight the post event repercussions for gaining a fresh perspective on how to tackle issues for future development. A devised piece would draw on a variety of perspectives of how the incident was seen, a present a variety of questions with possible solutions.

The stimuli could come from interviews with victims or the participants in the riots, newspaper articles, pictures, or even exploration of locations that were damaged in the riots. 

There are several ways of collecting stimuli to creative a devised theatre piece on this particular issue, that would hopefully result in a piece of theatre that would educate, inform, enlighten an audience in the telling of this tragic event.  (LO Unit 29. 1.1 & 2.2)

Back to Devising

After a quick brief on our Risk assignment we started off with a warm up/ game. I'm quickly seeing how these games have multiple uses, and how the word 'Game' is actually not the best fitting description for what they actually achieve. The games are fun and enjoyable, but more importantly they also stimulate the mind and body, and generate focus in the individual and the group.

Group exercise: Cowboys and Singers (My own name since I don't know it's actual name yet)
The group walks around the space and respond to a number of commands that a selected individual would call out. For instance these commands could be; hop, jump, freeze, walk, make contact, greet, silence, sing OOO AAA OOO. At the command 'CIRCLE', the group would have 3 seconds to form a circle. At which the Cowboy exercise would commence.

After our warm up exercise ;) we got into our Risk project groups to start devising or piece.
To aid us with this we were given a large number a quotes to choose from on the subject of Risk. I found this helpful in identifying, and sharing with the group how we perceive the concept of risk. This was my chosen quote.

"We know there is no such thing as freedom without the risk of failure"
Rick Perry

In my own life the fear of failure has been the defining factor in risks I have or have not taken. Which is why I was drawn to this particular quote.



My Group
For this Risk Project my group members are:

JONATHAN BAILEY

EVE DALLIMORE

LAURA NOCK

MATTHEW HAGAN

As a group we shared our quotes, and our reasons for choosing them. Through this discussion we were easily able to see similarities in our perceptions of Risk. As a group we summarised our thoughts and feelings towards the concept of risk down to the following points:

1. For progression in life Risks are Necessary 
2. To take a Risk means Coming Out of your Comfort Zone
3. The Risk itself is Not a Hard as It Seems

With these ideas in the forefront of our minds we began to think ways of how to present these 3 concepts of Risk.

Birdcage

The idea of the Birdcage is about be trapped. When you are afraid to take risks in life you limit what you could actual achieve, and fall short of who you were meant to be. The metaphor we came up with was of a 'Caged Bird'. A Bird was made with wings so it would fly, but if it remains in a cage in will never do so. It's life would always be limited despite the natural potential the bird has within it.
We related this to many people who live lives well beneath their potential, because they are caged by fear, uncertainty and comfort.

The idea was that a character or characters would be trapped by a Cage. In order to leave the cage in hope of a more for-filling life where they could spread their wings, it would take the Risk of leaving the comfort of the cage that they know so well, in exchange for freedom outside of the cage, but also the unknown.

I came up with a quote

'The Friend I don't know or The Enemy I do'.
Leon Mills

Like that one I'll get it registered ;)

Break time

Broke time

Who would of thought that having a break could be so damaging???
After our lunch break we attempted to resume our discussion and planning, 'Attempted' being the key word. For whatever reason the whole group really struggled to get our minds going. It's not that we lost enthusiasm for the task, we were very excited about what we achieved in the morning session. But the thoughts and ideas were no longer there. We were unable to think with any fluidity, and combine and reflect ideas. It also didn't help that we were distracted by an incident involving one of the students where paramedics had been called in. Thankfully the student was fine, but all focus was seemed to have been left in the cafeteria. I'm thinking for future reference after returning from a break it might be a good idea to restart with some sort of group exercise to regain focus, energy and unity.

We continued to discuss our ideas but without much progression. Amy our Physical Theater tutor joined us, and gave us some challenging questions to think about.

• What is our message?
• Which kind of person would see a poster for our production and want to come to watch it? 

Myself and Eve improvised a scene with the scenario of a couple divided over the future of their relationship. The Risk factor being to stay together or separate. Unfortunately this didn't really get us any closer to defining our message. What was happening was that we were losing focus on what we as a group defined the concept Risk to be.

Next week as we resume planning our project. I will be especially attentive to making sure that as a group we are working towards defining and communicating our message on how we see the Picture of Risk.

………………That is the Question!

WHO... 

    … is your target audience?

         This is the audience for whom you have designed your piece.

        WHY…

… are you creating this piece -for what purpose? See Purpose of Theatre Doc.

WHAT…

…is your subject matter and your central motif/metaphor?

HOW…

…are going to execute your piece?

What dramatic/performance techniques are you using?

Where…

…would you ideally like to perform?

Is there a specific site that would add to the power of the piece?

When…

…would you ideally perform this?

Is there a season, month, day or hour that would suit the relevance of the piece?