Individual post by Rochelle ; thoughts on next piece maybe?

Posted by Rochelle
Also guys i had an idea for something we could next experiment with! maybe we should use the back stage to show how there is no escape from societies rules like in the trial "there is no door and no entrance" and also "do you want to leave already" maybe we could play arround with the idea that we live in a society where the unjust laws and constraints on society seem the norm. for example like if everyone has to wear yellow to promote happiness among us but our body language and facial expressions are frozen and dull. so like everyones accepted those are the rules and laws and before they can see whats wrong with this society its too late; WHICH is also one of the themes we picked up from the initial material 2! and i think it ties in with the whole waiting theme. maybe were all like drones of one perfect person..we can play around with synchronised dialogue and movements! just some ideas to discuss in class

Individual post by Rochelle; Law and Order Performance

Posted by Rochelle 

Todays lesson went so well! i'm very pleased with our piece. just a recap..we focused on Absurd Theatre, having our characters not making sense with their dialogue. The piece was based in a court room focusing on the theme of law and order from the initial material - the trial. From reading the text we extracted the themes of Law and Order, Hope and Deceived, waiting..(for death, hope, fulfilment, future) and finally control.  After researching Absurd Theatre - Jack Mower, we liked the idea of the unknown, so having our audience not knowing what the main focus point of our piece was e.g. the murder of Ted “the teddy bear” and through rehearsal we found that having normal court order lines from the prosecutor that the words shouldn’t make any sense…

 There is a randoms advert which I used as material to help with scripting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aETAPlXAT-w this research really helped with the absurdity of our piece and when put into action we saw a massive improvement. In regards to us having the “criminal” and “victim” not using random nonsensical words, it helped with the audience connecting with the characters.

In the next lesson when discussing ideas to adapt and progress our piece we decided to experiment with light and dark while still incorporating absurd theatre, so after a few trial runs it adapted into us become animals. Where on the queue “questioning” from the Judge it went completely pitch black and we used LED lights to add colour and contrast while manically acting as Gorillas, lions, Apes, and screeching birds. This conveyed to the audience a ferocious side to law and control, completely contrasting with how law is expected to be civilised when infact there are a lot of things wrong with the system, shown in “The Trial”. Then when the lights were back on, the judge had a complete costume change of bright green sunglasses and a jester hat. This signified a mockery of the criminal justice system and how there are so many things wrong that no one sees when it comes to judgement and justice; which were also some things shown in “The Trial.”

Also at the end of the case I took the jury (audience) out in the back and asked what they though, their final verdict was guilty which is what we aimed towards but when one of the audience members had sais innocent, I followed with “that doesn’t matter” which was a quote from the priest in initial material 2 showing how once a verdict or opinion has been made no one else’s opinion can make a difference.  

A few quotes personally stood out to me –

“ But I’m not guilty. Its all been a big mistake.(…) everybodys guilty.”

“the doorkeeper deceived the man, just as the law is deceiving me.”

“there is no door and no entrance”

“you must accept the laws servant or doubt the law itself”

“do you want to leave already” 

photos from Week 1

Individual Post by Rochelle; SCRIPT – Law and Order

Posted by Rochelle Harris
i've edited and added a few things but i think it works really well, let me know what you think!

Drama script – Law and Order

(Brittany)Judge –

Silence in the court.

             We are now focusing on the case of Jamie smith. If the defendant could please come to the stand.

             Thank you and could the defence Attorney now begin questioning.

(Lauren)Defence Attorney -  (pace speeds up on queue “snowflake”)

Your honour….as you all know the incident involving whiteboard snowflake on the ceiling monkey. Fish and chips on the corset shoe. (slams evidence on judges table)

        Turn left at trumpets, jump squishy free fall. (takes a deep breath out ) Cardigan

Judge – Do you agree with this evidence? (hands evidence over to George)

(George)Jamie Smith – Proves I didn’t do it yeah  

(Rochelle) Elderly woman – I fink shes innocent…nice young white girl wouldn’t do nofin wrong,

Judge – Prosecutor you may now commence with your questioning.

EVERYONE GOES CHAOTIC IN AN ANIMALISTIC MANNER

(lights suddenly go to blackout and LED lights will be used on each animal, pause then lights go on and its carried off as normal)

(Jack)Prosecutor – (coughs and clears throat over exaggeratedly preparing for questioning)

Cat table monkey floor?

Jamie Smith – maybe

Prosecutor – Penguin bowl custard bear?

Jamie smith – I’ll admit I didn’t like the guy but I didn’t kill him

Prosecutor – moustache kitchen floor ankle?

Jamie smith – you cant prove anything

Defense Attorney – (stands up objecting )Brussled Sprouts!

Judge - (bangs hammer 3 times ) Over ruled! – continue..

Jamie smith – go on then prove it

(Prosecutor has nothing else to say)

(Rochelle)Black Chav – What! *kisses teeth* that’s what I said and I got 2 months for stealing a kit kat from fucking tescos.

Judge – *clears throat* can the defendant now return to her seat.

              I now call the witness to the stand. (pause) questioning may now begin.

Prosecutor – puppy tall light green giraffe?

Danny – His name was Ted, we went everywhere together

Prosecutor – beard slug nose cough?

Danny – yeah…yeah

Prosecutor – long monster singing pig!

Danny – no of course not, I wouldn’t do that! I wouldn’t leave him, he never left my side.

Prosecutor – silly sizzling sausages? Hmmm..?

Danny – now ted is gone, I don’t know what to do.

Prosecutor – TV plate gummy bag

Danny – then jack came up to talk to me

Prosecutor - brum brum hot chocolate slag!

Danny – yes! I have every reason to believe it was her!

Prosecutor – coat on a boat with hope

Danny – why wouldn’t it be? Of course it’s her

(Rochelle) Upper Class Business Woman – pfft..such a slim pretty girl couldn’t commit a crime like that. I mean look at how stunning she is, wouldn’t hurt a fly.

George reacts to danny’s statement and turns into an animal, begins to growl danny reacts in the same way and Jack as “father lion” shouts NO to stop it.

Prosecutor – Samalama ding dong…

Danny – I miss ted so much *begins to sob uncontrollably*

Judge – thank you prosecutor, any further questions?

Prosecutor – no your honour

Judge – thank you, if you could please return to your seats…defence?

Defence Attorney is dramatically sobbing at Danny’s story and cannot reply.

Everyone freezes and lights fade out

END OF SCENE

Individual post by Rochelle - evaluation and research on individual characters

Posted by Rochelle

Stereotyping in the criminal Justice System - Race, beauty (aesthetically pleasing), class

 

My three characters of the jury I’ve included are to signify how the law subconscienly hold a biased opinion of members of society based on race, how aesthetically pleasing someone is and their class. Conveying the darker crevices as to where the law lacks decent judgement. “Research has long shown that people assume beautiful strangers have a host of other attractive attributes, such as intelligence, competence and kindness." Therefor subconsciously stereotyping a criminal. This has been proven on the news mainly in America but interestedly I found Research that has long shown that people assume beautiful strangers have a host of other attractive attributes, such as intelligence, competence and kindness. After writing the script and coming up with my three characters I decided to google the link between beauty and stereotypes. I found a lot of really good website which spoke about how “beautiful people” are more likely to have more success in life. Like for example if two candidates both with the same level of intelligence, one more beautiful than the other, scientific evidence has proven that the more attractive candidate is more likely to get the position. As your brain sub-consciously judges a person within 4 seconds of meeting them.  A few interesting websites and quotes I’ve found –

Beauty –

“Interestingly, these responses were not sexual - they happened regardless of the gender of the person in the photo. We might link any attractive people with "reward" because they have high social status. "Meeting a potential good friend or someone who might influence our career might be very rewarding," says Kampe.                                                                                                                            He adds that the response seemed quick and automatic and might partly explain evidence that we make snap judgments of people within three or four seconds of meeting them.”

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1412-beautiful-people-spark-a-brain-reaction.html#.VCmrFvldU0w 

“This advantage plays to all sorts of parts of life. humans want to see attractive people in their daily lives. in order to recieve physiological stimulation from seeing physical beauty. the brain seems to suggest that beauty is important enough to recieve a chemical stimulus to force us to surround ourselves with beautiful people. the chemicals released when one is happy are the same as when we see beauty or when we are addicted to drugs. this seems to point to an advantage that beautiful people have. although many other factors contribute to success in society it seems like the saying it pays to be beautiful may after all be true."

http://intro2psych.wordpress.com/2010/05/03/how-the-brain-reacts-to-attractiveness/

http://www.apa.org/monitor/oct06/pretty.aspx

Race -

“The current political debate on racism has centered on racial profiling by the police. The issue has been the extent to which police officers use their discretionary power to stop, detain, search or arrest in ways that disadvantage persons of color. It is well established that persons of color are stopped by police at much higher rates than white citizens.”

http://academic.udayton.edu/race/03justice/justice02c.htm

Class and other info -

http://critcrim.org/critpapers/barak.htm

Physical Theatre; post by Brittany

In one of our lessons a constraint that we decided to include in our improvisation and creation was physical theatre.

Physical theatre is a genre of theatrical performance that pursues storytelling through primarily physical means -

Physical theatre is a form of performance in which movement and physicality of the body has predominant part in the narrative of a piece.

There are several quite distinct traditions of performance which all describe themselves using the term 'physical theatre', which has led to a lot of confusions as to what the definition of physical theatre actually is. The term 'physical theatre; has been applied to performances consisting mainly of;

- mime

- contemporary dance

- theatrical clowning and other physical comedy

- some forms of puppetry

- theatrical acrobatics

Whilst performers base their performances around all of the above and claim to be using 'physical theatre', the essential and key distinguishing factor is a focus on the narrative, character and storytelling. Although, it is often difficult to draw a distinct boundary between what is and what is not physical theatre, and distinctions are often made quite arbitrarily by critics and performing companies.

Some practitioners, such as Lloyd Newson, express a resistance to the term 'physical theatre' as they feel as though it is used as a 'miscellaneous' category, which is classified for anything that does not fall nearly into a category of literary dramatic theatre or contemporary dance. Contemporary theatre including post-modern performance, devised performance, visual performance and post-dramatic performance are often simply labelled as 'physical theatre' without any reasoning other than simply because they are unusual in some way, which is incorrect. 

Modern physical theatre has grown from a variety of origins; mime and theatrical clowning schools, such as L'Ecole iinternational de Theatre Jacques Lecoq in Paris, have had a big influence on many expressions physical theatre. practitioners such as Steven Berkoff and John Wright received their initial training at similar institutions. Ccontemporarydance has also had a strong influence on what we regard as physical theatre, partly because most physical theatre now requires actors to have a strong level of physical control and flexibility over the body. 

"The Trial"

What is the Trial?

"The Trial" was a play written by Franz Kafka in 1914 & 1915 but was not published until 1925. It tells the story of a man arrested and prosecuted by an authority, with the nature of his crime revealed neither to him nor the reader.

Character in The Trial:

"Josef K. – The tale's protagonist.
Fräulein Bürstner – A boarder in the same house as Josef K. She lets him kiss her one night, but then rebuffs his advances. K. briefly catches sight of her, or someone who looks similar to her, in the final pages of the novel.
Fräulein Montag – Friend of Fräulein Bürstner, she talks to K. about ending his relationship with Fräulein Bürstner after his arrest. She claims she can bring him insight, because she is an objective third party.
Willem and Franz – Officers who arrest K. one morning but refuse to disclose the crime he is said to have committed.
Inspector – Man who conducts a proceeding at Joseph K.'s boardinghouse to inform K. officially that he is under arrest.
Rabinsteiner, Kullich and Kaminer – Junior bank employees who attend the proceeding at the boardinghouse.
Frau Grubach – The proprietress of the lodging house in which K. lives. She holds K. in high esteem, despite his arrest.
Woman in the Court – In her house happens the first judgment of K. She claims help from K. because she doesn't want to be abused by the magistrates.
Student – Deformed man who acts under orders of the instruction judge. Will be a powerful man in the future.
Instruction Judge – First Judge of K. In his trial, he confuses K. with a Wall Painter.
Uncle Karl – K.'s impetuous uncle from the country, formerly his guardian. Upon learning about the trial, Karl insists that K. hire Herr Huld, the lawyer.
Herr Huld, the Lawyer – K.'s pompous and pretentious advocate who provides precious little in the way of action and far too much in the way of anecdote.
Leni – Herr Huld's nurse, she has feelings for Josef K. and soon becomes his lover. She shows him her webbed hand, yet another reference to the motif of the hand throughout the book. Apparently, she finds accused men extremely attractive—the fact of their indictment makes them irresistible to her.
Albert – Office director at the court and a friend of Huld.
Flogger – Man who punishes Franz and Willen in the Bank after K's. complaints against the two agents in his first Judgement.
Vice-President – K.'s unctuous rival at the Bank, only too willing to catch K. in a compromising situation. He repeatedly takes advantage of K.'s preoccupation with the trial to advance his own ambitions.
President – Manager of the Bank. A sickly figure, whose position the Vice-President is trying to assume. Gets on well with K., inviting him to various engagements.
Rudi Block, the Merchant – Block is another accused man and client of Huld. His case is five years old, and he is but a shadow of the prosperous grain dealer he once was. All his time, energy, and resources are now devoted to his case, to the point of detriment to his own life. Although he has hired five additional lawyers on the side, he is completely and pathetically subservient to Huld.
Manufacturer – Person who hears about K.'s case and advises him to see a painter who knows how the court system works.
Titorelli, the Painter – Titorelli inherited the position of Court Painter from his father. He knows a great deal about the comings and goings of the Court's lowest level. He offers to help K., and manages to unload a few identical landscape paintings on the accused man.
Priest – Prison chaplain whom K. encounters in a church. The priest advises K. that his case is going badly and tells him to accept his fate.
Doorkeeper and Farmer – The characters of the Chaplain's Tale." - Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trial#Characters


How did we use the Trial within our devised piece?

We took the idea of the unknown, not knowing what is going on and put it within our piece. We based our devised piece on a courtroom scene, much like the Trial itself, we then came up with the idea to have the actual story progress through the perspectives of multiple people, but without letting the audience know, this would cause confusion and they would be kept in the dark, the wouldn't know what was happening. We are still developing our piece.

Cases - initial material 3. - posted by Lauren

posted by Lauren.

As our theme was the idea of the 'unknown' and telling the story under 2 or 3 different perspectives. Our performance was based on a court battle.
I have found some cases relevant to our group piece.

The case of R v Pagett (1983)- In this case a man walked out side with a gun whilst using his pregnant girlfriend as a shield. He shot at the police, in which the police had no choice but to retaliate and fire back, killing the pregnant women. You could say that because the police killed her it's their fault however 'BUT FOR' the defendants  actions would she have been killed? The answer is no. The defendant was found guilty.

R v White (1910)

The defendant put some poison in his mother's milk with the intention of killing her. The mother took a few sips and went to sleep and never woke up. Medical reports revealed that she died from a heart attack and not the poison. The defendant was not liable for her murder as his act of poisoning the milk was not the cause of death. He was liable for attempt.

This case established the 'but for' test. I.E would the result have occurred but for the actions of the defendant? If the answer is yes the defendant is not liable.

Immersion Theatre-Jack

Interactive theatre removes the fourth wall so the audience is involved heavily in some performances. In many performances some parts are scripted while a lot may be improvised including bouncing ideas off one another and then with ideas the audience members. Interactive Theatre is also seen in many comedy shows such as “Whose line is it anyway?”

In many of the newer performances, the usual conventional setting in a theatre is discarded and the audience is involved in the performance itself. Often this is used to move the audience around a location to see a lot of small sections of a performance that would link together in the end. An example of this is a play called “Sleep No More” which is a fusion of Macbeth by William Shakespeare and Film Noir. This play takes place in a 5 story factory. Many of the locations are abandoned and empty factories and warehouses.

A majority of Interactive theatre disregards conventional theatre and changes everything it can to involve the audience as either someone suggesting an idea, holding props, becoming part of the performance as a character. They can determine the plot, complete the story and resolve issues in the play. This gives the actors a chance to make different endings and to be ready to improvise around the audiences suggestions.

This is not a new genre, the Athenian playwrights Aristophanes and Aeschylus often used the audience as the chorus or as a jury for the trials in some of their plays. An example of a Greek comedy that breaks the fourth wall is Aristophanes’ Peace. As the Hero Trygaeus is being lifted by a crane offstage, he tells the crane operator to be more careful.

Absurdist theatre research

Absurd theatre- Jack Mower

Absurd theatre is used to show what occurs when human existence has no meaning or purpose so all communication breaks down. The logic and arguments give way to illogical and often incomplete dialogue as well as abrupt endings.

Absurdist theatre often uses no works or sounds but if it does the sounds may be small snippets of words or sounds, they use this nonsensical dialogue to focus the attention on the actors and what they are doing rather than dialogue. 

All of the features are employed in order to present life as irrational or meaningless, it often focuses on humans being trapped in a world where literally anything can happen no matter how illogical it is, anything can happen,

While most plays will have a character that is well thought-out and have motivation the characters in this genre usually don’t have a motivation and while most conventional plays have a beginning middle and an end theses plays often don’t go in a logical and chronological order.

World war 2 brought theatre of the Absurd to life. This global conflict and trauma caused by the war cause many people to think on how absurd much of life truly was. The experience of absurdity became part of life at the time. A drama practitioner called Antonin Artaud wanted to reject all realism form theatre and to expose the conflicts of the human mind. He was quoted saying “it was no longer possible to keep using traditional art forms and standards that had ceased being convincing and loft their validity”.  He wanted this theatre and he got the illogical, conflict less and plot less drama he was after especially with the nonsensical dialogue.

The most famous play of absurdist theatre is Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” where two characters sit on the stage and wait for this “Godot” for two acts. The setting is a country road a tree and a stone, the two characters continually say they should leave and then they don’t leave. This play s often referred to as “the play where nothing happens” and many of the audiences believed the play to be a joke. This play and many of its kind are often cyclical in nature and don’t come to a conclusion in any form just end abruptly.

15 second endless loop stimulus script

15 second endless loop stimulus script.-Jack

Office: three chairs. 1 stage right with a desk, other two spread across stage

Enter Brittany

Lauren: Hello Horatio

Brittany: Hi, Horatio?

(walks past George)

Brittany: morning

George: hey dude

Brittany Hey Jack

Jack: Hey Man

Brittany: Man? Dude?

Jack: yep

Brittany: How’s that report coming? I need it soon

Jack: Almost done just ten minutes

Brittany: Good I will put it in the paper in 15 minutes

Jack: Sure thing Horatio

Brittany: Horatio? Why are people calling Horatio?

George, Jack and Lauren: Number 4 Horatio Freezer

Jack: Well it’s been your name for the last three years

Brittany: But that’s not my name, Horatio is a Guy’s name, I’m obviously a girl

Jack: (laughs) Sure you are

Lauren: Horatio, I need you to research the fire in New York yesterday for tomorrows paper (walks

away)

Brittany: Sure thing, wait why is everyone calling me Horatio, that’s not my name

George, Jack and Lauren: Number 4 Horatio Freezer

Lauren: just gonna go to the toilet guys

Brittany: whatever, I’m going to go freshen up

Jack: ha ha you get me every time

Brittany (in the toilets): urgh my skin is a mess

Lauren: What are you doing in the girls toilets?

Brittany: I need to sort this out, I’m going out with a guy tonight

Lauren: A guy? Come on out with it. You’re totally gay I knew it, the others said you weren’t but I

knew it

Brittany: How am I gay? I am going out with a guy.

Lauren: but you’re a guy Horatio...

Brittany: I am not a guy, why are people saying that and they keep calling me Horatio?

Lauren Did you hit your head. You are Horatio

George, Jack and Lauren: Number 4 Horatio Freezer

Brittany: Wait what’s my last name?

Lauren: Freezer, Horatio Freezer, we all found it hilarious

Brittany: Wait how did you hear about this? It only happened last night

Lauren: What are you on about?

Brittany: I was on the phone to O2 about my phone, they used their stupid voice recognition and

called me Horatio Freezer and now everyone is calling me Horatio and that not my name, I’ve had

enough I’m going home. (exits toilet in a rush and collects her things)

Jack: I’ve got the report for you

Brittany: I don’t want it! I’m going home

Lauren: If you leave now you’re fired!

Brittany walks through the audience to the stage

End