waiting- Created as a group, posted by Lauren

23 September 2014.

Over the past week or so, our stimulus was 'waiting'. Waiting for either something literal, or metaphorical.

Our second stimulus based on the idea of 'waiting' was part of a text from the play 'The Trial' by Stephen Berkoff. Each member of our group picked a word we liked from the text.. they were; Law, Hope, Deceived, 'The world is growing darker', and 'there is no door and there is no entrance'. From this we then used constraints to help us start out piece. We picked 5 constraints including; Silence, a joker, ensemble, change of focus and physical theatre. The main idea we came up with was order and chaos and how in life there are rules that society have to abide by, there is no escape.
As a group we all combined lots of different ideas until we found a couple that we really liked, we then took this and rather than talk about every little detail, we just got on with it and experimented with the ideas and trying new things out.
We eventually came up with the idea of Soldiers to start with and how when someone does something wrong it changes the course of the future.
In the beginning scene, we are all stood in a line as Soldiers. Our leader (George) is giving us a rule (salute) that we all have to follow/abide by. However when it comes to one of the soldiers turn (Danny) he doesn't do the correct procedure and is immediately the focus  and belittled by everyone else who stares at him before the Commander/leader shouts "No" and we all fall to floor as if we have been shot and killed in action.
In the next scene of our performance we rise from the floor whispering the words "the world is growing darker" repeatedly and surround Danny representing the dark, we push him with a metaphorical power , perhaps showing the "wait for death", we also mention "there is no door and there is no entrance" to show how isolated and trapped society is. We then used one of our constraints "Change the focus". Jack and Danny then swap places whilst the dark world (i.e: everyone else) circles around them clicking to add suspension, this takes the focus of Danny and onto Jack.
In the last and final scene we all came up with the idea of setting up a family home where we await our soldier (brother, dad, son) to come home from the war. In this scene we all use non sensible dialogue, this is to frustrate the audience however at the same time draw them in for the big twist at the end.

Our performance has a lot of the practitioner Beckett's absurd theatre style as we use some of his devices like; Non sensible dialogue, Reflection of treatment by society, repetition, and use of pause. I think our group found it hard not to talk about what we wanted to do for too long, however saying this we worked as a group and pulled together and came out with a great idea and a great performance. what worked for us is we all had an idea, we all had something to incorporate which was great. However what didn't work so much is that we sometimes tend to get side tracked and loose focus.

Posted by Lauren.