Today's lesson was slightly different to the ones we have had in the past because we began by sharing our pieces that we had created over the weekend. It was a good way to ease everyone into the session and also to have a meaningful discussion about whose ideas would be applicable for the end products and whose ideas could be tweaked.
From doing and seeing the presentations last week, I took away from them that performance does not always have the same form. I thought that instead of just having the visual element to the piece, there could be another layer. The way things are looking at the moment, we will do one performance which comes and goes over one morning, and with some of our participants possibly not being able to make the performance. Therefore, I thought I would be able to use the same stimulus; what the patients at the hospice said, but put it in a form that is more substantial, so decided to create a box with different images in it. Like I wrote about in the first session at St Christopher's, we went round the circle and said our names and did an action of something we liked doing with a sound. I remembered everyone's action and sound, printed off pictures that symbolised what they said and wrote their sound on the back. I thought that I could find a creative way to link all of these together and liked the idea of the participants being able to go through the box and find things that applied to them, or that may jog their memory back to the first session. I personally learn and retain information in several ways, so think it would be interesting for the Hospice to have something that they could keep and perhaps engage with after the performance has happened. I didn't know whether to suggest there was a small box for every individual, but I think it would be more interesting and also more fair if there was a big box full of everyone's stories they have offered up. This was the idea I pitched to the group and I think it was received well and lots of people had suggestions as to how it could be altered slightly.
Everybody else created ideas for performances, songs and poetry which were all of a high standard and seemed to be very centred around the information we collected from the Hospice. A few people worked together, and three students took what Jane said about liking the musical 'Wicked' and found a song ('For Good') with some really lovely lyrics and came up with an arrangement for that. I thought this was clever, as they took something that they know people will enjoy and found a song that actually meant something, rather than a song that perhaps they could have done a more interesting arrangement to but would not have as deep a meaning. Jasmine wrote a poem which took the lives of three of the participants who all had the theme of 'travelling' in their stories and wrote a beautiful poem about their experiences of moving to London. I really enjoyed listening to it and thought it was a good way to use her talent for writing, as she had written it in a way that everyone could relate to it, yet the three people who it was about would definitely know it was based on them. As a group, we decided that this would be fantastic to include in the final piece, and could even be accompanied by some movement or dance in the background to really emphasise the language.
After we had shared and discussed everyone's contributions to the piece that they had formulated over the weekend, we moved on to a more abstract idea that could be used in the piece. We were all given pieces of ribbon and had to find interesting way to use them with shapes and distance all being carefully considered. This was probably the part of the session I least enjoyed, because I thought it was slightly too abstract for me personally, and I didn't really have a vision about how it could be applied to the final piece. However, it was fun to experiment with the ribbon and it was challenging to work as a team and work with instinct rather than trying to choreograph a sequence. I think that it became clear that we all came from different backgrounds in performance in this particular exercise because the people from Theatre were experimenting more and were trying different things out for the whole time of the exercise whereas the dancers were choreographing a sequence and polishing it. I think in the final piece we will have to utilise both of these skills that we have to blend together an interesting and polished piece.
For the afternoon session, we retuned to the work we had talked about in the morning, and a few people grouped together. I was with Felix, who had come up with a martial arts/stage combat piece because one of the participants, Mad Max, used to be a boxer. I found this difficult, as I have never done stage combat before and there was very limited time to get it to a good standard. However, I think there is potential for this and it is what I need to practise for next session, and will put in extra hours to ensure it is better. When we shared this work we had done in the afternoon it was interesting to note the change in people's work and how it had evolved from the bare form we saw it in during the morning's session. As a whole, the class worked well and made good progress which is promising for future sessions.
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