Site specific – Week 7 Evaluation

This week we performed our piece of site specific. We meet before the lesson as last week, we focused on the risk assessment. We knew what we were doing, but we all needed to come up with scripts for our own characters. We had a couple of run through which went really well, so that gave us the confidence to perform our piece.

We performed our piece twice, which meant we had two sets of audiences. I felt that the first performance was as good as the second one, which I feel could be an achievement I perform with the same convictions and energy. The reason I felt the performance were the same was that I made mistakes in both performance, but for different reason. The first reason was I was really getting in to  my character, as soon as I started thinking about the people in front of me as well as what I was saying I started to stumble but I seem to get it back on track. The second reason I stumble was around the same problem but I looked up at the wrong time and saw I was being filmed, which that meant I started to think about my character too much.


My script was very good as I felt I had all the information that worked in the performance. I wanted to find information that work in the piece as it was about a parent's evening, I wanted to find information for not only the benefits of the site but that was relevant to a class and children of the 1800s. I found a website online that give me lots of information about schools in the 1800s century. Here is the website: http://primaryhomeworkhelp.co.uk/victorians/children/schools.htm . I find it fascinating that there so many things that were different, researching it was fun and helpful.

Week 6

This week we looked at our risk assessment, so we worked together to come up with ideas and scenarios related to actions or props that could bring harm to the audience, and the ways to reduce the risk. We also looked into our performance and wrote scripts for it.
In this lesson I also got to see another group’s performance. Watching this piece was really interesting, as they found a unique place in the school that was part of a mental hospital, looking at the different ways to show different ways of expressing mental health through performing arts. The way you were escorted through the space was in a wheelchair and you were given the impression that you were a new patient; this was emphasised when you got to the last section where you were treated as someone who was different and like a monster instead of someone who’s like them, but moves around or talks differently. They showed this as an awards ceremony where the individual got to stand with the winners, and the winners acted as though the individual is a monster.
In conclusion, I feel this piece had a powerful message behind it and it left us really thinking about how you treat people. The message was powerful and the aim was to defeat the stigma attached to mental health issues in society.

Week 5

 This week we spent a productive 2 hours working as a group until we got a solid plan for our piece, as well as getting the suitable space we wanted.

Our idea is to use different characters from history to set up a parents’ evening, so the audience members will take part in a parents’ evening which we set in a girls’ grammar school; the characters are a teacher from the 18^th century, a BRIT School teacher,  a Doctor from WW1, a boys’ school teacher etc.

We played about with some of the ideas we came up with last week, and found that they were good ideas, but we didn’t have much time to elaborate on those, so we felt that this was a better idea for the amount of time we had, and it was going to highlight the group’s strength in the best manner.

My weakness from this week would be that I should have come up with the ideas faster, so we can develop them in a shorter time. The more projects I work on, the more I realize the importance of sticking to timings and how important it is to keep a high pace of work; there are times when we need to spend more time on finalizing performance material, so it is always best to do the idea brainstorming quickly and purposefully to save time for the rehearsals and the final tasks, which are crucial to be perfect.

My strengths would have to be that I kept giving ideas and found that it fuelled other people’s imagination and helped to develop ideas to create our final performance. I like experimenting with spaces and various ideas, and I believe I am a good team player.

Week 4

This week in our lessons we worked on our performance task of the assignment with meant that my group had to find a different location, as our last one wouldn’t work because it was in the way of a fire exit. So we walked around the building and finally settled on a classroom which had windows running along the wall facing the corridor. We thought that we could use this window as there is a door in the hallway that cut the window in half so we thought that we could use one half of the window to represent the past and the other window to portray the present. And having one side of it either in black and white and then the other as normal, so when we walked through one side of the room to the other, it became more lifelike.

Another idea we had was to use a small section of the corridor, where we will create a square, where we would stand tight together, then one of the group would try to come through and this would represent creating history, adding to events, and explain how there sometimes is a limit to how much history one building can take before it starts to crumble; people try and fix it, but it doesn’t work, and you sometimes have to destroy a piece of history and build something else instead which can start a new chapter. 

Week 3

This week we had our talks on 3 different site specific companies. So my group went first and we had a good group presentation, so it felt like we gave all the information needed for people to build a realistic picture of the work they are creating and their performing style. We presented the 3 companies that most of the class chose, so we found that because we went first, the other groups talked about  the same aspects of the chosen companies, so towards the end I found that information was repeated, and therefore it became a bit tedious. 
My strengths would be that I spoke with confidence, I was very well informed and I delivered what I was saying with knowledge behind it. 
My weakness would be that we could have done a better delivery of it, for example a more interesting performance.

Week 4

Site specific – week 4

This week we looked and worked in our groups for our performance. We started in the classroom and talked through and recapped ideas from last week. We didn’t get as far as we wanted last week so we thought a new approach to the project would help our ideas. We went back to our space, where we thought we could do our piece and find that we came up with ideas that were sticking so we keep coming up with ideas; unfortunately none of them were strong. 

Our ideas were based around the concept of empowering women and the feeling of what women were told to do and what they couldn’t do. My idea for using power to women song was a good base for it to develop into a song that is sung by women from that time. We came up with ideas to use physical theatre for example we are going into the classroom in regimented fashion so it shows how strict they were with young ladies in the past. 

Doing some research, I have found a book review and a book, which can help with the research for our ideas. They are about what it was like for girls to go to school, so in the 1940s there were more girls going to school as before, although society in general didn’t think girls should be following in boys’ footsteps when they went off to school, when they were deemed old enough to be sent away to school; although, if the girls were sent away from school, they would be mostly from a small number of the wealthiest section of middle classes’ families, they would go to a school in the south of England,as they were extremely expensive, modish schools, as they thought it would provide a better education for the girls, but it was common in the upper region of middle class families that they wouldn’t send their daughters to school. These girls were from a wealthy family provided a more select and sheltered environment for the girls to learn in by getting in resident or visiting governesses,and if the family could afford the extra lessons like dancing, singing, and painting they would be able to have them. If the family felt it was acceptable for their daughters to become more intellectually accomplished, they would be allowed to sit in their brother’s lesson with visiting masters. 

Here are the links to the where I found the information:

https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=idgbsHRSpF8C&oi=fnd&pg=PP2&dq=1940s+girls+schooling+england&ots=FtBMEVfpCS&sig=fRr3MMx9wioHc1tgoj4pBy5oFuM#v=onepage&q&f=true    

http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/689

The location we chose is a collation of small spaces we found at an intersection of corridors. We will use two corridors that lead off the main corridors, we will use the main corridors as our audience seating. We chose this space because it could be used in various ways; for example, using the corridors as different scenes: we will move in the four sections and turn in a circle with the audience in the middle. We also find we can use the wall and the enclosed space to help with the idea that the girls had limited jobs they could do. 

I hope finding this information will help fuel some ideas that we could use to develop our piece. I also feel that a site specific performance should be about the space they are performing in, but I feel that it has to be about something deeper than what is obvious. 

Here are my ideas of what needs to be included in a risk assessment – picture to the right.

Week 4

Presentation group (task 1) - Eleanor, Mel, Pakize, Joe, Jenny (me)

This week we looked at our presentation of three site specific companies, we wanted to focus on looking at a wide range of companies, so we chose to pick an international one, European and UK based. So we also gave roles to what everyone would be doing for the presentation. I will be looking at what they have done, where they have done a piece, and what was the purpose of their presentation.

Companies

1. Grid Iron - I think that the company we should use is Grid Iron because they are leading innovators in the site specific presentations; this company is based in Edinburgh and it specializes in writing site-specific plays or pieces. This company is focusing on more writing site specific pieces, rather than actually performing them, even though they do perform them sometimes.

I found it really hard to find a Theatre Company related solely to site specific, loads of companies I have found do other theatre pieces in theatre, while doing a little bit on the side of site specific. Something that can be quite hard to find is one international company, one European company and one UK based site specific company. I am also having trouble finding groups that are based on the theatre around the location instead of creating the piece of theatre before they pick their location.

Site specific performance (task 2) - Eleanor, Pakize, Sarah, Chris, Jenny (me)

During this task we are focusing on the school building and coming up with a location and idea for our group to do. We found that it was quite hard because all the ideas we had didn't work in the spaces we found. In the end, we found that the space we came up with would support a handful of ideas, some of them were about the girls’ school and how they were very regimented and didn't get to talk about boys or their own opinions. Teachers were strict and non-sympathetic and they didn’t care about their students’ feelings. I also came up with the idea that we can use all the people from the building’s history; they could walk around that space and interact with the BRIT School students now, so that it would create a sense of history character; for example, the characters from history would go about their business in that area, mixed with the BRIT School kids. We still haven’t found an appropriate place to use, but I feel that we will all come up with ideas over the week and we will have a solid solution for the next lesson.

I came up with an idea that would be a good development on our concept, based on the girls only school: during the First World War the girls had to take over the jobs that the men were doing on the farms, as well as in factories, hospitals, schools. I feel this part of the war’s history is really significant for the status of women, which changed dramatically in that period and led to more rights for women, especially in the employment field.. My idea is to use a song that emphasizes women's power and to create a choreography piece which will highlight how the women started to gain their rights.  We will do this piece of dance to the song "Sisters are doing it for themselves" by Annie Lennox & Aretha Franklin.

I have find that in our group we have lots of ideas which can be used and some that can be developed but nothing that solid starting point. I feel like we all need to come up some solid ideas that we can work from. I also feel that my group isn't very good at concentrating thought out the lesson. My strengths are that bi can keep focus but im weakness is that i cant get the group back on track.