Monday 12th January 2015 - Thursday 15th January 2015

During the weekend, Elliott wrote up the script and emailed it to us so we could learn our lines for this week.
To appease both Jade and Elliott in regards to the debate they had last week of if there was to be a moral behind the show, Elliott added ways to help people suffering with mental illness at the end of the script for when we perform to our targeted audience. 

Our finalised synopsis of each scenes are:

Prologue:
Conor's monologue

Scene 1:
Minions tormenting Jade while she sleeps, as she screams, the minions run off showing a change to reality as her flatmates run in.  The audience can see that Jade has been suffering with these dreams frequently, disturbing and having an effect on not only Jade but everyone around her.  Justyna then invites Jade to the Café to help take her mind off everything going on

Scene 2:
Justyna and Abigail are having a discussion seemingly about coursework, Abigail is concerned about someone helping her with her essay, while Justyna's concern is on Jade being distracted by seeing the minions in the café.  Justyna tries to console Jade, but Jade runs off saying no-one can help her
On her way home, Jade is suffocated by the presence of the minions.

Scene 3:
Jade suddenly finds herself at home after the encounter with the minions, to divert her attention, she tries to watch T.V. but as she switches channels, she sees the minions on the screen, eventually they coax and torment her into joining them.  She breaks the T.V.

Scene 4:
Jade finds herself in a dark forest, the minions lashing out at her, Conor then comes along where they converse about how she got here, metaphorically speaking.  Conor is revealed to be part of her, a figment of her imagination, she is only there because she herself put herself there, only she can come out.
A dance scene played by the minions after Conor leaves plays out.
Jade is faced with Hangela who convinces her she is crazy, that everyone will judge her if she speaks about her problems etc and that the only option to end it all is as simple as just...well ending it all. 

Scene 5:
The scene shows Jade is talking to a counsellor obviously mid-way into the session as the counsellor tells her that's all she has time for and they will reschedule when Conor appears to her telling her she needs to wake up. 

Scene 6: 
Back in the flat, Abigail and Justyna stumble in on Jade asleep on the floor, next to the broken T.V set.  Enquiring about the T.V. and what's really going on with Jade, Hangela appears and tells Jade false thoughts on what her friends will think of her if she tries to talk.  Jade seems to be at the end of her tither, going crazy as she states she can't take this much longer, and that 'they' are a part of her.  With nothing much else they can do, Justyna and Abigail leave Jade alone, thus ultimately sealing her fate and making her decision known to the audience that Jade has made her choice in suffering.  The play ends with Jade holding the knife up and a blackout occurs signalling the end of the play.

Epilogue:
Each actor takes turn in stating facts and mental illness and how people can help and benefit others suffering or knowing someone if they are suffering themselves. 

After reading the script, I noted that scene 4 is to make the audience think - to relate this scene, Jade found a text that she would like to read out the children before we start the show or even afterwards. 

"A psychologist walked around a room while teaching stress management to an audience.  As she raised a glass of water, everyone expected they'd be asked the "half empty or half full" question.  Instead, with a smile on her face, she inquired: "How heavy is this glass of water?".  Answers called out ranged from 8 oz. to 20 oz.  She replied, "The absolute weight doesn't matter.  It depends on how long I hold it.  If I hold it for a minute, it's not a problem.  If I hold it for an hour, I'll have an ache in my arm.  If I hold it for a day, my arm will feel numb and paralyzed.  In each case, the weight of the glass doesn't change, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes."  She continued, "The stresses and worries in life are like that glass of water.  Think about them for a while and nothing happens.  Think about them a bit longer and they begin to hurt.  And if you think about them all day long, you will feel paralyzed – incapable of doing anything." It’s important to remember to let go of your stresses.  As early in the evening as you can, put all your burdens down.  Don't carry them through the evening and into the night. Remember to put the glass down!"

On further individual research I came across a statement:

(Haruki Murakami said "Pain is inevitable.  Suffering is optional".)
When I came across this statement, to me it meant it starts with you.  If you want help it starts with you.  It's easier to find comfort in your suffering and suffer in silence but you can find release in your suffering by leaning on someone, we have to be dependent on others at times, although we might feel lonely, we are never alone.  The choice to be alone is solely down to ourselves.  We cannot force ourselves to get help; to open up ourselves.  That choice is also made by ourselves.  The audience can see that Jade did try to seek help, only in her dreams however, but the audience is left to their own completion of the play if Jade actually kills herself or doesn't.
Jade finding the text I feel will benefit a lot to adding a more educational aspect to the show and to also make the audience go away and think more.
It oozes Brechtian! (Thanks Rob)  

In more ways than one, Elliott has been able to show a moral to the show without being old-fashioned and stating "the moral of the story is...".

This week we began working on the progression of our devising projects by setting up our plays with the theatre.  This was beneficial as we are behaving as a professional company, as companies have to make sure that each performance that they showcase at venues, they know how to operate the lights/sounds or to work alongside the technicians of the theatre if they don't know the technical side.
As H'angela in charge of the lights/sounds/costumes, she had to present her written script with light and sound cues to the technicians at the theatre at Westminster Kingsway. 

Once that was sorted we was able to rehearse our play with the added benefit of lights, sounds and costumes, adding more affect to the play.  Personally I feel that without the effects of the lights and sounds and costumes, the play would be very amateurish. 

During rehearsals within the theatre, our group did have a lot of venting and complaining about people coming in at set times, the lights and cues, actors taking long to set up the stage in between scenes.  There was even an argument about the script and wanting to cut parts out. 

On Elliott's behalf, he did make it clear to email him back if there were spelling errors, lines that doesn't make sense and nothing is going to get changed (I assume with regards to the scenes) as we're going to have to soldier it on and it is late to change anything anyways.  He also explained that he scripted the play to be dramatic not comedic because he personally felt that 'our class has a horrible problem with making any piece we've ever done funny in some way and its annoying.' At the end of the play Elliott stated that there wasn't to be a fight at the end because he couldn't work it in and the physical violence would've been 'shit'.

H'angela brought up that she found what he emailed with the script very offensive and due to lack of comprehension or I feel she scanned the email quickly, she thought that Elliott was being insulting. 

As a writer, Elliott felt insulted himself when Jade said she wanted to cut certain parts out but he was lenient about it being too late and refusing to cut any part out. 

Being able to set up our devised plays in the theatre was an opportunity to see the rehearsals of the other devised pieces of the other groups while the rehearsed with sound and lights and costumes. 

The 'Peer Pressure' group was about a girl wanting to be accepted by her fellow peers joins a world of prostitution and fraud by involving herself with a 'sugar daddy' that gladly buys her things as long as he gets coitus in return despite her friends warnings about it.  I like the fact that there was simple suggestions that this was occurring within the play, and was used as an objective for the antagonist to fit in and gain luxuries.  I applauded the group that no acts were shown of it but they do need to be more clear that this is what the character was basically doing to fit in and not just focus that it was about fraud.  I feel that even themselves in a way was uncomfortable in addressing that it was in fact prostitution that the character was doing probably due to taking in account and being aware of our targeted audiences age group.  They need to be more assertive in their belief of their play and not be afraid to state what it is about because these things happen in real life.  The group stated that they wanted the play to be from the perspective of the antagonist going through it, allowing the audience to become aware of the pressure and make their own judgements and reflections of that character that has made the decisions to fit in allowing the audience to go away and make decisions on their own.  If they want that reaction from the audience then they had to be aware that there audience is smart enough to come to those conclusions so should have no worries in addressing to their audience that it involves prostitution because the audience will see that.  Another reason why they may not have registered it as prostitution because it is commonly known as being exchanged with money rather than material gain.  

The 'Freddy Story' was really interesting to watch and this group had taken from what we had did with the Donmar with Naomi.  While it was really effective with the use of techniques of showing Freddy's past with the use of freeze frame in the current scenes and smoke and dark lights to show upstage that a scene within a scene was happening, when it came to their performance and adding more to their scenes, it took the focus out of Freddy's story and seemed to be a little about Freddy's boyfriend in the beginning scene.  

When the other groups watched ours, they really enjoyed it however it was annoying for someone to comment on ours that we should've known our lines when we had just received our scripts over the weekend.  Our group was the only group to have done a script and stick to it, while the other groups did it from improvisation and sticking to the lines.  From observation, I noted that when we did it with the script, there was no confusion, no missing lines, no-one ad-libbing or trying to take someones moment, the scene ran from beginning to end smoothly.  The groups that had done it without the script, especially the Peer Pressure, there was people talking over one another and there was usually an extension to a scene the next time Freddy's Story went up to rehearse.  I like that our group worked from the ground up and I feel we could appreciate it more because it stemmed from our own ideas and not from something we had already done and then trying to make it our own. 

The feedback for our group from the others was that it was really good but Jade shouldn't stay on stage in between scenes because it makes it look amateurish which I relayed to the group and the audience are questioning why she still is there.  People also noted that they could see H'angela and Jade in the sense of it was their ideas that was used and that they had come up with the play rather than from Connors suggestion which I, myself had noted. 

Certain actors within our groups wouldn't go to Connor who was the director and would take it upon themselves to say how things should go etc.  When I had a suggestion I felt would greatly benefit us e.g. The beginning scene where the minions are to antagonise Jade while sleeping, I thought it would be more effective to move around on stage and not touch her and if possible one minion could stand over her and puppet her as Jade had wanted to after the heartbeat and when she screams, the minions then run off.  I presented this idea to Connor which then he would allow me to present to the group and we could try it out.  I had presented this idea to Connor last week which was relayed to the group but no-one had taken notice to it whatsoever and Jade then complained about it before we went to perform.  It was infuriating for me as this idea amongst others I felt weren't listened to.  I voiced this to Connor and Sharney who agreed with me because Connor felt he wasn't the director anymore; Jade was.  I decided on a professional opinion to keep the ideas to myself and when the others would argue I'd keep silent because I had no qualms with anything.  I felt more peaceful and wasn't aggravated as much because I felt I wasn't wasting my breath.  I also decided that if I did have an idea, I would present it to the people that were only involved as it was less fuss and easier to explain so they understood clearly without others interrupting. 

For our performance, I felt it was really good, and was glad to have finished it and everything was worth the hassle because the audience enjoyed it.  It was an enjoyable experience to also work with the audience and do our workshop with them and they said we had made it fun and it was really interesting to see their perception of dreams and how they constructed their own short devised pieces. 

As the education officer I told the others that I had no problem with each actor leading a part of the workshop if they wanted to.  However I was generally upset because on inspection I noted that our audience didn't know who we were and I felt once again my idea had been shut down when I pointed it out.  We had done a warm-up of Fee-Fi-Foe led by Jade as she knows it very well, then Ninja which was led by Elliott.  When I said that we should do a name game, they just began with saying it plainly in a circle but I interrupted and said let's make it fun to then have Jade say we only have a certain amount of time. The name game would only take 2 mins tops so I carried on however with my name game, stating that you had to step forward, do a movement and say your name and come back into the circle so the next person could go on.  I felt really upset afterwards and voiced this to Sharney who also felt that my ideas were shut down everytime I presented them. 

My own feedback in regards to this whole experience has been enjoyable but I felt I didn't enjoy it as much as I should've and I wouldn't say I wouldn't do devising ever again, but I won't be quick to do it again any time soon.  

After the performance and workshop had been done, Abigail, who is the Administrator in charge of finding schools for us to showcase our devised shows to, had found a school that we'd present our piece to a hundred students next week and requested that we keep learning our lines while she was in Norway to which we agreed to.