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The House of the Fall of Usher is what inspired our group to devise our own play. The story begins with the narrator riding on horse to to where his childhood friend lives, Roderick Usher. After arriving the narrator finds Roderick, paler and less energetic than he used to be. Roderick's sister Madeline, who also lives there, is very ill with a strange disease that doctors cannot seem to cure. The narrator spends several days attempting to lift Roderick's spirits, reading him stories and listening to the man play songs on his guitar.

Soon, Madeline dies, and Roderick decides to bury her temporarily in a tomb below the house. A few nights later, Roderick comes to the narrator's room, hysterical and in fear he might have buried his sister alive. Suddenly, wind blows open the door to the room, revealing a bloody Madeline who attacks Roderick as the last bit of life drains from her. Roderick dies of fear, the narrator flees in terror, and the house crumbles to the ground just after he escapes it. (Poe, 1979)

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References:
Cash, J. (2014) Theatre of cruelty conventions. Available at: http://www.thedramateacher.com/theatre-of-cruelty-conventions/ (Accessed: 12 October 2016).

ELTON, H. (1990) Antonin Artaud - mystical burnings | Heather Elton’s Blog. Available at: http://www.eltonyoga.com/vajrayogini/1990/08/20/antonin-artaud-a-man-possessed/ (Accessed: 12 October 2016).

Poe, E.A. (1979) Fall of the house of usher: Play. United States. (Accessed: 19 October 2016)

Bibliography:
Artaud (2001) Available at: https://dlibrary.acu.edu.au/staffhome/siryan/academy/theatres/artaud,%20antonin.htm

Cruelty (1964) Available at: https://dlibrary.acu.edu.au/staffhome/siryan/academy/theatres/theatre%20of%20cruelty.htm

Stanislavski, C. (1936) An actor prepares. London.

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Today was the first time we've rehearsed with lighting, sound and props. We felt our tech run went really well, although we didn't rehearse with our presentation as some of the group hadn't started their slides yet.
Since it was the first time using the props we came up with another idea. In the birthday scene we will be using fairy cakes as Eddies birthday cake. We thought during the scene Rudy ties Eddie up, Rudy will stuff the cakes in Eddie's mouth leaving him unable to speak/shout and struggle to breathe. We haven't actually tried this yet but the idea of it makes me feel quite tense and anxious, which is how we would like our audience to feel.

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Our devised piece is about a messed up family with many mental illnesses between them. There is 1 brother, 1 sister, their Mother and a cousin. The brother, Roderick/Rudy has a split personality disorder, with a very evil side to him, which will be played by Matt and Connor. Maddie has schizophrenia and a stutter effecting her speech, who will be played be Alicia. The Mother has a drinking problem and despises her daughter (Maddie) and favors Rudy over her. The cousin, Edga (Eddie) played by Ellis is the only one without any personality disorders and finds himself mixed up in the family madness. We decided to use the characters names from ' The Fall of the House of Usher' (Maddie and Roderick/Rudy) and also the writers name (Edga).

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Today my group and I started to plan our performance presentation. We looked at performing a script from a play but after a lot of thought we decided that devising our own script would be better. We decided to devise our own play as we could add a lot of modern twists to it and really make it interesting, rather than mimicking someone else's work we wanted to be creative and produce our own interpretation of 'Theatre of Cruelty'. Our play is inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Fall of the House of Usher'.

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Today our group added an extra scene and removed a scene. The new scene we added was a murder. The evil side of Rudy, the son, played by Connor kills his mother after a violent outburst with his cousin. Rudy attacks Eddie (Ellis) and ties him to a chair. The Mother (Me) tries to comfort her son but he strangles her while Eddie is there as a witness. Rudy then approaches Maddie (Alicia) and rapes her in front of their dead Mother while Eddie is tied up with no escape. We added this as we thought it would be a really vile sickening scene and make the audience feel really uncomfortable, which is the main aim of our performance.
We also decided to remove a scene. The original plan was to have Ellis as a third personality for Rudy,  as he already has a split personality played by Matt and Connor. At first we thought adding three personalities would make it interesting and add a clever twist but as we went through our performance, it seemed very confusing. Even I at times had to have the situation explained to me as it didn't seem clear to me at one point so we didn't want to confuse our audience.

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Today the group started to work on the presentation on Artaud - Theatre of Cruelty. Unlike other groups we will be showing our presentation after our performance as we don't  want to give anything away and are trying to keep our performance as secret as possible. I will be introducing the presentation and explaining what Theatre of cruelty actually is and its aim.

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Today the group came in outside of university hours. I was unable to get childcare so I brought my little boy with me to rehearsal (below). The group and I added my scenes in the performance presentation today. The Mother is vile towards her daughter and almost too nice to her son making it quite weird and creepy. We made the Mothers character this way because we thought the audience might realise that it is in fact the Mothers fault for Maddie's behaviour towards Rudy. Maddie has been resented all her life and wanted someone to love her as she didn't know what love was, which is why she rapes Rudy but doesn't understand the damage she is causing.

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Today we were one cast member down so Luke (second left) stood in for us. The imagine below is the opening scene - Edgar's birthday. We timed our project today to see how much performance time we had, but unfortunately the device we were recording on stopped after 8 minutes and we were unable to record it again due to not enough storage space.

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Today we planned what music and props we would use in our performance presentation. We will be using 'Pure imagination' from 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory'. We chose this as its a very innocent song from a children's film but we thought with our disturbing story-line it takes the innocence away and makes you look at it in a different light making it sound quite sinister and creepy. Edgar celebrates a birthday in our performance so we've decided to use balloons and pop them in the audience scaring them.

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2/11/16 - Back from half term - Rehearsals

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2/11/16 - Back from half term - Rehearsals

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Today the group took our ideas from paper and started to block out the scenes. The video below is very disturbing. It is between Maddie and Rudy (brother and sister). Maddie is upset about their father dying and Rudy is trying to comfort her. Maddie gets confused and forces Rudy to sleep with her. Rudy releases his evil side shortly after and rapes Maddie as she did him for revenge. We decided to use rape in our performance as it is a scary and awful subject and will make the audience feel uncomfortable,  which is our aim since we have chosen Theatre of Cruelty. We also added rape because like Artaud, we want the audience to imagine how bad life could really be.

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After our introduction lesson to Artaud, we placed ourselves into groups and immediately started brain storming numerous ideas for our performance. There is myself, Alicia, Connor, Matt and Ellis in one group and we are the only group choosing Artaud as our practitioner. The exercise with Angela gave us an idea to use balloons in our performance and pop them unexpectedly scaring the audience. We thought this idea would work really well as we thought about what would scare us as an audience member and put ourselves in their shoes.

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Theatre of cruelty exercise:
Today in our lesson Angela greeted us in the theatre and told us to go straight onto the stage and lay down as it was going to be a "relaxing" exercise. Little did the class know that this soon turned into one of Artaud's cruelty techniques. Angela made us all feel very relaxed then very tense and nervous as the room went pitch black and scary music, yelps and screams were being played. Students who new about this exercise helped Angela with walking around the room and scaring each of us individually by grabbing us etc.
The exercise made me feel very on edge but I loved it! I loved not knowing what was coming next and the fact I couldn't see anything and was unable to predict what was going to happen.
I had originally chosen Stanislavsky as my chosen practitioner for this module but this exercise is what made me change my mind and is why my group and I have used Artaud as our chosen practitioner for the presentation performance.

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Today we were introduced to Antonin Artaud.
According to Elton (1990)
"ANTONIN ARTAUD IS A MAD THEATRICAL GENIUS WHO LIVED IN PARIS OVER SIXTY YEARS AGO. He was a poet, playwright, actor, director, whose radical theories on staging and language have influenced the avant-garde. Artaud’s assault on his audiences in the twenties and thirties, using shock techniques he invented for the theatre, film and poetry, would still startle audiences today."

Artaud was a french practitioner born in September 1896 and died in March 1948. He was the first to introduce the idea of 'Theatre of cruelty'. He considered cruelty not as physical violence but pain actors must endure to show audience what they wanted to be ignorant of. He wanted the audience to imagine how bad life could be. He used surrealism techniques which is activity you may vision in your worst nightmares that aren't real (Cash, 2014). Artaud actually suffered severe headaches and clinical depression due to having meningitis in his youth. He was also committed to an Asylum. Artaud's past had a major influence on his creation of the 'Theatre of cruelty'. (Elton, 1990)

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The forth exercise we did was called ' Sticky Paper' we each got a small piece of paper each, barring one person who again, had to go in the middle of the group. We each placed and pressed our pieces of paper onto the persons body parts and they then had to move around the room with our paper still pressed against them. This exercise is used for communication and teamwork.

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One person in the group had to volunteer to be lifted. The group stood in a circle and the volunteer stood in the middle. The group had to push firmly on the persons body parts and then quickly lift them up. The person being lifted stayed relaxed which made it easier to lift them. this exercise is for building trust within the group and working as a team.

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Angela prepared a pot of sugar and a pot of salt (we didn't know which was which) and the class had to get a spoon and try both one at a time. Before we tasted it Angela said for it to be an honest reaction. So this made me conscious to not over exaggerate my response. I tried the salt first and pulled a face, said 'urgh' and had a very watery mouth. I then went onto try the second sample (the sugar)  but because I already had salt in my mouth from before it made it  even worse and left a vile taste in my mouth leaving me pulling another awful face.

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Today we were introduced to Augusta Boal and his exercise/games for actors/non actors. The first game we played was 'The bomb game' we all chose one person in the class to be a bomb and the other a shield leaving us getting really close to the person who would play our shield. This game is used for interaction and getting to know one and other. It would normally be played when meeting each other for the first time.

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The group had to watch a random person (without them knowing and not making it obvious) and write down how they moved/how they spoke/ etc.

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The second exercise she did with us was passing a scrunched up piece of paper round the group and convinced us it was a tiny little bird who got stuck in a tree. She described what the bird looked like and made it that little bit more believable. The group passed it round in a circle being as gentle as we could and when the bird got passed back to Angela she placed the bird on the floor and squished it. I gasped and was so shocked because she had convinced me it was a bird and its like I grew some sort of attachment to it.

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Belief. In today's class Angela pretended to lose her wedding/engagement rings and had the whole group worried and up looking for them. She was very convincing and I believed the whole thing as Angela was close to tears. It was so realistic, Angela wanted to carry on with the lesson but the whole class wouldn't move on until we found her rings. I had really bad anxiety as it bothers me a lot when people lose their things, I was so genuinely relived when she told us it was part of one of Stanislavsky's techniques.

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Stanislavsky - Introduction to performing arts.

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Stanislavsky - Introduction to performing arts.

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21/09/16  We were introduced to Stanislavsky and some of his techniques. Today we explored the relaxation method by laying down comfortably tensing our muscles individually and then releasing and relaxing them. We did this as "physical relaxation liberates your imagination" - (merlin. 2003:118) - Konstantin Stanislavsky