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Changes character
Use of props are creative
Verbatim
Monologues
Sound/ lighting to reflect mood
Simple costumes
Narration
Cleaver use of props

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Hannah did the first initial research because this was the character that she would like to play. However, me and Kat helped out finding interesting stories where we came across the stories of came across the story of Quina and her sister Mollie.We choose to use their stories because Mollie was one of the first women to die so through Quina’s point of view, the audience would be able to see how this affected Quinta and allowed us to discuss some of the thoughts and accusations that were put on the women to hide the truth of what was really causing their deaths.

http://theradiumgirls.com/the-girls/4593781028

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Human stories
Props
Cinematic
Stay in character

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wasn’t tested properly
-blamed mothers
-testimonies
-trial
-other drugs?
-compensation
-took a long time to get rid of it

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-each have a person or all of us a family
-warnings before -shakily feel safe at school- school shootings
-Testimonies
-Trail
-still painful for many people
-government/coal boards not taking responsibility
-lots of people have to die before change
-local
-lights /flowers

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-Trump and women
-How men in power abuse women
-Everyday Sexism
-Epstein, Weinstein, Prince Andrew
-Marolyne and Jacky Kennedy

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-nazi
-communism
-lies
-government
-keeping people quiet
-power

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Nuclear weapons?
-legacy
-disasters /deliberate
-sexism/affair
-danger
-died from science

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Our first idea was sexism. Which we then narrowed down to Marilyn Monroe and Jackie Kennedy and how the media perceives women and how Trump views women.

However, I was concerned about how we could cover the stories  and we all felt that we wanted to do these women justice and with such a wide story we were worried how we were going to portray this. And unanimously decided that this topic although interesting  and political would not be right for us.

I then thought about 5 other options which I brought to the group and we narrowed it down to three. Thalidomide, Abervan and Marie Curie. And each picked one.

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I chose to research Marie Curie because her story really intreasted me and how she died in the name of science. It was also rare for a woman to be a scientist at that time.

Also I had recently watched a film on her life and this really interested me at how her discovery let to so much. It also lead me too really respect her as a woman and a trailblazer and wanted to find out as much as I could about her.

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Maria Skłodowskawas born in Poland on November 7th 1867 but due to the lack of opportunities for women in Poland she moved to Paris where she met her husband Pierre Curie. To fit in more with Parisian culture she changed her name to to the french Marie. Her most well known discovery was with her husband in 1898 which was Radium and Polonium after Heinrich Hertz demonstrated the existence of radio waves in 1886.Also Heneri Becquerel exposed the salts of uranium which then led to him discovering another type of radiation, which could pass through foils and a darkened photographic plate. He became friends with the Curies. Who discored the two elements through studying the natural ores that contained uranium and thorium. They won two Nobel Peace Prizes for their work.  Her husband died after being hit by a horse and cart where Curie continued her studies with Becquerel until her death in  1934 of aplastic anemia which is thought to be due to her constant contact with radiation.

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They were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their discovery of articfical radioactivity. And with her mother went to the Western Front to x-ray soldiers which saved many lives. She died when she was 58 of Leukaemia because of the exposure form the radiation

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As a group we chose paper birds as our practitioner because this would allow us to have more exploration with our piece. It also means that we can dip in and out of character for narration which we would have not been able to do with idle motion.

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Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter – Martin Luther King

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Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter – Martin Luther King

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To be able to understand our stimulus more I did some brief research on Martin Luther King Jr. This allowed me to discuss my findings with the group for how we could address this stimulus. And this added how our performance evolved to fit with our practitioner’s political style.

Taken from Wikipedia

‘Martin Luther King Jr. was an American Baptist minister and activist who became the most visible spokesperson and leader in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968.’

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We choose this stimulus because we felt that it was best suited to us as we are addressing an issue which is not addressed often. How dangerous radiation is also our underlining message about how the governments and. Those in power will keep quiet and deceive their people for their own gain.

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We were slow to find our feet for this scene as we did not know where we wanted to go with it. One peice of research that I found that really stuck with me was that after they won the money they used it to pay for their own funerals. So we had a go at creating a scene within the funeral directors. However, we collectively felt that this did not show their story fully and how the employers at the factory made them carry on.

So we thought that the best place to set this scene would be the factory. Our original idea was that Kat and Hannah would be working in the factory and I would be the factory manager and would be dipping out of the scene to narrate. But when it actually came to it, it looked messy as I would have to keep changing and there would be big pauses. So I just became the narrator which was more effective because it would allow the audience to focus on these two girls and it would get their story across better.

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Chernobyl is one of the most famous nuclear disasters in history so we throught that it would be one of the best events to address however, we soon discovered that there were not many individual stories and felt that we should not make up a character as it would be disrespectful when all the rest of our characters were real people.

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CHOSEN IDEA, Atom Bomb- Main Character Kat (Appendix 5) 

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CHOSEN IDEA, Atom Bomb- Main Character Kat (Appendix 5) 

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The dropping of the two atom bombs was one of the most contriversial events in history. However, we did not want to present our personal opianions of wether or not they should have been dropped. We wanted to preform a story of one survivor so that the audience could have their own opinion. We all felt Kat would be the best to be the main character in this scene and she felt that she wanted to research some survivor stories and came across the story of Michiko and really connected to her story has she was a young girl when it happened. We used this story because she was only a few years younger than us and I think that the dropping of the bomb effected everyone even teenage civilians going to work.We also included some quotes from survivors because we felt that because they were real they were more effective than anything we could have made up and it was something that our practitioner did.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-53646820

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/07/23/national/history/hiroshima-atomic-bomb-diary-hibakusha/

https://www.worshipmedia.ca/2020/08/05/hiroshima-the-day-michiko-nearly-missed-her-train/

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We also wanted to cover a story that is not as well known. I found an article about the Manhattan Project and was instantly exited and read all about this miscarriage of justice and knew that this would be a good story for us.  When I read into it more I was shocked at how there was another government coverup. This became a human rights issue and the fact that I could only find the stories of a few of the ‘test subjects’ made the story even worse. I wanted to show the audience the facts of these people’s lives. And at first I found it extremely difficult to balance the facts with making the stories into an engaging performance. Which is where I came back to the ghost idea, which at first we were going to use as the frame work for all our scenes however this didn’t really work. So I experimented with rewriting the scene and found the right balance of story telling and the facts. I wanted to show how this happened to different people from all walks of life. So I chose so man, woman and child and  gave each of us one of them. I shared the parts out evenly so we would each have a monologue and a chance to become a character. And over lapped the ghosts story with the conversations of the other characters so that I could show the emotion but also the facts.
https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/human-radiation-experiments

http://rochistory.com/blog/?p=241

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We are all reporters on news event through history reporting on the disasters and big events connected to Marie Curie and radioactivity.

WHY NOT?
This idea was dismissed because through the rehearsal process and the evolution of our piece, Marie Curie’s life became less of an influence  on us as we found much more information on her work so our piece became a sort of a warning about the dangers of radiation.

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I have a new watch and Hannah is looking at it and giving me facts about the radium girls.

WHY NOT?

Not very interesting and we could not write much about it. A bit cringy, not very original

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Kat is struggling with her project. And Hannah and I are suggesting ideas to her. Then I pick up a news a paper and kat reads that the headline for a Marie Curie charity run and it gives her the idea to do her project on Marie Curie. We then watch a documentary on some of the big events to do with Marie Curie and Hannah starts pulling facts out of a pot noodle and I out of the mug that I am holding.

WHY NOT?

We decided that our opening was not effective enough as it was a bit long and boring with two many facts. We also found it a bit tedious because it did not fit with our piece because we did not go back to it at the end of the performance. It served us no purpose and was not worth the amount of time that it took so we got rid off it.

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I decided that I needed to approach rewriting the opening differently than I had in my previous drafts. So I got some inspiration to how Paper Birds open their productions such as Thirsty and Mobile. I realised they just introduced themselves gave a hint of things to come. Which was much simpler than what I had previously wrote so I drew directly from the practitioner.

We would talk directly to the audience and say who we were and what our purpose was- I made it clear that we knew that the audience was watching us by talking to them. I think this engaged them a bit more and made them feel included in the performance as a participant rather than observer.  I decided that we should be ourselves as this makes our performance much more naturalistic and not that we were acting but having a conversation. I think this put the audience at ease and more likely to feel immersed in the world that we were creating.  I also choose to include our personalities and make it humorous such as by mentioning an experience we all had, in school board and waiting for the lesson to end. This made a link with real life to the audience and  because it would lighten the mood and make the more tense scenes later to contrast with the opening so that we could address how bad these events were and make them real rather than a distant part of history.

WHY WE CHOSE IT?
We had a read through of this scene and felt it was a lot better than the others and showed who we were and what we wanted to achieve in a short amount of time.

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We wanted to show a relaxed, casual atmosphere for when we are out of chatracter. So chose a simple way of showing that we were at home through dressing gowns. Although we did have a look at wearing pajarmers this didn’t really work because we had to change so quickly.

When we changed our first scene, wearing dressing gowns were no longer effective because we no longer at home so it would not make sense for us to wear pjs.So we decided all blacks would be best because they are the most neutral and most professional looking.

CHOSEN COSTUMES - ALL Blacks
We knew that we would be quickly changing onstage so we have chosen to wear all black which means we can quickly add costume to change character. It also means that each character is easily identifiable.

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Magic props to go with the practitioner- this will make our performance interesting and more engaging like a magic show.

-newspaper
-pot noodle, mug, remote with facts coming out.

In our final idea we made our scene much shorter to fit the time limit so there was no need for us to use props.

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Izzy blacks- Narrator so wanted to make it obvious to the audience that I was not in the scene so they would focus their attention on Kat and Hannah and the scene.
KAT/HANNAH cap  and apron apron - simple way to show that they are working in a factory and give an idea of the time period whilst making it easy for them to change.

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Two watches- KAT and HANNAH painting them
Two paint-brushes- KAT and HANNAH
Newspaper- IZZY reading the newspaper story of Quinta- smart prop

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News reporters IZZY/HANNAH- tie easy to change, identifiable
Same factory worker outfit- ALL easy to change, identify character

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Microphone for reporters

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Wash of light. We wanted to use simple lighting because we felt that the scenes where our lighting was more complex would stand out better against our normal lighting. Paper Birds also often use a wash because they are a tiring company so has to keep the lighting simple in case they arrived in a venue with not much equipment, the show would be exactly the same as if it were in a venue with the equipment.

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We wanted to transport the audience back 100 years through the lighting to help us. We wanted to use dim lighting to create a cold, sad, nostalgic atmosphere. Which we lit with a few yellow beams of light to look like lamps, the ones that would have most likely been at the factory . We used this lighting because electricity would have only been recently invented when this took place so more than likely it would have been quite dark. I think this lighting was effective because the spotlights allowed you to focus on the characters and the shadows were a metaphor for the secrets that were hidden form these women and I think it gave this scene an air of secrets and fear.

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We used our white wash for when we were narrating to oppose the strobes we would use for the bombing. This made it easy to devide the places from the restraint to the news studio.

THE BOMBING
We wanted to make this moment feel chaotic and show the danger so we used strobes. We decided that the lighting would be the most effective way along with sound to convey the sense that a bomb had been dropped. We first tried to act out the sequence however, when we were offstage and it was just the lighting and sound it was a lot more effective and believeable.

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News reporters ties- KAT HANNAH
Floral dress- IZZY looks motherly, easy to change, easy to identify character and her personality

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Tv remote to change the channel

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Low lighting, create sad cold atmosphere. blues and whites peaceful

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This scene, although detailed was too long so we decided to focus on one story of Simon’s mother. We felt that this was the one that stuck with us the most as he was so young. We liked the idea of the reporter scene at the end of the atom bomb scene so continued this and used it to carry the narrative but top also present the facts while I gave the emotion as the character to give  both sides of the story the facts and the human cost which is not talked about as much. This shortened the scene but also allowed for enough information to be conveyed to the audience.

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To use our voices to communicate emotion, character status and personality, formality- e.g the news reporters and accent.

This should make our performance  more effective by improving this skill we will make our performance more refined and entertaining to the audience.

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During our online lessons we would have a read through of the script in character but have our cameras off to our small audience to see how we would use our voices to preform.

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We received feedback from our read through and have used them to improve our script and the way we preformed it with our voices. I found this task beneficial becasue we were not able to rely on  body language and the staging to commentate with the audince which has taught me how important it is to use my voice as well as all the other aspects of a preformance and to just focus on that.

Improvements to make:
Using accent more often to show the character and varying the accents

Varying tone of voice- this will show who the character is, there personality, status, gender  and age

Shorter- during our read through the script was too long for the time allowance.

Developing the way we spoke emotion

Positives:

We were able to see what needed improving

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We spend a session looking through our script and editing parts that were not needed and only keeping the parts that were important to the story. We also re-rote the ATOM BOMB and MANHATTAN PROJECT scenes because we felt that they were two long and could be more dynamic. KAT and I worked on our two scenes together and made them more similar such as we would both be news reporters this allowed us to move into each scene and to connect them together. I also shortened my scene to only have one story so we would be able to stay in the time limit.

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-To get an insight to how dangerous and powerful these elements are
-To lead to the big events in history that came form Curie’s discoveries, which was what we later based our performance on
-Gave us a foundation to what radiation is and this understanding helped us appreciate the elements and to experiment how we would present this to the audience

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How our stimulus influenced our decisions 

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How our stimulus influenced our decisions 

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Our stimulus made our performance become more political rather than factual because we were addressing something that is not talked about or widely understood by the general public, only the specialists in that field. I believe that this needs to be common knowledge so that will lead to safer uses of radioactive elements so that the events that we addressed in our performance can be prevented from happening again.

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Music- create mood set a scene in the time period
Experimented with magic props- didn’t end up in final piece because the scene no longer was being used
Breaking the fourth wall- to engage the audience and make them feel involved in the experience
Sound effects- make the experience seem more real and give the performance more dimensions
Verbatium- Witness accounts were more effective because they knew what happened, they were there so it gives their words more gravity and makes our peice more emotional so that the audience can get an idea of what it was like to like then
Media clips- The president is a source of authority so shows how bad these events were and makes them more shocking and real.
Multi-rolling we were a cast of three so multi-rolling was needed to cover the whole story

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I found a clip during my research to write this scene of president Clinton declassifying the files of the Human experiments. We felt that it fitted well because he was a person in authority and a source that could be trusted but it also fitted with the news reporters and made it seem as if it was happening in real time.

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Targeted Individual / Gang Stalking in Maryland

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President Clinton's Apology for Human Experimentation

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The purpose for the music in this scene was to set the time period of the 1920s. So we found this mix of tracks and picked a section that we liked, which was calming and felt a bit nostalgic which would not take away the action but play gently underneath the dialogue. It added emotion and made this scene have more depth and rawness. I felt that listening to the music made me feel connected to these women as they might have been listening to the same track as we were  now and I hoped that through this music we would make the audience feel the same.

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20s & 20s Music: Roaring 20s Music and Songs Playlist (Vintage 20s Jazz Music)

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We used this sound effect to make it more real to the audience that they were experiencing a news report. It made it more exclusive and made what we were saying more important because the news were there from all around the world.

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We used some contemporary music from The Paper Birds soundtrack to run through the monologue to create a sad atmosphere and show the grief that the character is suffering. We used modern music because this scene was set much later than when it happened to show the long term effects of the mothers suffering and used the contemporary music to show how time has gone on.

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We decided that we would use the sound effect of a bomb dropping to make this moment seem more real to the audience and hearing the whistling would create the sense of fear and dread because they would know what was coming and possibly have a bit of an understanding of what the Japensease citizens experienced which made our message more powerful about the dangers of radiation.

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Dropping Bomb with Explosion Sound ~ Gaming Sound Effects

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We wanted to create the apprehension  of the bomb dropping and to make the scene have more depth so found a recording of a place form the era. I really like this sound effect because it takes you back and makes the audience feel involved in the experience.

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Supermarine Spitfire  - Original Sound + Low pass

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For our opening we wanted fairly simple staging as we would just be introducing ourselves. We decided to stand because we wanted to create an energy and make the audience feel involved.

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We decided that KAT and HANAH would be sitting at the desk because they would be working in the factory and to differentiate between who is in and out of the scene I am separate room the sitting on the box where I would read the newspaper for when I talk about the newspaper report

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This is our transition between the radium girls and atom bomb KAT is in the centre because she is the main character for the next scene

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We decided to be quite close to each other because we were friends so it made sense and it would look like a work place

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I would be sitting on the box watching the news report which is where I would start the monologue.KAT would be at the desk to represent a news studio. HANNAH is downstage left because she is life in America so used the stage to separate where each character was.

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HANNAH would be centre stage on her own so the audience would only focus on her and make the dialogue more effective.

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To separate us ands to show the audience we are in different countries I am sitting at the desk as the news reporter and KAT and HANNAH are centre stage to draw the audiences’ attention.