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Having a verbatim piece was perfect for our topic gender. Gender is a topic that is both talked about and ridiculed over the internet and almost everyone has an opinon on it. i took great inspiration from the play the laramie project when giving my input into the piece. this is because it looked into the way a homosexual man was treated which in many ways has similaritys to how trans people are treated. verbatim also naturally allows it self to become hard hitting. knowing that the words have come from a real person have the potential to make a piece incredibly personal and moving. the laramie project does this perfectly in my opinion which is why we stole the format of winding monologues on peoples opinions on gender into a story.

we also experimented with physical theatre. we thought it would be a great way to get the audience thinking. what may be a simple thought of a girl and and a boy on stage was challenged by the obvious mirroring of each other as well as swapping place really making the audience question what they are seeing

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while doing our piece i was very keen to make it as hard hitting as possible. i belive this is important as we did not want to make the topic seem light hearted. this naturally raised the age of our target audience. Gender has become a big thing recently on the internet so i thought it was also important to target teenagers. this came with challenges as we needed to try and apply to a younger auidence that may not fully understand the extent of events. this is why we decided to have interviews that were unrelated to the chelsea manning case. we wanted to give a realistic depiction of events from real people that they could hopefully relate to. it also added some needed relief to the dark nature of the chelsea manning case we were depicting.

looking back on it i feel we could have more effectivley done this. i belive we should of got a wider range of ideologys about gender so people could have seen a bigger picture as our plan wasnt to tell people what they should think about gender, but merely express the way we felt gender is conceived in the modern time. i also think we should have spent more time trying to grab hold of our target audience (16 - 30) and made it more applicable to them. by the end of the time we had i felt like we were rushing our piece and made the whole piece rather generic.

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https://australianplays.org/category/23

a list of verbatim plays. I looked at some of them for influence while making our piece

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http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2014/02/heres-a-list-of-58-gender-options-for-facebook-users/

a list and explanation of many different types of genders to help give ideas to our piece

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http://code.on.ca/resource/verbatim-theatre

a link i used to help form our piece by looking at the imperatives of verbatim theatre

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelsea_Manning
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-38661018
http://www.independent.co.uk/topic/chelsea-manning

Links i used to learn about and keep up to date with the chelsea manning case

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http://health.howstuffworks.com/medicine/surgeries-procedures/stages-of-gender-reassignment2.htm

A link to a real life accont of gender reassignment

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http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Story?id=277685&page=1
https://www.aclu.org/blog/speak-freely/matthew-shepard-was-brutally-murdered-laramie-wyoming-1998-last-night-city-passed
http://www.matthewshepard.org/about-us/

The previous are links to the famous mathew shepard murder case. i have researched this because it was made into a verbatim piece called the laramie project. The laramie project was my inspiration of the piece as the represion of mathew shepard and the trans comunity share many link

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Today we discussed our piece as well as consent forms

The first thing we did was to present to the other group what we have done so far. our group so far is still struggling for a narrative to cover so it was a little bit of relief to learn the other group was to. Our group basically knows the sort of opinons we want to get. We want to get the opinon of the council the opinion of regular people both for and against it as well as those directly affected by it.

The next thing we did was discus consent forms. consent forms are vital as for legal reasons you need proof that you have been given permission to use the stuff discussed in the interview. because of the nature of thing we will be asking it is important we disclose everything that will need to be used in our piece to make sure the people are 100% okay with it.

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The first thing we did today was perform our verbatim monologues.

I was amazed at how different people's performance's could be when they are all working off the same script. i really like Luke's version of our script he went for a different vibe to me opting to go with a version that portrays the man as still very upset and on edge almost slightly psychotic which made the piece seem just that little bit more real.
I learned from watching peoples pieces that our group (me included) has a tendency to go into a sort of performance mode were we making every movement and sound very precise and slightly over the top because that is the typical way of performing but when doing a verbatim piece it is important to try and blur those lines a little bit to make it feel real life. This is why Luke's piece stood out to me

The second thing we did was start our development process on creating our own piece on Verbatim theatre. we were split into two groups and asked to pick a topic to do a piece or verbatim theatre on. Our group has decided to do our piece on genders because it is something that is becoming more and more prevalent in our society as well as drawing lots of different opinons from all angles. we then went to the library and started our basic research on genders.

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Today we carried on working on our verbatim monologues.

Although all i did was try and perfect my monologue i was given some useful feed back from Luke. He noticed that when i preform i do it in a dramatised way so it was obvious i had thought about when to move so he suggested that i should try and be a bit more figgity so i seemed more whilled up by the situation. His point made sense especcially as it is a verbatim piece of theatre making it as real life as possible is important.

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Today we started our work on the Verbatim Theatre unit.

Verbatim theatre is a style of documentary theatre that will take precise words, phrases or even interviews from real people about the topic or event you are talking about.

We started talking about Anna Deavere Smith's play, Twilight, Los Angeles. The play is about the LA riots and the people effected by them.

Each person in the room was given a script with a monologue from the play in it and we were allowed to individually work on it as performance.
My monologue was from the guy who was charged with beating Rodney King which was the catalyst for the LA Riots.

When giving my script the first thing i looked at was my delivery of speech. Im not very good at delivering my lines at the right tempo so i sat through and figured it out. This was more of a challenge then first thought as because this is a verbatim piece and as the lines are written they dont always make as much sense as they should do. The next thing i did was try and imagine his mind set. as a police officer being charged with assault it was pretty clear it would be a big feeling of shame as well as being scared of the consequences. I tried to put on what could almost be described as a 'shaky' voice to try and portray this as well as making it look like when i wasn't directly talking about the beating i was trying to change the subject out of shame. I then thought about my staging. i decided to sit down during my scene almost like i was being interviewed. Sitting down also gave me the benefit of being able to appear like i was "on the edge of my seat" when i was getting upset and stressed while also being able to retreat make in my chair for comfort when trying to change the subject

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Today, we explored soundscaping.

Certain people in the class were asked to bring in a picture of a scene. with this picture we had to create a soundscape that showed a dynamic. the picture we had in our group was a picture of a really tall fragile land bridge surrounded by water with a sort of medieval esque look. while doing this thing thing that I picked up was how important even the smallest of sounds can be. the background noise of our scene was vital to portraying the area.

We were also asked then to create a soundscape using items that made the noises. we decided to make a christmas sounding scene. making a sound scape using items is a completely different challenge as although you may be able to make much more distinctive sounds the items of aren't very diverse in how many different sounds it can make

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In todays lesson we watched all of the groups pieces they had been working on in the lesson of the 28/9/16.

On thing that really stood out to me was cams groups way of keeping the audience engaged. they were doing a piece on educating children on what to do in the event of a fire. they decided to get the audience to choose the outcome of the character and made it into an interactive drama. this can be really effective as it will engage the audience more by giving them this sense of power as well as making the story more relatable to the audience.

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In todays lesson we were introduced to the idea of archetypes

Archetypes can be very important in telling a story because it can be a sure fire way of giving the audience information by fulfilling these archetypes. For example when telling a story to children archetypes are vital as they will not be able to handle diverse storys with depth and plot twists so having a stereotypical character can be a great way of subconsciously feeding the audience thing we want to know about the character such as what there personality may be like or what they be being doing or get up to. an example of this is the archetype of hero. a hero is used a lot in children's books because it is and easy black and white way of portraying good and evil when coupled with a vilain.

The first activity we did was to practice some well known archetypes. we walked around the room and were asked to become different archetypes such as a mother, a hero, a trickster etc. This exercise was really good for helping think about what these different archetypes have that make them so rememberable.

The second thing we did was to experiment with children's theatre. we discussed the fact that when preforming to children there always seems to be a message of some kind wether that be learning about something or a message of well being. we also discussed that when making a piece of theatre for children you need to make sure you retain there focus. We were split into three groups and asked to make a piece of theatre. Our groups piece of theatre had to be educational. At first we struggled to develop a scene because although it had to be educational we needed the piece to be fun and enjoyable. In the end we decided to do our piece on a very basic and dumbed down version of the evolution of man. we decided that the way we would catch our audiences attention would be to have us physically act out the evolutions and also make funny noises to try and make the audience laugh. As narrator i also adapted the way i spoke. i over exaggerated everything and really emphasised my excitement for what i was talking about and made it seem like i believed every word i was saying. this is vital in story telling because if the audience thinks your not giving 100% they wont want to engross themselves in it because not even the narrator is.

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Today we did a few communication exercises

The first exercise we did was were one person went out the room and the rest of the class set up an obstacle using chairs. One person will go round the course in a order of there choosing. The person who went outside then has to come back in and go around the obstacle course in the same order using nothing other then claps as a sign of going in the right direction. This exercise is very challenging yet good as it improves your concentration skills as you need to listen to the way people react so you can get round the course in the right order.

The second exercise we did was similar to the first. Someone would go out side the room and get blindfolded. they would then come back into the room and have to make there way through the obstacle course blindfolded. There will be two people giving you instructions, one person giving correct instructions trying to get you through safely and the other trying to make you lose. This Exercise is very challenging for two people, the person blindfolded and the person trying to make them lose. The person blindfolded for one has the physical problem. If instructions aren't specific enough or misheard you are in danger of walking into something without doing anything obviously wrong. this is why it is so vital that you listen so carefully. The person trying to give the wrong instructions has the hardest job however. The problem with trying to give wrong directions is that its hard to make yourself seem innocent because the person trying to safely guide the person through the course will naturally take charge and guide them through safely. the technique needed to get someone to fail is you need to gain trust you need to try and take charge and give off the impression that you are in charge and can be trusted. these are all very important to bare in mind when telling a story because you need to be able to manipulate and emotionally draw in your audience so they are fully amerced in what your saying.

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Today we concluded our pieces on the objects (louise's Wristband).

Overall i believe our piece was a success. Although some people may argue that our item didn't play a big enough part of our performance i argue the opposite. I believe that storytelling is about learning to use your resources to aid you and not let the dictate your piece.

I think we maybe however could of come up with more indepth characters for Jordan and Rachel because the entire piece seemed to revolve around me and Louise and in a way they almost weren't needed at all to progress the story. I belive making Jordan and Rachels characters more developed would have heavily improved the depth of the piece.

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For todays lesson, we were asked to watch stand up comedians and take notes on how they tell stories in there shows.

I took notes on Jimmy Carr. I realised that the Jimmy Carr focus's on audiences attention when doing his standup. One thing he does is to keep his jokes short. A lot of comedians can have 15 minutes segments in there shows dedicated to a single joke or joke subject which can sometimes lead to the comedian going of topic a lot and occasionally losing audience intrest. By keeping his jokes short he cuts out all the nonsense from his material and it makes it a lot easier to maintain intrest while watching his shows. This can be applied to storytelling as it is important to not go on to much while telling a story so you can maintain audiences attention
The second thing Jimmy does in his shows is tell 2 or 3 punch line jokes. He will tell a joke and deliver the punchline. This punchline however leads up to and even funnier punch line and so on and so forth. this can be applied to story telling because it can often keep you on your toes and expecting more improving audience attention so making your story less linear can have a good out come at improving the quality of the narrative

We then discussed the target audience for our comedians. Jimmy Carrs target audience is obviously over 18's as his material is crude and often very offensive

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The previous storytelling lesson we had we were asked to each bring in an item that could tell a story for todays lesson.

I decided to use my phone as my item as my point was that a phone is with you through all aspects of your life and can almost act like a central hug for story's and drama's

We were put into groups and were asked to pick one item that someone had from that group had brought in and make a story out of it. We choose Louise's wrist band as it could have various different meanings to it.

At first we were asked to develop one scene using that item to tell a story. We made a piece about a group of friends being split up because of university. My character had an intrest in Louises character and was finally going to ask her out untill he realises that she is moving far away to go to university.

We decided to use the wristband to strengthen the show of love for my characters love towards Louise's character as we made it clear to the auidence that the band had i love you written on it.

This task was very good at developing the way we use props to enhance a story and to tell it more effectively. It was also very intresting to see how people can go from a wrist band to developing a full scene about love that, apart from its use to show the love between character, had nothing to do with a wrist band.

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Today we practised our storytelling abilities by playing the minute game.

The minute game is a game were people need to talk about a certain subject for a minute without hesitation or repetition.

I learnt by watching other preform there attempts that a big problem people had was going to fast. A lot of people were speaking very quickly when given there subject and kept stumbling and failing as they couldn't get the words out of there head quick enough.

When it came time for me to attempt the minute game i picked the subject 'gardening'. I really tried to slow myself down while playing the minute game and managed to succeed!

I learnt 2 things from the minute game:
1 - Don't Rush - people panicked and started talking way to fast and were running out of things to say. pace is vital to story telling to maintain audience intrest as well as not confusing yourself
2 - Take thing one step at a time - This also goes hand in hand with dont rush. People panic and try to instantly think of everything they can say at once. If you relax and tell your story or whatever its is point by point, it will flow organically and the chances are you will think of things to say instead of getting confused

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Today we learnt about the work of Augusto Boal. A man famous for founding the theatre of the oppressed. We experimented with a task called the game of power. We were given a table 6 chairs and a drinks bottle and were told to make one of the chairs more powerful.

It was a very interesting experiment as it helped to see how different brains think regarding power. some people made a chair stand out by placing it on its own by making it strongly independant were as others would but lots of chairs behind the power chair to show things behind it

This task was designed to get us thinking about the different links between things and how those links can portray messages.

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Today was our introduction to story telling

The first thing we did was an exercise to A: Help us get to know our class mates better and B: To see witness how every one gave facts about themselves or told "a story"

The second thing we did was a task that involved listening and story telling. We were put into pairs and had to label each other either A or B. We both told each other a true story that the other person would have to listen to and remember. We then had to retell the story back to the class with out missing out any of this features. This task helped us to learn how to listen to the small details of story's as well as develop our story telling skills so that the story's we were telling were rememberable and engaging.

The third thing we did was create a mind map in groups. The mind map was about things that made a good story. This was a surprisingly tricky exercise as so much more comes to mind then you would initially think about.

The final thing we were asked to do was tell a story about what the object you had been given had gone through. I was with Jordan and we were given a party hat. This task was designed to get us to think more creatively about the story's we were telling as well as holding the message of everything has a story.