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Along with the poem, we also developed a small drama which explained the cutting down of the oak tree that was in our city centre and discussed the point of views of the managers and retailers as well as the city's residents. This then led into a song in which we replaced the original lyrics with some of our own. This was sung/acted to the tune of "Whats this?" from The Nightmare Before Christmas which explained that the city isn't in fact what everyone says it is and that we don't follow the typical stereotypes everyone gives us.

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Overall, I feel that the entire performance went extremely well! Everyone remembered their parts, there were no hiccups and it flowed together perfectly to create an effective piece of physical theatre. It was an amazing bonding experience which really helped get to know my fellow classmates and what will come in the future of this course.

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One thing that was disliked by many was the fact that a lot of the things we worked on were removed when we were integrating the dancers and the actors. It was changed a fair bit from the performance we all worked so hard on for the past week, but in truth, removing, integrating and mixing our work had improved our performance so much more and created a better and more eye catching piece.

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Continuing from that, the poem we created started to form as a performance when we brought in the physical theatre effects as well as the vocal effects. We thought that if we do the actions that relate to the poem, we could tell the poem's story through our bodies to the audience.

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After the introductory icebreakers, there was an idea to use a courtroom scene as the opening of the piece in which Milton Keynes was to be accused of "Cooperate boredom, worshipping the god of retail, being a concrete, bland, cultural desert". This gave us the chance to defend ourselves from common stereotypes and tell the truth about this "young city". We came up with an array of words describing the city such as "space, culture, entertainment, greenery" and so much more! Some actions were created to go with the words in order to increase the effect. We all volunteered to say a few words each, which we decided to all shout out one after the other whilst showing the audience that MK isn't what everyone says it is. It gave us the chance to feel pride for our city.

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One downside to the whole process was the digressing which was almost constant throughout the first few days. Although she might not have realised, our mentor, Rosemary Hill, was keen on storytelling, which may have slowed down the process of creating our piece and altering it. Despite this, we all enjoyed working with her! It was a privilege to be able to work with a professional so early on in the course.

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Afterwards, we experimented with sound and action through words using poetry and a stanza in Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream". At first we didn't like the idea as we got confused with the vocal expressions such as scatter, echo and call and response. However, after managing to understand what they were, we managed to create an effective piece of physical theatre in which we transferred ideas to the final Home Sweet Home piece. One of the effects we all came to like was the soundscapes, as it gives the audience an insight as to what the scene is like. This effect was successfully used in the final piece.

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As we started the project, we were introduced to improvisation, which I personally disliked beforehand. However, that seemed to change after being challenged to more difficult characters and situations. For example, when we were introduced to "park bench", we were challenged to come up with a character on the spot as well as their personality and backstory. It was well enjoyed by actors and audience alike!

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Our project that we worked on was called "Home Sweet Home". The project was about celebrating Milton Keynes' fiftieth birthday and conveying our views, opinions and memories of MK.

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We were privileged enough to work with professionals in a collaboration between  The Play's The Thing Theatre Company, Motus dance, The Gray Circle and us in MK College (Performing Arts course)