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After running through the entire piece, there were a few things that we needed to change.

In the final scene where Finn's hallucination of his friends starts to break down and they all start shouting at each other, it was too chaotic. The characters were all arguing at the same time over the top of each other and despite being in the round, this was too much. Therefore we cheated it a little by using mime and when Finn approached us, we would begin to shout. Stylistically this ended up actually working quite nicely as it allowed the audience to experience the action more from Finn's point of view, with their attention being drawn to different characters as Finn walks up to them.

Amelia's presence in Finn's life wasn't made apparent until she appears in the scene with him. Therefore in order for the audience to anticipate her, we made sure that Finn and Jake mention her near the beginning of the piece. This also gave me an idea on how to make the story more interesting...

In the final scene Sarah returns saying that she's changed her mind and thinks that she could in fact see Finn as more than a friend. Chaos then ensues following Amelia's reaction to seeing another woman in Finn's life. Despite the fact that she's his ex, she's so up herself that she wants to believe she's the best Finn will ever get and wants to continue to control him, allowing for really intense friction between her and Sarah. What has changed prior to this is that on Finn's desk is a framed picture of him and Amelia that he forgot to take down. This again draws more attention to my character earlier on in the piece, increasing the audience's curiosity as Finn becomes angry after realising Sarah must have seen the picture before she left. It also gives Sarah more of an internal dilemma that the audience can catch on to.

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We achieved this by after improvising all the scenes in our piece, a scene was allocated to a group member each and we typed them up in order to edit and improve little bits of script and enhance elements of the story. I personally put together and wrote the majority of this.

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After losing a game of rock paper scissors to decide which actor would get the part of Finn's imaginary best friend, I was left with the role of Finn's manipulative ex. We knew she would be manipulative because Rachel had presented her character Sarah as a nice, friendly young woman in improvisation which works really well for the story as it gives the audience something to hope for. They begin to see Finn is a little different in the first scene where he is interacting with Jake and it becomes known that he has a crush on Sarah and that she is coming to visit. It reaches a complication when at the end of the scene with Sarah, as nice as she is explains to  Finn that she doesn't like him in that way.
From this I knew my character would have to be fiery to contrast with Sarah, and to create drama in the scene I would have to reveal mine and Finn's mysterious history, and show a nasty element to my seemingly caring character by taking advantage of his vulnerable mental state.
All of this came to my head after the previous scenes were improvised but when it came down to improvising, I was hopeless. Therefore I decided to write the scene and then see what further characterisation I could find for Amelia.

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We decided that type one bipolar disorder fit quite well with the character that Ben had improvised. During our piece, Finn is in the midst of a manic episode and is experiencing severe psychosis.

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Room is a critically acclaimed 2015 film starring Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay. It tells the story of 24 year old Joy, abducted when she was 17 and her 5 year old son, Jack. They live in a shed that they call "Room" imprisoned there by "Old Nick". Jack has never experienced the outside world, and Joy has him believe that everything he sees on TV isn't real, Room is all there is. They manage to escape and Old Nick is imprisoned, but both Mother and Son struggle adjusting to normal life once back with their family. The film concludes with the pair slowly but surely settling in to their new life after Joy had attempted suicide. On Jack's request they are escorted back to Room by police and say their goodbyes.
This film was great inspiration for our drama taking place in the protagonist Finn's bedroom. The clear understanding of the mental side effects of being imprisoned is part of what makes the film so effective, so we knew our protagonist would have to accurately show signs of whichever mental illness is causing him to allude that he is in his bedroom and unwilling to leave, when in reality he's in a mental hospital.

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Performing In The Round presented us with a bit of a challenge but mostly gave us the opportunity to be a lot more creative with staging. After creating the characters that show the dynamic of Finn's life and then fitting them into scenes, it worked out that for the majority of the piece we had two or three people on the stage at any one time. With audience surrounding us not on only four sides but entirely in a circle, this worked really well for us as by having two characters facing each other pretty much always and incorporating movement in dialogue scenes were less static, more naturalistic and allowed for every audience member to see at least one actor's face at any time.
It was initially slightly difficult as all of the group was used to performing on an End-On stage, with phrases like "don't turn your back to the audience" and "cheat the conversation" often running through our heads. It was strange not having to slightly turn towards the audience and speak out to them when having a conversation with someone on stage. It certainly gave our acting a realistic intimacy that the audience got to be immersed in too.

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After Ben, Rachel, Mitch, Tom, Mungo and I listed any thoughts we had on Dennis Severs' house, we proceeded to discuss what goals we wanted to set for our piece and themes and styles we wanted to steer towards. It was quickly unanimously decided that we wanted our piece to have a narrative as all of our previous devised shows were montages of scenes not interconnected by a plot. Not only did we decide this to freshen things up,  but with the house having such a strong historical presence - full of hundreds of stories - it would only be right to have a plot.
Ben put forward that he really liked the idea of there being a room that gets moved around, similar how to the rooms or exhibits are regularly changed at Dennis Severs' house. At this point we were informed that our performance space for this project would be In The Round, and so we agreed that a story that takes place in or centres around one room would be ideal. No one in the group was particularly pressed to make this project more challenging so decisions were made easily. Constantly fighting to think outside of the box can be the key to a really good play but it is not always necessary, and as we were tasked with "devise a 15 minute play from this stimulus" and not "devise a play tackling social issues" or "develop your own style of theatre", we knew that we could make an interesting and entertaining piece of drama without getting sidetracked by focusing on stylistic or thematic choices not crucial to the central plot.

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Our final performance was successful as we got a brilliant reaction from our audience. It became apparent that our focus on the dynamic between characters was a fantastic idea, as audience members were clearly moved by the relationship between Finn and Jake, shocked by Sarah "friendzoning" Finn and empathised with Finn when I showed Amelia's true manipulative colours. With our initial goal being to communicate themes like broken homes, divorce, family life, friendship and relationships, we fully succeeded in that.
If we were to further improve this play we would probably come up with a name for it, and also design set and lighting for the show. During the change from Finn's imagined bedroom to a hospital room I felt that it could have been really effective had we had the technology at our disposal. I had a vision of none of the set moving or changing at all when the shift happens, but through projections and lighting everything becomes dull, just bog standard hospital furniture that Finn painted into life in his mind in order to escape.
The performance showed that by choosing a protagonist the same age as our target audience of teenagers, our audience were able to empathise with him deeply as he experiences trouble with his dad and relationships.

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In order to ensure every actor in our group had a part in our piece, before we became too focused on the plot we decided upon 6 characters to make up the mentally ill Finn's family and friends. Although we initially considered Finn having two parents or a brother as well as his dad, we settled with just the character of Dad looking after him. We felt this made for a more interesting family dynamic, and with a cast of only 6 actors a part may have been wasted on a Mum. This left us with the role of Protagonist, Parent, we then added in (imaginary) Best Friend, Crush, (psycho) Ex-Girlfriend and then a Doctor for the big reveal at the end. This selection of characters made for the most interesting possible dynamic we thought, rather than having two parents or maybe a sibling. The interactions we improvised with these characters proved this point true.

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Some Background Info on Dennis Severs' House

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Some Background Info on Dennis Severs' House

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It is both a breathtaking and an intimate portrait of the lives of a family of Huguenot silk-weavers from 1724 to the dawn of the 20th Century. As you follow their fortunes through the generations, the sights, smells and sounds of the house take you into their lives. It was Dennis Severs’ intention that as you enter his house it is as if you have passed through the surface of a painting, exploring with your senses and imagination a meticulously crafted 18th Century world.

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Creating a scene using Tyrone was challenging, as we weren't focusing on our voices or our movements but rather entirely on how we could move some scrunched up bits of newspaper to tell a story. Through Tyrone's group of puppeteers improvising a scene with another puppet, we found that when left to only movement to create drama with we quickly resorted to violence. This was fine as slapstick violence is commonplace with puppetry like Punch and Judy, the only problem we faced was the size of the puppets. As they were so small we were informed that we would have to incorporate their size into the movements and make them bigger, more defined and maybe ever slow motion. Otherwise especially with 6 puppeteers crowded round the two puppets, it becomes a blur of hands and newspaper.

Another challenge we faced using puppetry was focus. I think the main reason for this is when you are devising a piece using actors as characters, every person has their very own character to be concerned with and thinking about what they could do, how they can contribute to the story, what traits they should have etc. However with puppetry, each character is shared between three people. Because of this concentration often lapsed within the group and as much as I really enjoyed using puppets they would not be suitable to use for our final devised piece as not enough people in the class enjoyed using them. This workshop definitely opened me up to the importance of using movement when devising.

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In order to practise our devising skills, the class split into  groups, each assigned a poem to create a piece from.

I made my song a coat
Covered with embroideries
Out of old mythologies
From heel to throat;
But the fools caught it,
Wore it in the world’s eyes
As though they’d wrought it.
Song, let them take it
For there’s more enterprise
In walking naked.
- W. B. Yeats

Trying not to get too caught up in the meaning(s) of the poem, we all noted what stuck out to us the most. The majority of the group (myself included) were a bit overwhelmed with the complex and metaphorical nature so we started by picking out themes we noticed in the poem.

"Them" / "They" repeated

Mythology

Clothing

Song

Hierarchy

Following this, our next step was to see what we could make of these points - if a story or concept came to any of our minds that would be a fantastic starting point for the task. What we came up with instead were characters. We felt that going along with the theme of a hierarchy or power play within the poem, six characters could be used to represent that: The Fool, The Guard, The Liberator, The King, The Media and God. The fool was the protagonist of our short piece and is at the bottom of the food chain until empowered by The Liberator, a rebel who wants to overthrow the hierarchy. The Guard comes above the Fool, with his job being to enforce the rules set by the king to oppress the people. The King and Media end up on the same level, constantly fighting as whilst The King maintains the power of his position as ruler of the society, The Media is read and believed by so many, is everywhere in every home feeding the people whatever the editors wish that Media also has a hugely significant amount of power. God resides over all of it, controlling both King and Media.
We then had a discussion about including other points in the narrative, but it was mutually decided that with our short time frame it would be unsuitable to try and cram in our other initial ideas - we already had a story.  If after the piece had been rehearsed we had some time, it is at that point we could have embellished what we had with more material, maybe a subplot.
After completing this exercise, the only problem we found was that in using something metaphorical as a stimulus, our piece ended up being rather metaphorical and abstract to the point that our audience didn't really understand what was going on. We were informed that our piece was still enjoyable, but there needed to be a moment where something clicked, where the scenes of duologues eventually led to some sort of realisation - for example maybe if the characters described their names or made clear their motivation, rather than leaving absolutely everything up to the audience.

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The chosen stimulus for our final devised play was a trip to Dennis Sever's House in Shoreditch. Sadly I was unable to attend this outing so I did some research of my own and came up with ideas to start the devising process based off of accounts from my fellow classmates.

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Frantic Assembly are a physical theatre company who pioneered the use of Chair Duets as a tool for devising. The company focuses on the ethos of collaboration and empowerment and their work is described as brutally dynamic yet also proudly tender and fragile.

We began with little more than a fierce work ethic and a desire to do something different and to do it differently.

They have created many successful productions, performed mainly in the UK and Australia including Things I Know To Be True and Stokholm, and were responsible for the spectacular physical theatre in the hugely successful National Theatre production of The Curious Incident of The Dog in the Night Time, a BAFTA award winning show that has toured the UK, Ireland and the US.
I find their work liberating and inspirational, with each step that their performers take, every individual movement they make being filled with expression and the passionate ethos that the company encourages.
Their passion for collaboration is made clear on their website and inspires a feeling of community within creativity and has definitely changed my perspective on devising drama. Rather than a chore, it has become something that I now enjoy, through its challenges.

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In today's lesson we made very basic Bunraku puppets out of newspaper. We began by creating the puppet's body and head out of scrunched balls of newspaper, then neck, arms, and legs, with simple folds in the rolls of paper existing as knee and elbow joints. The puppet's small size and awkward manoeuvrability meant it was challenging to move it as a group of three puppeteers but after working through these difficulties it slowly became easier. What ultimately allowed us to gain total control of our puppet was breathing. We found that if we all breathed in time, moving the puppets shoulders up and down with us he instantly came alive. His movements were more fluid as we had found a rhythm that was consistent through all three of us. This was a very intimate type of teamwork and being so in sync is an exceptionally useful skill that I intend to apply to our future group devising work.
We named our puppet Tyrone Jenny Tyrone, and whilst we of course didn't give him a face as any expression would take away from the focus of using movement to tell a story, he had a six pack and a cape because why not. Character building ;)

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Experimenting with methods of devising further, Alex and I improvised our own chair duet. It was challenging at first as we didn't really know where to start, but we found that after starting with a very simple movement - touching hands - we created an intimate and sensitive chair duet. It became more intense and passionate as we became faster and one movement led to another. Occasionally we would have to go back and correct or change things as they weren't quite fluid or didn't fit, but it was surprisingly easy to create a story of romance between two people using movement.
The challenge was that most of this we did without communicating verbally, it was done just by feeling the energy between us and being aware of each other's body language and matching it, or leading the mood and story to another place by changing. It's a very poetic form of devising that I thoroughly enjoyed, with music being used as a stimulus to further our piece once we had gained a reasonable pace and helping us with keeping consistent characters presenting a theme or story.