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Feedback received and how this helped us to make our finalpiece.

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Feedback received and how this helped us to make our finalpiece.

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One of our first pieces of feedback was that some of us needed to project our voice's more as some of the lines being said when we were trying to do the punch line for a joke got lost so we overcame this by pronunciating our words properly and making sure our pitch was loud enough.
We were also told that some of who we are naturally was being seen through our characters, for example it was said that James was acting too much like himself at times and that his character seemed to change from snobby to suddenly very kind. So we changed him to be a character thats not snobby but just a little bit confident and actually does love those he's friends with.
We were told that when one of us werent in an argument or being involoved in some way, we weren't acting like our character, we were just watching what was going on and waiting until our next bit came up. To solve this we decided to give each of our characters a habit or gesure that they could do when they weren't being involoved so that not only the image of a break time room is in action but also so it gave us something to do to help us be our character.
We were told that we had to make sure that the energy was kept up because otherwise the audience would lose interest, and therefore not pay attention to the message we were trying to tell.  To solve this we made sure that there were no un-necessary pauses between arguments and that when we made a joke it would be slightly over the top to make it more comical and therefore help keep the energy up.
We

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We had lots of ideas in the beginning but it all depended on whether we wanted it natturalistic or not. If we werent to do it naturalistically we might have entertained the idea of a montage illustrating the different problems in school as well as some of the things that can affect you in school that are outside of school. Some of our possible restrictions on doing tis would have bee that we would have needed everyone and it would have required good time management. Another possible idea would have been maybe doing a piece where we get the audience invloved to see if they identify problems and how they would fix them etc. The only main porblem with this is that it would have been hard to rehearse as we wouldnt know what path to go down and it would have required lots of time deddicated to coming up with each scenario that could occur.
However in the end we decided upon a continuous flow of scenes to make a naturalistic looking break time at school. The reason we thought of this is because not only was simple and effective due to layout and the fact that characters and problems can be implemented easily into the piece but we also decided on this because we new it would challenge us to find ways of making the energy in the piece stay up and keep the audience interested and pay attention.  Obvious ideas were that characters could go off to hand in assignments or in my case, sharpen a pencil but these were all quite obvious so we thought about how we could make moving around more interesting while still keeping the image of a natural school environment. For a lesson we thought about having a conversation at the front of the stage and having a couple of the characters go to the back of the stage as if looking at work on a desk but the feedback we got when showing this idea to the class was that despite that it was at the back of the stage, the fact that they get up and have to move their from the front was still quite distracting and they found that they lost track of the conversation at the front of the stage. However we did not reject this idea compltely as we had James rush off the stage at one point to hand in an assignment which was perfect for the moment when Ben would come inn and leave alos leave room for some comedy which helped keep the energy up.

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Research and how it inspired performance ideas

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Research and how it inspired performance ideas

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Most of our ideas were inspired by personal experiences by everyone in the group. It was from our experiences that we shared with another that we realized we could see common 'characters' in classes. For example, there was always that one student that would always without seeming to do any work would get high grades or that student that gets frustrated because they have a learning disability and wants to do well but they find it too hard to get the grades they want. It was from this that we managed to get our character list for everyone. This led us on to the sort of relationships that our characters would have with each other and therefore the types of problems that they would face at school.
This would help us decide on a structure for our piece which was that we wanted to have a series of scene that flowed into one another seamlessly to make the illusion of a natural school environment at break time.
When doing a rehearsals in front of the class we were asked what our age was as we mention getting not university but we act like we're in year 7. This influenced us to change the line to mention a college course  and we changed our behavior slightly to act a little more mature about our work. This also made us do research into the key stages and different schools as shown below:

Independent schools

In the United Kingdom, schools are either provided by the local government authority (state schools) and are free for all pupils, or they are independent schools and charge fees to the parents of the pupils. Almost all the schools taking part in the HMC Projects Scholarship Scheme are independent schools. In the United Kingdom independent schools have an excellent reputation for high standards of teaching and learning and almost all pupils go on to prestigious universities when they leave. There are also many excellent state schools, three of which award scholarships through HMC Projects. Scholarships to state schools can only be offered to students from countries in the EEA.

How it works

All boys and girls must attend full time education until they reach the age of 16. The school system works by placing certain ages in different years and key stages, for example:

•Key Stage 1 - Foundation year and Years 1 to 2 - for pupils aged between 4/5 and 6/7 years old.

•Key Stage 2 - Years 3 to 6 - for pupils aged between 7/8 and 10/11 years old.

•Key Stage 3 - Years 7 to 9 - for pupils aged between 11/12 and 13/14 years old

•Key Stage 4 - Years 10 to 11 - for pupils aged between 14/15 and 15/16 years old.

•Key Stage 5 - Years 12 to 13 - for pupils aged between 16/17 and 17/18 years old.

Generally, most students stay on at college or sixth form until they reach 18 so they can prepare themselves for universities if that is there plan after finishing at college.

We also did some research into learning disabilities and the like for two of our characters as shown below:

Parents are often worried when their child has learning problems in school. There are many reasons for school failure, but a common one is a specific learning disorder. Children with learning disorders can have intelligence in the normal but the specific learning disorder may make teachers and parents concerned about their general intelligence. Often, these children may try very hard to follow instructions, concentrate, and "be good" at home and in school. Yet, despite this effort, he or she is not mastering school tasks and falls behind. Learning disorders affect at least 1 in 10 schoolchildren.

It is believed that learning disorders are caused by a difficulty with the nervous system that affects receiving, processing, or communicating information. They may also run in families. Some children with learning disorders are also hyperactive; unable to sit still, easily distracted, and have a short attention span.

Child and adolescent psychiatrists are aware that some of the long range consequence of learning disorders can be lessened with early intervention. However, if not detected and treated early, they can have a "snowballing" effect. For instance, a child who does not learn addition in elementary school cannot understand algebra in high school. The child, trying very hard to learn, becomes more and more frustrated, and develops emotional problems such as low self-esteem in the face of repeated failure. Some children with learning disorders misbehave in school because they would rather be seen as "bad" than "stupid."

Frequent signals of learning disorders, that parents should watch for in their child include the following:

•difficulty understanding and following instructions.

•trouble remembering what someone just told him or her.

•fails to master reading, spelling, writing, and/or math skills, and thus fails

•difficulty distinguishing right from left; difficulty identifying words or a tendency to reverse letters, words, or numbers; (for example, confusing 25 with 52, "b" with "d," or "on" with "no").

•lacks coordination in walking, sports, or small activities such as holding a pencil or tying a shoelace.

•easily loses or misplaces homework, schoolbooks, or other items.

•difficulty understanding the concept of time; is confused by "yesterday, today, tomorrow."

Despite the small amount of research we didnt actually use alot of it in the end as most of our ideas came from our own personal experiences which helped us make the piece more relatable to everone and therefore more naturalistic.

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We briefly tried different styles for the first lesson but we ended up scrapping any ideas that weren't naturalistic. This was due to us wanting a piece that wouldn't be like the other groups as they were all doing a montage that contained physical  and non-naturalistic scenes.
We didn’t explore performance styles during the whole of our process as we wanted it to be relatable so that the audience would understand the issues we would be highlighting.  We did however entertain the idea of having some sort of narration where we would narrate a story where we would go behind the scenes to look at the problems that don’t happen in the classroom but can effect someone in the classroom.

But the main style we explored was naturalism. Making sure we had the setting and the actions that people would do while scenes that include them were going on, was all part of the process to making it very naturalistic.

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Initial ideas and responses to the source material

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Initial ideas and responses to the source material

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The first response we had for our piece was a montage where we would show the problems with the educational system by having a range of different scenes that would contain a range from mime and physical sense to naturalistic classroom scenes. However we didn’t do this as we decided to do a naturalistic piece. Another idea we had was to have a storyline where we would follow a boy/girl around and look at reasons why someone might fail at school due to reasons at home or bullying however we didn’t follow this idea as we felt it lead us astray from making points about education. We also thought about doing something abstract and outside the box like for example, a sort of videogame idea but we decided against this as we felt it would take up too much time and if we were to create it in record time, it might not portray our message or lead us astray from the fact that it’s about education and not what the we want the structure of our videogame to be like. We briefly thought about doing Verbatim which would give the naturalistic feel that we wanted plus the fact that we would be focussing on people’s opinions and what they think is wrong with the system but it would have made our piece too boring and low level.

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We had the idea of having a sort of common room for our setting. A kind of place where people could study as well as have fun and chat. We did come across a few problems with clarifying our setting and this was due to the audience being unsure about our age. This was because a line that was said by Jordan mentioned universities but we acted like we were in year 11. We fixed this by making Jordan mention A-Levels in order to correspond with our behaviour and therefore the setting.
We also kept our idea of having a constant flow of scenes. This is because this would make our piece more naturalistic because you wouldn’t suddenly have puppetry or mime in an ordinary common room. Something else we kept was our characters as from the first moment when we decided who we wanted to be, we kept that in mind and we each dedicated ourselves to our characters by thinking about their habits, how they would speak and being careful not to act too much like ourselves. We helped define our scenes and having a constant flow by working on transitions and thinking about why a student would suddenly have to a room at break.
There were also some comedic aspects that we decided to keep in as without them our piece, apart from the arguments would have had no entertainment and the energy level would have been very low. Also it only made sense to keep some of our more comedic parts in, like for example the whole issue about a mars bar, because a common room would have laughter and people  making jokes and we were intent on keeping a naturalistic feel to the whole thing.
Nevertheless, there were some ideas and research that we didn’t keep. The first is that we didn’t keep any research at all. Our reason being because we felt that it would be too random and non-naturalistic for our piece to randomly have facts and statistics in our piece. We could’ve had Toms character mention a few as his character is the typical smart kid that knows everything but we couldn’t help but feel that it would be too random.
Staging was another problem we encountered during Ben and Mungos argument as Ben goes to stand on the opposite side of the stage that Mungos on but this blocked Tom from the audiences view so we decided to move him centre stage with Mungo so that the attention would be more focused on them.
We also had the idea of me falling over at the end of my argument with Tom.  Originally during a rehearsal in front of the class I fell over but I managed to make it look as if it was meant to happen. This was met with approval however in the end we didn’t keep my fall in as it would have been too forced if the atmosphere created on stage wasn’t right enough for it.

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Personally I think that the performance went well because firstly, everyone kept their focus and didn’t laugh when they weren’t meant to as during rehearsals some of us, myself included, kept laughing at some of the jokes made. I think it was a personal achievement that I didn’t laugh as I tend to lose focus easily. I think the performance also went well as a problem we encountered during rehearsals was keeping our characters in mind, even when we weren’t speaking. To counter this problem we decided upon each character having a particular habit they would do for when they weren’t speaking. This made us continually keep our character in mind and therefore keep our focus on stage.
I think that the messages we were trying to portray to the audience were clear as we made sure that whenever we wanted to highlight a moment where we say something important, we would for example have a pause after someone speaking for a long time to make the audience realize if they weren’t paying attention that we have stopped for a reason or we would so it by having a change in tone or pitch.
I feel that we also used the space well as some of us would move to certain places on stage and not even know why we moved there in the first place. For example, during Mungo and Ben’s argument, Ben would move in front of Tom only then to sit down again. We fixed this by making Ben stand in-between me and Mungo so therefore we could see everyone on stage and this made them more centre stage.

Also things like our timings went well.  For the  timings of our piece, they weren’t entirely a huge issue but we for example we had to make sure that Ben came into the scene at a moment that wouldn’t distract the audience’s attention to what was going on the stage but also so he didn’t come in so late that us on stage were left improvising.

I feel that our strengths were that firstly, we kept our characters in mind and our focus. Another would be that our piece as far as it goes didn’t get stagnant. However despite this there were parts where it did feel a bit slow but this is because our piece was very naturalistic and therefore we didn’t have a lot movement due to the place that scene was set in. Another strength I feel our piece had was the fact that our piece was relatable and that the audience fully understood the issues we were highlighting as they would have experienced the issues themselves.
Our weaknesses were that as I’ve already mentioned, the piece was a bit slow at some parts but that was to be expected due to us not having anything like a montage which would keep the audience on their feet to find out what was going to happen next.
If we were to further develop our piece, I feel that the part where I get up just to tell Tom he has no friends was a bit pointless. Of course it was more to add to the effect of the words that I say to him but I just feel that it was pointless after I had literally just gotten up to mime sharpening a pencil and that even after I give my line, I just sit down again.  But to really further develop our piece as a whole and not just little bits, I would consider the idea the of maybe having a bit of Verbatim Theatre as this could help us to show the problems of the education system by using the opinions of people who are teachers or have students from different types of schools. However the problem with this is that depending on how we did it, it could have made our piece more stagnant and boring to watch with the energy level being relatively low.
Another way of developing our piece could have been by having something more abstract and physical like for example having the education system shown like in a videogame and we have to use mime and things like puppetry and audience interaction to help this person through the problems that they encounter at school. A problem with this though is that theres the chance that without proper time management, this idea could have taken too long and may be too complicate for something as simple as a 15 to 20 minute piece. Also a problem with this is that it would have lost its naturalism and relatability that we wanted to give to the audience.

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What message did your group want to have and why?

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What message did your group want to have and why?

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The first task was to pick a social issue to focus on and produce a 15 to 20 min piece about illustrating either just one issue or have lots of little messages about the chosen topic. My group initially decided to have lots of little things that were wrong about our education system throughout our whole piece. However we realised that the audience would have trouble realising what our main message was due to us saying so many small different ones. During our rehearsals we decided not to focus too much on this issue as we had a more pressing issue about movement however in the end we had the idea of having Ben wrap up our whole piece and say a big speech about education which would bring together the points we had made.

It was only during the last part of our process that we finally came up with the idea of having Ben doing the speech. This does show a lack of organisation as we should have really thought about this at the beginning and made our piece revolving around that decision but instead in the beginning we went with the idea of just having lots of little messages. This was because when we did our research on the topic, we had found some statistics that we thought we could use highlight some of our points. Though to be honest most of our points were taken off personal experiences that we as a group had all experienced. For example, one of our points why someone might not do well and fall behind and need help as because maybe the class there’re in has too many students to one teacher or for example the kids that are doing well getting all the attention because they are the ones that just because they have the ability to do well, they get the help to make sure that they stay the as the smart one.
In the end our message was more to show that lots of the little problems that occur in classroom and at school all link up to make the major problem that we have now.