# data[].attributes.body
One of the ways I added statistics into the performance was by during the transition into Therapy, I used a bit of an interview that Mungo had transcribed and made a statistic part of that, to say in character as the Therapist - this was a seamless and successful way of getting a fact into the scene, as it allowed the character I had created to be consistent and believable.

# data[].attributes.body
Our performance of Mind The Gap was hugely successful as all of our aims for the project were achieved When we showcased our work. After introducing the lighting cues to our transitions in the tech rehearsal, we were able to see if the amount of time we spent ensuring our transitions were slick, was worth it. It was. With each scene flowing seamlessly into the next we created a calm, controlled atmosphere that didn't allow for any chatting or awkward half-applause from the audience. As a group we maintained focus and our level of energy was consistent and appropriate throughout the performance.

All our research into our target audience paid off as all of the reactions to the show were overwhelmingly positive. Our decision to introduce "What Do You See?" as a comedic scene to provide the audience with comic relief from our more intense scenes, proved immensely successful as it was met with laughter and the idea of using music as a storytelling technique was great. The song proved a really big hit with it being met by thunderous applause and receiving many compliments, which goes to show almost any audience loves seeing someone with a pleasant singing voice sit with a guitar and play a song for a couple of minutes. This was certainly one of the strongest bits of the performance, not only because my classmates believed it to be but because it was such a hugely different style of presenting verbatim stories to an audience that the change from speaking to singing was a refreshing variation. This made Mind The Gap a much more enjoyable and complete production, because with it being so short and a montage of separate scenes with no set plot or narrative, it needed to be diverse and dynamic in order to appeal to short attention spans.

One of the most challenging aspects of the performance for me was all the physical theatre elements to the piece, solely because with having little time to rehearse in the performance space beforehand. When it came to What Do You See on opening night, everyone had to demonstrate superb concentration and awareness of the ensemble in order to stay in character whilst walking the space, ensuring that they filled the space evenly and avoiding collisions. To have improved this I would have used rehearsal time to be more meticulous and plan and rehearse people's  pathways to make it a lot neater. Added to this, two scenes that would have really added to the diversity and length of the production were cut due to them being unfinished. Better time management would have allowed us to complete all scenes and then with as much high quality, finished material a possible we could then review if there was a weakest scene that ought to be cut.

From this process I have learned how to make verbatim into interesting drama that has a point - and yet can still be comedic. In an upcoming performance on crime and punishment I have used an interview to create a monologue with astounding effect because of its realism, and I've found the balance between having an energetic, entertaining performance and staying real and believable.

# data[].attributes.body
At a point where the performance date was fast approaching, peer feedback informed Mitch and myself that our duologue was falling flat in comparison to the energy of the other scenes. We immediately set about solving this issue, knowing that the blocking was good but our characterisation needed to be improved in order to make the scene more interesting and up the pace and energy. I once again looked into the great Verbatim Theatre practitioner, Anna Deavere Smith in order to find some information as to how to represent real, spoken word in a way that is still naturalistic, yet also energetic and interesting.

# data[].attributes.body
From speaking to our peers and from the interviews we collated, about half way through the total devising period we realised that many members of our target audience were regularly throwing around words such as "mental health" and "stigma", so although in terms of educating parents on mental health we would definitely still need to raise the issue of acceptance and defeating stigma, a large part of our target audience would need more than plainly what they are already talking about if we were to make a lasting impact.

By analysing "Nina's" interview I saw that she was acutely aware of mental health and it's impacts on society, but all of her points were vague understandings of her experiences of mental health and shared little insight into the bigger picture of how mental health affects us as a species. This was similar to many people we interviewed, so I judged that since our target audience are aware of mental health already, what we could add to this existing knowledge through theatre, would be statistics.

Mental health is a HUGE story to be told, it being an issue that affects every single member of the human race.  Therefore with people's individual stories covered thanks to the interviews, what was needed to engage our audience was solid facts...

in 4 people in the UK will experience a mental health problem each year.

The annual number of suicides among male patients has been increasing since 2006 in England, while for females the number has fallen between 2003 and 2012 .

Time to Change’s Attitudes to mental illness 2014 report illustrated that attitudes towards mental health problems are continuing to change for the better.

Between October 2014 and September 2015, 7.6 per cent of people with a mental health problem or learning disability were classified as unemployed. (Source:http://www.nhsconfed.org/~/media/Confederation/Files/Publications/Documents/MHN%20key%20facts%20and%20trends%20factsheet_Fs1356_3_WEB.pdf)

# data[].attributes.body
Once I had finished writing the song I proceeded to rehearse regularly to practise story telling in the song - I worked on looking at what I was doing less, in order to look at and engage the audience. I ensured I was using facial expressions to add to the meaning of the lyrics

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Store photos and docs online. Access them from any PC, Mac or phone. Create and work together on Word, Excel or PowerPoint documents.

# data[].attributes.body
Once I had reviewed the interview I was able to not only think about the words' meanings but the rhythm, pace and patterns of the speech and from that tell a story in a way that is catchy and up beat.

# data[].attributes.headline
Step Two: Transcribing Acquired Material

# data[].attributes.subject
Step Two: Transcribing Acquired Material

# data[].attributes.body
This was a lengthy process that required patience and accuracy,  but necessary to fully examine the words of the interviewee's story.

# data[].attributes.body
It is clear that for the purposes of this project the best way to gain the necessary material for creating drama is to get it yourself, so with Mitch's help I carefully selected some well thought out questions and recorded this interview

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Store photos and docs online. Access them from any PC, Mac or phone. Create and work together on Word, Excel or PowerPoint documents.

# data[].attributes.body
London Road is a musical written by Alecky Blythe (book and lyrics) and Adam Cork (music and lyrics). The production, directed by Rufus Norris, opened at the National Theatre's Cottesloe theatre in London, United Kingdom, on 14 April 2011. It is set in and around London Road in Ipswich, Suffolk, during the Ipswich serial murders and subsequent trial of killer Steve Wright in 2006–2008. The piece is written in verbatim style, meaning the spoken text is reproduced by the performers exactly as recorded in interviews, in this case conducted by Blythe with the residents of London Road and some of the women who worked as prostitutes there, as well as members of the media who gathered in the area to report the news. The lyrics in the musical segments are similarly derived from the interviews as recorded, with the meter, pitch and rhythm of the music following the patterns of the original recorded speech as closely as possible.

Neither the murdered women nor their killer are depicted, nor are the murders themselves; rather, the piece is concerned with the residents as they cope with the events unfolding around them, the media attention drawn to their neighbourhood, and their attempts to rebuild and regenerate their community afterwards. The piece does not feature principal characters in the conventional sense; instead, an ensemble cast assume the roles of various locals, sex workers and reporters, and most characters are not referred to by name. (Source Wikipedia)

In discovering that Verbatim has been used as a style for a hugely successful musical, I figured that I ought to try my hand at conducting an interview and putting some chords to it, especially as the group expressed the concern that in our eagerness to get people's strong messages and stories on mental health out there, our piece was becoming too serious and would come across as heavy and too intense. The process of creating this song is as follows..

# data[].attributes.body
Rehearsing the beginning of our piece.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Store photos and docs online. Access them from any PC, Mac or phone. Create and work together on Word, Excel or PowerPoint documents.

# data[].attributes.body
Rehearsing Change About Myself.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Store photos and docs online. Access them from any PC, Mac or phone. Create and work together on Word, Excel or PowerPoint documents.

# data[].attributes.body
After creating a few scenes our primary concern was transitions. The last thing we wanted was to have bashed out loads of scenes for our piece but not thought about how they would flow together as one unit, one production - a piece of drama is thoroughly uninteresting if transitions are stop start and drawn out. We wanted our production to be seamless with no blackouts if we could help it. Therefore, with the premise of somehow blending The Opening Scene into Therapy, we created Role Call. We devised this scene as a group, all of us contributing ideas which was challenging because there were so many people throwing around so many ideas it became difficult to even know what was going on. We solved this by doing a focus exercise together and slowed down the pace - less people talking, more people listening.

Another challenge presented was which ideas to go with because of course we couldn't use every single one. At a point where we had the scenario and message of the scene confirmed (we carried forward the idea of robot barbies, but this time it wasn't body image but mental health itself that each "barbie" represents) there was a disagreement as to how we could end the scene so that the ensemble had left the stage, leaving only Mitch and myself. Mungo, Niamh, Luke and Cam all had motivation to exit the stage as they were "barbies" moving through the machine to "proceed/conform to society." My reason to stay on the stage was that my character was somewhat aware of how atrocious the factory was as she waited in line to be processed, and so this awareness made her stop in her tracks. However Mitch was one of the three people who were part of the machine, who at the end of the sequence is instructed to leave by the manager, Corin. Our first try at overcoming this was to have Corin walk over to Mitch and stretch his hand out, physically stopping Mitch but after trying this I felt this would be out of character for Corin to do that - he'd much sooner give orders and walk off, than interact with someone unnecessarily. The next plan of action was to have Mitch just stand there whilst his team exited but that was much too little going on - it didn't make a point of him being unable to leave. Therefore I suggested as a middle ground between the two, Mitch should try to leave with them, but then struggle, as if his feet were glued to the spot. As a transition, this worked a lot better than the other two because it wasn't unnecessarily long or dramatic, but it was still something interesting to watch .

# data[].attributes.body
Mungo recorded an interview that he selected certain lines from to form a dualogue, which after reading through we thought it could be represented as a therapy session. To get this scene done quickly and as it only involved Mitch as the patient and myself as the therapist, I asked Mungo to direct the scene. This enabled us to get the blocking of the scene done really quickly - with only two of us in the scene it was important that the space was utilized effeciently to ensure the scene wasn't static. After perfecting our pathways through the scene as directed by Mungo, we then decided on lighting cues for the scene. Despite the fact that we wanted to keep our piece as minimal as possible in terms of set, costume and lighting in order to draw attention to the realness of Verbatim, we felt that we could add a bit of symbolism into this scene using more complex lighting without sacrificing minimal design - we made sure not to use any coloured lighting, still only white lights. Our plan to have follow spots on Mitch and I throughout the whole scene was compromised for the sake of simplicity, however. In the tech rehearsal we decided to feature a spotlight in the moments leading up into this scene on the therapist, so still getting across that someone who speaks out against stigma is a light in the darkness.

# data[].attributes.body
After many hours of recording and transcribing interviews, we read through what we had and found that one of the answers to the question "What would you change about yourself?" was particularly empowering and reasonably well worded, so we decided to get to work devising a scene around that. Because the interviewee describes physical elements of a person and in order to make the interview an interesting scene, it was decided that we would have one actor speaking the interview, with the entire ensemble performing physical theatre around him to complement his words. Our main target audience being college students (young adults) and their parents, presenting messages and telling people's stories through short scenes, bold physicality and comedy, allowed us to appeal to those who would maybe have a shorter attention span due to often having the words "stigma" and "mental health" thrown at them, and also those who maybe haven't heard much about mental health before, so we wouldn't want to throw them into the deep end.

This scene tackles stigma around body image, and from that the ensemble ended up becoming kind of robotic barbies, representing the stereotypes people are encouraged to conform to. We all moved in unison, attention being drawn to Cam who was speaking to the audience, engaging them in the story. While Luke directed our gestures to phrases such as "Botox, here and here" and "six pack and everything", things that we could physically represent, the climax of Cam's monologue centres around the interviewee talking about having a sensitive personality, something not as tangible as Botox or muscles. Everyone being stumped, I chipped in saying to make the moment poignant and the tone more serious, we could still represent this moment physically, only metaphorically. As the pace of Cam's speaking slowed we would all slowly walk out of our positions on the stage to form a chain of people, each with their hand on another's shoulder - gentle, intimate, sensitive. This proximity worked in theory but peer feedback informed us that, due to the lack of levels and the fact that Cam ended up disappearing in a line of people, it looked flat and our positioning needed to be revised. Therefore, to solve this we changed up our positions so that rather than standing in one straight line, we formed more of an arrow shape and had some people sitting or croushing down, and turned our whole bodies and used body language to reflect sensitivty and angle ourselves towards Cam, as if we were an extension of him - his sensitivity branching out. This was a lot more effective than our original staging of this scene because each body looked more part of the ensemble, allowing Cam to be centre of the audience's attention. The words he said were able to land and get a message across to the audience, without the ensemble being pointlessly placed around him - we created metaphors for the audience to interpret.

# data[].attributes.body
Our opening scene begins with Mitch walking on stage, and asking the audience, "How did you feel when you woke up this morning?" A question that is very simple and yet so telling of one's mental state, and we felt that drawing attention to this simple question would inspire thoughts into how we live our lives, and how society perceives our moods. In response to this question each cast member then enters the stage one by one, stating either "cold", "tired", or "confused", and finding their place on the stage. Corin then enters from the back, saying "shit." We all slowly turn to face him, judging him, and then turn back to the front. This represents the stigma surrounding mental health.

Out of all of the scenes we created this was by far the most successful, it was short, simple, and to the point  and remained unchanged throughout the devising  process because of this. By placing the ensemble on the stage in visually striking lines, bold messages weren't only presented through speech but through staging and the ensemble. This was hugely effective because by keeping the scene short, with movement that didn't upstage the minimal dialogue, we were enabled to start questioning stigma and plant social messages into the audience's minds from the very first scene because we ensured it would be interesting. We discovered from doing many many interviews that when presenting our findings to an audience, the material we recorded would have to be meticulously refined in order for it to be engaging; despite the fact that we tried to make the interviews we conducted relaxed and casual, it is human nature to repeat, stumble and ramble when put under conversational pressures. Therefore we decided that a good way of massively shortening this material and yet still maintaining the authenticity of Verbatim, would be to focus in on singular words and how one single word can tell so much of a person's story. Especially for the purpose of easing an audience into a theatre style that is immensely wordy and a subject matter that can be quite heavy, this was an effective approach by allowing us to instantly appeal to even someone's short attention span.

I directly contributed to the process of devising this scene by suggesting that each actor speaking the words "cold" "tired" or "confused" ensured they used a different tone or inflection compared to thee actor who said the same word before them. I suggested this because in order to make the scene more colourful and not have the actors sounding like robots, there needed to be a clear difference between speaking the words as although the words may have been identical, real people are not, they are unique individuals and we aimed to reflect this in our piece. Several people interviewed replied "Tired," when asked this question, yet all in a different way and for their own different reasons.

# data[].attributes.body
After spending a few weeks interviewing people on the topic of mental health and then devising scenes from those interviews, the Mental Health Verbatim group paused rehearsals to discuss the progress of our Verbatim piece and where we wanted to take it - what message we are trying to put across, the points we are trying to make and what kind of structure we want our finished performance to have. So far we have successfully devised the opening; an ensemble scene involving all eight members of our group speaking snippets of interviews amidst physical theatre, creating imagery and metaphors exploring the way society perceives mental health.
We chose the title Mind The Gap for our piece as we feel it's a memorable, funny and really rather fitting metaphor. The word "Mind" draws to the fact that our piece is entirely focused on people's minds, "Mind The Gap" as a phrase can be seen in the way that so many people have to be wary of or mind the huge gap in society as to what is acceptable when talking about mental health. Another meaning of this title is "Mind The Gap" are words which those of us who use public transport hear multiple times, every day and our aim through creating this piece of drama is that in the future, our society will transform into a more accepting, positive space where people can openly speak about their feelings and mental health without judgement, so the words Mental Health become as common as Mind The Gap.

# data[].attributes.body
Verbatim Theatre is a form of Documentary Theatre based either loosely or entirely on the spoken words of real people. Verbatim playwrights vary from using Verbatim in its strictest form where only direct quotes from recorded speech/interviews are turned into theatre, and plays that include a mixture of direct quotes and fabricated scenes.  It is seen as one of the most incisive forms of political theatre, and is most commonly used to dramatise political/current events or to draw attention to social issues.

# data[].attributes.body
Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 is a one-woman play written and originally performed by American actor, playwright and professor Anna Deavere Smith about the 1992 Los Angeles riots. The original Broadway production opened at the Cort Theatre in New York City on April 17, 1994 and ran for 72 performances. The play is composed of a series of monologues by real people connected directly and indirectly to the riots; the text of the monologues is taken verbatim from interviews that Smith had conducted with them. The subjects/characters of the play include public officials like LAPD chief Daryl Gates and congresswoman Maxine Waters; a nameless juror on the Rodney King police trial, whose verdict directly led to the riots; various victims and instigators of violence, including, most famously, truck driver Reginald Denny, and residents of Los Angeles with their own view of the events, including singer Jessye Norman and actor Charlton Heston.      (SourceWikipedia)

Smith demonstrates incredible skill in her performances of these monologues, creating vivid characters highlighting the different communities and their opinions towards the riots. She expertly tells tiny snippets of these people's stories, and through that creates one big picture of the people living in Los Angeles at that time. She displays diversity and complex social conflicts.

# data[].attributes.body
In today's lesson I wasn't as in the zone as I'd have liked to have been which prevented me from contributing to the orchestra game, in that I didn't have the confidence to hum or sing a melody in front of the group. I think that as a whole the group was unfocused and agitated, although this improved slightly throughout the lesson as we were given the task of creating soundscapes in groups. This was challenging as we had to imaginatively use our voices and instruments to create sounds that tell a story, and the exercise widened my understanding of storytelling as it showed how you can use multiple different mediums to tell stories. There's much more to storytelling than reading a text-pictures, sounds and movements are just as important.

# data[].attributes.body
When rehearsing our piece featuring Baggy McBagface, the four of us discussed what we needed to improve on collectively and individually, and by giving each other advice and listening to how best to improve, we were able to then get on and rehearse immediately. This kind of focus within a group paired with mutual respect allowed us to work efficiently.

# data[].attributes.body
As part of our Storytelling unit I analysed Jason Byrne's "Special Eye" sketch in order to gain a better idea of what skills comedians use to make their stories engaging and funny.
I concluded that on top of the outrageous nature of the story, Byrne's incredibly over the top facial expressions, gestures and inflection, along with pitch and volume that crescendos simultaneously with the story, is what makes it so hilarious without even listening to the words. This can be applied to telling any story, as you can instantly make even mundane subject matter entertaining by using silly mannerisms, this works especially well for a young audience as complex language and any high comedy will go straight over their heads.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Jason Byrne Live At The Apollo - Special Eye

# data[].attributes.body
We exercised our creativity by creating a story for an inanimate object, eg. Lucy the Leaf. This activity was done in pairs, which highlighted the importance of teamwork when devising - ideas flow incredibly quickly when you have someone else's ideas to bounce off of and be inspired by. Once we were telling our unrehearsed story to an audience the importance of the use of emotive language, facial expressions and attachment to the story we were telling quickly became apparent.

Augusto Boal - The Great Game of Power
We explored people's different interpretations of power by positioning inanimate objects - 5  chairs, a table and a bottle of water to create a most powerful chair. Through this exercise I came to understand the importance of using means other than simply words to tell a story. It is human nature to assume, join dots and basically just to think, so when presented with 5 chairs, a table and bottle of water that someone has arranged, as a spectator I instantly inferred from the image what the story might be - that a particular chair was more powerful.