In the first lesson we all discussed the sins and what we learnt about them, Then Mrs Saroya told us to create freeze frames involving each of the 7 sins in which we struggled on as we didn't know the meaning of words such as Gluteny or Sloth so Mrs had to give us clues. Our images included Josiah trying to flirt with me, Kimran and Bethany as Lust and Me being rich and the rest of the group being my slaves having to do things for me as i wanted more than necessary showing Greed which was effective as it gave a clear message and interpretation to what sin was given.
During the Second and Third Lesson with Miss Sethi we were recapped on the sins in which we were more familiar with them and started watching the movie "Seven" which was all about Sins and informed us on what they actually mean giving us an insight on Sin and Sacrifice. When finished watching the movie we were able talk and discuses what the movie made us feel and how it effected us for example it made me think of my sins and what i am doing and my actions in life and how life has alot of offer but god is watching. We also talked about how the movie has some Artaud elements such as the idea of mystery leaving the audience to think and expecting the unexpected which made me understand artuads theorys and how he didn't want all the blood and just simply killing people he didn't want the obvious he wanted to shock and leave the audience scarred.
Week 2:
In week 2 continuing out discussion on Artaud we had to make sure we fully understood him and drama techniques as he is the practitioner we are styling the play in. We had to think about what Artaud exercises we have been taught For example one was the slap lesson in which Mrs Bahra was slapped by Miss Sethi which obviously got a reaction from all of us as we didn't know what to do and our state of shock got to the better of us for example Josiah kicking a bin to express his anger and Kunal walking out showed the surprise element and that to do a Artaud performance you have to be ready for different reactions and how people take things.
Another activity was when Mrs Bahra blind folded us into the room and made us sit in different sides of the room so that we were aware of our senses as our sight was taken away so we had to rely on our other senses in which we started to make sure eat things which started off sweet but then got bitter and it made us feel like we had our power taken away we had no control of the situation we had to take everything given and done to us which we wanted to interpenetrate into our play making the audiences senses awaken and had to come up with way of doing that without hving to blindfold them.
Mrs Saroya decided to show us another Artaud technique to refresh our memory as the other 2 examples were done before the summer holidays. So she decided to sit us down in a circle and start playing a very intimidating character which was in our face commenting on things we were wearing or just getting a reaction like blaming us for something we didn't do. For example when she started commenting on my red lip stick and gave me a red cloth it made me think and they way she was talking to others making me feel uncomfortable and as it made me uncomfortable it made me remember it as it stayed in my head.
As we wanted to awaken the audiences senses we picked the sense of hearing in which Mrs Saroya told us to experiment with an activity which was to pick an emotion and do a sound for that emotion for example i chose being tired so the noise i would use is yawning. After she made us do it each in a circle she made us do it quicker to make a pattern later on making us do it all together as once starting off quiet and then gradually getting louder which gave a strange effect as it was different and confusing yet worked.
Following up on that exercise we had to do a scene with just sound and no dialogue in which we decided to do a storyline of sacrifice in which we talked about women and decided to use the windows as a sign on being trapped and the men approaching us which we tried out but didn;t think it worked due to the fact it was more symbolism than sound and what we were asked to do.
Week 3:
During week 3 we were told to share our deepest and darkest secrets and thoughts to help us embark a better trust relationship within the group and get into that deep and raw emotion. Which helped everyone become more confident and helped me individually as i cried which showed a sign of true emotion and how releasing that energy helped me overcome the situation. We wanted out audience to feel that sort of raw emotion as some scenes which we create can be relatable to the audience making them uncomfortable.
As a group we talk alot and focus more on wanting to do certain things instead of going with out gut feeling so Miss Sethi gave us a task where we were each given a sin and we had a few seconds to direct and make a scene with it to help us work faster as a group in a short period of time. My Sin was Obesity where i decided to make everyone stand in a line and show the stages of eating and why they would eat so much and the effects for example i had Kunal running out of breath and Josiah on the floor eating because of heartbreak giving different ways of showing the sin helped my thinking and my interpretation of it. Then we were told to add a noise where i made the group do a mix of crying and eating noises showing a variety which would be unpleasant to the ear.
From the scenes we were given we had to show a link to it all and a backstory to each scene to make sure that it makes sense starting off with greed and how that turned into rape and into religion which worked as we were focused and got it done instead of talking it over and over again. We showed this to Miss Sethi in which she recorded it and gave us feedback where we learned that we all had a interest in women sacrifice where we should go research the topic in more detail.
We then wrote down deadlines to stick to during this term and what root to go down for our final piece.
Week 4:
In Week 4 we all research the topic of Women Sacrifice. Women Sacrifice is when a women give up something for their family or something important for them For example Women give themselves up for marriage and when they have kids having to take responsibility. Another example is Women's sacrifice in culture, In iIndiaduring the 1950's when your husband dies you are stripped off your identity and beauty and have to wear white and shave your hair off and even jump into the fire where your dead husband is being burnt. Research like this horrified me which made me have interest in it all and the group agreed. Therefore we tried to create a scene to do with it all the storyline we created was that a husband and wife who got recently married had a good relationship then the husband had to go on a business in which he unfortunately passes away leaving the wife with nothing but the guilt and loneliness in which she is forced to be stripped off her identity in which i was playing the wife and my clothes would be ripped from me and i would be dragged into the fire showing society taking me down in which we changed the lighting to orange and red to create the fire effect visually,
We all had a discussion on women sacrifice which led to the Freud’s theory in which i later on did research to find out he is a neurologist who created a theory on sexual behaviour starting from a young age starting off from a baby, when a baby is young they like to suck on things Freud interpreted this as the oral stage of a childs life then theres the Anal stage where the child likes to go toilet alot. Then the Latient where the sex drive is reducing as you get older. Another theory Freud has that made me think is when a Male has a sexual desire for their mother at a young age and wants to kill their father as they are jealous of them which made me shocked as it was something i would of never thought of therefore showing our group that the things that shock us interests us the most and the desires we have we need to show in our play to make the audience feel the reaction we need.
Week 5:
During week 5 we were told by both our teachers that they wanted to see a part of our play where they gave us 3 lessons and after school to work on it. To start the process we started to look at all the research we have done and stuck to Women sacrifice as it was something we knew more about than anything else we started developing a storyline and wanted to start with a women giving birth as that it something that can look horrifying and have potential to make it very Artud. To make this happen to decided to create a Train scene where the wife which was played by Kimran water broke on the train. The way we set this up was that the audience was part of the train having chairs parallel to the audience and seats next to them where we all act like strangers and once Kimran goes into labour the train turns into a hospital where she loses her baby and goes mental and the news is being broken to her. Her Husband who is being played by Dalip is cheating on Kimran having mistresses who will be me and Bethany that give him a sexual dance which we have rehearsed here:
Having me and Bethany on each side of Dalip shows we have control of him and that he is using his sexual desires to do the wrong thing since his wife isn't giving him what he wants anymore we wanted to develop this scene with a routine and poles and more intimacy and teasing involved. After this scene there is a confrontation between Dalip and Kimran where she askes him why hes late home and he begins blaming it on her and mentions the baby that has been miscarried which is where the marriage started falling apart.
We wanted to add sound to this piece for example when the train scene is going on we wanted to add a train sound with a mixture of music which someone on the carrige is listening too and also a baby crying as there is a baby on the train too which will overlap to create a disturbing sound and inteuge the audiences senses. With the seducing scene we had a debate on choosing high for this by the weeknd or practice by drake as they both create a dark vibe which was something that suited the scene perfectly.
After showing this performance to Miss Sethi and Mrs Saroya they both gave us feedback which included that they liked the train scene idea where the audience is involved as they felt like they were a part of something. They also mentioned that they didn't understand the birth scene and that should be reconsidered in terms of how we were going to do it. Then the strip scene we were told to be more confortable with it and know what we were doing and play it at a 10 not a 2. From this we took the feedback and learned that we need to be more open to ideas and explore more to be more ambiguous.
Week 6:
In week 6 Josiah came back with research to do with CIA and how they give people experiments and work with their mind to confuse them and put drugs to their system to do things they wouldn't usually do. At first we didn't understand his idea until he linked it with our current storyline and said how Dalip playing the husband can be the victim of the CIA and the prostitutes can lure him in using his sexual desires to an advantage in which we went to develop our scenes and incorporate Josiahs idea.
By doing this we started to create scenes and switch them around so we started with the prostitute scene and how that is the start to luring him in and strapping him down with wires so when he wakes up the prostitutes are gone and hes stuck with doctors trying to sort him out.
During the Next lesson i decided to do my own research on CIA and what is your symptoms of this type of illegal treatment and i discovered that soliders after the war used to be victims as it doesn't leave you with depression after the treatment but as the treatment started you still get flashbacks so i directed a scene where Dalip is in war and it shows his struggle and how he was like. This scene didn't work as well as i imagined so we scrapped it.
After this CIA idea we thought about it deeply and discovered that as a group we didn't like it as we
couldn't develop it further and we had no real interest to the topic.
Week 7:
During Week 7 we had no idea what we wanted to do with our play so we had a discussion on what we have and what we wanted to add. From what we have we still wanted to keep the prostitute scene and the giving birth scene so we were still doing the topic of Women Sacrifice.
The image above shows our ideas and how we wanted to do something about repressed anger and the stages of the relationship and although the man is cheating on his wife he still wants to protect her as in his eyes she is his property. As we wanted to show the stages of their relationship we wanted to start off with a happy scene so we decided that a wedding scene would be perfect. We originally wanted to stage the marriage scene on the school stairs as it gives it the height and the hierarchy of how they were on top of the world and how it all comes crashing down at the end but then thought it would be too complicated so as it is Arthurian we wanted to get 2 random people on stage and force them to marry each other to show how forced marriages are like and get them to carry a script of what to say to show that her life is being forced and given upon her and that she can no rights or choices in this and whatever happens it will automatically be her fault then we thought of geting statistics of arranged marriages projected on the wall to show that things like this still happen and the things it can do.
As a group we all had problems with eachother and the idea so thought it was time to scrap it again and actually listen to eachother as that is a main problem within the group we disagree on ideas that can work as we don't give them a chance and we assume the worst. We had a thought on our ideas and if we really wanted to do Women Sacrifice and decided that Sin would gives us all a equal role and more ideas to play up on so with that we decided we wanted to do Sin and Kimran thought of the idea of a House of Sin/ Family of sin where we instantly all agreed and started giving ourselves characters.
We all had a Sin except Kimran she wanted to be the narrator and we thought it would be a good idea for someone to be manipulative towards us like the Devil and she would then give us the roles and actually mold us into our characters stopping scenes and changing them into something good into something that would suit our sin.
Week 8:
In week 8 we wanted to think about set we all wanted to have our own sin space in the corners.
Using this chart we had to think about how we wanted the audience to be seated or standed and decided that we wanted the corners to be part of our set and section them off into 4 rooms to make a house and then have the middle be the part where we all come together. With this we first used a traverse stage with our original idea but now having this new idea we though having an Arena would be better but instead of having it round it would be a rectangle and instead of 4 sides it is now 3 without the back.
As my Sin was Lust my story line was now that i have an Angry boyfriend who doesn't like commitment so it is hard for me to have sex with him as most of the time he doesn't want it so i look for lust in my Step-dad so i would be taking them into my room one at a time showing the different types of relationship i have with them both.
In the lesson we focused on Bethany and her sin of Pride and that she is the mother in the family and of the house so she always wants to take care of it by being a clean freak and wanting everything to be perfect. With this we wanted to use her sin space/room more and decided to fill her room with her big mirror where she looks at herself alot and a big cross and bibles showing her love for God. We also wanted to shock the audience in her space to show that she can be masturbating to herself which shows the irony as she doesn't let her husband touch her and for a religious lady like herself she still wants that pleasure.
Week 9:
After watching "White Devil" at the RSC theater in Stratford Apon Avon we took inspiration towards to movement and how the piece was. I esspecially took inspiration towards the lead character as she was lustful and her lust took her to bad places and made her do bad things to herself and people.
With this we wanted to keep making ideas of the story and how it goes and think about our audience more and Artuad the practitioner we are looking at as we sometimes forget about the style of performance we have to go for. With this we thought of ideas such as Bethany going crazy at the end and aborting my baby herself as it is the devil in her eyes. Another idea was Dalip having sex with my while i was on my period and then Bethany and Kimran being lesbians as we wanted Kimran to have more of a Role so decided that her being a friend and manipulator would work as a character switch as they link in a way that they both want to ruin the family and we talked about how there is always one retaliative in the house that is the devil and we wanted to make it look like theres a devil walking around in every household and if you can't think of one it is possibly you.
We then decided that we needed to make a finished play and write down scenes step by step. This was a hard process as we were behind scheduled and needed to think fast.
We wanted to add scenes that focus more on our character and our sins in movement for example:
Mariam - Everyone else wears masks and walk around me not noticing me when i have no make up but once i make myself look pretty everyone starts noticing and being nice then everyone starts being rough and then drags me away ripping my clothes and taking everything away from me which could also interpenetrate into them taking away my virginity.
Josiah - As he is Gluttony we wanted to throw cake at him and make him eat it and force it down his throat and him looking unhappy but wanting more.
Bethany - As she was pride we wanted to walk around her holding mirrors so she can really look at herself and realise what a mess she really is and that this act she is putting on isnt working and show her crumbling down.
Dalip - As he is Jealousy we wanted to wear better things than him and he would try taking them off us and wanting it as he would be jealous of what we have and own.
Kunal - As Kunal is angry and has commitment issues we would all be in pairs portraying a perfect relationship in frount of him and he would be losing his mind as it would be something he wants but would never achieve.
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