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Final Performance

Lastly we performance in front of out family and friends which went very well because as it was our last performance we had full confident and we knew what was happening, however we was missing Connor; we skipped his scene and carried on with what was next.

The whole point of the title “My name is” is because we repeated the phrase “everything you will be telling me will be confidential”; it was the whole point of keeping others around you safe.

After performing at different schools we manage to think about the use of space, facial expressions, body language, tone of voice, our projection and interaction with the audiences. and etc. As the piece was mainly improvise throughout the process and rehearsals we manage to know what is needed to be said even though the jokers had papers in front of them but it was not relied on all the time.

As I was playing a character who was suffering from self harm and suicidal plans , I was able to relate to her a lot because I have experience it myself and that was one of the reason why I chosen her.

My strength was that I was able to get into my character’s shoes before going up on stage which allow me to focus on the emotions and able to stay in character. The weakness is that I was during St Paul's academy i lost my confident due to the reactions of the audience I was getting.

Personal thoughts: I personally thought I did achieved my target in this because i was able to feel the emotions that the character was feeling, had the confident apart from St Pauls and staying in character most of the time.

If there is anything I would have done better, what would it be?

Personally, experiencing people missing and not turning up (discipline), I believe that next time main the main roles should be given to those who are committed to the performance and the course; knowing that they are not going to let their peers down.

I definitely learnt a lot throughout this process and enjoyed it a lot.

24th March 2017

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St Mathews

This was our last performance at a school. The space was quite big and there was so much to play around with. I was a little disappointed because the joker did not turn up to this performance which led me and Millie reading word for words from the scripts. It was more difficult for Millie because she had not rehears being a joker where I have.

I believe the performance went well and we worked very well as a team to make this performance successful.

There was not feedback from the audience but there were questions such as where journey is taking us, what we used to study before going to college and etc.

24th January 2017

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Crow Woods School

I personally do not know how to describe how much I loved performing as well as leading workshop with this class. They were mature, understanding and focus. I was surprise at how they came across and made us feel welcome.

There was three of use, Millie, Nelson and myself. We manage to just do a short performance to show the audience what we have and explained to them what was missing. We also led a hot-seating task where we would ask a student to come up and represent Millie’s character (Eating disorder) and the audience would ask the character questions as if they were her counsellor.

Afterwards, the group split up into three where one group worked with Nelson’s poem, one worked with Millie’s story and one worked with my song. As you could see from the video above, this was my group developing their piece they have done before and collaborating my sign into it which touchy because I realise that they care about how I felt and the emotions that was express through my own language. I taught them specific sign for one verse of the song which were “if I'm lying her” and “will you take me home”

Feedback:

They enjoyed the workshop and the short performance

They believed that there wasn't much improvement needed, they just wish they saw more of the other stories

Maybe if this happened again, have movement piece between me and Millie

23rd January 2017

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St Paul’s Academy

This was our second performance at St Paul’s Academy. This school was totally different than the first one we attended. There were more students as our audience and there was a noisy environment. These students were immature and was not taking the performance serious which led losing confident and not doing the performance well.

There weren't much feedback from the audience but more from the teachers at the school for example, they likes how we come across of spreading awareness and giving information on how to seek help and they likes the signing at thee end because it relates to one of the student in the school.

22nd March 2017

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Eltham Hill

This was our first performance at Eltham Hill; I believe that it went well. At first I could tell we all were nervous but it got better at the end. Just before starting the performance we helps each other prepare where we did a quick warm up, ensure we knew what we were doing and use specific skills during the performance such as projection, focus, stay in character and have fun.

Feedback from audience:

Loves how it was set out

The questions were appropriate to engage the audience well and there is no chance to how we could have made our forum theatre better.

Quite emotional and felt a lot of the characters emotions

Balloons should be blown up

Kelsey (Myself) should start with signing standing up instead of starting it sitting down because it loose the emotions and the sign is not clear as it was standing up

Taking the feedback abroad, I would think blowing up the balloon would be better than it tided up already.

20th March 2017

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My name is...

Round One Orei: We are checkboard theatre, today we will be showing you a performance based on mental health, and we chose mental health because we came to a conclusion that there was not enough awareness. During the process of creating this piece we brainstormed issues currently affecting young people in our community. We hope to give you information on issues and information on where to go if you or know anyone suffering from these issues.  

Kelsey: Put your hand up if you sometimes feel overwhelmed. Put your hand up if you think a lot of young people suffer from mental health Ok a lot of you think that, now Put your hand up if you have physical health issues or know someone with this issue.

We all have mental health as we all have physical health. Some people can become unwell physically and mentally. We can also look after our mental health just as we can look after our physical health. How can we look after our mental health?

Orei: This is what are going to be showing you during the show. Please we want you to understand that these stories are quite sensitive, so we would like you to be as mature as possible.

After Round one You have just seen a girl who is suffering from a type of metal health Can anyone guess what type of mental health she has…? {Students may or may not answer} … she suffers from an eating disorder which is a type of mental health Whilst watching the rest of the show I want you to think where she could get help and who she is talking to in that scene? Put your hands up if you think she is doing the right thing.

Round two Kelsey: So, what you have seen is a young boy explaining to this boy that he just been in a fight, he was bullied and picked on because he is new. This boy stopped the fight to comfort him but takes the mick out him and planned to put the video of the fight online. If you was this character, put your hand up if you would comfort this person in a different way. Ok, that’s good that most of you would have comfort him in a different way which is interesting. I would like to hear some of your ideas later at the end. Now let’s see how the story would have turns out. This scene may have been disturbing, here are two boys sitting in a house, one of the character offers the other drugs. Some people use this to calm themselves down. I want you all the think if the negative effect this might have such as paranoia, depression and bipolar This may have also been disturbing. This character like most young people worries about their future. The type of mental health this character is suffering from is called Cyclothemia.

Orei: Where do you think this character can get help? Round Three You have just seen a teenager and her grandmother who is in a care home who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease. As you can see the grandmother is distressed and the teenager seems to be suffering from Anxiety; if you were in this character’s shoes, put your hand up, if would you have walked away and leave Put your hand up, if would you have stayed and made you grandma/nan comfortable? These are very good point, but again it’s good that this young lady has someone to talk to.

Now you are about to see a monologue performed from a character with PTSD. Just as a warning, some of the topics in the monologue may be distressing to hear, but we will discuss this after the monologue.

Connor; PTSD What does ptsd stand for? Post-traumatic stress disorder can develop after a very stressful’ frightening of distressing event’ or after a prolonged traumatic experience. These include serious road accidents & violent personal assaults, such as physical abuse. Put your hands up if you have a better understanding of what PTSD is. Round Four

Now you are about to hear a poem about his experience with a friend dealing with mental health issues. Again, this would be sensitive so are that in mind. Statistics Numbers…. What do you think these numbers mean? Can u have a guess? You think this numbers are related to what we have shown you guys so far. 750,000 28% 8.2 27,000 – 40,000 69% 250,000 750,000 young people suffering from an eating disorder 28% young adults suffer from Cyclothemia 8.2million people suffer from Anxiety 27,000 – 40,000 suffer from self-harm amongst the deaf community due to communication break down 69% I want you to think amongst yourself which character stood out to you the most and why they stood out to you. Thank you for participating in our show

Order

Round one – Millie, Kelsey and Danny 1. Kelsey and Orei – Introduce the audiences to the piece 2. Connor starts the exam 3. Counselling session for Millie 4. Pen drop 5. Orei – Explained what the audience just saw Round two – Danny and Nelson 1. Danny and Nelson’s Story 2. Kelsey – explained what just happened 3. Back to Danny and Nelson’s Story 4. Danny’s Monologue 5. Kelsey – explained what just happened Round three – Frankie and Jamel 1. Frankie’s Counselling session 2. Frankie’s story 3. Back to Counselling 4. Connor’s Scene 5. Orei – explained what just happened Round 4 – Millie, Kelsey and Danny (BACK TO ROUND 1) 1. Nelson’s Poem 2. Millie’s Counselling session 3. Kelsey ends the Counselling session with advises 4. Kelsey’s song 5. Orei – End it

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New target settings

Confident - I will be signing at the end of the performance just before everyone comes on with the balloons, I need to able to express myself with confidents. Also I should feel like this throughout.

Show emotions and feel them whilst signing - I have been improving on feeling the emotions throughout rehearsals but I have to show a bit more when it comes to final performances.

Stay in character - Ensure during questioning, stay in character or something is happening that is not meant to happen, I need to stay in character.

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Restrictions of Performing in the community

Resource list 

Exam tables (x3)

Chairs (x5)

Phone in Danny’s scene

Gun shot battle (sound effect)

Take me home by Jess Glyne (song)

speakers

How would we over come it if we were not provided with these resourses?

As we will be traveling to different venues to perform our community arts piece, we need to make sure we know and be prepared for resources that will not be provided. For example,

Exams tables - if there are no exam tables we will carry as normal and pretend it is there. This means, during rehearsals we will need to practice how we improvise that the table is in front of us.

Chairs - if the chairs are not provided, we can work around with the levels. What I mean is that we can sit on the floor, kneel or stand up but we need to ensure the audience can see us.

Music - the song might be able to be played during the piece because there is not socket is not provided which means we might have to bring in speakers or cut the song scene out of the performance.

3rd February 2017

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Health and safety Risk of “confidential”

As a class we discuss the health and safety risk assessment of the piece in general

24th February 2017

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Performance techniques needed for performing arts in the community

We are using Forum Theatre in our piece where we interaction with the audience to make them put their hands up to answer questions that being asked during the performance. The main skills that are needed during this are,

Communication skills - This is because we are having conversations with the audiences when it comes agreeing with them or explaining to them that their answer may be wrong appropriately.

Focus - This is because the characters need to ensure that when the joker is giving out questions and receiving answer, they would need to be in character until their discussion is over.

Eye contact - Make sure audience are getting their attention when coming to answering the questions

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Sarah Kane

Sarah Kane is a playwright who writes plays based on redemptive love, sexual desire, pain, torture (both physical and psychological) and death. She was born February 3rd 1971, in Brentwood. She was then a fervent born-again Christian at the age of 17. She hated what was going around in South East London due to some things that was not allowed to happen and the amount of abuse and corruption taken place. Sarah Kane studied Drama and was awarded a first there at University of Bristol and attended university of Birmingham to study David Edgar’s Ma in playwrighting. Kane died on 20th February 1999 due to committed suicide. She was found dead in King’s college Hospital hanging herself on a door in the hospital toilet. Whilst she was at the hospital, the doctors were told that she wanted to take her own life after trying to overdose herself couple of days before she died by swallowing nearly 1150 antidepressants tablets and 50 sleeping pills when she was suffering from depressive illness. The doctors did not realise that Kane needed extra care and constant monitoring. She had a long history on serve depression and two years before she committed suicide she had been in and out of medical care and taking anti-depressant drugs.

There are four books she wrote which are Sarah Kane, Ansia, 4.48 psicosis/Anixety, 4.48 psychosis, Crave/ 4.48 psicosis and Nana’s Royal Mess, she had written five plays which are Blasted, 4.48 psychosis, Cleansed, Crave and Phaedra’s love and she has appeared in a movie called “Skin”.

Theatres that use Sarah Kane’s work are Stage Theatre, IN-YER-FACE Theatre and The National Theatre.

The reason of researching Sarah Kane because from looking at her way of describing what is like to have mental health, it provide better understanding of it. Along side this, looking at the books and work she had made allow use to apply to our piece of mental health work.

But focusing on our performance piece, we need to ensure that we have enough information on the trigger, what it is like to have mental health, who are more likely to suffer from it and how to deal with it to be able to present to our target audience effectively and ensure that it not offensive so it is not seen as stereotype but seen as it is happening now.

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Mental Health

During development process we decided to focus on mental health due to previous research and the result this was that not everyone is aware of mental health issues around them which led us to lead a message relating to this.

We came up with stories and shares stories that we have experience and heard or seen around us. There were specific mental health illness we went for and we did not want to go for the obvious and try out new characters to make our piece more entertaining. The characters throughout the performance - the ones that in bold are the important and main characters.

Girl suffering from an Eating Disorder - Millie. Therapist - Me, Millie, Frankie. Girl suffering from depression in the deaf community - Me. Boy suffering from Bipolar - Nelson. Boy suffering from Psychosis - Danny. Girl suffering with Anxiety, due to her Grandma’s illness - Frankie. Grandma with Alzheimer’s - Me. The Joker - Orei & me. Exam invigilator suffering from PTSD - Connor.

what skills use?

Communication skills

interaction skills

vocal skills

listening

physical skills

projection

timing

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Paul’s Experience as a Community Art Worker

On 9th February, Paul who is an art teacher in our college came to one of our lesson to talk about his experiences working in the community. He has been working with various of people through arts such as, homeless and past offenders in different places. The aim was to build trust, confident, team work and friendship throughout the course. They would come together and build a sculptures or a piece of art to show to the community and along side this, Paul would only help because he had faith and belief in the people and that it should come from them and Paul.  

His talk was inspiring, especially when he said he worked with children that not been to school. It was powerful and entertaining and he makes you realise there are so many people around the world that need our help today. There are many quotes that I have take from him to use today...

Make sure to make the performance about the people and how we can help. - ���It’s not about you, it’s about them"

Can’t change the future by worrying, change it by action.

Don’t be like a teacher = ask the students, don’t tell them. Show that you care.

Lack of confidence is the biggest disability

Give them self-belief

Fearing is not key, don’t worry too much, just got with it.

Feel fear and do it anyway

I would share these quotes with other people today because it makes them think and realise that they are not alone.

9th February 2017

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Rehearsals on my sign language

As checkboard theatre we decided as a group to add a song to the piece and have me signing it. I suggested a song that will go well with the piece called “Take me home” By Jess Glyne. The song is based on, the need to have someone who cares when you are at your most vulnerable. I chose this song because it goes well with the piece as it is linked to having mental health and it very touchy as well as emotional.

The first time I signing it and figuring where to put the song, we had Danny and Millie sitting behind the exams tables throughout and just before the end, the placards are then shows with statistics. However, it looks messy and the placard was not clear enough to see. We decided to use balloons instead with just numbers as well as Danny and Millie doing a Movement piece.

As you could see in this picture above there are balloons blown up and I am signing on down stage left. Throughout this rehearsal, we believes that the balloon are too distracting and it takes the eyes away from me signing where I need to be the main focus, so we have decided that they will come on when I start to walk off.

2nd February 2017

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PowerPoint - Performing Arts in the Community

Unit 4 task 1 is to present a PowerPoint on performing arts in the community which evaluates he practice that define community performance work through effective exploration, comparing and contrasting well-chosen examples of purpose, focus and practitioners to support.  

Throughout this research process there were two companies that I have chosen which were Bush theatre and Cardboard Citizens looking at what is community arts to them and the Purpose, Themes,  Venues and Client.

Bush theatre

This theatre first opened in 1972 and is a world-famous place for fresh plays and an internationally renowned champion of playwrights. They find, nature and provide the best new playwrights from the widest range of different backgrounds, and show their work to the highest standards possible. They look at inspiring new voices that have a story with “wit, style and passion” and they champion work that is both “provocative and entertaining”.

Cardboard Citizens

This theatre have been making changes for 25 years now with and for homeless. They create theatre to provide a real and positive difference for their society and those living in their borders. They are the “UK's leading practitioners of the Theatre of the Oppressed methodology”. They present workshops, forum theatre, advise and guidance.

Personally looking at different companies especially these two above, it helped me more with my research to how I can work with my group to create a successful performance or workshop. Such as learning about the power of language, stereotypes, identity and looking at the different types of theatre companies and practitioners that carry out different awareness in their work.

I believe that I use this in future reference where it gave me a better ideas on how I could use the spacing, where my audience can surround to be involves in the workshops that I may lead and what type of target audiences I would go for

Although both was useful, I found Cardboard Citizens more beneficial because it was very powerful and the message that they gave out helps a lot of people around the world and they did not just focus on people who want a acting career but focus on people who find it hard to get a job or do not have anywhere to feel safe. Before the research, I have not heard of them before until I searched them, I would like to visit and see how they work with people, see how they promote their company to get people to join and etc.  Bush Theatre did not draw my attention and did not have something I could take from their work to apply to my work but what I could take from it is make the world a better place to get people seeing the world better.

27th February 2017

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Warm-up

It is important before every rehearsals that we warm-up to allow ourselves to gain energy, prevent risk of injury and allow us to prepare the mind and body to concentrate on the task ahead

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Research on The Sapphire Stereotype

During our lesson (log post 23rd January) we were looking at different labels that we are given. For example, I was poor black girl, another peer was typical white girl, another was bad guy, another always taking people's jobs and etc. Each of these has meaning behind it. Looking back at "what went well or what did not" we as a class did not have enough information which therefore made me realise that I need to do more research on the someone who is gone through something similar to the character I am playing.

The Sapphire stereotype is one of the main ways white Americans look at black women. It is why so many of them think black women are hard to get along with. Sapphire, named after a character in “Amos ‘n’ Andy”, always seems to have her hands on her hips while she is running her mouth – putting down her man, making everything into a fight, never taking anything lying down. She is an overbearing, hard and undesirable woman who drives men away. Think of Tichina Arnold’s character Pam in “Martin”. Michelle Obama comes dangerously close to being read this way.

Throughout my research I came across a woman called Sapphire and she was stereotype because of the way they see her appearance and how she act around certain people. This relate to my character because is a black woman and is stereotypes in the she looks and how to come across others just how sapphire was. Even both have different stories it is still related in a way that they both are labels in something that they are not and being compares to other people.

23rd January 2017