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nixonproject · 8 years ago

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My Blog: Working on The State vs a Fetus (university project.)

Early sessions of studio theatre production class included sharing individual stories which could be used as stimulus for future group work. Around thirty new people had joined that year totalling the group to sixty (approximately.) Actors, writers and phycologists tell us to appreciate the importance of larger groups in terms of capacity for change, as well as for understanding culture and society (Schneider, Weinberg, 2003, P15.) After listening and trying to understand someone’s story, social barriers can be broken down and you can feel closer to a complete stranger. Therefore, making theatre with someone you don’t know can be helped by the experience of sharing personal stories.

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AIMS + AUDIENCE

One particular story about the struggles of being a young mother struck home with myself and Ellie, Naomi, Amy and Laurie-Ann (my group members for the project.) Once in a group, we began working on our interpretation of the story. One member of our group was a young mother and she shared her insights into how having a child changes your life. This developed the team’s understanding of motherhood greatly but without wishing to be bias to one opinion, we explored further. In a blog (via the Huffington post) April Salchert mentions that women who have children because of societal pressure many times believe they will love their child simply because they are female. The blog continues by stating that women are letting society dictate their behaviour, their lives and their uterus. (Salchert) With conflicting opinions in the group about abortion the idea of staging a court case sprang to mind. Our project’s aim was to show audiences that just because social norm states women need to have children doesn’t mean they need too. After pitching the court case idea to the group, they agreed and we began writing and devising a naturalistic courtroom drama. In the writing of the piece it became clear that we were writing for a young audience between eighteen to twenty-five. We wanted the project to be accessible to all ages but we felt that the story could start more conversations about abortion between young people, especially women.

STRUCTURE

Improvisation was a key tool to develop the structure and dialog of early scenes. We wanted to explore the idea of interpretations for example: how Nay’s (our protagonist) Mother and Father felt about the pregnancy. The concept of the male gaze arose in one particular session as this improvisation ended with Nay’s father pressuring his wife and the court for Nay to have an abortion. Conflict consistently arose in improvisations about gender roles and society’s stigma towards young mothers. Amelia Hill (2016) suggests the biggest reasons for society’s attitude towards young mothers is cultural, a lack of education and stigma. Although sexual and relationship education are far better now than they once were, we felt this article via a mainstream paper proves that social stigma around young pregnancy still exists and attitudes needed to be addressed.

Script finished, confidence in rehearsals was high and the aim of what the piece was trying to translate to the audience felt strong with our final scene involving a killing of the fetus on stage. We wanted to leave this moment open to suggestion for our audience as we followed the moment with a drinks party scene, the platter served being the fetus.

FEEDBACK

Scenes had been blocked to a point where we could show the opening ten minutes to module leaders. Our module leaders gave constructive criticism highlighting that our naturalistic approach wasn’t working. Their interpretation of our project didn’t suggest naturalism but expressionism. Looking back at this stage of rehearsals it’s clear that we seriously lacked theory to influence our practice. This was a pinnacle moment and due to being halfway through the rehearsal process it was extremely important to react positively to the change of performance style.

WIDER WORLD OF DRAMA / KEY DRAMA THEORIES

Researching expressionism, our light bulb moment happened! It started to dawn on the group that the style fitted perfectly with the dialogue and worked within our project’s structure. The work we had initially created channelled towards consistent themes of fear, internal conflict (of Nay) and identity: how would Nay change if she aborted the baby. This feeling of isolation is common in expressionism according to author David F. Kuhns who argues that the most common experience of the Expressionist generation was the feeling of social and spiritual fragmentation. (P11, F. Kuhns, 1997.) Fragmentation was the perfect word for our work as we decided to set the court case inside Nay’s head. Her emotions would become lawyers and witnesses who multi-roled as parents furthering the concept of isolation and unawareness of people around her. A voiceover throughout the piece played the role of the judge and this developed the sense of the unknown, providing gravitas to an off-stage character representing judgement.

Usually a naturalistic writer, August Strindberg’s A Dream Play became a huge inspiration as within A Dream Play characters are split, double, multiply, evaporate, condense, dissolve and merge. But one consciousness rules them all: the dreamer’s (Badley, p148, 2010.). Similarly, we tried not to name characters in rehearsals (apart from Nay) but frame scenes through moments instead. We kept the script but decided to begin rehearsing with techniques from the wider world of drama. For example: in one rehearsal we blocked a scene where Nay takes the bus to meet a friend, a simple task. The rest of the company create the bus and the characters within it before bursting into a hectic song/dance covering a rock version of the wheels on the bus. The song was an interpretation on how a fond memory can be viewed differently once a traumatic experience happens.

In this rehearsal we blended Strindberg’s writing in A Dream Play (duality of character) with preparation of theatre director Vsevolod Meyerhold’s technique ‘shooting a bow.’ This technique makes the actor hold an imaginary bow and allows the actor to comprehend in spatial terms, acquire physical self-control, develop elasticity and balance (Braun, 2016.) For the first time in rehearsals, we really challenged ourselves and used a technique that speaking personally, was extremely difficult to master.

It was clear that the company started to place more importance in movements as in this bus scene, the company moved, made sounds as a unit while being aware spatially. Another scene where we used the technique is where the mother and father of Nay were having sex. Instead of actually showing sex physically, we internalised it and played a game of volleyball on stage. The back and forth of the ball mixed with the rest of the company making sensual sounds provided a tense, strange but hopefully sexual feel to the scene. Why Meyerhold’s technique was so important here is because with every ball hit, we had to subtly allude to an expression of a troubled sex life. We did this by making the game build up (like sex) but become violent both in the dialog and more aggressive hits of the ball. The ball represented trust, passion and love, three things the couple started to lose through the stress of their daughter’s situation.

WHAT WORKED?

Upon reflecting, what really worked was the company’s commitment to the piece. The final performance showed dedication in movements and belief in scenes that felt wonderfully weird and real. We’d really paid attention to detail, physicality and the narrative throughout the piece. Ultimately, the story appealed to audience members who spoke of being both angered and empowered by the open ending of Nay’s abortion. We believe this ending was a strong social comment and warranted an emotional response from the audience. The piece also kept in-line with our initial aim of starting more conversations regarding social norms for women and abortion which was extremely positive.

WHAT DIDN’T WORK AND WHY?

What didn’t work was our use of puppetry as we only worked on the puppetry at a very late stage of rehearsals. No research occurred for puppetry practice due to sound and lighting design taking over in the final week. This had a negative impact and made the performance less believable. Also, with our staging being ‘in-the-round’ lines were lost as well as some important puppetry moments for a few audience members. The onesie costumes also didn’t make sense with the overall production concept and was another last minute decision. More thought into these parts of the project along with reworking some abstract scenes would make the piece more accessible to audience members. Sound design (the voiceover) could have been mixed once more as the volume altered throughout the performance and became dominating in places.

IF WORKING ON THE SAME PROJECT, WHAT WOULD YOU CHANGE?

If working on the same project again, further research into drama techniques, performance style and staging would develop the overall production. At times, rehearsals for scenes were improvised which didn’t always work in the latter stages of the rehearsal process. Also, a time tabling schedule for all the company would definitely be produced. Many rehearsals were missed due to group members being unavailable, which became unprofessional and slowed the project down.

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