How did you and your group explore the possibilities of form, structure and performance style?

18/9/12

We decided that we would either create a performance based on the idea of secrets and trying to cover something up; either a robbery or possibly something more political, for example something to do with a group of people protesting against the government or perhaps unemployment. We thought that maybe all of the characters would have the same secret that they are all trying to cover up, for example a conspiracy or robbery, or possibly the characters may all have their own secrets, either small, humorous ones, or maybe more serious, sinister secrets such as murder or betrayal and the plot may involve the different ways the characters try to conceal their secrets, or perhaps the plot may involve the repercussions of what happens after all of the characters secrets come to light.
We hot seated different characters that had secrets and figure out how they disguised their secrets. For example there was a character that had a secret job working in MacDonalds and was trying unsuccessfully to hide it from her friends because she thought that they would judge her, but her friends were more concerned about that fact that she was not a pleasant person, and did not care where she worked, in fact, it was her snobbish attitude that they had a problem with, not the job itself. The exercise made us more aware of how people perceive themselves and keep unnecessary secrets and how keeping a secret can be more damaging than the secret itself. We then discussed and brainstormed in detail the different storyline possibilities and different characters that we thought we could bring into the piece. We also discussed the different skills that we possessed as individuals and started to think about who could play which characters, based on what strengths and weaknesses we had.
We are considering creating a piece based on a robbery, possibly going down the route of a more broad comedy where the characters are all or mostly archetypes and slightly exaggerated. We are thinking that perhaps the entertainment will come from the characters themselves, because the plot is presumably going to be relatively simple, therefore the characters will need to be unique and intriguing, and perhaps somewhat not naturalistic because the situation is not very realistic. We felt that it would be unique if we did not tell the audience exactly what it is that the characters are hiding, which would involve more secrecy, or if we involved the audience and perhaps had them being involved in the secret at the end, for example, if we did agree on the robbery idea, then perhaps the audience could be the people who are being robbed.

25/9/12

 We worked more on character development, using music to figure out and practice the way the characters walk and move. We then established that the relationships between the characters; for example, the Nan character often belittles her granddaughter, but they have a generally good relationship and the leader is distant and does not seem to be friends with any of them because she seems superior.

We hot seated the final character, then discussed the way we thought the plot would play out. We improvised a news report covering the robbery that our characters were involved in, came up with ‘mug shot’ poses that almost sum up our characters. This exercise was supposed to give us a better understanding of our characters and also generated ideas about what we could include in the robbery scene, for example, the Nan show off to the CCTV camera and the leader seemed in control even though nobody was really listening to her. The ‘dumb’ character asked stupid questions and didn’t seem to follow much of what was going on and generally the improvisation helped us to get a better handle on our characters and their relationships. After this, we played the theme to Mission Impossible and each character walked across the stage as though they were in the middle of the robbery. We did this to understand and develop the way that each of the characters walked and any mannerisms that they had. We thought that because our play is supposed to be a relatively broad comedy, the characters need to be bold and almost farcical; therefore their movements should show their personalities straight away.

It seems as though most of the play will involve the characters planning the robbery and that the comedy will come from the fact that they have absolutely no idea what they are doing, but they think they are experts. There are going to be conflicts between the characters based on their personalities as a few of them struggle for power and control within the group, but ultimately, the failure comes from the fact that the characters are too different to work smoothly as a team.

2/10/12

We decided on the opening sequence; Raye enters as the detective and interacts with the audience, therefore suggesting to them that the plot will involve crime, then the characters all come on, using only a few seconds to introduce our characters by interacting with the audience and trying to escape from the detective. We decided to have the characters enter from different parts of the stage to make the scene more chaotic and exciting. We end the scene with each of our characters standing in front of our ‘mug shots’ to confuse the detective, which we thought was a way of showing the stupidity of the characters and the detective and also we thought that the freeze-frame would solidify the characters in the minds of the audience. We also thought that if we began the piece in a way that was not necessarily naturalistic then the audience would immediately understand the nature of the play and realise that the purpose of the play is more about the audience being entertained and that we are not really aiming for the audience to empathise with the characters, but to laugh at them.

We tried different types of music and movement to begin the play and finally decided to play the theme from James Bond as we thought that the fast music would encourage us to move faster and therefore the pace would be more comedic and require more energy. We also thought that this would fit with the genre of the play and show that we were attempting to spoof the sort of crime stories such as James Bond. We rehearsed this in different ways and finally broke it down slowly because although the sequence is only a few minutes long, all of the characters are introduced and the audience needs to understand that they are archetypes and should be easily recognisable to them. Each character only has a few seconds to introduce themselves by interacting with the audience in some way and therefore we needed to discuss the best way for each character to do this in a concise but effective way. We improvised things that we thought would be relevant to our characters and them put them together with the music to produce our opening scene.

We were originally thinking that the plot will involve the characters planning a robbery and the detective comically turns up in each scene wearing a ridiculous disguise as he observes their plan so he can arrest them, as we felt that otherwise the detective may not be onstage as much as he needed to be. We feel that it could be comical if we had the characters attempting to rob somewhere frivolous such as Bingo, and we thought that them planning the robbery, bringing up wild and unrealistic ideas of how to go about it would add to the humour of the piece, and would also relate back to the stimulus as obviously the plans of the terrorists on 9/11 did not go wrong, and their plan worked, but we wanted to show how wrong things can go if the plan is ridiculous rather than catastrophic.

9/10/12

We decide that we would start the play with the opening scene, but we focused more on the second scene where the characters really interact with each other. We decided that we would have the main setting as the Grandma’s house, because we thought that it showed that she was one of the characters that lead the group as well as the actual leader. We also thought that it would add comedy if the Grandma’s house looked like a typical old woman’s house with ugly, cheap furniture, but in fact the house is guarded with hi-tech equipment, and there are ways that they can hide their plans by turning the furniture over and pulling down screens and she has a multitude of cameras around and outside the house for protection. We thought that it would be a good idea if we pre-recorded the ‘inspector’ in disguise looking into one of the security cameras we would be able to show the characters reactions and panic better than if he was in the room with the other characters, therefore making it clear to the audience that the characters have not really planned everything out that well, and do not know much about covering their crimes up, even though they think they are criminal masterminds.

We attempted to run through the opening sequence again so that we were absolutely clear on the lines and timing and then we sat down and verbally planned what exactly should be in the first actual scene with the characters. We agreed that we needed to establish that they have already carried out a few smaller robberies, but that the Bingo robbery that they are planning is going to be their largest and most elaborate so far. We improvised the scene where the characters were beginning to plan the robbery and we decided that we would include the ‘inspector’ almost immediately and have him pretending to be ‘Granddad’. The other characters do not know, but my character ‘accidentally’ killed the real ‘Granddad’ and therefore is understandably shocked when he appears to come back from the dead. We have not improvised the scene further than the entrance of the ‘Granddad’ because we want to work more on the characters as I feel that some of us have not really hit our stride with the characters at this early stage and need more time to understand exactly how to play them before we move further on with the actual plot. We improvised the scene and managed to script a few lines that we definitely want to include in the final piece. We went over this scene a few times, each time changing our ideas and the dialogue slightly as worked out the plot and what exactly the plan was.

So far, we have not completely decided what the characters plan will involve, but so far, we have Elizabeth’s character suggesting an elaborate plan involving idiotic disguises, tricking the security guards and breaking in to Bingo, Taylor’s character suggesting that they all go undercover into Bingo and her creating a distraction by pretending to give birth in the middle of Bingo, and Hazel’s character seems to think that a more violent, direct approach where the characters attack the security guards and storm in. We were thinking that possibly, in the middle of the plan, my character of the Grandma reveals that she has keys to the building after they come up with a plan to break in, therefore showing the characters stupidity. We were thinking that it would be best if we perhaps did not show the actual robbery taking place because we would need a lot more characters and we thought that it would be more effective and professional looking if we simply showed the events leading up to and possibly after the robbery, as we think the plot should be more about the characters and the planning of the robbery rather than the robbery itself because we feel that it will be more interesting and more manageable.

We decided that one continuous narrative was not the right structure for us, and that it would be better for us if we each played at least two different characters in order to display our versitility, and also we think that it would be easier to make it a fun comedic piece if there were more characters and short, sharp scenes. The concept is almost like a sketch show, with each five minute scene relating to the theme of 'secrets'. We thought that it would be better to do a montage because it gave us the opportunity to play a range of different characters, it is also a way to ensure that each scene is short, sharp and relevant. The scenes and characters are not related in the issues that they deal with, however the style is similar in each scene; not naturalistic and slightly farcical. All of the characters are either archetypes or are over the top in other ways. We also use innuendo and slapstick as it is a part of the farcical and over the top style. For example, we have the 'secretary' scene set in a pencil factory, which of course gives us the opportunity to be extremely crude, as for example when the secretary sit on the desk, the boss says "you're sitting on my pencil" and we also plan to have a poster on the wall behind the scene with a tacky slogan, which we have not thought of yet.

6/11/12

We decided that although our performance style is not naturalistic, as our piece is made up of several small scenes, almost like a sketch show and although we decided that the humour will come mostly from the characters being not naturalistic, yet they are in simple, naturalistic situations, for example at dinner or in an office. Although we thought originally that having a lot of innuendo crude humour would make the characters funny and show that they are not necessarily naturalistic, however, as two of our scenes are filled with this type of comedy, we thought that it might be better if for the other two scenes we went in a more highbrow direction as otherwise all of the scenes would have a similar tone, and it will be more interesting and creative if all of the scenes are very different, yet all still relate to the theme of 'secrets'. Our scenes are no longer than five minutes each becausewe feel that if the scenes are shorter than they will have to be fast paced, which will make the piece more engaging, and also it will force us to make the script concise and take a closer look at the exact dialogue in order to make the piece as well written as possible, as we do not have the luxury of wasting time with dialogue that is not sharp and specific.

16/11/12

We thought that perhaps instead of five five minute scenes, we could create three five minute scenes and one ten minute scene that involved all of us, as our scenes involve only one or two characters at a time and we thought that it would be unusual if we involved the whole cast in a small scene. We thought that it would give the piece a different dynamic, as it was getting a little repetitive having pieces that were similar containing the same number of characters. we also thought that it would be a good way to end the piece and tie all of the scenes together.

27/11/12
Most of our scenes involve the 'comedy triple' as there are three characters, usually there are two characters who are similar and more over the top, than the other character, or vice versa. This is possibly most obvious in the scene with the two teenagers and the PE teacher as the teenage characters are vastly different from the teacher. We thought that it would be more comedic if there was a great difference in characters and therefore researched some sitcoms that used this three character format, this is evident in comedies such as Frasier, which involves two brothers who are extremely intelligent and sophisticated and their father who is slovenly and almost exactly opposite to them. The comedy comes from the father grounding the sometimes outrageous and outlandish actions of the brothers and acting almost as the voice of reason, as well as the interactions between the characters in general, as it is there different personalities and views that cause conflict. This almost the opposite premise to Absolutely Fabulous, as the two main characters are presumably 'fabulous' and trendy women who are somewhat wild and care mostly about fashion and keeping up the appearance that they are extremey cool, however it is the daughter of one of the characters 'Saffy' who is an intellectual and her purpose again seems to be the voice of reason and to contrast with the slightly wackier characters. This is similar in our scenes as in the PE scene the two teenage characters, although they are a little exaggerated and stereotypical, they are a lot more realistic than the teacher character, who is loud, energetic and has an accent which makes her seem larger than life, therefore the two teenagers ground the scene and make it more believable overall. Similarly in the 'restaurant' scene, Jackie is a bit flirtatious, but is a lot less over-the-top than the waiter character Maurice and the overexaggerated woman dressed up as a man, which means again, that she grounds the scene.

5/12/12
My group have decided that it we could all be in the last of the four scenes as it may be longer and most of us have been in two scenes already, also we thought that it may be a fun way to tie the whole piece together if all of the actors are in the final scene.

15/12/12
We improvised a scene with all of the group, however as we only have a very short scene we thought that it would be too chaotic to have all five of us in one scene for such a short amount of time, there would not be enough time to see and understand all of the characters, therefore we thought that we would have another five/six minute scene with only two or three characters. We dont have an exact idea of what the scene will include yet.

11/1/13
The new scene involves a builder crashing a fancy dress party to use the toilet, we thought that he would be really contrasted by the posh over exaggerated characters, and also the fact that it is a fancy dress party gave us the opportunity to have the characters wearing over the top costumes.
The order of the scenes so far are: the 'secretary scene', 'dinner scene', 'PE scene' and then the 'Builder scene'. We thought that we should end with the builder scene because it is the scene where all of the actors are onstage, so we thought that it would anchor the whole piece and make it more of an elaborate ending. We thought that we would either begin with the 'secretary' or 'dinner' scene because they are the most outrageous and over the top scenes, so it would immediately introduce the audience into the the mayhem and over exaggerated nature of the piece, also, they are the scenes that we created first, therefore we have worked on them the most, so they are the strongest, so we thought it would be best to begin the piece with the strongest scenes.