How is the initial material being researched and developed at significant stages during the process of creating drama?

18/09/12

We are researching different ways that we could involve a robbery and we are also researching political protests and scandals in case we decide to go down a less comedic route. We are also researching the character types that we might like to incorporate into the piece. It is related to our stimulus of 9/11 because we thought that the idea of a small group of people planning something that nobody knew about or even suspected was similar to the events leading up to 9/11, however although we are relating it to 9/11 we thought that it would be too harrowing for the audience if we created a piece that was more obviously based on the events or people involved in 9/11, therefore we decided to go in a completely different direction and do a more comedic performance based only on the idea of secrecy and crime rather than the pain and suffering of 9/11.

25/09/12

The idea of dramatic irony and secrets is going to be prevalent because that links to our stimulus of New York and the idea that when the terrorists were planning 9/11, they kept it a secret and nobody knew about it. There may potentially be some physical comedy and at the moment it appears that it will be mostly the characters that provide the entertainment and the story as the actual narrative is relatively simple. We are thinking that it will end up being more of a spoof than a serious piece of drama, as we felt that it would be unique if we subverted the original tragic event and produced something that would be light-hearted and fun.

2/10/12

The original idea of hiding something that we got from 9/11 seems to have developed and the story is
more about crime itself and the people who commit it, which therefore could relate to 9/11 in a
different way, as rather than exploring the idea of how nobody knew what the terrorists were planning,
we are now exploring the nature of criminals and crime itself, however we are exploring it on a much
smaller scale as the robbery that the characters are committing. We also based some aspects of our
characters on some people we saw while in New York, for example my character of the disgusting and
straight-talking Grandma character was influenced by some of the people that we saw in New York
who seemed to simply say things to people and not care whether it was hurtful or tasteless.

9/10/12

 We developed the original stimulus of 9/11 because of the idea of a crime and plotting something, we
have also included the idea of the people being slightly larger than life because of some of the people
what we saw when we were in New York, although none of our characters are technically based on
the people we saw, the high energy levels and over the top attitudes of some of the people did give us
the idea of making the play not necessarily naturalistic.

24/10/12

We brainstormed any themes or ideas that came from our stimulus of New York and 9/11, and we found that something that kept recurring was the theme of secrecy, lies and deception as what made 9/11 so devastating was the fact that it was utterly unprecedented and there was no way to prepare for such an unexpected disaster. We immediately thought along the lines of conspiracies or even terrorism itself, however, we decided that it may be too similar to 9/11 and there was very little room for freedom and creativity, not to mention the fact that we may offend or upset people if the piece was not constructed delicately. We decided therefore to branch out and analyse the idea of secrets in further detail without keeping it strictly focused on 9/11, and decided that a more light-hearted piece would allow us to be more creative and would be more suitable for the talents and strengths that we have personally and as a group. We organised workshops and in my workshop we explored the idea of secrets and trust through doing improvisations involving a hitchhiker with a secret getting into a car with a family. This gave us some ideas about different secrets that ranged from funny to disturbing. Hazel and Elizabeth’s workshop involved us writing down secrets, putting them into a hat, selecting one, then improvising a scene on a plane with the secret in mind. This therefore gave us the idea of having different characters with secrets rather than one big secret. We tried several spontaneous improvisations and they helped us to create characters and come up with storylines. The idea that we originally agreed on was a robbery of something trivial by a group of inept characters that were not naturalistic, however once we explored this through improvisations and began to script the first few scenes we began to think that one continuous narrative was not working as well as we had hoped. On Tuesday 16^th September we decided that the rigid way of constructing one continuous narrative was not allowing us to reach our full potential as performers, and we did not think that there was enough material to create an entire piece based on the robbery, therefore we thought that it would work better and suit the personalities and talents of the group if we created a piece that was made up of several small scenes with very different characters that were more comical than naturalistic. We created several spontaneous improvisations based on the theme of secrets including one about a secret infection, criminals, secret beauty treatment, secret stalkers and other secrets, and it was these spontanteous improvisations that helped us to come up with ideas for the short scenes that we are putting in our final piece, even some of the characters and situations are taken from the improvisations.

7/11/12

We improvised a scene where a woman goes to a hairdressers and accidentally ends up bald. We experimented with the idea of the hairdresser trying to hide her mistake from her boss and the client, but we found that the scene did not really go anywhere. We then decided to eliminate the boss and just have the interaction between the hairdresser and the client and perhaps have it so that the client needed her hair done because she was going on a date, but again, the scene was limited, then we started to think of perhaps a different situation that still involved the idea of the character being bald, and came up with perhaps she is doing an advert for hair colour. We thought that the idea of being bald was more effective for visual comedy that an infection as it is so obvious and impossible to hide.

16/11/12
We tried to improvise a scene where a posh man and a 'gangster' had some sort of interaction as we thought that it would be funny if we played with the idea of stereotypes and had a scene that involved two opposite characters. As we attempted to devise the scene where the posh character was lost in an area where the 'gangster' character would be in control, however their interaction did not seem realistic, and although the performance itself is in a non-naturalistic style and the scenes are not really realistic, they cannot be utterly implausible. The characters interaction was awkward and it was not believable that they would interact in that way, we also realised that the secret in the scene, that the posh character was not really posh, was not very interesting and there was nowhere for the scene to go. Therefore we began brainstorming ideas where two characters could interact. We thought that possibly a scene where the 'gangster' character snuck into a party or formal gathering, or got in by mistake and therefore had to pretend that he fits in with the posh people there. We thought that this would be a better situation because there were more opportunities for comedy and the situation was more believable.

27/11/12
We tried to build on the scene with two girls who are ditsy, they are both seeing the same boy (Trev) and one of them is pregant. We have been working on the scene for a few weeks and we thought that it would be a good idea because it is not as crude and full of innuendo as the other scenes, and also unlike the other scenes it ended in an anti-climax, as the characters do not find out the secret. We have been working on the scene and building the characters for a while, however, today we realised that although it is on the theme of secrets, it is set at a bus stop, therefore there is not any opportunity for physical comedy or a particularly broad acting style, therefore it does not seem to fit in with the other over exaggerated scenes. This therefore prompted us to go in a completely different direction and make the scene really physical. Therefore we kept the characters as ditsy, however, we set the scene in a PE class and changed the secret to they had stolen things and hidden in on them under their jumpers and in their pockets. We thought that if we added an energetic, stereotypical PE teacher it would make the scene really physical and active, and would also have more of a contrast between the characters.

5/12/12
We worked on the 'secretary' scene, working on physical comedy and making it a more over exaggerated scene. We tried to work on the physical comedy by adding into the scene the secretary being on the desk, posing in a way which she thinks is seductive, then falling off it comically. Another example of the physical comedy that we have added in is almost a physical comedy cliche; the secretary hits the posh woman in the face with a cake. We thought that although it is a cliche it does fit into the scene and the 'spotted dick' is a running joke in the scene. We also added more innuendo into the scene, as we have chosen to make the scene almost in the style of a 'Carry On' film as most of the comedy is physical comedy and innuendo, we thought it would be comical to set the scene in the office of a pencil factory because the double entendre is subtle, but if members of the audience understand it,  it will be funny, and it gave us a lot of ideas of running 'pencil' jokes, such as 'you're sitting on my pencil' and 'take youre pencil and shove it', which although they are simple, they are smart as they have a running theme. We also worked on scripting the 'PE' scene which we found quite hard to do as most of the comedy in the scene is physical. We did however, think about whether we could make more surprises in the scene, for example we thought that we could start the scene with the characters subtly hiding their stolen goods and having the dialogue suggest that they are hiding drugs or something sinister, but then reveal that they have stolen trivial items that no-one would actually want to buy, which will be humorous to the audience. We also thought that maybe the revelation in the scene could be that the teacher finds them out, scolds them but then goes and sells the items herself, to show hypocracy.

15/12/12
This week we worked on scenes 3 and 4 and left the first two scenes as we think that we have finshed them. We worked on developing scene 4, generating ideas through various improvisation games and activities including the 'party quirks' game in which one person is the host of a party and the other characters come into the party one by one as a certain character or certain characteristics or a secrets and the host has to guess what it is. The scene is helpful with generating ideas, but we found that the actors focus too much on acting a certain way and not on actually developing new characters, therefore we moved onto the activity where two people improvise a scene and at some point a character either takes the place of one of the actors and starts a new scene or comes into the scene as another character. This was useful for developing characters. After exploring with different scenes we thought that it might be an interesting idea to create a scene with all of us in it, perhaps a scene at a dinner party at christmas or something, however, we tried to improvise the scene and we thought that our acting and characters were too big and overpowering to have them all on stage for such a short time and tell a story in that time, therefore we thought that, as Taylor has been on stage for the shortest amount of time, she was a priority and we should create a scene with her and perhaps only one or two other characters. One of the characters that Taylor does very well is the character or a small child, therefore we thought that perhaps we could devise a scene with a child and perhaps a baby sitter.

23/12/12
We brainstormed ideas for the final scene and we think that we will devise a scene with two builders or plumbers in a celebrity's house. one of the reasons for this is because we thought that builders characters would be very different to the other characters that were already in the piece. Also we thought that there would be a lot of opportunities for innuendos and physical comedy in the scene.

10/1/13
We decided that there was very little opportunity for development or comedy in the 'builders scene' but we did like the characters of the builders, therefore we brainstormed other ideas for the characters and settled on an idea where the builders sneak into a hotel or building to use the toilet a stumble upon a fancy dress party. Because they are in their work clothes and look like stereotypical builders, people think that they are guests. They see a table of food, they decide to stay and pretend to be guests. They meet three kooky characters that are really over exaggerated, because we thought that the costumes would make it easier and somehow more believable if we took this opportunity to make the characters bigger than ever, especially if it is going to be the last scene. We thought that the builders could get really into their roles, pretending that the are guests at the party, that they get drunk and somehow cause a scene and their real identity is discovered. We thought it would be funny if the real party guests are outraged and are angry at the builders, but then the builders turn the situation around and make it seem as if the guests are the ones in the wrong. We then thought that the builders could dramatically storm out, then shuffle back in as the forgot that they still need to use the toilet.

11/1/13
Although our stimulus of 9/11 is incredibly moving, we realised that although the people in our group have a range of skills, comedy is the strength of almost everyone in the group which we discovered when performing our Year 12 pieces, and we thought that if we could still use one of the main themes and issues brought up by 9/11 but in a completely different context it would suit us more as a class.
Our original idea was to have a robbery with kooky characters, however, this is a cliched idea, as it is the plot of 'The Ladykillers', 'Tower Heist' and many other films. Also we kept feeling stuck when it came to showing all of the characters clearly, therefore we thought that it would be better for us to only have a few characters in each scene, as they would get more focus.
The improvisation games that we used to help generate ideas are 'Party Quirks' which is inspired by a game played on 'Whose Line is it Anyway?' where someone is a neutral character who is hosting a party, and the other actors come in with a specific quirk, secret or character and the 'host' has to guess what the secret is. It was helpful with generating ideas for new and unusual characters, but also helped us to realise the different ways that we can show the secrets and quirks of the characters in an obvious and subtle ways, which is important for us, as 'secrets' is the theme that links our scenes together. Another improvisation game was the game where two people are onstage and they are put into certain positions by another actor, and they have to improvise a scene starting in the position that they have been placed in. Then as the scene plays out, another actor can stop the action at any time and either take the place of one of the actors and start a new scene or come into the scene as another character. It helped us to develop comedy because we realised the different ways that different characters can be funny, and not always in an obvious way.
Also, in the PE scene is set and performed in a school, therefore it is perhaps the most relatable scene in the piece, therefore the audience will need to identify with the sitation and characters to make it more funny for them, therefore we brainstormed all of the things students can get away with that would be funny, and we settled on blatantly stealing large objects from a lesson. It was important to figure out a way to stage the scene as the props are a large part of the comedy. We could not get the actual props, so we used various objects that would also inhibit the actors movements, so that we would be able to see how much they could move and how funny the idea actually was. It made us realise that they can barely move, and it was really obvious what they were hiding, therefore we thought that it could add to the comedy, if it was really obvious what the teenagers were hiding and still the teacher didnt realise.
Our final scene involves a builder sneaking into a fancy dress party to go to the loo, but he sees food and decides to stay and pretend to fit in. The character of the builder came out of a spontaneous improvisation that we did a long time ago, where there were two builders who were quite stupid and disgusting, spying on a woman who they were supposed to be working for. This was originally developed into a scene where two builders are in a celebrity's house and they go through her things, but we realised that there was not really much that we could do to develop the scene, and it was not very funny, so we scrapped the idea for the scene, but kept the character, and we thought that if the scruffy character was in a fancy party with posh people, the contrast between the characters would be funny. Also, as it is a fancy dress party, it gives us the opportunity to be creative with the characters, as we have a couple dressed as 'tic' and 'tac' yet they seem to hate each other, someone is dressed as a traffic warden and someone else is dressed as a baked bean.