​Rosie Allen - BTEC Acting
Stimulus #1
[Privacy and technology]
My group found this article online about privacy and how the government and/or hackers could be spying on us every time we use an electronic device such as a computer or smart phone. We were incredibly inspired by this idea as it is extremely relevant and topical in this age of ever-increasing technological advances and we decided to get the piece up onto its feet immediately as opposed to sitting and planning for the whole lesson. We ended up with a very abstract, physical opening sequence that gave the piece a very stylised feel from the outset and we then went on to devise a short, episodic sequence of three different people being spied on by government surveillance officials, ending with a suspicious-looking individual who is planning a terrorist attack of some description.
The feedback we received after showing our piece back to the class was very useful as it gave us a different perspective on the work we had devised this lesson. The main piece of constructive criticism that we got was to be careful of not over-physicalising our work and make sure to create physical theatre out of an idea as opposed to the other way round, which can leave the piece lacking substance and direction. I personally found this feedback very beneficial as it is now something that we are aware of and will strive to avoid in future devising as a group. The theme and ideas were positively commented upon by the class, although one piece of advice that I received personally was to make sure that my characterisation is clearer when multirolling as I was in this piece to clarify for the audience exactly what is going on. On reflection, I also think that our elements of physical theatre could have been more effective if they had been polished a bit more, if we had had more time to work on our scenes.
Stimulus #2
[Alcoholism and depression]
At the beginning of today's lesson, we agreed collectively that we wanted to explore using a song as a stimulus as opposed to a picture or article. Izzy played us a song called 'Between The Bars' by Elliott Smith and we all really liked the haunting, lilting melody and dark lyrics about alcoholism, depression and dependence and thought it would make a good basis for a piece of devised theatre. However, we struggled a lot with this stimulus as we felt there was a huge danger of creating something cliched and overdone, something that we want to avoid at all costs in our final piece. I personally think that this was, admittedly, partially our own perfectionistic mental block against creating something that might not be an amazing piece of theatre but also on the other hand, the very nature of the song left us incredibly frustrated and, although the theme itself is extremely interesting to explore in theory, we struggled to get that creative spark to begin to create a piece of theatre. We eventually came to the mutual agreement not to use this particular song as a stimulus although I definitely feel that we learnt a lot from this seemingly failed exercise - that we ultimately don't want to have a theme that is generic or 'overdone' in any way and I think this decision will give us a lot more creative freedom when looking for stimuli in the future.
Stimulus #3
[Criminal psychology/'Bonnie & Clyde Syndrome']
Today my group looked at and responded to a combination of two similar stimuli. The first was a Psychology Today article about criminal psychology and the other was a related photo of historical criminals Bonnie and Clyde and the reverse of criminal psychology - 'Bonnie and Clyde syndrome', (or Hybristophilia) in which a woman is romantically involved with and morbidly fascinated by a dangerous criminal. These two stimuli and the consequent ideas and themes related to them are connected by their link to criminality and psychology, two things that my group is interested in exploring in terms of devised theatre. We began discussing possible ways of devising and staging a scene relating to this idea and one of the ideas that we liked was creating an interview scene that cross-cuts between a serial killer's interview with a policeman and their lover's interview/monologue to a journalist or the audience. We felt that this would be a very interesting and visually engaging staging technique that would tell both sides of the story in terms of psychological motivations for such actions. Although our ideas were in very formative stages during this lesson, the group discussion that we had together was very beneficial as it opened up another potential route to go down once we start devising our final piece for assessment and we will definitely bear these ideas and staging techniques in mind when we reach that stage of the devising process in future lessons.
Stimulus #4
[Con-Artists and Psychological Tricks]
Today we watched a short clip from the opening sequence of the film 'Now You See Me' and were collectively very inspired by the concept of sleight-of-hand tricks, con-artists and how the human mind can be tricked by manipulating people's perceptions of what they can and can't see. We devised a short sequence of movement as a direct response to this new stimulus and worked very intensely to perfect it, deciding to keep it simple so that we can achieve a perfectly synchronised effect as the three of us perform it in unison. Having explored this concept, we began to see some links between this idea and the first stimulus we responded to - privacy and technology - and attempted to attach this new sequence onto the scenes we created in response to the articles on privacy that we looked at initially. In some ways, this worked and we tried to polish up and take into account the feedback we received for the first scene we showed back to the class. Although this worked to some extent, it wasn't as effective as we wanted it to be and couldn't see where the storyline was going to go from that point onwards and decided to only keep the sequence we created today to take forward into the devising process for our final piece for assessment. At the end of the lesson, we had a brief discussion as a group and agreed that, for the next lesson, we would all research simple card/sleight-of-hand tricks and practice them to teach to the rest of the group next lesson so we can continue to devise and incorporate these tricks into the overall concept of our piece.
Initial Devising Process
Before our first proper rehearsal/devising session having settled on an initial stimulus to work from, I did some research on possible card tricks that we could incorporate into the piece. Many of the methods found online involved sleight-of-hand that takes years of practice to master successfully, which was unrealistic given the amount of time we had to devise the piece for assessment, so I decided to focus on self-working tricks that do not require sleight-of-hand at all. I found one (see video) and learned it myself before coming into our first rehearsal and teaching it to the rest of my group. Initially, we struggled to work out how we could fit it into the piece as it is a rather long-winded trick that makes it hard to maintain the audience's attention. We discussed this dilemma and came up with the idea that perhaps Isabel and Justice could perform the trick to two audience members whilst I explained verbally what was going on to the rest of the audience as if I were doing the trick myself. We tested this idea on two people from another group and the feedback they gave us was very positive, saying that performing the trick in this way engaged the audience and built to a highly effective climax at the end when the participant's card is revealed. This was very beneficial to us as it enabled us to use this trick as a foundation for the rest of the piece.
In terms of the overall structure and story of the piece, we knew collectively what we wanted to do - something involving three heists of increasing magnitude, resulting in a twist at the end in which the characters are revealed to actually be working under a bigger power/corporation. We discussed the pros and cons of playing guys versus playing girls in terms of the effect that this would create and the tone the piece would adopt as a result of this. We all agreed that the first thought that comes to mind when we think of con-artists is either suave, 'gangster'-like men or the stereotypically sexy, sophisticated women archetype and we wanted to avoid the piece becoming cliched and playing to this female stereotype, so we decided to have our three central characters as men - Christian Tulloch, Cam Stapleton and Matthew Callahan. This gave us a solid starting point on which to base our overall structure. Structurally, we wanted to maintain the audience's attention and keep them guessing at the outcome until the very end, and we experimented with a non-linear, more episodic plot line that jumps back and forth between the actual events of the heists, and interrogation scenes in which a detective probes each character as to their motives.
Once we had the basic structure, we struggled to decide as a group about the other two heists as the piece progresses. We wanted each one to be greater than the last in terms of ambition, severity and magnitude, starting with petty card trickery on the streets and ending with something much bigger. For inspiration, we researched various different cons and heists throughout history that made the headlines, but none of them were much use as stimuli from which to work in this aspect of the piece. One member of the group then came up with the idea of drug dealing as the second heist and we collectively agreed that this was a good idea that could be very effective if executed well. We then thought about the final and biggest heist, and decided to settle on the traditional casino setting and possibly an armed robbery and, to add dramatic depth to the piece in terms of character, we thought it would be effective if it turned out that our male characters turned out to be working for a group of women who executed the final heist on a much bigger scale.
Research/Additional Stimuli
As a group, in order to enhance our piece in terms of the devising process, we conducted a fair amount of research into famous con-artists throughout history that somehow related to the content of our piece. This was a fascinating exercise as it gave us additional stimuli on which to base our characters, adding depth and believability as we were essentially adding facets to our own characters that were inspired by real-life con artists. Two particularly notable ones that we discovered were:
Titanic Thompson
Matt The Knife
Props and Costume
Character
One of the aspects of our piece that changed the most over the course of the devising process was our characters and how we differentiated between the different people we multirolled as. For example, once we had decided that the detective character in each of the interrogation scenes would remain the same, despite being played by each of us at some point in the piece as each of the main characters are interrogated, we decided that the easiest and clearest way of distinguishing the detective from the three con-artists was by adopting typically feminine and masculine physicalities, respectively, as well as by accent to keep some consistency throughout the piece in terms of the female detective. Initially, the three con-artists were American men, with the detective a British woman, but after we received the feedback that it would be more effective to have the three con-artists as women in order to play to our strengths in terms of performance, we decided to re-evaluate the choice we had made initially. As a group, we disagreed slightly on how to tackle this dilemma - I thought that the challenge of playing men for the majority of the piece would be interesting and add an additional level of interest for the audience, yet the rest of the group saw the benefits of playing women, even though the dynamic both amongst themselves and with the detective would change drastically. Eventually, I compromised my viewpoint on the matter and the minor disagreement was solved as we decided to change the three central characters to women. This, however, meant that we would have to work harder on clarifying the distinction between the con-artists and the detective, and we figured that one consistent piece of costume for the detective such as a blazer would help keep the consistency and indicate to the audience that that character remains the same throughout the piece.
Towards the end of the devising process, having rehearsed the entire piece with this character set-up, we still had some reservations about the use of American accents when playing the con-artists. We thought that the pressure to keep them consistent, considering the significant amount of time we spend playing these characters, might make them slip and be less effective and authentic. However, changing the American characters to British would mean that the only distinguishing factor between them and the detective would be the blazer, so we decided to make the detective American instead. Despite us having changed the characters so much, this ended up being the ideal solution, as we would still be able to multiroll clearly and effectively.
Music
We all wanted music to be an integral part of the piece so we considered what music to use in each scene as we went along in the devising process. In addition to the sound clip from the film 'Now You See Me' at the very beginning of the piece, we wanted to incorporate a mixture of naturalistic ambient sounds such as the background noise of a busy street for lead-up to the card trick scene, as well as non-diegetic music (for example, the electronic track played during the actual card trick itself) to mark significant moments in a non-naturalistic manner. Isabel was appointed in charge of the music for the performance, drawing on her music tech skills as a valuable asset for the group as a whole.
I also scripted and recorded a voiceover for the end of the piece in the style of a news broadcast that told the audience about the heist on the casino in Las Vegas and how Isabel and Justice's characters planted the evidence to frame my character, resulting in her arrest. This was a useful tool to clarify to the audience exactly what happened at the end of the piece, as the non-naturalistic, physically stylised casino scene, though effective, was not enough alone to fully convey the vital plot points at the end of the piece. I felt that the collaboration between the three of us to put together the soundtrack of the piece resulted in a highly effective use of music throughout the piece and it also enabled us to rehearse with the music from the very early stages of the process as we made an effort to work out the soundtrack as we went along, a decision that required a lot of organisation and collaboration.
Physical Theatre
We reached a stage in the devising process where we thought that the piece was overly naturalistic, in our efforts to avoid our piece lacking substance and direction through the over-utilisation of physical theatre (SEE FEEDBACK FOR STIMULUS #1). We decided that our piece had enough structural integrity and substance for us to include some well-placed sequences of physical theatre in order to add visual interest to the piece and to tell the story using varying theatrical techniques instead of traditional naturalism which can be effective in its own right, but can be tedious in certain contexts if used too much. We sat down as a group and had a brief meeting about places where we could insert physical sequences and the most obvious option was the 'rave scene' in which we convey the drug heist that takes place in the middle of the piece. We had already chosen some music for this section of the piece and thought that the best and most efficient way of progressing with this idea would be to immediately get up and start devising a sequence. We wanted to keep the movements abstract, but still polished and clear so we came up with short sequence involving all three of us and little to no dialogue, to let the movement speak for itself. Justice came up with the idea of using some sort of white powder (to replicate cocaine in the context of the scene) to be used in conjunction with both the lighting and music to create a powerful, impactful effect. Her idea was to end the physical theatre sequence with all three of us throwing up a handful of powder, with the lights completely blacking out whilst the powder is still hanging in the air. I volunteered to take responsibility for sourcing some baby powder and working out how we could contain it during that scene so that we could transfer it into our hands at the right moment. I made some small plastic sachets and we deposited some of the baby powder into them and this turned out to work quite well in the final piece.
With regards to the final casino heist scene, we thought it would be interesting to combine two opposite techniques - naturalistic monologues and totally physical essence machines and physical theatre in a very Berkovian style. We began by discussing how we could recreate the essence of a slot machine, using our knowledge of Berkovian total theatre and essence machines. We came up with an idea that incorporated all three of us and used this sequence as a starting point for the rest of the scene. We thought that perhaps it would be effective to begin with a naturalistic monologue from the card dealer at the casino, who is oblivious to the heist going on around him. Due to this section of the plot being centred around Isabel and Justice's characters performing this con in order to frame my character, it made most sense if I played the card dealer in this scene and we decided to make him American and build up a backstory about how he was born and raised in Las Vegas, working at the Monte Carlo Casino for 12 years, and how he considers it to be an honest way of making a living, commenting upon all of the gamblers he sees pass through the casino.
Script - Early Draft
Final Script (with lighting and sound cues)
The link on the right will enable you to download and view the full script.