weeks review

This week we started our new topic, devising. Devising is the complete opposite to script work. You don't have to learn lines and there are no stage directions. Instead we are given a stimulus and we have to create a piece of performance from that. Our stimulus is the sing "Chasing Pavements" by Adele. At first I thought that this would be hard to create a piece from because the song is about a couple dying in a car crash, and I thought that we would only be able to do a piece on car crashes. I didn't realise that we could do our performance based on the title or one line of lyrics. We were then split in to two groups and told to come up with a few ideas.

My group decided to create a spider diagram with "chasing" in the middle. From that we came up with an idea of a twisted dinner party. We're the host has invited strangers to attend dinner and play some games and the winner gets a lot of money. But what the guests don't know is that this game is twisted. It's a game of "would you rather". The questions are life threatening for example "would you rather stab yourself or the person next to you?". And that person would have to either stab herself or the person next to her. This idea relates to our stimulus "chasing" as each contestant is chasing  prize which is the money.  But the problem with our idea is that it is exactly the same as the film "would you rather". So we aren't actually devising, instead we are copying a film which defeats the object of our terms topic. In the next lesson we decided to change our idea, and be more creative.

At the start of this lesson it was extremely hard to think of ideas that aren't already a film or play. We spent at least half an hour thinking of ideas and then deciding either they weren't good enough or they had already been done or they didn't relate to our stimulus. Then I decided we get rid of all our ideas and start fresh. I decided we should start with the little ideas and work our way up. I then asked my group if we wanted our play to be set in the olden days or modern days or in the future. We decided to set it in the future. At that point everyone was full of fresh, New and great ideas.

Our idea is set in the future. The government is completely corrupt and everyone has been stripped of there identities and feelings and emotions. In every single place in England there are camera's. All these cameras are run by a person called Jamie. No one knows who he is or what he looks like, but every one obeys his rules. Which is:
1) no individuality
2) no feeling
3) no love
4) follow your life story given to you at birth
5) always do what Jamie says.
Everyone in England follows these rules. Except from the terrorist/rebellion group. This group of rebels hide out in the basement of the library where there are no cameras, plotting on how they will destroy Jamie. They are "chasing freedom" which relates to our stimulus. The rebels mission is to take out every single camera and then find Jamie and kill him. There are other small details we had included in our performance such as everyone must always wear black in the future. And each announcement from Jamie always ends with "Jamie is always watching".

We then figured out a plot. We thought we would begin with a voice over of Jamie explaining why life is like this, and his 5 main rules. And then we will introduce the main character/ newby of the gang. This then let's the audience know the names and background of each member of the gang. We will the commence on a series of successful mission to destroy the cameras. We also decided to include romance, we want some one from the gang to fall in love with the gang leader who will be female. Close to the end of the play we will have the gang capture who they think is Jamie. And just before they can kill the fake Jamie, the real Jamie will come in and kill all members of the gang. This is when the audience find out that Jamie was the leader of the gang, and is a woman. She kills every one but hesitates on the one she fell in love with. Once they are all dead it will end with Jamie/gang leader saying "Jamie is always watching".

I really like our story because it adds an interesting plot twist and it includes different genres. Such as: sci-fi, action, romance, mystery. It also relates to our stimulus. And we will be able to include slot of different story telling devices like: voice over,movement, physical theatre.