Mine and Emilys Devising Process

When we first began this project we got in to pairs and had to tie ourselves together by our wastes then we where given a word, completely unaware of your partners word you had to improvise a physical theatre piece and experiment with our bodies, I was working with Jordan and the word I had been given was War and He had been given peace,this exercise was challenging for us as one of the words was viciousness they are both conflicting words which lead to the string breaking allot, but we managed to balance it out in the end and making sure you watch your partners movement so they do not move to fast and suddenly for the string to snap. 
 We then had to take away the string and develope the piece in to a couple of minute long performance our  performance was full of energy and always had strong sharp movements, we had just been working with string and had gotten used to balancing the movements that we found devising the rest of the piece harder than expected  War and Peace are so two conflicting words, there is not a way for them to stand still and be with each other they are both always moving trying to persuade the other to believe in there word, As I was war I found my movements to be allot sharper and fiercer  we used different jumps and lifts, Me viciously running at Jordan and he would catch me and spin me round in slow and gentle manner completely the opposite to the way I addressed him this exercise helped us to explore the different aspects of war and how they impacted each other  for example with War and Peace the string kept on snapping and ripping which I believe is because they will never work well enough together for the string not to rip at some point, because they are so conflicting.

 We began to devising process by acting through various different moments with in a solider fighting in the wars life and time during his service, 
We started off with the night before you leave to be apart of the army, with all the new troops, drinking and having a final send off, the party before they leave. We then followed this with other moments such as the army training process and learning how to kill the enemy, also your first night in the trenches hearing the bombs going off, hearing the screams of people, hearing people dying around you, the bombs getting gradually closer and closer each time.

This exercise helped with introducing the war and the people who where fighting in the war, at the beginning of the exercise you had to give yourself a job to do and create a character, from what they did for a living to how they walk this exercise helped you experience what they went through, even though it was not a real experience we still went through the same journey as many of them would of, it helped establish to me that they are people and the physical theatre piece is about people not just about "the war" but the soldiers and victims and what they experienced through out the time of the war. The piece shouldn't just be about fighting because that is one of many elements that the war consisted off. The exercise was a discovery of character, having the presentation before about the war helped me understand the impact the war had on the soldiers and families. 

This exercise was useful in helping us develop our performance as a whole group, so we do not forget about the performance we are doing as our whole year group, it was also useful as we did it before we where given some time to rehearse so if a particular laben effort matched the theme of your piece you could experiment with changing some of your movements to working and fitting with it, such as mine and Slashing it helped me look further into shell shock as a trauma and what memories and experience have caused it and the slashing movement is a key laben effort I discovered at helping represent haunting and repressed memories and fears.

I am working with in a pair with Emily and we decided to focus our performance on Shellshock and struggle, as Emily is having problems with her back on a regular bases we found this a topic which didn't have to be completely physical using the whole body, chairs and allot of arms hands and head movements could be used to create out piece.

At the beginning of our devising  process we started off by improvising and experimenting with foot and leg movements, whilst during this we thought having a piece of music could help set and atmosphere so I went through and chose a song I thought would fit in and add the correct feeling for out piece as it isn't fast moving a full of big movements. 
The song chosen was Peter Gabriels "The Drop"
The Lyrics I found to be particularly sutied to the theme of our performance and once putting the opening of our piece to the music we found that the song helped us with timing and pace. 

Moving down the fuselage

Toward the open door

Catch you looking down outside

To see what lies ahead

One by one

You watch them fall

Fall through cloud

One by one

You watch them fall

No idea where they're going

But down

Where they've gone

Where they've gone

Watching as the sun goes down

I sit inside this plane

Notice how the city lights

Are like the nerves inside a brain

One by one

They're going out

You watch them dim

One by one

You watch them fall

And wonder where they're falling to

The song ultimately is about death and what happens after death, the song talks about many people dying with the "one by one" which we linked to other soldiers and friends who he served with and the memories of him having to watch the die are haunting him now.

Further into our process we found that Emily having problems with her backed worked to our advantage as it could be used to show the victim of Shell Shock and trauma to be limited in there movements and how there is a physical struggle with in the solider., and would work in contrast to my part with in the piece who is at first struggling with movement but then over comes it, much like the Past of our soldier who can seem to forget and not relive what he has experienced when fighting in the war.

This was a particularly useful video in showing us that there where many other problems because of shell shock and the efforts some people went into helping them, which helped us to create a section with in our performance of me trying to help Emily move by bending her legs and ankles, we wanted our performance to be serious and even though being able to have various different lifts etc with in our piece would of been nice to have due to the circumstances of Emily's back we where unable to have them, which did create an added challenge which turned out to be and advantage to use and our piece. We used chairs to experiment  with Sitting on them and laying under them as a type of shelter and protection.

We where limited in our ways of devise, contact improvisation which many people with in the year find helpful when creating there performances wasn't available as an option due to Emily's back, so we found ourselves experimenting with the smaller parts of our body which we found to be a success to create a build up of being haunted more and more by your memories, we went from using small sections of our body  such as a toe to then using our whole leg we did this with our fingers as well  it reached a point Where Emily as our Soldier had to stop and I could carry on exploring it further.