The first thing we did, before knowing what the stimulus was was talk about the various ways we can begin any improvisation. Ideas such as finding symbolic meaning, crafting a story, characterization and researching the context came up. I decided to record my and my group’s initial reactions to the stimulus. This would allow us to capture our first and most pure ideas. We could then come back to the recordings when we get stuck so that we remember where we were planning on going.
The stimulus is the song ‘7 years’ by Lucas Graham. After listening to the song twice, the people in my group all said what they thought the message of the song was. I said that the message is that life is short and you don’t want to have regrets near the end. Other ideas were about not having a father figure to guide you and that life is like a bumpy road.
We decided while improvising to get these ideas into our performance by showing and not telling. After the first time improvising, we chose to have Lucas, a character, be near the end of his life in an elderly home looking back at life. Lucas will tell his carer about his life in a narrated style. At first, when he did this, I and another actor began acting out what he was saying and adding more depth to his story. It would be a type of flashback with two actors playing the character of Lucas. We are merging the elderly home with the flashbacks. This will mean that Lucas and the carer will have to freeze frame while younger Lucas and his mother act.
At this point, we felt like we had a good idea so I chose to carry on devising dramatic techniques that could be used during the performance. I also chose to develop our use of light in the performance.
The most used technique is flashbacks. Our whole performance is based on the idea that older Lucas is watching as his life is being performed before his eyes. This technique will be used after older Lucas finishes telling a chapter of his life. The flashbacks will take the audience on a trip through Lucas’s life allowing them to understand the character on a more personal level because it will feel like you have known him their entire life.
The way we will integrate the flashbacks is very reminiscent of one of Bertolt Brecht’s techniques. Verfremdungseffekt is one of his techniques that was created to make the audience feel less connected to the fictional action in the performance. Actors on stage will begin as other old people but when the flashbacks begin the old people on the side perform Lucas’ story. This will make the audience uncomfortable because actors are playing different characters before going off stage and changing costume. The reason I would want to do this is because when the audience feels too comfortable in their seats, no self-reflection occurs and this means nothing has been learnt from watching our performance. Also, in the last scene, young Lucas will swap seats with old Lucas and the carer will not recognise and will begin talking to young Lucas as if he was always speaking to him. This might confuse some of the audience members but this will symbolise that young Lucas has finally caught up with old Lucas. We attempted this in the rehearsed improvisation. Because he never looked back, due to fear, part of him was left in the past, but now that he has looked back he is complete again. This will also communicate to the audience that the performance is ending because the flashbacks have caught up to the present day. The audience will link the actor of young Lucas to flashbacks and that now he is in the present, I want them to realise life is short. Lucas was able to summarise his life in less than 10 minutes.
A spoken thought is another way to provoke the self-reflection. The main use for spoken thought is to show the true intentions and feelings of the characters, mostly Lucas, because when confronted by another character Lucas may be putting up a front because he is scared or another reason. During the flashbacks, spoken thought will be used to show how the mentality of Lucas changes. At the end, Lucas will realise that happiness doesn’t come to those who wait and this is one of the messages I want to put through to our audience.
Use of lights can be developed to enhance the improvised performance. My intention with the performance is to make the audience leave the theatre criticising their own life and stories. The first thing I want to do with the lighting is for the lights in the house to be turned on at the brightest possible setting, instead of the audience being in the dark. This will make the audience feel vulnerable. I want to expose them to the message of the performance. The lights staying on will confuse the audience into thinking that this isn’t a performance where they can just sit back and enjoy the actors portrayal of their characters. There will be not to be any blackouts or fade-outs. I want the audience to see everything. This is something Brecht would do because there will be no breaks for the audience and they will be forced to watch everything, even when the set changes. Strobe lighting will be used when young and old Lucas cross paths when swapping seats. This will communicate to the audience that what is happening is not literal but metaphorical.
Evaluation of Arthur Davies’ character development.
I believe that hot seating is an excellent method for developing a character. The type of questions didn’t directly relate to the performance but questioned the morals and attitude of the characters. This would allow the actors to portray the character more realistically since they will understand the views their roles have. This will, in turn, improve the overall performance. The deeper understanding of the characters will also make creating the plot more fluent.
If there was a way Arthur could improve his methods for characterization, he could carry out an additional activity within his group where lines for the script are read off stage while the actors are on stage focusing on their movement and portayal of their character. Another possiblity is for the actors to improvise off the plot. An unrelated performance with different situations will allow the personality of character to shine through and this knowledge could be used in the real performance.
React!