Rehearsal process and development

I rehearsed my Solo Piece 'Have you ever done something you know you shouldn't have?' in front of a friend who goes to Mountview Academy and is being trained in dance and theate and got the following feedback/advice for changing and improving the piece.

• They enjoyed the assembly story, and the paris/cliff story, and the conservatory, these should stay the same.
• The train story was funny but there were parts that seemed irrelevant, so I've cut the small section about the lady with the baby struggling with the suitcase, and the woman with the food trolley. Although the part about giving up my seat is not relevant to the punchline or the story, it was advised that I keep it in because it is funny and will get laughs.
• The police interview now uses a spotlight and is closer to the audience because it is an intimate piece, and I have been told to act more aggressively, have more of a 'why am I even here' attitude, and to extend the final lines about the man getting away with something. This makes the audience wander what he has gotten away with that made me attack him.
• A slight change in structure happens here, instead of the confession about Hyde taking over, I have been advised that the 'My 1st Memory' section should come next, because it runs smoother and lifts the atmosphere after the police interview. It also starts to include my brother, an important element of the story that prior to the change in structure, came in rather late in the performance. I end this piece with a small dance section where I isolate my movements to imitate a struggle with them, whilst telling the audience 'If my brother was normal it would make going on the underground (etc) easier'. I was told that although it looked good, the way I used these movements alongside the confession was confusing as they did not relate to eachother. The dance section no longer has 'Beautiful Burnout' playing in the background as it was felt it distracted too much from the words, so is now a dance without music.
• The spotlight then comes back on and I admit to Hyde taking over me, and why I attacked the man. This is only a short section and is addressed to the audience instead of using dance to imitate disability.
• The music for the club/fight scene has been changed because Underworld's 'Moaner' seemed too monotonous. Instead, I am now using Underworld's 'Between Stars' (Deadawn remix). The lights come back up from a spotlight to full cover at the start of this scene. I was told the violent and physical dancing, along with the loud and quick music detracted from the words and speech, so I have changed the dance to the repetition of an 8 beat sequence with pauses in between for speech. This makes what I am saying clearer and the dancing looks more refined. The final lines for this remain the same, 'This is for the retards of the world, the dowies and the crips....(etc), but instead of using the 8 beat repeated sequence I was told to throw punches and kicks towards an imaginary person, and to 'freak out' because this was the most violent and aggressive part of the speech and was leading up to a crescendo, after which the music cuts out and I collapse to the floor.
• The following section remains the same, only I will interact with the audience more on a one to one basis as I ask them questions. Instead of offering the audience a beer at the end of this section, it has been changed. I will now go to pick up a can of beer (with water instead of beer) from the wings, drag the chair across the stage and sit on it to down the 'beer'. I will imitate drunkeness, telling the audience of the effects it has on me whilst falling uncontrollably to the floor, seemingly drunk, to snap out of it and tell the audience 'this is how my brother feels all the time.' I will then finally collapse.
• The very final section has been changed. When I played Ian Dury's 'Spasticus Autisticus' alongside pictures of my brother, I was told that it seemed incredibly offensive, especially considering the sensitivity of the poem that had just been. I realise that I only know that the song is not offensive because I have read the lyrics (which are quite hard to understand in the verses) and the background to the song etc, but the audience do not. Therefore I have removed the song. I repeated the poem along with just the projections of my brother but was warned that it looks too 'soppy' and self indulgent, something that I DO NOT want to do and have been steering away from during the process of making this piece, so have also decided to get rid of these slideshow projections. I have however kept in the 'thank you for listening to my brother' video at the end, but will now simply say the poem on its own, without music dance or a soundtrack because, from the feedback, it is more powerful on its own, especially after the intensity of the previous fight scene.

Although I am slightly annoyed that some of the sections have been cut, like the song Spasticus Autisticus, I appreciate the feedback and refinement of the piece. It has taught me that I although I know why something is included, the audience might not understand it. I like the structure of the piece more now too, and the shortening of the comedy/stand-up type section at the start can only be a good thing as it was running too long anyway. I am also glad that I introduced my brother earlier on in the piece because prior to the change, he was only introduced towards the end which was odd considering the piece is based around him. I am a lot happier with the structure now because it is not so split by the comedy and the serious, the 'My 1st memory' section acts as a comic interlude that lightens the mood of what could be a very dark piece.

The Pictures I'm using in the slideshow

I'm using the following pictures in this order to show my brothers childhood to now. I have lots of pictures of him, but decided to use these ones because they are a mixture of him in his wheelchair, his walking frame and some look like he is not disabled. I also made the slideshow/projection of Paul waving at the train coincide with the lyrics 'Hello out there in normal land' so that it would look like Paul was saying hello to the audience.

The video I want to play at the end of my solo performance

This is a video I made using simple tech skills on Windows Movie Maker. It has a slideshow of my brother from when he was young up to present day, and also a thankyou message from him at the end saying 'thank you for listening to my brother'. The slideshow is accompanied with Ian Drury's Spasticus Autisticus song as well.

The idea for this video came about when Gem suggested to put one in, but I decided to use Ian Drury's song too because it seems appropriate with what has gone on before the video, which will be played at the very end of the performance. This video is a celebration of my brother and his disability and is somewhat lighter in tone than what has happened previously, the fighting and the realisation of rape/sexual assault. I did not want the performance to end with the violence and the rape because, although it is shocking, it would end in a very dark place, and this is not what I intended at any point in the rehearsal and devising process.

Identity exercise

An exercise we did during lectures and seminars has been coming back to me because it has been helpful for me to understand and realise my own cultural identity. It was simply an exercise in which one has to stand on a number between one and ten depending how strongly they feel on the subject in question. For example, I stood at number 1 when asked if I felt like I was a country or city person because I dislike living in the city so much that I cannot wait to move back to rural England. Again, with fox hunting, I stood at number 2 because even though I am very much against it, I realise they are pests for farmers and damage crop/livestock. Although I will not be using anything from this exercise in my final performance, it is clear that it has had an effect on me because I am now a lot more sure about where I stand on subjects, and know that I am very different from other people in the class. There are moments in my performance where my cultural identity comes through, such as my mocking and dislike for a middle class family on the train, and when I say that I am going back home on the train for christmas. These two sentances are simple, but tell a lot about me and my cultural identity. Again, when I say about London having little snow but coming to a pathetic standstill, and the rest of the UK having several feet more but struggling on with life, it shows my stance on London and my cultural views on it.

Stand-Up/Comedy section changed

The stand-up/comedy pat of the performance is only supposed to be an introduction to the gremlin character who reapears in the script, but it was too long and ran for about 8 minutes, so I had to trim the stories and change some of them so that the punchline came quicker, especially the story about the family on the train.

I also, during outside reading/leisure time, read The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, and watched a televised bbc adaptation of it called Jekyll starring James Nesbitt.

I loved both of these but I realised whilst watching the television series that the gremlin in the stories/stand-up of my solo performance was actually Mr Hyde, the repressed person hiding in all of us that fights to come out and sometimes wins. I realised that I should introduce this as what I thought is a gremlin, then tell the audience that I'd read the novel and that's what was trying to get me to do things, because by telling the audience this it reveals part of my cultural identity and my reading/television habits. Also, the character of Mr Hyde is recognisable in many cultures so would be universally recognised and understood. I feel that although this is only a simple change to the script, it is actually a large change to how the audience perceive the violence and anger parts of the performance, and it justifies why the anger is there, because it is Hyde, not me who is fighting and swearing.

Underworld - Music

This is Underworld's Beautiful Burnout, that I previously mentioned I wish to include in my performance. I heard it first in Frantic Assembly's play called Beautiful Burnout, but I will not be using it for the fight scene like with Frantic Assembly, but for the middle scene where I use physicality and movement to show a disabled persons actions, however, this is only out 30 seconds long, so I shall use the calmer and more relaxed start of this song for this section.

This is Underworld's Moaner, I will use a short 1 minute section from the middle of the song for my fight scene where I use dance and physical theatre to imitate violence and agression, the song lends itself well to this becuase it is very fast paced with a loud bass line and strong techno beat.

Frantic Assembly - Beautiful Burnout

I saw this show in Edinburgh this summer and loved it. Its a physical theatre performance about the life of boxing, and has an emotional ending for me because a womans son is hit so hard in a match that he becomes brain damaged and disabled. It made me cry and is one of the most powerful pieces of theatre I've seen in a long time. I also loved the way the company portrayed boxing and fighting through dance, which is something I want to replicate in the fight scene for my performance.

I loved the music this performance used, and it was all by a band called Underworld. I'm going to copy Frantic Assembly's Beautiful Burnout and use songs from Underworld, including Beautiful Burnout and Moaner becuase they are mostly instrumental.