After receiving Kate’s feedback last week about the rope being a powerful image on stage, we looked into various exercises involving the rope, getting inspiration from YouTube and various theatre productions we’ve seen. There was a show in term 3 last year in which a chain was used throughout the production which had clear meaning attached. We thought about how much the rope could symbolise. Originally we had it as a noose but the more we used it, the more meanings and images we were able to create using it. We did an exercise with the rope where we had to create an image based on one word:
With our new direction of gender pressures and the effects they have on people, especially their mental health, leading to suicide we’ve been looking at the pressures that are being faced and how to show them with physical theatre images using the rope. We have all been looking into specific things in today’s western society that can be classed as gender pressures and have come up with ideas such as:
- Looking a certain way – women wearing make up and being thin with curves. Men being well built, attending the gym etc…
- Men being ‘breadwinners’ and taking care of their families
- Women being ‘baby makers’
Continuing with our idea of taping our mouths and using a voice over has been working really well during our rehearsals, we’ve found there are ways to reach the audience in a way we would never have been able to do if we were just standing there speaking. They are able to see our expressions and reactions to what is being said so much more clearly.
It was really helpful to meet with our buddy group this week before our producers pitch and interesting to get a completely outside eye view on our piece before performing it. They gave us some really useful feedback regarding our performances and some ideas into how we an improve it before we performed. They recommended that we alter the voice recording slightly to make it easier to listen to and alter the movement so it is less distracting for our audience. After receiving this feedback we’ve added a number of pauses to the recording and have paused our movement sequence in poignant moments during the recording.
Our producers pitch went really well. We had a momentary technical difficulty at the beginning but once that was sorted we were fine and we didn’t allow it to throw us off. Despite feeling so unprepared, the pitch ran smoothly and nothing went wrong. One of my favourite bits that I feel was most powerful, having a clear impact on the audience was then Romy and I ran to the audience with the rope when the ‘birthing’ image was just about to happen and made eye contact with our audience members – this made them feel uncomfortable as I could tell. My concerns are with the voice recording and whether our audience were able to fully understand our intentions and message through the images we were creating. Having altered the recording to sound less like a lecture and more interesting I think this really helped, especially with the pauses we introduced within the movement happening on stage. At the end of the day, it was a conscious decision made by us as a group, justified by the tape over our mouths and after speaking to my peers in the audience after the pitch, I received feedback that it was a powerful piece and they understood our message so all in all I am happy with how it went.
Staging the Text 