Wednesday Week 1 (Devising)

During our first lesson of the devising module, we were given a stimulus, which was a painting named "Christina's World" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christina's_World (as seen here.) We were asked what our first impressions were and mine are as follows:

Colours:

• The house is dark, which makes me think of symbolism, and that the house symbolises misery.
• The woman in the image is wearing bright colours, this makes her eye catching, and stand out in the image.
• The grass uses really grungy yellows and greens.

Characters/Stories:

• Looking at the scenery, it reminds me of a farm, with a field, a small hut and a manor house, and the position the woman is in looks quite helpless, so I think that the character in the painting, is either a famers wife or daughter and that domestic abuse plays a part in the story, which has led her to run away, as she turns back she takes one last look at the farm, and it brings bad memory's to her causing her to fall to the floor.
• The image does look as if the house has a dark history and that no-one wants to go back.

Shapes/Textures:

• The field and the house look quite scratchy, as if they were painted with a stroke technique.
• And the ladies clothes look like they have a softness to them, which makes me think that the character in the image is quite soft and mild.
• Yet there is one strand of hair that looks as if its floating with the wind, which makes me think she wants to be independent and break away from the rest.
• In the painting the field and woman are painted using lots of curves, yet the house is painted using jagged or sharp shapes, making it look as if it dangerous.

Later that session we were given the name of the painting and the time it was painted, here are my thoughts on these:

Title "Christina's World"

• The title of this painting gave me two ideas, either she is watching as her life fades into the distance, as the house is quite far from the lady, and that she is just watching it fade away, but she is helpless and cant do anything about it.
• Or this is a dream she has, of living on a farm far away from everything because she wants to get away from the life she is living at this point in time.

Time Frame "1948"-USA

• The date of this painting, and the area it was painted in, made me instantly think end of World War 2, and the great depression, and so I thought that this woman in the photo was watching everything being taken away from her.
• When I didn't know the date this was painting, I thought of World War 1 and the evacuations of children to the countryside. 

We later did some research into the painting and here is what I found an interest in:

• The Painter, Andrew Wyeth's father was killed in a railway crossing before this painted
• Anna Christina Olson, the woman in the painting, had polio and this is her, doing what she did everyday and crawling through the field back to her home.
• The house in the painting is actually real. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olson_House_(Cushing,_Maine)

Now I later linked both, the fact that his father was killed crossing a railway, must have had an effect on Andrew Wyeth, if you link this to the fact that Christina crawls from the field to the house everyday, it shows Andrew Wyeth using this painting to show his struggle (like Christina struggling to her house.) with the fact his father had died.


We were later put into groups, The Mighty Oosh (our groups name,) consisted of Dan, Bradley, Alicia, Shelby, Yasmin, Rae-Ann and Imogen. Once we were put into groups we started to share out ideas together, we had a few story ideas:

• I came up with the idea of a girl who's either the farmers wife or daughter, which I told you about earlier in this blog, and she is struggling with domestic abuse, as he father locks her away (now this can link to the polio as its caused by a lack of sunlight.) and the whole piece is her struggle to keep hope and achieve freedom.
• Dan came up with an idea, based around morphine abuse back in the USA during 1948, I backed him up by saying that the title "Christina's World" could actually be a reference to drug abuse and how she gets away from everyday life, this idea made me think Alice in wonderland straight away.
• I later went on to say, what if she had run away from home along time back, and now she comes home and seeing the house just floods her with emotions and she drops down, because we could preform it as her starting that way and gradually each scene is a memory, good or bad, of the farm.
• We thought briefly of an idea, where a woman gives up here child, but we didn't go that far into it, we actually said we would research, and look more into giving up children and adoption.

In a different session that day, we had to do three freeze frames, one of us looking at someone, the second of us looking at someone but not wanting them to see us, and finally looking at someone but making it obvious, we started to walking around the space and when 1 was called out we stopped and did our first pose, then two for the second and three for the third. Eventually we had one person standing at the front and we were focusing on looking at him/her, the reactions they gave were that the first one was intimidating, the second pose just looked silly and the third pose didn't really have and effect, it wasn't until we started slowly walking to the people that they started to feel uncomftable.

In our final session we put ourselves in Christina's shoes and also used the looking poses in this activity, we had half of the class on one side of the room in the position that Christina is in, in the painting, and then they would crawl across the room whilst the other half would watching them changing the poses that we had created in the last session.

• When I was the watcher, I felt really bad and wanted to help up the people crawling along the floor.
• When I was Christina, I felt really uncomftable as I don't enjoy having people watching, and staring at me struggling.