Week 4 (Devising)

Week 4 was performance week, we had two scenes to create and a few to polish up, here is how it went:

We first devised one of our three scenes, originally at the start when we were creating ideas we split into two groups to devise a scene each and then critique one another, Imogen, Bradly, Shelby and Yasmin came up with the train scene, it was about showing how different we all are through different emotions, for instance Imogen was shy and reserved, Yasmin was angry and agitated, Shelby was open minded and free and Bradly was kindness. But when we watched the scene it was really naturalistic, so therefore the piece was long, very slow paced and so it lost the audience at time. So we thought that we would take the idea of this original scene and use it in our performance, we thought it could work well in devising piece because "The Real Christina" is all about finding who you are and so the different emotions could work well in  a scene.
For this scene everyone apart from Yasmin (who was Christina for this scene) stood staggered around the stage staring blankly into the audience, until Christina came to talk to us we thought that it would be like Christina is bring the different emotions of hers alive, so when we were brought to life our emotion would be shown by body language, facial expressions and how we spoke. We tried to pick very different emotions from one another in the group, so that the audience could tell that each character was separate.

After this we created our final scene, we had an idea for a while during the creation process of having a twist at the end and also that we could all wear letters through-out the performance rather than referring to one another using names. So we took both ideas and created our last scene, we thought it had to be simple without taking away the tension we have created in other scenes, so we used the sentence "I AM FREE" because there were seven of us, it fitted into the performance and there was a way of adding in the final person of our group, so we lined up with our letters taped to us in this order, Shelby (who was Christina in this scene) said a monologue at the front, we wanted her to go back to the start almost brining back some of that text but in a different way, we used the "can you feel that? Because I cant, can you hear that? Because I cant," but instead changing it to because I can, to make the audience feel like she's there she finally knows who she is then Shelby says "I am strong, I am independent and I am free, am I free?" we turn around at this point in our line to reveal that the word has changed from I AM FREE, to AM I FREE? Shelby joined the line as the question mark then, we planned for a fading black out.

We rehearsed the whole scene but it wasn't long enough, so the group thought of an idea, that maybe we could show how Christina got here, so we created the hospital scene, most of this scene was spoken to the audience, like frantic assembly's work, and we also added in a movement piece it was the mother and father fighting over their daughter, who had just gone into a coma, and Rae (who played Christina this scene) watched over the whole scene trying to make the stop.


The next day we had to work on the lighting, we were given a few minutes to rehears our piece before the tech run, but oddly enough we came up with an idea by just playing about in the curtains. The photo to the left, shows us sticking our heads through the curtains, now at the time we were messing about saying things like im the real Christina, then we realised that this could be incorporated into our box scene.

The lighting we had worked well with the piece and had shown a variety of different colours here is a list of what we had:


Hospital Scene: Scene one we had a simple wash at the beginning for the dialogue to the audience, but then when the fight/movement scene started, we had them change to blue.

Trap Scene: Scene two we had red when Alicia was sat on her own and also whilst we "trapped" her in the chair, when me, Rae and Dan moved back we had a spotlight on Alicia, so that for the next bit you could not see me Dan or Rae. Then finally we finished with a fading black out, as we had to get blocks on stage.

Box Scene: Scene three we had our heads through the curtains, so we had two lights from either side so that everyone could be seen at the back without lighting the rest of the stage, once everyone started to move out of the curtain, the lights became a simple wash again. And then the scene ended with a black out as we had to get the blocks off.

Circle Scene: Scene four we had a spotlight on Yasmin, so that when we eventually circled around her, some of us would be lit for the monologues and then when we span others would be.

Obstacle Scene: Scene five we had the lights change to green when Yasmin started to walk back, the lights remained this way through-out the mirror/obstacle scene until we all caved around Yasmin at the front.

Train Scene: Scene six was straight after the mirror/obstacle scene, so we changed the lighting from green to a simple wash once again.

I am free Scene: Scene seven used two lights like the ones for the curtain bit, but these were blue lighting the line we created the was a little strip of light for Shelby to then do her monologue. And then we finished with a slow fading blackout.

After our tech run we needed to polish scenes, such as the box scene and the train scene, but we were also told that our end scene loses the tension we create in our obstacle scene, so we developed that more as well.