Journal 4: Week Four

This week in Drama we successfully choreographed our Dream World's events. We all agreed on this plan and put in input. Here it is below: Audience outside with the fears KATE: Take a sit… chop chop we haven’t got all day… HURRY UP (grin and giggle) Audience sits down in semi circle where the tape is placed Annabel on stool, centre stage with black sheet over head Nina sits too far out of the semi-circle KATE: AH! Don’t sit there Nina moves further in KATE: Welcome, welcome, today we will be meeting a girl, now this victim, volunteer hahahaha lets get started Annabel has her head down Kate claps and Annabel moves her head up KATE: Yell all you like, no one can here you (smile). Why so tense… I know exactly what you need! Kate gets the fear blindfold and ties it around Annabel (smiles, laughs) KATE: hahaha well lets take a looksies inside your pretty little mind… hahahaha BLACK OUT Dodie and Laura walk on stage behind Annabel Music Lights on Dodie and Laura do peer pressure choreography. Kate comes in DODIE AND LAURA: just do it, take it. That’s better! Take it KATE: you have succumbed to the pressure now… Annabel starts crying Change music Issy and Kate behind the black board in a creepy style Dodie and Laura form group and stage talking, excluding Annabel Issy comes out and walks around ISSY: nobody likes you, they cant hear you, you’re a nobody to them Peer pressure echoes Issy Annabel runs back to her chair and Issy whispers more insults Issy uses hand motions to lift Annabel ISSY: you’re a lonely soul; you’re never going to be good enough Issy uses hand motions to drop Annabel on ground Change of music Thea and Nina go on stage and pick Annabel off Dodie, Laura and Kate behind backboard → frozen in place, Kate rips black sheet off mirror and throws out tape measures Thea and Nina grab Annabel off the floor and start measuring/strangling her with the tape. Annabel struggling. They force a shirt on her. Annabel looks in mirror and grabs belly. Thea and Nina looks at audience and grabs belly Stop Music Everyone speaks in character at Annabel – Laura, Dodie, Issy, Nina, Thea KATE: game over Everyone corrupts Annabel – face has changed to evil KATE: who’s next? So far I'm very happy with how the play is going, the idea sounds like a real nightmare but with some realism to scare the audience with what they were comfortable with. We are using a lot of techniques to get emotions across, such as when Annabel is looking in the mirror and Kate, Laura, Nina, Dodie and I all start whispering insults to do with our characters which will gradually get louder until theyre being shouted out (e.g. peer pressure: just take it!, Self consciousness: Your ugly! Your Repulsive!, Loneliness: Nobody Cares!). This will symbolise the voices and thoughts in her head getting bigger and harder to ignore until she breaks. This way the audience can hear what is going on in her head, and feel overwhelmed by all the noise. Another factor that will scare the audience is Annabel's change, this is because the audience will be used to her being the victim and the only 'good' one. When she loses, evil wins, so the audience will feel hopeless and scared. When it comes to lighting, we hope for eerie colours that make people uncomfortable and make the whole room feel like a whole different, surreal place. We have begun choosing music and decided we need a track for the introduction (something circus themed but eerie), music for the peer pressure scene (something faster paced), loneliness (sad, creepy music), self conscious (something distorted and unexpected) and the final scene (something that builds up for Annabel's change). If this was a real dreamworld that we were creating, i think that changes in temperature would make it more effective, like it getting hot as peer pressure pulls Annabel around because the scene feels demonic and the heat would link it to hell. Our goals for now are to establish music and light, bring in costumes and run through the performance as much as possible.

Journal 3: Week 3

This week in Drama our group worked the hardest it has yet to try and script and have the lines ready to start rehearsing next week. As a result we made a lot of important decisions with ideas of our dream world. It was finalised that the nightmare will be set up like a gameshow with a demonic circus atmosphere. Our main goal is to grab the audiences' attention and not lose it, hopefully leaving them effected by fear after if executed correctly. Below is an outline of how the dream world should be so far, written up by Dodie while we discussed it OUTLINING scene 1- intro tape on the floor in shape of horse show (semi-circle) everyone is single filed out side and Kate (devil narrator) directs everyone to sit around in the half circle - nina, thea, issy, laura and I come in with audience Annabel (the girl) in the middle of the circle with eye closed kate does her introduction - scares audience and brings in game show kate puts a blind fold on annabel (shows the dreamworld etc) scene 2 - self consciousness tape measure self conscious has a shirt with outlines, words etc.. and they force it on (there is a white screen or a thin sheet and self consciousness and girl is behind it- showing the shadows etc.) mirror and whispering voices people yelling and reinforcing the self consciousness --> linking back to fear kate helping and narrating along the way scene 3- peer pressure dancing --> peer pressure. peer pressure is dancing and makes girl mirror hair emphasis on the dancing --> strong sharp moves scene 4- loneliness emphasis on being lonely this scene is more sad then scary however, this is still a mockery happening Whilst we did not finish it, we plan to fill in details whilst rehearsing next lesson so we know what works best. In our last lesson we also planned out and acted the entering of the class into the world and Kate and Annabelle's introduction. No one in the class should be able to tell that the shape under a blanket in the middle of the room is Annabelle until Kate rips the sheet off. Hopefully this will catch the audience off guard, the lighting will preferably be dark and in my head maybe smoky with some harsh spotlights on the main figures so that Kate is using the lights like in an interrogation when asking her questions. Kate plans to go full out psychopath, complete with mood swings and creepy behaviours (sniffing audience hair, intense stares, etc) which will make the audience uneasy as the person they knew has changed completely for the role and Annabelle the opposite, meek and innocent. We will try to contrast the clothing to show this difference even further. Kate in rich dark colours, annabelle in white and the rest of us, as demons, all in black with face paint to symbolise what kind of demons we are. Here is the final casting: Girl/ Victim- Annabelle Host/Devil-Kate Self consciousness demons- Nina and Thea Peer Pressure- Dodie and Laura Loneliness- Issy For our roles, this weekend we were all to do research on music for our characters and personas we think will suit our roles. As loneliness, I want sad clown music playing and I want to be a fairly emotionless demon, I barely pay attention to the girl but just being in the room puts her spirits down, like I can control emotion, even the other demons won't want to include me.

Journal Two- Week 2

This week in Drama we had three lessons. Two of which we continued developing ideas and the third in a circus act workshop. In our theory lessons we all shared ideas we had thought of over the weekend and created a rough timeline of events for our five minute dream world performance. We decided the Dream World should be like hell's version of a gameshow, where The lead 'Demon" is the boss of the other lesser demons that the host introduces as different emotions and situations, e.g. peer pressure, loneliness,etc. What we are trying to achieve with this is the girl's real life fears becoming real but bigger and more emphasised, like her own personal nightmare come true. The demons team up trying to tear down her spirit, scaring her with their faceless appearances and movements. Two ideas that I contributed that the group agreed with was that at the end when the girl finally loses out to the demons she could be lifted by them and made to fall in line with the rest, putting on a mask and becoming a demon as well and secondly when the room goes black Kate could whisper 'who's up next?. This will hopefully scare the audience as they have seen the result of the last girl on the show, and they will definetly not want to follow her footsteps. We began choosing characters, Kate as the host Demon, Annabelle as the main girl and Thea, Nina, Laura and I as the demons. We are going to start incorporating choreography next week, aiming to make Annabelle look fragile, scared and innocent as she moves around and everyone else, as demons, as unnatural and terrifying as possible to substantiate the nightmare theme. In our last lesson of the week, the circus class we learnt tricks to do with standing on and lifting people, as well as tricks with hoops. Although we learnt some new things, a lot of the tricks were things that we had learnt previously or may not suit our idea. Overall, it was a very fun experience and got everyones brains thinking about the choreography for next week.

Journal One- Week one of assignment

Friday was my first lesson of Drama this week since I have been away, fortunately I only missed the individual part, so I can catch up this weekend. Mrs Burley gave the class some insight into previous girls' dream world ideas, I really like the ones that somehow involved the audiences and I would like to make that part of the performance. I was put in a group with Nina, Thea, Dodie, Annabelle and Kate. We began to brainstorm ideas and concepts, looking at the stimulus to help. Thea came up with the idea to blindfold the girl who creates the dream world, and have the fears and thoughts in her head come to life. We all agreed that we wanted to do something to do with bullying and fears that teenage girls have as we can relate to them and I had the idea that we could have bizarre creatures or characters that represent her demons (like, self consciousness, cyber bullying, self harm, etc) and everyone helped to expand the idea so that the demons will be over dramaticised and using symbolising, the dream world will be like the journey through senior school, with the demons slowly getting more power over her until she is free of them. A few girls in the group all came up with the similar idea to get in the audience and try and get them to call the main girl names, trying to grow in strength through her pain and low self esteem. I also shared another idea that stuck, we should have the girl wearing white pants and a tshirt and all the demons will write insults all over her, and outlines of what her body should like as opposed to her own. For the set we thought that the room should be dark and lit with colours that can be connected to fear. So far everyone in the group is contributing and giving their ideas and no one is just sitting around, so I think that our group will hopefully do well.