Lesson 1 - Tuesday 1st November 2016

In today’s lesson we got into small groups and discussed ‘What is the function of theatre?’ We came up with loads of different ideas but there was a clear repetition in a few of the answers. For example many of the groups wrote down ‘something to challenge the audience’, ‘something for the audience to relate to’, ‘something that makes the audience feel connected’ and ‘to entertain’. There were also other, less popular ideas that came up such as ‘to make the audience uncomfortable’. This exercise allowed us as a class to engage with what we aim to give an audience and also allowed us to reconnect with what obviously has to be done in order to make a good performance, but also what have to happen in order to make a performance great. These extra things would set a performance apart from the rest of them and make a performance both unique and enticing for the audience.

What is theatre

After establishing this we were then put into different groups. My group consisted of myself, Francis, Antonia, Alex, Tianna and Milo. We were then given a newspaper and told to find an article that we could use as a stimulus to work from. We chose an article with the heading ‘Moors murderer Ian Brady makes new bid for move to prison so he can starve himself to death’  We then split into pairs and created short scenes that would later be merged together. The first scene showed Ian and a career in the mental institute talking. The scene addressed the main issue of Ian refusing to eat food and telling his career that he was well and didn’t need to be in the institute anymore. The second scene showed the mother of one of the children that was murdered by Ian noticing his possible release in the news paper and getting upset about it. The last scene displayed the lawyers discussing whether Ian should be allowed to be removed from the mental institute and instead placed in a prison. Things that came up in the debate was the fact that it would be cheaper for Ian to be placed in prison however there was also the contradictions that Ian was allowed to refuse food in prison without being force fed and therefore he would be able to starve himself to death. The political side of the performance was the questioning of whether Ian should be given the opportunity to enter an environment where he had a clear intent of starving himself so that he could die, but the audience had to think if he deserved to have such an easy escape root out of his fears after killing 5 children. After all, each of the children’s family and friends have to live with the pain, why shouldn’t he?

We then performed our scenes to the class. I really liked Sarah’s group because their scene was memorable and funny. It made fun of the serious issue of machines taking over more and more jobs every day. It also met most of the criteria of creating a good performance that we made at the beginning of the lesson. This showed that the group had both considered what they wanted to get across but also how they could do it successfully.

We then got back into our groups and discussed how we could turn our ‘dramatic’ theatre pieces into ‘epic’ theatre pieces. My group discussed doing a lot of narrative sections and maybe always being present in each scene or taking on other roles. For example, using the actor that plays Ian as the Mother as well would cause the audience to sympathise with the situation and political issue rather than the character. This would be because the character would look identical to the evil murderer/loving mother and so a bias opinion wouldn’t be created.

After break we created our own ‘Political Protest Groups’. My group consisted of myself, Sherene, Leanne, Loyde, Phoebe and Angelica. We then all said our ideas of what we’d like to protest about. I feel deeply towards the whole exam process and really wanted to do that. Phoebe really didn’t like that idea and so we began to search for other ideas. Loyde then came up with the idea of doing chemical warfare and everyone getting into overalls with a gas mask and using powder paint to somehow represent the chemicals. We were all delighted with this idea and loved the idea of using powder paint in such a symbolic way. And so the election between Loyde and myself started. The votes for exams and Chemical warfare were even which made things ten times more difficult. Obviously I was bias to my own idea, especially since I felt so strongly about it and since the group had come up with plenty of work to back the issue such as using a passerby to do a Q and A with someone in our group which would show that everyone has different mentalities and so not everyone should be marked under exactly the same criteria (be that the allocated time in an exam, difficulty etc). Sadly, Loyde won the election instead of me but I think we could do so much once we back up our work with the correct research. I look forward to putting proper ideas down next week now that we have an issue to protest about.