Delayed post of first blog on Midterm pre-appendix

Saturday, 13 October, 12

            One of the most beneficial activities that we did in class this week for me was the short movement pieces with our midterm group. This was an excellent opportunity to work together with other members of our midterm groups and really just develop the different sources of inspiration. Especially since Hans, Kara and I were outside the classroom and working in the pedway between the Timm’s Center and FAB I feel we really had a chance to just play. This exercise really inspired me to consider using found space for our project, because firstly it is a huge risk. Secondly because a different space has the ability to really change the how the piece feels and even the audience perception of the piece. This exercise was extremely helpful in the development work Hans, Kara and I did on Saturday evening. We really worked on developing the very movement-based and raw characters we began to develop on Thursday.

            In class after one of our short presentations Liam had said it reminded him that there is a monster inside of everyone. Saturday evening we really investigated the theme of monsters, especially focusing on gremlins. I was inspired by the ideas of gremlins just by looking at a picture of a cake off the TV show “Halloween Wars”. I love the image of the gremlin crawling out of the cake and being so utterly jagged. Even though this character is completely ugly, I find just the way he looks really implies his movements would be very sharp and defined. Today we all developed our gremlins and the individual personalities of our gremlins. I discovered that the gremlin I created was extremely violent and jealous of both Kara and Hans, particularly Kara, and just wanted to disturb them. We explored these gremlins through placing a pile of clothing in the middle of the floor and digging through the clothes to try and find the clothing of our civilized selves. However, I could not find clothing that worked for my gremlin so instead I just tried to steal the clothing that Hans and Kara attached themselves to.

            As we have worked on devising our midterm presentation I have found that one of the most helpful things the class has done to assist in the devising process were the presentations on the different devising companies. This activity was extremely useful because it gave the class a large variety of devising technics to use and try. Although not all of the technics work for the devising of our particular midterm project it does give us a wide range of options to play with. My midterm group has really started using the exercises that physicalize mundane activities, such as getting dressed, and dramatize them. My midterm group has also been working a lot with the different inspirations that each of us has had throughout the process. We have listened to each other’s music, looked at the pictures that inspired us and thought about the different theorists available to us. Since we had to collect these different sources for our midterm project we have all found many different sources that have proved to be very influential in our creating process.