During the first visit to the cemetery, a key idea I picked up on was the different types of trees that resided there. Additionally, I educated myself about the people who were buried there. After that visit, I researched heavily into the trees in the cemetery, which was my main focal point for the research stage of devising. I made numerous PowerPoints and documents detailing the different sorts of trees within the cemetery, looking into the historical, cultural and biological aspects of each and every tree. Evidence for this is here: 

 https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xVZSV93aRObLlYgcW9i2zKYmN3ZWtOcViToIdu2qiAI/edit 

https://livecoventryac-my.sharepoint.com/:p:/r/personal/lamaj_uni_coventry_ac_uk/_layouts/15/Doc.aspx?sourcedoc=%7BF2E742E4-63ED-4FCA-9C0D-3B83F2FF2ABC%7D&file=Presentation3.pptx&action=edit&mobileredirect=true

The next stage of our performance was physically creating the scenes. I helped work on the Yew Tree, whilst also writing the speech for the first scene. For the speech, I researched different cultures and mythology to seek ideas for the monologue. I wrote up a Word document entailing two stories of Norse myth, as evidenced here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yspn2GD5P_k8bR6nMGL5eiEFUCw8Ec4Pv0bZLTuG_Mg/edit. Shifting my focus more heavily on the speech and much less on the research, I began working heavily on the speech both physically and on the script. One thing I could’ve done better during the research project was going to my other actors and cast to test if my speech was better, as a lot of the beginning speech lacked proper refinement. One other area I think I could’ve worked on for the speech was increasing the level of the enthusiasm of the druid to really capture how devout he is to the yew tree. I think doing this would make the importance of the yew tree much more evident and has its effect on the performance be more impactful. Finally, I think my level of volume needed work in the final performance, as it felt like I was at some points too quiet whilst at other times I was audibly much louder. 

Speaking on the process as a whole, I think we had strong moments of making refined, well-constructed art, whilst at other moments it felt we lacked a lot of ideas. I think during the time our director wasn’t in, we had a lot of issues, as making work and joining up as one collective cast definitely meant the work we could’ve been doing wasn’t being done. I think we did very well on the research aspect and that the cast as a whole definitely put their focus into it, and the ideas we gathered were clearly worked on and edited to better fit the context of a performance. I think I could’ve been more present during the development of other scenes and split my time between developing the monologue and helping the rest of the cast out, as I felt unaware and unhelpful during the development of other scenes. I think given the time we had we created a fine piece of work, but there were definitely elements we could’ve fixed, developed and changed that we just didn’t do. One of the primary elements was collaboration. A lot of the individual groups for scenes stayed in bubbles without having other people come in and criticise, and offer ideas, which definitely would’ve improved the process overall. I think another impactful effect it would’ve had would create a more ambitious and effective workspace for the cast, leading to more work being created. On the other hand, I think during the rehearsal process the fact we were running the show over and over again helped everyone see the performance as a whole and actually lead to a plethora of ideas to be made, explored and developed. One of the most heavily rehearsed and developed ideas we worked on was the transitioning and moving of boxes. I think this demonstrates a collective understanding of working as one cast. My general opinion on the rehearsal process was that it was our most effective, sharp and overall finest process during the whole creation of the performance, due to a collection of ideas, development and altering. During this process, we worked on a plethora of different scenes and sharpened a lot of the weaker and underdeveloped parts of the show. I personally felt more in tune with the cast as we were able to give ideas and opinions on what to change, ideas we’ve had, and offer our perspectives on certain parts of scenes. 

On the contrary, I think there were a few times during the performance we could’ve done more. I think given the limited time and lack of a directorial role meant there were a few scenes that felt comparatively less developed and subsequently lower quality than other more rehearsed parts of the performance. I think a thing we could’ve done better was effectively split our time and effort across multiple different scenes and other aspects of the performance, for instance, the scene with the grandpa was lacking in terms of quality in script work and volume. I found that there were scenes that definitely felt weaker, another one being the bar scene. I felt that there were parts of that performance that were under-rehearsed, such as the speech about William’s death, that definitely could’ve been improved as it didn’t feel realistic to what would’ve been said during that era. A lot of these issues were absolutely tied to the lack of a director for two weeks, but to be more critical, a lot of the work that we could’ve been doing during those two weeks was either not done or scrapped entirely. Furthermore, I think after our director came back, we had a lot of issues translating the ideas and carrying a lot of them across. In my case, a lot of the research wasn’t used. This is obviously bad, as a lot of the time and effort I put into researching the cemetery and its trees were lost. 

To evaluate, I think the latter half of the process was much sharper and more focused than the beginning, due to the pressure of having to put a performance on. I think a lot of the cast, myself included, could’ve done more during the time we didn’t have a proper directorial role, and that a lot of the work during those few weeks was good, but could’ve definitely been much better overall. I do however think we did excellently during the rehearsal process and made the performance much tighter and of higher quality. I think we definitely came together as a cast during the whole process, obviously more evidently during the final part of the performance process. 

1st October : Tension Studies, practice that had us perform a job or task such as cleaning a car with varying amounts of energy. Was good, let’s you perceive different ways of doing a specific thing, potentially use in scenes if it lacks ‘energy’ or content.

2nd November: Evelyn and Gabe enter left and right side of stage with something covering their faces. They hang up a coat onto a coat rack before turning around and smiling, identically to how Sir Hugh will be doing it during the whole movement piece. Stage 1: Hugh will be miming the actions of the script; hands on head with smile, the sun could be one of the currently not used actors.

Plot Points: Hugh’s interrogation. Hugh’s death. Pre-wedding party. Finding the note. Evelyn seeing phantom version of herself. Nightmares. Nurse MacDonald seeing the spirit.

Notes from Notes app:

Acting Notes

5 Goals:

Make dependable friends who understand ME.

Become an independent person that can handle them self in any given scenario.

Expand my knowledge beyond what I have already learnt and use that to better MYSELF.

Become a more charismatic, confident person that people know and speak fondly of.

Work on my insecurities and change my perception on myself. Use them to change how I see others and learn how they can make us have more humanity.

Make feeling uncomfortable feel more easily manageable.

16th September 2021, Notes:

Password: ellenterry1

Any realistic horror movie should NEVER have a part two.

Find unison. Remembering to stay at the same pace, but also foreshadow you’re gonna be moving

The modern world is ridged

Physical theatre

A critical introduction

Started with keepy-upy

Bucket Ball

Ribbon of Destiny

White and gold shoes from foot asylum

23rd September

Mantra:

Mirror -> Explore -> Copy -> Heighten -> Transform

Flexibility = Objective. Similar to space practice.

Improvisation -> missing something from nothing.

Don’t make excuses -> use self to make play, use hands to make props and improv. it.

Sporling used education to develop, through colleges and schools.

Message Glenn on weekend

Jacque LeCoq

7 states of tension

1. Half asleep

2. Cool, fluid relaxed

3. Neutral

4. Questioning

5. Positive, drawn towards

6. Negative, repelled

7. Rigormortis

Neutral masks developed Jacque Copeau

A101AD

28th September

Visual storyboards

Pied Piper – Hamlet – Dark Metaphor

Dark, primal fear of adulthood

Folk tale

No. 1 Introduce world, characters, status quo, some sense of background

Status quo – could be war.

No. 2 Inciting situation

No. 3 What’re the stakes? Progressively worse and worse, conflicts get worse. Rising action.

No. 4 Final Event.

Task for next week

Find a piece of performance

The nature of the teller is important

⁃ Sense of architecture

⁃ Got special interest

⁃ Got mimic element. Depth further up stage

⁃ Intentional moving (?). Intentions weren’t clarified. What’s the atmosphere that should be giving?

⁃ Stay in character (stupid me)

Opening ideas. Evelyn, Gabe and Nurse all enter from different parts of the state, pretending to hold a coat or bag to place it on a coat rack or elsewhere. Hugh is doing morning rituals, waking up, etc. Second opening idea: First shot is whole cast walking into line. Say small anecdotal line about event in play that foreshadows something, but is kept mysterious. After each line, whole cast turns around, speaking in weird language before turning back around with smiles on faces.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/1UsFR42EpBfG8dTczF45-qkpQ4DlOy-4B/edit?usp=docslist_api&filetype=msword