Blackout - Rehearsals #TeamBlue
BLACKOUT
-- We received the script for Blackout by Davey Anderson, we then read over it as a group and each person dished out ideas and what it made them feel. When it came to me I thought that though there were some powerful themes highlighted in the play. For example bullying; this was shown throughout many of the scenes in the play however the concept itself was a brilliant idea in that it created a sense of independence and freedom within the play for actors to mold and form their own creations. There were a few dark moments that many people didn't like but then again I believed it to be a great contrast onto the other play's we completed beforehand i.e Two Gentlemen of Verona, Oedipus, The Cherry Orchard and Medea.
In the coming week Team Blue will do more and more research into Blackout to see what else there is to be deduced from the play and what we can do to make additions to it.
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On the starting week for our lead into 'BLACKOUT' which was to be our final major production for our first year Rob got us active with games like normal and vocal exercises. He then handed the scripts for Blackout to everyone, the play was centered around a young teen called: James. The boy goes through some changes throughout the play as he slowly but surely becomes infatuated with the feeling of "ripping, tearing" someone open or imagining feeling of killing someone, putting up swastikas in his house and eventually waking up in a jail cell with no recollection of what he had done. This was a clear notion to James' psychological barriers being broken from the boy he once was to another human entirely.
We found out that the play was set in Scotland therefore it's actors used Scottish accents as this was seen in many of the words we read such as: "nae" or "ma" and "gonnae" in order for us to combat this we simply used our normal accents and changed some of the words to make them more understandable. After the read through was finished we were put into different groups named Red and Blue. I was placed in the blue group with: Pele, Leonie, Kaede, Juan, Chief, Georgia, Yasemin, Jessica and Laura. Our group was then tasked with breaking up the sections and seeing who wanted what parts and how we would perform them. The first section I was chose to be in was section four, this section was speaking on how alone James truly felt as he was the kid who "didn't get along with anybody" due to him being too shy or too quiet, these traits were seen as weird and nobody really wanted to be associated with someone like that. As a group we decided it best to add some physical aspects into it as opposed to just narrating the play and making it boring for both audience and actors alike.
We found out that the play was set in Scotland therefore it's actors used Scottish accents as this was seen in many of the words we read such as: "nae" or "ma" and "gonnae" in order for us to combat this we simply used our normal accents and changed some of the words to make them more understandable. After the read through was finished we were put into different groups named Red and Blue. I was placed in the blue group with: Pele, Leonie, Kaede, Juan, Chief, Georgia, Yasemin, Jessica and Laura. Our group was then tasked with breaking up the sections and seeing who wanted what parts and how we would perform them. The first section I was chose to be in was section four, this section was speaking on how alone James truly felt as he was the kid who "didn't get along with anybody" due to him being too shy or too quiet, these traits were seen as weird and nobody really wanted to be associated with someone like that. As a group we decided it best to add some physical aspects into it as opposed to just narrating the play and making it boring for both audience and actors alike.
In the coming week Team Blue will do more and more research into Blackout to see what else there is to be deduced from the play and what we can do to make additions to it.
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Come our second week we immediately split apart into our respective groups from the week prior and cracked on starting from section one and downwards. For that first section we were a bit skeptical in what to do for it and tried Juan whom played James for that whole section narrate the situation to the audience, at first it seemed like a really swell idea but that quickly evaporated as seeing it as an audience member it felt boring to watch with just one person narrating a whole scene without anyone else, so in order to work around this problem we came across the idea of having James be in a prison cell which was made up of four people (Kaede, Georgia, Ruby and Leonie).Line wise we broke them up and gave the majority to the girls and some to James as they were conversational and not written as a monologue so it made sense. After some changes in how they should enter and what they should do we finally came to the decision of the four closing in on James to surround him in a square formation and say "Imagine!" in unison which we believed would show the effect of a cell with the "walls closing in" coming into play leaving the prisoner with just his thoughts.
Moving swiftly onto the second section this was about the rocky relationship between James' mother and father, a point in his life that he was to young to understand but the audience identify that the father was a woman beater, this is evident in the script as he is described as "beating her to a pulp" to a point where she no longer felt safe around him. The key factor being how alcohol changed the family for worse, for this scene in particular we had two James' this time around to create a split-screen effect showing the past and present. With the present James narrating the piece as a flashback to the audience with younger James relieving the harsh moments. Stanislavski's teaching of: Naturalism came into play here as we wanted to address the theme of abuse in this scene but not to overdo it that it comes out cliche and deadpan, so to overcome this we said to Pele (Abusive Father) to walk around Jessica (Mother) who at the time would be staring at her mirror looking at the bruises inflicted on her, and just let his presence flow over her as if he's about to hit her and she expects it. The reason for this was to show the audience how fearful the mother was of James' father and not give them the expected "father beats mother" scene but yet play with their minds about the severity of it.
The introduction of James' Grandfather was a pivotal point for him growing up so in section three we chose to bring the physicality into it, for that the group was displayed in a sort of 'V' shape but later changed to a diagonal line for viewing purposes. The scene consisted of the goodness that his Grandfather instilled in him and how much of a good time the two constantly had, theme of love and happiness was shown here albeit for a small part but this shows that James in fact did have a caring side at one point in time and only because of his grandparent did this come to be. However nothing is all sunshine and rainbows as a few arguments were had due to some people in particular wanting their voice to be heard over the others in a fight of dominance which was hard to battle against as some people wanted to get on with the work whereas those particular individuals decided it best to waste time with belittling their colleagues ideas or downright arguing for pointless reasons.
Moving swiftly onto the second section this was about the rocky relationship between James' mother and father, a point in his life that he was to young to understand but the audience identify that the father was a woman beater, this is evident in the script as he is described as "beating her to a pulp" to a point where she no longer felt safe around him. The key factor being how alcohol changed the family for worse, for this scene in particular we had two James' this time around to create a split-screen effect showing the past and present. With the present James narrating the piece as a flashback to the audience with younger James relieving the harsh moments. Stanislavski's teaching of: Naturalism came into play here as we wanted to address the theme of abuse in this scene but not to overdo it that it comes out cliche and deadpan, so to overcome this we said to Pele (Abusive Father) to walk around Jessica (Mother) who at the time would be staring at her mirror looking at the bruises inflicted on her, and just let his presence flow over her as if he's about to hit her and she expects it. The reason for this was to show the audience how fearful the mother was of James' father and not give them the expected "father beats mother" scene but yet play with their minds about the severity of it.
The introduction of James' Grandfather was a pivotal point for him growing up so in section three we chose to bring the physicality into it, for that the group was displayed in a sort of 'V' shape but later changed to a diagonal line for viewing purposes. The scene consisted of the goodness that his Grandfather instilled in him and how much of a good time the two constantly had, theme of love and happiness was shown here albeit for a small part but this shows that James in fact did have a caring side at one point in time and only because of his grandparent did this come to be. However nothing is all sunshine and rainbows as a few arguments were had due to some people in particular wanting their voice to be heard over the others in a fight of dominance which was hard to battle against as some people wanted to get on with the work whereas those particular individuals decided it best to waste time with belittling their colleagues ideas or downright arguing for pointless reasons.
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Next week we started with a few warm-ups as a full class for an hour or so and then again split into our teams. This time along we were up to section four and five in which I had chosen to tackle as James, the reason for the fusion of both sections were because they bled nicely into each other and the way we had set it up worked incredibly well. The theme used in this was bullying as both scenes had showed just how he had to deal with his classmates showing fake love towards him and the bullies in the class victimizing the boy using him only for their benefit highlighting how cruel and vile there were, we employed this by letting the bullies push through the classmates to get to James where they would verbally assault him, hearing the words used and such poison filled into them I could feel how someone in James' shoes may have felt to put up with that every day was a monstrosity. In order for me to perform this as well as I could I utilized Stanislavski's 'Magic If?' and began to ask myself questions regarding the situation at hand. "What if that was me?" "What if I was bullied everyday, how would I feel?" Thinking on these I regressed into someone else as I was lost in the character of James in a sheer sense of understanding whilst both reading the lines and experiencing the feeling upfront. There was a transition in the scene where the positions of James are changed from me to Chief as he at the time was the head bully leading the pack. For this to work I narrated whilst moving through the crowd where Chief would go to grab me back he would be surrounded by the classmates who drag him down and circle him. I narrated upstage from the circle and spoke out what the bullies would do to James "Throw you down the stairs" / "Kick you in the ribs" "Wrap their belts around their knuckles and whack you with it!" I used these phrases in time with the ensemble as we decided that they should act out the beatings with what I was to say giving another taste of physicality in the play to show the brutality that came with being bullied, this was either done with clapping, stomping of the feet or whacks with the belt.
Sections six and seven were done when I wasn't in on the day due to an illness but once I was back I was quickly brought up to speed on what was missed, the real kicker though was section eight of which Kaede narrates. This specific section shows the audience what James went through at school again but only at a glimpse as the bullies "Chase him home with meat cleavers and machetes". It begins with her narration leading into the bullies making noise backstage which consisted of frequent shouts i.e "Get him!" / "Grab him!" and running footsteps. The bullies would run from backstage and we used body blocking here showing Kaede as James getting hit them, after the last hit she would drop the floor in agony and continue to narrate the tale. The line "All the way to your front door" pushed me into the scene as after witnessing what had happened to James I felt numb and shocked carrying this into our scene, Leonie (Mum) asks me what's wrong as she looks at me clutching my rib, I simply shrug it off and head upstairs into my room. There's a nice touch here where Kaede and I break the fourth wall whilst looking to the audience who in a sense act as our bedroom mirror, we both say in unison "I'm not a gimp" one reason why this worked well was because it allowed our audience to identify that we were both playing James at that time.
Kaede begins narrating again and here starts another superb transition as Pele comes on this time as well representing James, our narrator says the line "And you'd cut your hair pure short, right down to the skin" and Pele begins "cutting" my hair and we switch places. This shows the change in James after cutting his hair as I had noticeably longer hair that Pele which again was unexpectedly effective.
Section ten had possessed the theme of Extremism where Chief playing James would put up a nazi salute in class surprising both teacher and students alike, in the end he would be sent home by the teacher for that act of indecency. It follows on to see James smoking and acting like a "hard man" then transitions to Leonie in the role of James. Here he goes up to the bullies to pick a fight saying things like "What're you gonna' do you daftie?" and "Who's gonna give me the first punch?" Where Kaede is sat smartly in the audience who never expected her to apart of them, she incorporates them into the scene by looking at them and giving slight chuckles when Leonie is egging her on for a fight as if the audience are the culprits, it is here we see his hunger for a battle he cannot win yet he gets some enjoyment out of it as the punches seemingly don't hurt anymore and he sits there with his face red raw asking himself if it felt good. A point in time we see James slowly faltering in his personality.
It was the twelfth section that really held weight as it focused on James, who is played by Yasemin, watching a horror flick and really enjoying what's going on in it. Our four girls play his mother in this scene and split the lines between one another as they stand behind James having a conversation with him then seeing him off by turning their backs on the line "See you later!" spoke once more in unison. As Yasemin speaks on her views of the horror film she says "Slash, chop, rip, stab" the girls behind her add their own physical tinge to it with their hands to symbolize them through various movements. In the end of the scene Jessica returns as the mother and speaks to James about the passing of his Grandfather. This. This truly turns the tide of torn personalities and breaks down the boy immensely, his only link to hope and love gone because of an illness.
In the closing weeks we worked on stage transitions and perfecting certain scenes that needed tweaking as well as getting constructive criticism from our tutor to keep our energy up and bring our energy out on a physical level. Our imagination for bringing this all together was said to be done really well and we also told to make sure our vocals were warmed, ready and clear. With that out of the way I was eager to start. Though we've had a rocky road within the group here and there I honestly believe we're ready for the final performance and ready to start our second year with a bang. We've learned so much this year and it felt good putting it into practice and see how amazing each performance came to be, for that I thank you Rob and I thank all of my friends for pushing each other and being the supportive foundation for one another.
But it's still: #TEAM BLUE!
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