Monday 31 January 2011

publicity so far

this is what is going in prospectus!


Why did Tom forget? Will Carmen remember to remind us? Do we tweet to forget or remember to tweet? How to create the unforgettable moment...
An exploration of the relationship between theatre and remembering - Welcome to the journey!
You can check in early in the process via our blog http://memoryplay.blogspot.com/


remember to come to the show… meet at the recollection point…


and no, none of us remembered to remind each other that day and forget what it was we had to remind. but carmen never did.....

day 2

some nearly went to london today to see a play about the brain.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkBT_OC-VSw


it didn't happen but this is what did.


two pieces on perspectives in remembering. one filmed, one staged.
questions arising are how do we stage differences in perspectives? how do we reproduce change of camera angle, points of view and voiceovers on stage?


one event, three different memories; what does this say about the nature of memory. can there be a historically accurate reconstruction of an event? or is it always from one perspective influenced by emotion, stake in the event and sense of self identity?


relevant sources



ideas for our play arising from this:
  • different staging areas with different activities; autobiographical memory, deja vue, semantic memory, mnemonics. what happens in each and how many choices do the audience get? food, smells, questions and monologues? is there a couple of main stage pieces? physical, musical, beautiful, on silks?
  • can audience choose one of three endings to the show? something like; choose to leave with a personal memory, write in our guestbook, time alone to reflect?
  • choose to create a collective memory in a group. 
  • what memento do we give the audience? a aide memoire of the show? a photo? a perfume?

Tuesday 25 January 2011

day one

 today we each performed a small piece of theatre that we had created based on different research topics on memory... once we had seen the performances we had a group discussion on what we thought were good ideas and what may work within our show... some of the ideas that came out of it included:
> lecture
> voiceover
> audience role?
> brain in a jar image
> one man show?
> montages
> poems/poetry
> tricking the eyes/senses = tricking the memory
> flashbacks linking to the past... can they be remembered correctly?
> Amnesia
> memories seen in third person
> coma's waking up and not having memories of the new world..
>
> after this we took turns to recall memories and try to give as much detail to the
>  group explaining the memory like telling a story... then used various senses to see if they added to improving the memory of worked against them, also from the audiences' point of view whether  listening to the memories increased the experience having other senses stimulated at the same time.



Sharing our memories

Why did we choose those ones?
How did the chocolate help or interfere with the retrieval of memory?
Which bits did we make up to describe it linearly?
How did the smells conjure memory or emotion?
What do we use smells in show for?
Why do we want audience memories? What is in it for them and how do we use them?
Why are memories so filmic?
How did our memory changed once we had shared it?
How did we see it? Were we in it, or our point of view?
How do others remember that same memory?
Were we sharing just a memory or something more of ourselves?


How Do We Turn this INTO THEATRE?


Monday 24 January 2011

Beginnings

Started our new show on memory. Why did Tom not remember? Why did he not remember that it was about memory? and why did all the rest not remember that Tom forgot? We are looking at thousands of things about memory. theatre of memory, memory in space, memory experiments, memory and philosophy, memory and consciousness, types of memory, memory and the brain, mnemonics, the art of memory, memory and the dead. we have a topic and now we begin our search for our question. What kind of theatre do we want to make? magical, engaging, challenging and fun. Theatre that will involve and develop our audience, theatre that will stay friends with them afterwards. Not one night stand theatre. Silks, songs, smells, languages, magic, music and party tricks. We will rewrite our script using other texts only in the mash up tradition emerging. We will write about our process here and invite you into it.