Fridays session - Performing our Research

Small pieces of theatre

In Friday’s session, the actors each performed a small piece of theatre, showing the audience the research that had done on their chosen topic.

Carmen – Brain turns reality into dreams, some people remember dreams but not the actual event. Carmen explained this by Tyrone playing a game of noughts and crosses….. Then he dreamt about it, and when he had woken up, he played again, but this time he used a different hand and a different technique to play the game.  So he had remembered how he played in his dreams, not the actual event. After discussing this, we thought that this could go into the experiment room?

Ryan – Repression of memory. Research had told Ryan that repression of memories at this stage is not a proven face and is still only a theory, when people repress their memory , it is usually due to a traumatic experience in which their subconscious takes over to protect the host by blocking it out. When Ryan performed this he used a technique that psychologists use in the same situation, when Ryan performed this, he took the place of a psychologist and was questioning his patient, towards the end of the piece, he began to get a little harder in the questioning.. which made his patient realise that he had in fact killed his wife.  

Brittany – Mirrors and Dual personality, we were taken on a tour around a museum where Britt explained about a woman who had dual personalities. We were taken to a room of mirrors where we were told that in this room,  she has realised that she has a dual personality as she had seen herself change in the mirror. We were then taken to a wall, where we were shown all the certificates from the woman’s achievements, here we were told that she had a degree in psychology? But due to her dual personalities she, half the time she couldn’t remember…  so she worked in a shop. Then we were taken over to the sofa, where it was explained to us that she had been abused as a child and this sofa is where the abuse took place, and this may very well be what began her breakdown.

Rory – Collective Memory museum (Coach trip), During Rory’s piece he involved the audience and took us around the museum with him. He spoke to us about collective memory. Which after led us to the discussion of, what is collective memory? ….. Also if we were to use the idea of a collective memory tour in our show, could the audience all work together on deciding what their collective memory is and agree on a memory? And what is the biggest collective memory for England and why?

Paul – Game show ‘Numskullz’ Paul chose two members of the audience to be the contestants on his show. They were asked questions about the brain, and memory.. for example “Which one of these represents the Hippocampus?” a)Giraffe  B)Seahorse… There were two round of the game show.  We discussed whether we could use a game show in the Memory show? Would it be a quiz show? Will the same members of the audience take part? At what point in the show will the quiz be? Will we have prizes? And will Frederico Mombasa be there to chalk out the scores?

Toby – Autobiographical memory, Toby played and sang a song that was relevant to his Autobiographical memory, he had written the song himself. He then played a ‘Chasing Cars’ by Snow Patrol. Which seemed to have an effect on the audiences memory, as we discussed, the song had triggered of different memories for quite a few of us.

Ria – Enhancing memory and the effects of Drugs and Alcohol on the brain. During the performance, I did an ‘experiment’ on a sedated rat, and explained that if you inject a protein called IGF-II (Insulin – like growth factor II, then it can develop the brain and later impact on the memory formation. This test was actually done on a Rat, but I was unable to find out what the results of the test were.  Using images of the brain, I then went onto explain the effects that binge drinking and drug taking have on the brain and how it can impact your memory. E.g When taking drugs, THC will attach to the receptors in the hippocampus and weakens the short term memory. Also Pro – Longed alcohol abuse causes permanent damage to the memory system and you will have difficulty in remembering new information. Would we be able to use this in the show? Is the information actually all true? As it came from websites and not books.
Here is a scan of Brain, see the difference from a Non alcoholic compared to and Alcoholics brain!

Tyrone – Created a voice over… where he was questioned about his granddad and his dog, he was reminiscing and remembering the times that he and his granddad went fishing, and how a couple came all the way down from Scotland to buy his dog. He used pictures and when the voiceover was playing, he was sitting in the chair letting the thoughts run through his head, and we could see from his facial expressions the effect that the memories had on him.  

Please add anything that I have missed!!

Ria :)