Thursday 28th - Run through

On Thursday, We were in the theatre for an LX Plot... Which ran up to about 2 oclock...

After lighting, we went to wardrobe to get our costumes on for a run through which the ND's watched... We ran through half of the play and had a Q&A to find out what they thought of it..

Some of the audience did not understand where they were suppose to be at all times, most of them followed the suitecase.. but didn't know when to move.. During this run, we didn't have the AV screens, so the doctors were unable to move the audience with the screens...

They thought that we all needed work on Characterisation, and "own " the space alot more, as sometimes it got abit boring..

With all the scientfic text in the piece, some felt that we needed to really understand what it is we are saying, so that when we are speaking it, it makes sense to the audience.. Also work on pronunciation of some of the scientific termanology...

We need to make our relationships clearer.. as at the beginning of the piece, when people walk up to Henry as Jaccapo is speaking, it wasn't clear on how some of the characters reacted... However, we did not get through the whole play, so some characters were not introduced at all of introduced properly.

We also asked if the movement sequences during the piece took away the concentration of what was being said by other actors, for example, when Britt and I do the movement sequence when Ryan is speaking his little monologue... the audience said that it was not interferring with concentration, and they were still listening to what was being said.... They thought that the movemnt bits werereally nice, but sometimes didn't understany what they were suppose to be representing... As they haven't seen the whole piece, aome of these sequences  make sense alot later on..

The audience felt that we needed to believe in the piece for them to believe in it and enjoy it... as we went in there quite negative about how it was going to be, and  the audience sensed that... We told them that because we had been in th theatre all morining, it was a big change moving to a smaller space, and not having the set and the props which add to the piece alot...

They understood the story and liked what they saw, they want us to give it more omphhh and really believe and enjoy whatwe are doing...

After the run, we went back to costume to get the final alterations done on our costumes!!

Please add anything I have missed..

Ria :)

Henry Speaking

Ria has found this. Zac, can you get the sound? it is towards the end, as you can see in the transcript.

http://www.kpbs.org/news/2009/dec/10/first-complete-brain-dissection-also-social-media-/

Henry Speaking

hello please help. we were plotting sound on thursday and we are really missing a good clip of real henry saying something poignant to finish the show with. 
can you please help find something and send me link?


i 'm sure i have heard him say somewhere if it helps others... but i cant find it.

thanks hope you are all having a good break

vanessa

Wednesday 27th Run Through!

Run Through

Today, We done a run through and blocked the WHOLE PLAY!!

We have decided:

• On our blocking for each scene
• Where we want the audience for each scene, do we want them standing around? Or sitting in the lecture theatre?
• New scenes, nearly all of us have written, are writing or adding to a scene for the play.
• No scale electrics to explain Synapsise, as it was broken, but a lovely idea..
• Do we use the doodle bug? I think it was decided that it wouldn't explain it very well?
• How and when Henry gets transformed from young to old, how the audience know....
• We have added in scenes that explain, relationships, science bits, family...
• Decided what voiceover we are using
• What else needs to be recorded
• Music????????

We were in the theatre for an hour...... So we were able to work with the set (Which is AMAZING!!), and get a really good idea of the space we are going to have to perform in... how much room we will have to move the audience around with. Also being able to use the AV screens abled the doctors to mark out, When, How, Where and Why they are going to be moving the screens... To move audience? To hide something? For shadows?

Also, most of us felt that being in the space made us more excited and optomistic about the performance...

Some felt that the show lacked energy... Because of the characterisation? Because of the script? Because of the way the story is being delivered?....

We all feel that we need to work on characterisation and really bring energy and truth to our characters...

What the actors need to do???

• Learn lines!!
• Email the new scenes to Vanessa this evening!
• Work on characterisation
• Remember the blocking
• Work on our Projection... Otherwise the audience will not hear us, and what we are saying will be lost...

Please Add anything that I have missed!!!

Thanksss......

Ria :)

How to explain memory

Hello all. There is a really interesting article about how freud likened memory to a magic slate. Not sure where it goes and if but some text about how metaphors have changed and they keep changing. But now we have the real thing to look at and digitise etc…..

Some ideas are that we write that (see notes) and also get the audience to use a magic slate as part of that piece. They might write down a memory. Then it wipes clean but you can still find it in the memory. Might we also link it to memories of buildings and so anticipate what happens in the bar afterwards??? And they can leave them behind with messages on them? (see picture below)

From the greeks onwards, we have been trying to find the right metaphor and analogy of how memory works. They said it was like a library, like an aviary, like a theatre, like a room, like a book, like a computer,

We are done with metaphors henry. We now want the real thing. Sliced, saved, shared, digitised. Parbola escrita… what is written stays and your brain might contain all the answers and all the questions. Each metaphor reflects the technology of the time

Synapsis Bullet points and Today's silks session...

During today’s silks workshop, we tried to use the silks for the ‘pass over scene’ between Jaccapo and Suzanne, and also we tried to mainly use them to explain how the Synapsis works.

During the Jaccapo and Suzanne scene, we created some nice images using the silks, but we didn’t know what the intention of the silks was actually for… Why were we using them? What did they represent? How do they represent it?....

As we couldn’t answer the questions, and in this scene the silks didn’t actually help in telling the story, we decided that we will not be using them for this scene, and find another way to do the pass over…

For the Synapsis scene where we explain the bullet points below, we thought of many many different ways of using the silks, we tried tying knots in them, people swinging, people doing areal positions, climbing up and having a knot tied in when you come back down, joining them, linking together and so many other ideas…. But we didn’t feel that it helped to explain what we want to explain, we felt that the silks didn’t really help in showing the journey that needs to happen when forming a long term memory. 

So we thought of using a Train set? Or Scale electric? Or cars on a track? Where, if one piece of these is missing, they will not work. We think that using the train tracks idea will help us explain the Synapsis story to the audience, and it will make more sense to them, so they will be more likely to take in the information that is being given to them.

When we come back off Easter break, we are going to be experimenting with the Train tracks and Scale Electrics and coming up with new ideas for scene that were originally blocked over by the silks.

Taz wrote the main points for Synapsis:  Bullet Points

·         The synapsis neuron is connected when a sense is received and the initial connection is then made

·         For the impulses to travel through the neuron, there needs to be a Connection

·         That connection is made by calcium protein, this holds the synapsis together

·         The bigger the impulse, the more calcium is produced to make a stronger connection

·         The stronger the connection, the better the memory

·         Henry had no hippocampus, therefore could not make the connections to form long term memories

·         The true function of the hippocampus is still being debated by scienctists today.

Ria :)

Silks Photo's 20/04/2011

Pics from Silks session.... Ria :)