This was a quick workshop to show different ways to transition into a scene to another scene. We briefly wanted to show different titles of the performance and how we would picture the scenes to go. It was really fun to come up with ideas of what we expected for example ‘Fan’ to be played out. But overall that did help us come up with different ideas of how the scenes will go, whether we use the ideas or not they are still there.

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So in this clip, you will be able to see the way we used the lighting to manipulate the scene to show how a person is perhaps laying on their death bed and the doctor responding. We thought this lighting would be good for this scene as you cannot see the doctors face and that could symbolise the various other doctors who feel hopeless in helping someone that is terminally ill. This is quite a sensitive scene and the way we portrayed the scene seems touching. The levels show who is superior and who is vulnerable so quickly. This is very easy to see as an audience and I also think is very moving

This is our first attempt performing this scene God’s Voice. We decided to play with the lighting so we get an idea of what works and what does not work. We experimented with two lights of square boxes. We tried this to show two different rooms. This is a different way of showing the audience how lighting can appear as if there are two-rooms rather than one empty place. For this particular scene, I do not think the square boxes work. Again what I would imagine is a center stage circle light. That seems very focused and the audience just needs to focus on that circle and the action. This was a helpful workshop and we got to see how different lights can make a difference to what you see.

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In this workshop, we will be focusing on the scene ‘Mother’. With this scene, I wanted to not only do I want to focus on the mother and child relationship but understand how close they will be on stage. The image I have in my head is the child is playing a video game, too distracted to hear what anyone says and the mother gets closer and closer to explain who she really is. We tried to see if the ‘child’ is sitting on the block and looking towards the audience majority of the time until the mother reveals herself. We tried to see if the mother walks in the living room setting or even a bedroom. When trialing that a few times we decided to have even greater proximity and get the mother to be in the lightbox. It did not seem realistic but once trialing it, we realised how well it works, and to see the mother get frustrated and get closer to the child seems much more naturalistic. From an audience perspective, it seemed way more fun and innovative using a place that is hardly used before. This workshop was useful as we discovered different ways of showing relationships between characters

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What I believe is if something that does not work in one scene we try and use it for another scene so the ideas are never wasted. James Macdonald (a Film and Theatre director) worked on, 2012’s ‘Love and Information’. “She thinks in terms of images,” referring to Churchill said by MacDonald in The Newyorker, adding, “The scripts are open-ended—they want you to enter into that world and play and find your own conclusions.” As a director, this gives open creative freedom to explore the scenes in many different ways. One of James Macdonald’s key features as a director is to say ‘let’s try it’ which is great – no matter what anyone says. For me, I understand that trial and error is very important and that we cannot be fixated on one idea but brainstorm many. For this particular script, there is a lot to explore since there are no characters and there are no stage directions. As a director of this production, I did initially find it extremely daunting, to begin with. I could not understand how the script was laid out and gradually got to understand Churchill’s work and how she wants us as directors and actors to approach it freely. In this image, it shows how we all had a different interpretation of how we wanted to be perceived on camera. This was interesting to see how we all approached the task completely differently. It is all trial and error which we understood that it will be part of our process of learning more of what will work in each scene.

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So in this workshop, we decided to focus on transitions. We wanted to focus on this as it is vital for our performance to have a smooth transition than to awkwardly move things around while the audience is getting ready to watch the next scene. This is something we all wanted to tackle when performing this play and what we did not want is a continuos moment of blackouts. I do not this it is practical and as an audience, I would be frustrated if someone continues to turn off the lights and on again. It does not look professional so we decided to trial different ways we can show one scene to another with little movement. We decided to focus this workshop on the scenes ‘Fired‘ and ‘Message’. I started to think of ways we can show Message and we came up with different locations and thought of a train journey would be different. From the train journey, we wanted to then create an office scene because it only makes sense if  ‘Fired’  was set in an office environment. So we decided to work with blocks since it is so much easier to move around on stage. Initially, we placed the boxes next to each other but then realised it looks too crowded on stage. We then placed the boxes in a line with gaps in between so it looks like we are in separate carriages. That ended up looking very good and spread out. When transitioning to the next scene all we did is move the boxes as if it is now crisscross and we sat behind the box and used the box as a desk, as if we are responding to emails. This worked out so well and after a few practices, we did it in the least amount of time. This workshop was useful so that we understand the limited amount of time we have to change between scenes.

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In this rehearsal, we focused more on setting and characters so that we get a better vision of what may or may not be a scene for the performance. We initially brainstormed different ideas of what we thought the characters would be and then decided to think of more government-level people. People who tend to have power and manipulate others to something for them. This sounded great yet difficult to perhaps portray on stage so I then thought about levels and proximity between the characters. We tried to get both characters and say the words to each other close up around a meter apart. However, that looked very basic and not interesting for the audience to look at. So we decided to put a chair on stage to see if that made any difference. I sat on the chair as Lia investigated me. It still did not look intimidating in the slightest, so we decided to add another prop and bring a table on stage. We started with the table in the middle and look opposite each other, which worked well, and then we changed the table to it is placed in a diagonal so it is easier for the audience to see. Lia started by sitting down and saying the lines although it did not look right so we got Lia to stand and say her lines as I sat down and said mine. You can see the proximity between us and the levels did make Lia seem like she had more power over me. This workshop was helpful as it shows us how adding a few props on stage and knowing what your character is like can change the whole dynamic.

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For this workshop, we wanted to explore the ways we can showcase this performance. As the scene stop and change so quickly we thought hard about trying to remove things off stage while having another scene be on stage straight away. That did give me anxiety just thinking about quickly I need to be off or on stage. As we all discussed the scenes, it did not seem right to have all the action center stage.  So we decided to trial a few ways we could imagine the scenes to be. I thought of having the stage split to one right side and one left side and have the audience all facing one way. We did a trial and it works well with the scenes but still continued to explore more possibilities so we came up with an exhibition-style performance. Now, this does work to some degree, the audience will move but the actors will stay. This does remind me of the Brechtian technique of the audience always knowing it is a performance and not get too attached to the characters.  Again this did look good however it seemed like some people may get a good view of the performance some would not be able to see it so it kind of loses its touch as we want everyone to see it comfortable. This workshop was interesting as we were exploring how the way the performance is presented it can have an impact on the audience.

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