1999 War in Kosovo was the first image I knew I wanted to do 100% the power on the image is second to none. The black and white colouring combined with the smashed glass creates a effective yet deep picture. I knew straight away I wanted to do my version of this image behind a piece of glass. The original image has a feeling of entrapment to it, like the smashed glass is a sign of escape that is not going to happen. I really liked the idea of drawing the cracked glass onto a window as I feel having the individual within the image create the broken glass connects to the sense of being trapped.

This image was difficult due to the two beings and snow featured within, therefore I decided not to do a direct recreation of it but instead an interpretation of. I used two white boards to created the illusion of snow behind and under me, a flag that is not the English flag featured however is a a flag of the United Kingdom, i wore a coat to get the feeling it is cold. I took key factors of the image and made them my own.

Harry Potter and the philosopher’s stone for 1998 was a tricky on, I spent a lot of time pondering on how I could do this one. I decided to go with what I had, I used the white board to draw a basic idea of the train writing ‘Hogwarts Express’ onto it as seen in the image. The iconic thing everyone thinks of when hearing “Harry Potter” is the glasses so I had to include them. I recreated this image as best I could with what I had.

For the Britney Spears ‘Hit me baby one more time’ iconic image it had it be this. I decided since I work in a school why not make good use of it, the moment in the music video for ‘hit me baby one more time’ when Britney is standing in front of the lockers dancing is the part everyone remembers, that and the school uniform. I decided it would also be ironic if I wore my staff badge for this image as the original image sparked a lot of controversy when released due to Britney being a gown women dressed as a school girl. So, I wanted to add a hidden touch of the staff badge. I also did some reading from a book called ‘The Lolita effect: The media sexualization of young girls and what we can do’ by M. Gigi Durham, which has some interesting information surrounding Britney and that famous school uniform.

This my recreating of the 1996 IRA bombing in Manchester. The image of the women being carries away by a lady and police women was taken during the last attack on Manchester from the IRA. This image really stood out to me for its powerful nature, if you focus on the old women with blood covering her, it almost looks unrealistic, like she has had red paint thrown over her.

I decided when recreating this that I wanted to give it a uneasy feel to it, we had been given the rule of only using natural light so I had a little play around and found an area that had a sky light, when turning off all other lights but leaving this open it left a lovely kind of lighting that I knew would create the effect I was looking for. I decided to us to microphone stand one with a wig on and the another with as close of a police hat as I could find, to represent the women accompanying the lady. The red cloth over my chest was for the blood. When I looked back at the image I had created I noticed that the sky light above my head looked almost like a halo, which I felt gave the image, the lovely uneasy vibe I was aiming for.

We did not expect to be faced with a global pandemic in the middle of this module, in fact we did not expect to have to experience one at all. Corona virus saw the University we shut down (as with everywhere else) and left us having to make major changes to the way we planned our performance. Jazz, our director, did an amazing job of coming up with a brand new way of working. We went from creating a piece of theatre that would be performed to an audience to having to create a digital performance for an audience to watch from a far. Everything we had done leading up to this point, while it was not a waste of time, it definitely had to be rethought and reworked.

Our new plan was to take on a number of years ourselves and recreate them as best we could with only our selves and props we had around us. The years I got were 1996 – 2000. We had the opportunity to change the image we had originally to something we found not only easier to recreated under the new circumstances but also that we could see becoming something creative to put into our performance. Everything now had to be done online, any communication, uploading or interacting with one another. I decided to change the images for my years, after doing some research I picked images I could see would allow me to be creative and express my skills through.

The images I choose are…

1996 – IRA bombing in Manchester

1997 – Harry Potter and the philosophers stone book release

1998 – Britney Spears ‘Hit me baby one more time’ release

1999 – War in Kosovo

2000 – 1st women to go to South Pole

Images I had to recreate below.

We were doing really well with recreating our images,getting through them very quickly and actually doing a pretty good at recreating the images in a way the audience would recognise. We had a discussion about stereotypes and if we should be stereotyping when recreating the images. While I do understand the issue that come with stereotyping and we should be mindful of type casting when creating theatre, however for the purpose of this task and the fact that we were aiming to recreate these images of world events that our audience will know because of the physicality of the picture. If you take away and change the image then you are not staying true to the original or recreating it in a way our audience will understand. If we begin to change the cast and physical aspect of the images then there is not much left in way of recognition especially because we didn’t have props or costume.

The image above is our recreation of the famous image of the Mccan parents holding a photo of Maddie, that was a prediction of what she would look like now, in a bid to raise more awareness years after her disappearance.

The image below is our version of the ‘Mamma Mia’ photo I am sure you are familiar with. We had a lot of fun when it came to recreating the images, it was interesting to realise how much you had to pay attention to detail when recreating the pictures, as all we had was our bodies so the position of individuals had to be very precise,and facial expression had to be perfect in order to really capture the authenticity of the image.

The image is from the 1989 Tienanmen Square. We chose this image as we believe it is very powerful. Just one man stood in front of three huge tanks, it is a very simple picture however there is a level of depth to it that allows everyone who looks at it can understand exactly what the situation is and how it must feel to be there at that time. For me when creating the transition into this image, it was the first time I choreographed a transition that I feel was really effective and interpretive of the piece we (as a group) were aiming to create. I took the position and sight of the image I was seeing and used that as a base for the kind of movement I was going to create. I made the decision that I would get everyone into the position of the frozen image and them add a little bit extra before in order to get them into the still image. I had everyone position themselves in a diagonal line on there knees, across the stage one behind another, George being at the front once everyone was in this position. George then rose up and back down at which point the people behind him did exactly the same, as if to follow him. I liked this as an idea, to cannon the movements that happened. The idea being that someone is always in charge and others are always taking direction or following them. In this specific image you can look at it from whatever point however there is always a leader weather it be the leader of the army who decided to go into the square that day and fire on civilians or the person stood in front of the tanks, who could be seen as a leader of the public who that day decided to take it upon himself to stand in front of the huge machines.

Following on from the idea I have about cannoning the movement and wanting the audience to be aware of a leader, someone who moves first and as a result everyone follows. I did some research into the Tienanmen Square Massacre and who was the leader of what happened that very day in 1989. I found this very interesting article on the 21 most wanted student leaders. Link is attached below. There is also a link below to a very similar article about the 21 most wanted student leader: 30 years on.

21 Most Wanted Student Leaders –

https://www.hrichina.org/sites/default/files/PDFs/CRF.2.2004/b6_TiananmensMost6.2004.pdf

21 Most Wanted Student Leaders: 30 Years On –

https://qz.com/1618805/the-1989-tiananmen-student-leaders-on-chinas-most-wanted-list/

I was given the role of choreographer alongside George, I was very excited to have the chance to showcase my skills and put them into the work we were creating. After a few discussions we decided to start creating the freeze frames for the images we had chosen for the iconic moment from each year. We developed around 5 images and after that it was time for me and George to start thinking about how we would make the transitions between each image exciting and relevant to the performance as a whole. I decided I wanted to make the transitions from image to image movement based this was tricky at first to get everyone to agree to as there was some chat about people not being comfortable with dancing. I explain that dance and movement were different things and they should not be worried as I will create something that is simple enough for everyone to do however visually effective.

Definition for movement and dance…

Movement

• An act of moving the body or part of the body
• An act of moving from one place to another or moving something from one place to another.

Dance

• A series of movements and steps that form a sequence and are usually performed to music.

First class of Production Project 2, having already done PP1 during first year I had an idea of what to expect. I really enjoyed this module as it was very creative and practical. Throughout the first class we were informed on what the idea of the module was and what we hoped to create by the end of it. Our aim was to devise a piece of theatre based on the events from May 1968, and a piece of theatre called ‘Paradise Now’. It was apparent from the very beginning that none of us seemed to know what ‘Paradise Now’ or the events which took place during May 1968 were. We defiantly need  to do our research. We decided we wanted to look at world events between the years 1968 and 2020, then recreate a specific iconic image from each year for one of the three sections of what would become our end performance piece.

Our performance would consist of three sections…

1. Recreations of specific images from world events 1968 – 2020
2. Elements of Paradise now e.g Movement piece, Interviews, Recordings.
3. Monologues

The concept which we were given for Production Project 2 and that we needed to use as a base line for our performance, was very interesting to me. I knew it was going to be a challenge, our final performance could only last between 20 and 30 minuets, we had to squeeze all of our ideas and creations into that amount of time, half an hour isn’t a lot really. I look forward to the creative, physical and exciting project ahead.