Devising - Week 5

This week we had covered drama workshops and how they can benefit in the long run. Drama workshops often help with getting everyone focused and in addition, help bringing everyone together. For my group, we had decided to start of with a little twist with our stimulus. We decided to do the classical game "splat" but instead of saying the word "splat" we testing a little change by replaced it with their names so it help us learn their names in a game that is generally enjoyed by students according to a vote done by the group.

We then decided to have a discussion about what the main task was going to be about. As we were covering relationships, it may connect by a term called the "Domino effect". For example, one person can effect someones life which may influence them to meet someone else in their life that may help them cope with their condition and may later find out that that person may mean more than just a psychologist. So we then asked everyone to get in to two groups of 5-6 and we sent them off to put together a piece portraying what was discussed.

In result, the performances clearly showed the understanding of their interpretation and the discussion were clearly shown. For one of the performances, there was a bar scene where there were different characters and  personalities that integrated. For one, there were two 'typical' girls dancing and getting drunk whereas a Preacher was demanding the attention of those in the bar. In my opinion, it was a great contrast and as the scene resulted in a lot of the characters being arrested, the "Domino effect" was shown in other words as one problem fell on to another.

In conclusion, our feedback pointers were to maybe change the game as it did take a few minutes for everyone to understand the change to the game and that it may in some aspects have an unfairness to those with longer names. However, overall the workshop and ideas were clear and was fun according to our peers.

Devising - Week 4

This week for devising, we covered another stimulus of being a role model student. My group had the initial idea of clearing stating who the role model student was and the effect they had on the class when they first arrived compared to when they have been there for a while. It was as if it was a form of influence on the class and their behaviour. One clear representation of the behaviour of the class towards the student was the paper being thrown at the part where influence was first tried upon the students in the class.

As I was selected to be the role model student, I wanted to portray my character as very quiet and secretive. For character development, we had all had been set the task to come up with the back story of our characters. The characters varied from the loud/lazy/bystanders and of course the role model student.

The feedback given to our group over the process of creating our piece was to maybe show the back story of each character, in particular on how the role model student got to where he is today.