Week Four: Ideas

W4

Final Timeline of Performance

Time Limit: 10 Minutes

1-2 mins:

• Audience entrance, escorted by homeless escorts. Airline sounds will sound as audience enter, symbolising tourism.
• Audience see Indian destination pictures on door: thinking point (more detail below)
• Traffic sounds: Indian Street Traffic Sounds, jarring, constant sound
• Aaron's food stall: audience interaction/improvisation, pickpocketing, stealing oranges etc
• Informative wall: everyone in the group incorporated their own ideas on what could be on the wall: missing posters, wanted posters, drawings drawn by young children, quotes, art, poetry etc. 
• Capture by washing line. Using sensory aspects as they feel ragged clothes on washing line. Ruby, Lili & Charlie holding washing line.

3-4 mins:

• Orange Community
• Gesture Theatre: homeless day.

5-7 mins:

• Opening the box (Amelia's story)
• Child trafficking

8-10 mins:

• Wall Gesture Theatre by Ruby and Charlie (a story)
• Audience exit, escorted by homeless escorts

Ideas I generated for the piece:

Costume

• An idea I generated for the piece was that every actor should wear black. This creates a common chain of familiarity and community. The colour black could also represent simplicity: the fact that the street children don't have a lot. However, it can be seen as rather stereotypical and two dimensional so if each person had a particular accessory, such as a small necklace, bracelet, hat or headband, it gives them some meaning and character, rather than just being a 'bland streetchild with no story'. However, our group eventually decided that this isn't realistic enough for an audience. However, possibly, this could maybe be more suitable for the washing line holders, who can blend into surroundings more easily. 

Lighting

• Another idea I generated was that the room should be completely dark and lifeless. The audience have to find their own way round, with torches and they can bump into anything. I liked this idea because it portrayed an idea of uncertainty and danger because you don't know what is coming next - much more realistic to just having the whole room lit up. However, this idea was later rejected because it didn't seem feasible to have every audience member have a torch.  It also didn't portray the time scale of morning - night clearly.

Stylistic elements 

• In our Monday lesson with Miss Lee, I generated the idea of having a soundscape when the audience arrive and are trapped into the washing line. This area of the piece seemed to be rather bland and dry and having a soundscape would help fill this time with intriguing material. It's using sound to help set the scene of a street. Deep, harsh sounds could represent the traffic on the road and can collide with sweeter, softer sounds that could represent innocent street children in an unethical situation. Our team decided to go with this for this reason.

•  I came up with the idea to have a gesture theatre piece that depicts the daily life of a streetchild in India, from playing, to begging, to hiding, to stealing. We went with it because we wanted to show the story with movement because it would be more interesting and movement is arguably more powerful than just words or a thought track. Secondly  at this point in the play we'd have the audience under our grasp. To get the audience involved, I also thought it would be very interesting to at the point in the play where we plank, have every audience member crawl underneath us to symbolise a bridge: somewhere where a street child may find refuge for the night. However, we later deducted this idea because we thought it was too ambitious and would take too long for every audience member to crawl underneath only three of us in a limited time.  As well as this, with only three of us, the idea of it being a 'bridge' may not have been as clear. 

Set

• It would be effective to have plastic bags spread out all over the floor of the piece, representing the litter in India. Many street children work at dumps all day sifting through rubbish piles looking for things valuable and it's a huge cause of disease and death in India for many. Having this detail in our performance could hugely show that and we could have that idea also displayed in artwork on the wall too.

• On the door will be pictures of Indian destinations. This was an idea I generated and we chose to stick to because it shows the 'stereotypical' image of India on the door but as soon as the audience enter, they can see some of the deeper, less exposed scenes that are hidden away from tourists. It's a thinking point for the audience. 

Extra details

• I also thought it would be really effective to give audience post it note roles as they walk in. We are giving them the role of tourists but by giving them post it notes with 'John Smith. 36. Originates from Kenya. Visiting from London' it just gives the audience some purpose and a reason to be there, rather than just being a parent. We can also respond to where they are. For example, in India, Mr Rennison told us that they link Manchester United with the UK and we can incorporate ideas of this into our piece with various different people and backgrounds. However, our team is still deciding on this and how feasible it'd be. This idea could possibly link to Camp America. As their audience walk in, they label them with post it notes and if our group does it, maybe it shows a common link between society all over the world 'labelling' people.

• As well as reading out facts and figures (See Week Five - we made new changes to our piece) I had the idea that myself and Poppy, the washing line holders, should also say words at the end of our 'fact passages'. The script for it is here. Having words that we can build on every section adds some emotion and grit into the performance and we thought that this uses words as an abstract form of getting across our information to the audience. 

Evaluation:

As a team, I think we're working well overall. Every lesson, we share loads of ideas and share our opinions on them. However, especially because the final deadline is drawing to a close, we're focusing too much on producing more ideas than perfecting the piece.  As a team, we must try and work hard to bring props in, focus and perfect our piece. We can do this by setting up voice overs with Mr Hughes on our next Thursday lessons and working on our soundscape, gesture theatre pieces and audience exit scene.