REFINING PERFORMANCE IN REHEARSAL

 

 

 

 

In the performance, I played the brother of a young girl called Michelle who was being sexually abused by the brother. In terms of myself developing my performance in rehearsals, at first when i was acting, I was not coming across genuinely instead it looked like i was 'acting'. My posture and gestures were in a sense robotic at first so I decided to be more relaxed and act comfortable as the character i was. during the scene I'm in, I walk in and stare at Michelle. before i was staring at her straight away with the facial expression that indicates I was sexually aroused or deviant. that gave away to the audience what the brothers intentions were straight away so i changed it by being more subtle with the expressions. when I done this, I got feedback saying that it felt much more 'creepy' and 'sinister'. In rehearsals I was saying the dialogue in a normal subtle tone. So i thought in order to bring the characteristics of my character across, i needed to be more forcefull with my speech, more bold and direct so its more believable to the audience.


Me, Synthia and others in the original group would be trying different scenarios to see if it would fit the topic of choice. After alot of disscussion and trying different things for scenes we came up with a solid idea that there would be two families. One family were theres domestic violence and the other family suffering from sexual abuse. we came up with many good ideas with the teachers advice such as using internet forums were we act as if each individual in the group are on a chat forum online and Michelle asks for advice on the abuse shes receiving from her brother. Unfortunately because we had to cut the scenes down to fit into the time slot we was given, we had to scrap the forum idea although it would of been a good scene for the audience.

Process Of Creating Perfomance

Our Teachers, Nick and Yusuf looked at our individual pieces of work we created and gave us advice on how we should come across the audience which was to make the message we are trying to portray as simplistic as possible. instead of making it more based on realism within the acting or abstract, we instead should make it as basic as possible.  from that idea of it being very simple, Nick decided to combine groups from both sets together into one piece weaving all of them together but to make it intelligible. The teachers then came up with the idea to have to whole group sitting in a chairs in a semi-circle. all of us wearing blacks (which is compulsory on Performing arts courses) and 2 seats at the end to be used for when we are performing. The semi-circle itself nick quoted 'looked quite nice' in terms of its simplistic features. The teachers then thought it would be good to incorporate forum theatre techniques but instead of allowing the audience to interact, we let the actors within the semi circle tell the story in a conversational style where anyone from the semi-circle can interject and ask questions relating to that particular character in the scene for example, i say "theres a girl" someone from the semi-cirlce replies "whats her name", I reply "Michelle, shes 17."Then someone else would ask a question like " where does she live" etc. so to the audience it seems like spontaneous questions revealing more and more about the character when they are answered. During these periods of figuring out how to come across to the audience during the pefromance, we was also getting prep talks from our teacher Nick which he constantly stressed the quote of " Acting is Reacting" were he means that in order to achieve a high standard of acting in a performance. we must react to communication being giving appropriately to fit the theme and happenings of the scene. But what I as an individual need to consider is not always react in a Stanislavski 'realistic' way for all projects yet to find the balance. This includes the use of gestures and facial expressions reacting to something in the scene.

Research On Forum based theatre

A technique pioneered by Brazilian radical Augusto Boal. A play or scene, usually indicating some kind of oppression, is shown twice. During the replay, any member of the audience ('spect-actor') is allowed to shout 'Stop!', step forward and take the place of one of the oppressed characters, showing how they could change the situation to enable a different outcome. Several alternatives may be explored by different spect-actors. The other actors remain in character, improvising their responses. A facilitator (Joker) is necessary to enable communication between the players and the audience.

The strategy breaks through the barrier between performers and audience, putting them on an equal footing. It enables participants to try out courses of action which could be applicable to their everyday lives. Originally the technique was developed by Boal as a political tool for change (part of the Theatre of the Oppressed), but has been widely adapted for use in educational contexts.


I also think that we achieved some Bertolt Brecht techniques such as breaking the 4th wall barrier between the performers and audience. We wanted them to feel involved in the play and to also to recieve the dialogue as if it were spontaneous. Brecht wanted the audience to become socially active in the peformance, creating conflict and issues in the play to conjure up arguements and debates in the audience. Brecht wanted to know all sides of a story, all opinions were valid in his eyes and i believe we had that sort of mindset as a group.

 

 

THEATRE.IN.EDUCATION

Our current assignment is to come up with a theatre company which performs to secondary school students, tackling issues that occurs in everyday life based around making decisions on these rather personal issues that arise through teenage years. We as a group have to come up with a script and a theme for the particular issue we would want to work around and also to book the school that we wanted to show the play to. This task allows us to not only gain further more experiences as actors, but to help us understand the business side of things within Theatre in education.


Target Audience

Our Target audience is school students aged from 15-16 for our TIE Project. Our initial ideas where to do a performance based on making decisions and rasing issues to do with domestic violence and sexual abuse. The teachers explained to my group how we should try steer away from the stereotypical issues that have been performed in schools such as, gun and knife crime, gangs etc. because they have been done frequently in schools and education institutions so we started to think of other occuring issues that are not raised to secondary school students enough. although topics like gangs and gun/knife crime are serious issues that people need to be aware of. we feel that its been focused on too much whereas there are issues more affecting students everyday life such as domestic violence and sexual abuse. I believe my group brought together some good research and statistics underlining key issues that happens in school, which we thought we should include for example,
sexting and social networking. Because technology has grown considerably, it is now easier for peers, friends and family to be more connected through the internet and social networking services. although this is a reletively not a issue. there are some problems that can occur when using these sites (espcially for hormonal teenagers who use these social network mediums religously). Sexting has increasingly become a issues thats affecting young peoples lives. Social networks such as BBM has become prevelant in this area for these things to occur. young people sending pictures around to eachother that include sexually explicit material has become rife. Even myself alone has been a witness of constantly being sent explicit images of young people, which have been shared around to the masses like wildfire. these issues are a threat to young peoples lives leaving them to feel vunerable and suffer from depression based on these things. Because of this we included this topic in our performance piece.

I believe these topics and issues would meet the current needs of secondary school students because these issues arise in everyday life, particularly as a teenager. We are trying to give a message to the students that the decisions they make can affect there lives so we are trying to make them more aware of how they can deal with situations and issues stated. we give them advice on who they can speak to in order to prevent further problems for occuring. This would give the student more confidence to try and deal with there issues the right way instead of it spiralling out of their control.

Statistics and reasearch on Sexual Abuse and Domestic Violence

sexual abuse

January 2013

 

·         Nearly a quarter of young adults experienced sexual abuse during childhood.

·         17,727 sexual crimes against children under 16 were recorded in England and Wales in 2010/11.

 

Research statistics on the prevalence of child sexual abuse

Child abuse and neglect in the UK today (Radford et al, 2011) is a major piece of NSPCC research which interviewed 1,761 young adults aged 18-24 years; 2,275 children aged 11-17 years and 2,160 parents of children aged under 11.

Below are the key findings on child sexual abuse.


Experience of some form of sexual abuse (see Table 5.2)

·         Nearly a quarter of young adults (24.1%) experienced sexual abuse (including contact and non-contact), by an adult or by a peer during childhood.

·         One in six children aged 11-17 (16.5%) have experienced sexual abuse.

·         Almost one in 10 children aged 11-17 (9.4%) have experienced sexual abuse in the past year. Teenage girls aged between 15 and 17 years reported the highest past year rates of sexual abuse.

Experience of contact sexual abuse (see Table 5.2)

·         One in nine young adults (11.3%) experienced contact sexual abuse during childhood.

·         One in 20 children aged 11-17 (4.8%) have experienced contact sexual abuse.

·         Two thirds (65.9%) of contact sexual abuse experienced by children aged 0-17 was perpetrated by someone aged under 18.

Disclosing sexual abuse (see page 9)

·         More than one in three children aged 11-17 (34%) who experienced contact sexual abuse by an adult did not tell anyone else about it.

·         Four out of five children aged 11-17 (82.7%) who experienced contact sexual abuse from a peer did not tell anyone else about it.

 

Domestic abuse

November 2012

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In a study of 139 serious case reviews in England 2009-2011, 63% of cases were found to have domestic abuse as a risk factor. From: Brandon, Marian, Sidebotham, Peter, Bailey, Sue and Belderson, Pippa, Hawley, Carol, Ellis, Catherine and Megson, Matthew (2012) New learning from serious case reviews: a two year report for 2009-2011 (PDF). London: Department for Education.

In a study of 56 significant case reviews in Scotland since 2007, 30 (54%) of cases were found to have domestic abuse as a risk factor.
From: Vincent, S. and Petch, A (2012) Audit and analysis of initial and significant case reviews (PDF). Edinburgh: The Scottish Government.

According to a recent NSPCC study, 12% of under 11s, 18% of 11-17s and 24% of 18-24s had been exposed to domestic abuse between adults in their homes during childhood. Adult males were the perpetrators in 94% of cases where one parent had physically abused another. From: NSPCC (2011) Child abuse and neglect in the UK today. London: NSPCC.

Domestic abuse accounts for 18% of all violent crime. From: Home Office (2011) Crime in England and Wales 2010/11. London: Home Office.

Children who experience severe maltreatment by a parent or guardian are between 2.7 and 2.9 times more likely to also have witnessed family violence. Under 11s who had experienced physical abuse by a parent or guardian were almost 5 times more likely to have witnessed family violence.
From: NSPCC (2011) Child abuse and neglect in the UK today. London: NSPCC.

Between 1994 and 2004, 29 children in 13 families were killed during contact (or in one case residence) arrangements in England and Wales. Ten of these children were killed in the last two years. From: Saunders, H. (2004) 29 child homicides: lessons still to be learnt on domestic violence and child protection. Bristol: Women’s Aid Federation of England (WAFE).

The total cost of domestic abuse to services (the criminal justice system, health, social services, housing and civil legal) amounts to £3.8 billion per year, while the loss to the economy is £1.9 billion per year in England and Wales. An additional element is the human and emotional cost which is not counted in the cost of services. This amounts to just under £10 billion a year. Including all costs, the total cost of domestic abuse for the state, employers and victims is estimated at around £16 billion per year.
From: Walby, S. (2009) The cost of domestic violence: update 2009 (Word). Lancaster University: UNESCO Chair in Gender Research.