The Stimulus - Devising

Week 1

Gene Krupa Orchestra and Anita O'Day - Let Me Off Uptown (1942) [2]

We were introduced to our stimulus as a song which was definitely something we weren't expecting as a class. I loved the Jazzy upbeat and it made me tap my feet quite a lot. I felt like this music really captured me as I started to imagine a band playing in this room with flappers and gangsters. The theme I thought about was a Jazz era, the time of the 1920’s.  The beat wanted to make me get up and dance. 

At this time in the 1920’s many people would go to celebrate the joy and happiness after the debt in the country. The money in the country was worth nothing as without money people could still be happy. A distinctive sound portrayed by the Orchestra, music brings people together. However, even if you’re at home with your family you can still have a good time e.g. someone playing piano and someone else singing. 

My second and third response made me imagine that those who were dancing in our class to this song were the people at the concert. The atmosphere lifted our hearts up, making us all smile.  One of lyrics ‘a rhythm that you feel’ gave a knock on effect to everybody and we all felt the rhythm. To me it felt like a crazy feeling to have fun and release yourself from the person that you really are. 

I could now picture flappers and gangsters the way that people were acting whether they were watching each other or having the time of their lives. However, some of the people in my class looked like they wouldn't want to join in and thinking back to it now represented those black people by law couldn't mix with the white people. In the south, it was practically impossible for black Americans to rise up to the challenge of segregation.  Blacks felt scared and threatened by the power of the white people. [1]

1920s flapper and gangster [3]

When I thought of the 1920's, I thought about black, silver and gold, this is because these were common colours in pieces of clothing. They are vintage colours, they brought to life the colour of the party and the rich personality of each character. For example, the money they had and the power they had from after the great depression made them the way they were. The wall street crash happened as a consequence of The Great Depression, the two crises were economical and financial. One consequence of the crash was the nation's fall of stock market money which was loved by so many but, then people weren't investing and companies weren't giving out dividends from shares. Fall in production ruined farmers because they didn't get money for their crops and also production was ruined. This left a lot of unemployment for many people. [4]

Group discussion

Keeping an open mind, I spoke about how I wanted to learn the piece of music on my saxophone which was a strange thing to say however, Karen suggested that we could include our musical skills whether we play an instrument or sang. It made me think that even a strange thought like that somehow sparked off an idea. I also mentioned about crime and money thinking about the gangsters but, also the flappers. I felt like all our ideas were linking.

Listening to Rhys talk about The Great Depression and Prohibition, were Becky explained more about Speakeasies and moonshine that were people who sold alcohol privately. Al Capone was well known for being the leader of Chicago Mafia and it made others think that it attained fame through Prohibition. Prohibition was created when the public people demanded others to sell alcohol illegally.

Authorities are pouring alcohol into the sewers during prohibition (1919 -1933) [6]

Around the time of the 1920s, the 18th Amendment was passed but, people carried on drinking and gangsters supplied liquor illegally which led them to have huge sums of money. There are four main reasons why Prohibition happened. Firstly, America entered World War One in 1917, this meant that the mood across the country was nationally negative towards alcohol. Secondly, banning alcohol would mean that supplies of grains such as barley would increase. Also, people felt that drinking anything alcoholic went against God's will and lastly, most Americans thought that consuming alcohol was wrong whilst the country was still in the midst of a war. [5]

Each idea we listened to as a group really gave me images about the way of living in 1920's UK and 1940's America. Chloe S' idea was about a murder mystery that really made us think. However, there was a lot of crime at the time of the 1920s and I really liked the fact she thought of something different but new rather than picking out the most common thoughts of the 1920's in the UK.

With two pages of ideas on the sugar paper, we started off with Yasmin's idea of having 4 chairs in a square shape and one in the middle which were all facing towards the front.  The five guys would sit on a chair each ready to be seduced by the flappers.  Me, Yasmin, Beckie and Chloe were the four flappers.  Yasmin was picturing the idea of what Pau imagined with the black guy and the white lady they way she seduced him in the whore house.  We felt like we needed to try and find a different idea because it felt like something was missing. As a group we needed to research about the whore houses and different races, this would help us define our characters for this scene.


We were led by to Chloe S's idea to try out a scene based on a murder mystery which made Mike suggest the idea of us all being Cluedo characters but, we decided to try that idea. For example, I was basing my character on the rich, snotty character Mrs Peacock. It felt like it was difficult for each one to embody the characters for a long time.

Cluedo Party Tudor Mansion Edition Game [7]

The game pictured above is the closet one to our ideas that I think could have been used to base our characters on. For example in the scene that we did, we had two young maids based on the character Miss White. Also we had Miss Scarlet, a highly attractive female along with a young Reverend Green. We left this idea in mind in case we could develop it next time.

After learning about the Stimulus - 'Let me go off Uptown' by Gene Krupa Orchestra  

Learning a little bit more about the stimulus has been interesting so far. We now know the drummer Gene Krupa was white, the female singer Anita O'Day is white however, the trumpet player Roy Eldridge is in fact black. I'm not sure what people would have thought about the idea of letting black and white people mix because in the 1930s the blacks and whites rarely worked together. Also they lived separately. You didn't see many men go 'uptown.' For example, in Of Mice of Men something we discussed in our group was that the character Crook didn't go out to town with the guys on the ranch because he was black and there was a lot of racial prejudice.[8]  They didn't have equality at that time so, equality must of happened in America after The Great Depression which made those relax and a time to bring others together whichever race they were.

Research 

We decided to research about the different ideas we had on our sheet. I researched about money and crime in the 1920s but, then realized later that they actually wanted me to research it in the 1940's. This research was still good because the idea of a prison later became used as an idea.

A library book - social and war 

In the top left hand corner, a women is seen giving her job back after the men come back from war. It shows that women didn't have a right to keep their jobs and men expected them to kindly hand back there jobs because it was only temporary. They seemed to only be seen as housewives.  I included this photo as it was linked to research about money.

Also in the bottom left hand corner we see a picture of men trying to get employed as there was a lot of unemployment due to the war.

I wanted to get accurate information and didn't want to take ages to find something that wasn't as resourceful as the books I used. Local libraries are useful when looking for certain events of the 1920's as the money also linked to The Great Depression but, I tried to get information based on two topics including less information about the other topics that the other group members were researching.  A way of organizing and finding out information for me was to use small post-it notes on certain pages to mark where the key information was (see above).

Spider diagram research 

Using pictures and shortened topic titles, I made a spider diagram for money and crime in the 1920's. I made numbered headings and wrote a brief explanation including what each topic was about. For example, I spoke about the dates that coincided with the closing of prisons. Also the figures of how many prisons still remained.

Week 2

After research, we took ideas that we were interested in from each piece of research done by the members of the group. We started off with James' idea about a mental asylum and we watched a clip, [9] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76y9tR4CY4U), of American Horror Story the TV show, it was weird but the music linked to the theme of eerie that Chloe H suggested after hearing the stimulus the first time around. The idea of eeriness linked to the music perhaps being in the heads of the residents of the mental asylum.

My prison research linked to the idea of the asylum. Following that, we as a group researched what prisons in the 1940's looked like. We also looked into what diseases and illnesses the patients would have suffered from, e.g. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Paranoia. Then we experimented by taking a disease or illness per group member and listened to our stimulus according to the reaction of which illness or disease we had chosen, I for example had Paranoia and thought everyone was after me.

A cat and mouse scene was also looked into where we would be paired up and link arms in different spaces as Pau's character (someone in the Mafia), was after James' character and we decided that whoever James linked arms with, the person on the other side of that person would become the one who was being chased by Pau's character. Then developed it more to not linking arms and added some music e.g infinity. 

As a group, we used four corners which, Frantic Assembly, a physical theatre company we have looked at. We based it on the Hierarchy which included the land owners, ladies, farmers and workers. In these four groups, we were introduced according to the Hierarchy, starting from the top and working up to the bottom and what we thought of the workers. 

Week 3

Our starting point needed to be happier as both groups chose negative responses to the stimulus. After listening to it again, it reminded me of the Great Gatsby's film and of the TV show Downtown Abbey. It pictured the images of an the characters in the either the film or TV show dancing to an orchestra or perhaps a record player.

Jack Ross and his Orchestra in Downtown Abbey [10]

The character Jack Ross is a black American Jazz singer, with his orchestra, reminded me of the music and the fact that Jazz meant that black Americans were accepted and could perform with the orchestra. I wanted to show something to do with equality, rather than racial segregation.

We were split off in pairs from our group and came up with brief scenes using the masks available. For example, me and Pau, came up with the scene based in a pub where the flapper was cheering up the black American who wasn't sure if he should be mixing with her, this related to the stimulus with Roy Eldridge and Anita O'Day. My character was trying to show that it was okay for black and white people to mix together. Relating to Downtown Abbey, I thought about the relationship between Jack and Rose from the show. However, I felt like not everyone accepted the two of them together which showed the uncertainty between our characters at the beginning.

New idea - Kids Playground

The group thought about ideas for a new starting point to provide a more positive side from our stimulus work. The game of tag is something so simple it proved to be effective.  The idea at the beginning of the week was to explore games like stuck in the mud, tag or cat and mouse to give us a strategy of exploring each scene, the character and plot. With everyone being open-minded we struggled to focus on ideas for a new material since we knew we couldn't use our original ideas we had. I felt that we were all too open minded because we couldn't think of any ideas. 

Fireflies experiment with a game of tag with my group 

After considering the ideas recalling the tune in my head, I thought about each notes. Maybe each note must tell a story of the song. This made me wonder if we could base every note or several notes of a tune on a character in our piece. I was contemplating whether I could use different heights based on the different pitches e.g. high note - depicting tall and elegant. This could be used in comparison to a low note.  These differences would show the physicality between all the heights. I felt it was extremely difficult to explain at the time because I was confusing myself which gave a knock on effect which confused others. Next time when explaining an idea I need to be more clear. 

Pau suggested that we should have arguments through the song and someone suggested maybe stamping. I felt like he meant the instruments in the piece were arguing with each other. We could of included our musical talents of singing and playing instruments of certain notes but, we wanted an idea that would show the bad factors of this song.

We showed the idea that we had of fireflies to Karen, who really liked it, which made us think it would be part of our final piece. The different themes we included were slow motion, reversed, fast, serious, posh, ninja, spy and clockwork which was James' idea. Chloe S' idea was to include Commedia, e.g. Zani and Pantelon, but we wanted to keep this scene simple and didn't want to over-complicate it.

Cat-house 

Cat-house scene rehearsals

The seducing scene was difficult for me and I struggled to get in the role of my character. I also complained that I couldn't be sexy as I felt uncomfortable even though the girls in my class said I could do it. I continued to put myself down and this effected the performance from not looking as realistic as possible. A target would be to be open minded next time when we did this scene so I can be a sexy seducer in the cat house and not worry myself, I need to act that role, otherwise the audience would not believe that they were with me in the scene.

The songs we listened to were Ain't No Sunshine (When She's Gone) and Fallin' on YouTube [11]. We re-capped the scene because we also tried to remember each movement that we had changed it to based on the ideas that we had to make this seducing scene more sexy. The 4 different sequences were based on Yasmin, Chloe S, Chloe H and Becky's choice. Next time, when we perform the scene I wouldn't let me team down because I was scared to attempt to be sexy when they managed to do it even if they told me afterwards they were nervous. After rehearsing a few times after that. I started to develop my character without being as scared as I was earlier.

We decided instead of dragging the chairs off, we would take them off in a physical way, one after the other. It looked effective when they did it one at a time rather than just all at once. When the we watched the guys end scene fall in to place when track 3 came on Chloe H and Becky thought this music was more fitting for the scene than the other music. Working with track 3 ('I Can't Make You Love Me'), we all decided that it was a much better song choice to the track 1 and 2 on the Soft Jazz Sexy Instrumental Relaxation Music playlist. 

Week 4

We performed our devised piece so far to the second year of the Acting course and the rest of my class. Everyone loved our opening, however a few said that when we ran around, the shoes made a lot of noise and in a way ruined the piece. Next time, we need to wear softer and less noisy shoes, so we don't lose the beauty of the opening scene. 

Eye contact is definitely key, because at times, we looked distracted or didn't seem focused enough. In the club scene, the audience didn't seem convinced that we had enough trust in each other as we were relying too much on the music, which is a rule you must not follow. Another point in the club scene, a member of the audience suggested clockwork and we decided to have the same four movements throughout the piece. However, when we rehearsed it next, my four movements changed when I sat next to Logan's character and mirrored his movements which looked good. 

Also this week, we created our final scene, the court and prison scene and Chloe S decided we should have the chairs in the formation similar to the cat house scene. Using the masks, the guys wore it for the end of the scene showing they were still the Mafia, but we would remove them at the same time to show the guys different reactions. However, later on we decided as a group based on each member's crime that was read out, we would take the masks off one by one. To completely end the scene, we tried to hold hands creating half a semi-circle around the audience, saying ''guilty'', but when we performed it to Karen, we were in hysterics as we couldn't keep a straight face. This ending scene is either going to go one way or the other, but hopefully we can pull it off. 

Running through the performance twice, we timed it to be 22 minutes and 30 seconds long. This meant that we still had around 7-8 minutes to come up with another scene. It made us think about the couples scene we hadn't done, as most of the group had concentrated on their couples scene more than the other scenes. The decision was that every couples scene performed for one minute to create another scene.

Me and Mike's duet was something we both struggled on because he wasn't always in and when he was, we focused on the other scenes more. The chair duet was an idea that Frantic Assembly had done that we were interested to incorporate into our piece. Throughout the chair duet, I seemed to be making it complicated so we went for a simple idea which became easy to remember, however I didn't think it was as great as the others work. My target would be to work on the chair duet and accept that it is in fact a good scene according to my other classmates. I just need the movements to flow more than make them look out of place. 

Week 5

This week has been a difficult week since everyone hasn't made a commitment to coming in and we have struggled with certain scenes that we wanted to fine tune. The 'Slip' scene where Yasmin and James do their couple scene, Logan stepped in for but I suggested that the understudy should step in, the worst bit was the understudy wasn't in.

I was worried especially when we are performing after half term and that people aren't wanting to commit to this piece. We've been staying after college to rehearse but it has shown that people think this performance will be good, however I feel that we still need to polish up scenes that are incomplete.

We have also sorted out the lighting queues when performing parts of the scene with help from the technician to decide on colours and if we want a follow spot or not. It has shown that our choice of clothes, by completely wearing black, doesn't show us very well, this is why the girls will be wearing a white top and the guys will be wearing orange tops to foreshadow going to prison.

Also, the green chairs that we are using aren't good to use in the light, according to the technician so that is why we will be using black chairs. The follow spot use of colours represents the type of relationship being shown, e.g. a pink or yellow colour.

When we wanted to plot the sound, we couldn't, which has left us in a difficult position and a target for next time is to get everyone or a few people in our group to put the music on a memory stick instead of relying on one person.

This is our final whole week before our performance after half term, I will brush up on the scenes that I have been struggling with, including the Cat-house and duet scenes. I hope that next week, everyone who is in my group, turns up so we can polish our scenes and show that the hard work we have put in has paid off.

Bibliography 

[1] = http://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/higher/history/usa/race/revision/2/
[2] = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHCaxVCXNIc
[3] = http://vampirediaries.com/04252012-a-look-at-the-roaring-twenties-fashion-slang-and-culture/?gallery_post_slide=2
[4] = http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3977969.stm
[5] = http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/history/mwh/usa/prohibitionrev1.shtml
[6] = http://www.history.com/topics/prohibition/pictures/al-capone-and-prohibition/police-emptying-beer-barrels-during-prohibition
[7] = http://www.cluedofan.com/cmerch/entertainment.html
[8] = Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
[9] = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76y9tR4CY4U
[10] = http://downtonabbey.wikia.com/wiki/Lotus_Jazz_Club?file=DA-42-1381267712-1-.jpg
[11] = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3_tw44QsZQ