Final Rehearsals and Performance Evaluation

Understandingly, as the performance drew closer, we all started to worry about how unprepared we were and how we hadn't run the piece through without interruptions. We started the day off by going through and cleaning up our solo pieces, focusing on how the audience would be moved from piece to piece. We also redefined the end ritual by starting lying on the floor as if we were bacteria about to evolve into a breathing organism. We got a ques from the music and we started to evolve from lying on the floor to animals to being stuck between a human and an animalistic being. We then take the audience into the circle with us, where we discard the aspects of modern day Britain that we don't like. After this is done, we move onto the awakening of the four elements (water, fire, earth and air) where we will infuse the space with our sounds and movements of the embodied elements.  When this transition is finished, Ella then stands on the ladder and recite a poem about nature, marking the end of the piece. We then slink off stage after the poem has been read through twice. I like this ending as it includes the audience and gives our piece an overall meaning and motive which I think the audience will understand. 

Having mentioned my concern earlier, after rehearsing the piece a few times, I felt ready to perform, and when we did the performance, I could feel it working and having an impact upon our audience. 

The fact that the beginning was in promenade was interesting and very effective as it gave a new dynamic and spin on our piece. It included the audience and gave they snapshots of what is happening somewhere in England now. It did come with its complications though such as getting around to our next set and trying to keep the audience together so they could see everything. The solo pieces were very successful in my opinion, even thought they didn't link which could've been confusing for the audience, but in the spirit of Artaud's theory, you are supposed to pose more questions with your work than answering them. I think, overall, our solo pieces managed to shock, scare, confuse and inspire our audience which is what we intended. Personally, I think my solo piece went fantastically, as I think I had to audience hooked by my different staging and freakish, breathy grasped voice. Before the performance I hadn't practiced my piece being tied up, so on the night I slightly improvised with the movement and I think it was that which made it convincing and sinister. Having said that, I may have been a bit too convincing, as my dad came over when I was coughing on the floor to ask if I was okay. Although I was happy I had been so believable, it did break the performance for me slightly and I'm not sure if it ruined the rest of the piece.

Our group piece went well and the soundscape sounded great and very insightful. I kept up my accent which was heard to do when angry, so I am pleased with that. The set, music and costume fitted our piece well and I feel as if the audience believed they were in an old people's home. I was awake in the moment and because of this was able to improvise slightly when the audience didn't sit down when we asked them to. I did predict that they wouldn't, but I think our piece lost some of its purpose due to it, because we weren't able to give that personal insight into our world. I think we created a piece which reflected Britain well and was in the style of Artaud and Brook. 

The final ritual with the whole group looked and felt great. It looked like Darwin's Theory of Evolution being played out before the audience which symbolized Britain's development and how far it has come. I think this starting section shocked the audience and created an eerie atmosphere to continue into the element ritual. The actual ritual itself was a massive success, as we managed to include the audience and as we all believed in what we were doing, we were able to make the piece have some significance and relate to the audience. 

To improve the piece overall, I think we could've rehearsed more and been slightly more prepared to make the transitions slightly slicker and more polished, but overall I think our piece about modern day Britain was very successful. 

England Group Piece

As well as our solo pieces, we are also doing  group piece devised around the theme of England and inspired by the poems. Ella, Shaniqua, Kate and Josh are in my group and we decided to do a piece about old people set in a run down old people's home. We took the line from Going Going about youth to inspire this. 

After a discussion we decided to have broken elderly people, still in shock by the war and confused by modern day Britain. We chose the site by the space, just before you go through the doors to Ms O'Niels classroom, as it is dark and small, so forcing the audience to be close to us. We each have our own character and back ground story, which were inspired by the drawings of Britain we had to do:

I drew the hills and the moon, which inspired my older character. She represents all those who came to Britain because they thought they would have a better life, but over the years has grown to hate England and miss her home, but doesn't want to leave. I named her Dot and gave her a distinctive personality trate: she always has her toffee's and two cigarettes on the go. I decided to make her Irish as I am therefore pushing my voice and stretching my range. Shaniqua's character is similar to mine, but she loves England and misses her dead husband.

Originally, we were going to play out a scene in a communal room, having the audience sitting next to us, before we flipped the sofa over and entered into WW1 trenches, but this was too naturalistic and wasn't insightful enough. So, we thought about it for a little bit and decided on this running order which can be circulated:

1. Sitting in silence on the chairs, Shaniqua walking through the audience asking if anyone had seen Gilbert, her dead husband. The rest of us are muttering to ourselves (me about England and its youth)
2. Start talking to the auidence about things, immersing them in our world, while playing a backing track of a war song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Gx5DhKN_zY and us moving our feet to the music, hunched over while Josh rambles about how we need to stop moving
3. This goes into coughing while I talk about the youth and how they have destroyed Britain and how I miss Ireland. I then spill my toffee's and say how I blame England for making me drop them
4. We then tell the audience to sit down next to us and start talking to them
5. Ella starts rattling and shaking her biscuit box, Kate moves her knitting needles faster and the rest of us shake, starting to make a war soundscape
6. We then all breathe heavily and collapse.

Our piece is very immersive and includes various techniques to give the audience a new experience. It includes the themes form Going Going and tests the audience-performer relationship. 

Our costumes are run down like our characters. We decided to make the costumes naturalistic but over exaggerate the stereotypical conceptions of elderly people, by wearing heavily knitted items and head scarfs. 

 Our piece is fairly prop heavy; we need chairs, tissues, cigarettes, blankets and biscuits/toffees. These are all necessary to our piece, as they will make it come to life. Brook believed in the importance of props and knew they made a piece look complete. Our piece will come after Ruby's which is about modern Britain and how industrialized it has become. We are hoping our piece will be a nice contrast to theirs and give the audience a new experience of what England means to us. 

The Ritual

Brook believed that theatre should be based on ''rituals'' as they are an integral part of our lives which we aren't always aware of. They bring us back to our ancestors and bring our the animalistic nature humans have. 

as an introduction to rituals, we split into groups of four or five and were each given a theme in which to create a ritual around. Our theme was ''triumph'' which we took to mean a triumph in battle as that is what we associated the word with. As Khai was the only male in our group, we placed in him the middle as Kate, Shaniqua and I surrounded him chanting and half bowing to him. The feeling of triumph wasn't conveyed when we performed it, but I still feel as if it was accurate and effective use of a ritual to show a triumph. I think our chants were too low pitched, and maybe we should've danced more in order to show our triumph better. The audience got a sense of war and battle so that part worked. I feel that Ruby's group had to best and most effective ritual, as their movements and sounds conveyed fertility well. The pace and sounds gradually progressed and I thought it was a very effective and simple way to show this theme. It could also be repeated nicely which it key in rituals. 

After this I felt as if I had a better understanding of what a ritual looks and feels like to perform. We then began to expand on it and used two large groups of people to create two interlinked rituals. My group started off celebrating something, the atmosphere was energetic and happy. It felt like we were doing a weather dance of some sort. When the second group came in it changed the atmosphere completely as we felt like we were being attacked. I felt like I had to make my noise even louder and jump higher to be heard. This ritual exercise helped me to realise the true core and essence of a ritual and how it can be used to create meaning. Rituals are brilliant ways of creating an atmosphere within a piece and including the audience. I like how different circumstances and emotions can completely change a ritual so quickly and how they can sometimes confuse and distort the audience. 

At the end of our piece, we all come together to perform a massive ritual, ridding of the modern day complications and calling back the spirits of earth, fire, water and fire to bring England back to its natural state. To start we all discussed the various aspects of Britain that we would like to get rid of and added a physical action to that. We would then send that problem into the centre and shout 'gone!'. I chose concrete and did a suffocating action with it. This actions will start of the nature ritual. We will then go into summoning water then fire then earth and then air, adding movements and sound to each. I think this is a good way to end our piece about England, as it includes the audience and brings us all back to the roots of our country. 

Solo Revelations Piece

For this we had to do the continuous writing exercise, letting our train of thought flow onto paper for three minuets. We had lots of stimulus for this and they all had to be a revelation of some sort. We could chose from something being nailed to a tree, shouted in a cave, written in blood, whispered through a wall in a prison cell, spoken to everyone, said in a supermarket, tattooed in a hidden place, shouted from a high tower and spoken at an old persona fire place. I chose whispered through the walls of a prison cell for my stimulus. 

hands, hands, I need hands, spiders, I see spiders,

spiders crawling twisting biting squeezing plotting,

help, I need help, eyes use your eyes,

spies, I hear spies, spies watching mapping, breaking

heaving, grieving, you. I need 

you. 

This doesn't obviously fit with the theme of Britain, but when you look deeper, the spies are the media and how they have distorted and confused so many of us. I used both the theme of Britain and the stimulus as inspiration to write this short, continuous text. 

This piece is a piece depicting someones breakdown. I envision it would lots of coughing and wheezing, a desperate tone to it. At first, I pictured myself being locked in a cage and whispering it to the audience, but after a discussion with the group, Izzie came up with an interesting idea which I would like to carry through. She suggested that I be tied up in a corridor somewhere, like one giant spider myself. I started to think about where I could perform this and what tech requirements I would need. These short solo pieces are going to open the show in a promenade setting, so my place needed to be somewhere accessible. I chose the small out-grove by the toilets. As far as tech requirements, I don't need much. I need string to tie myself up in, a dark area and a small space and luckily I have all of those. 

In my mind, I am in a prison cell which has been over grown with cob webs and eyes. My emotional location is in the middle of a spiders web which I can't escape from. Dark surrounds me and I want to escape. 

I think this will be a strong image as the audience walk down the corridor, and I'm hoping my performance will be as strong. 

Continuous Writing

This is an exercise used by many directors and writers to gain ideas and let your imagination flow. We had to write continuously for five minuets using a line from the poem Going Going as stimulus. 

Poem line used for Stimulus: earth will always respond

Writing for five minuets: with its weather and ever changing circumstances, it tests us or dares us or just plays us? a never ending convocation and who will be the winner? either way both earth and mankind will end up destroying each other, we change the earth's body so much I don't see why it hasn't destroyed us years ago. earth is like a teacher who always questions you and answers everything. it favors others and humiliates the rest. one mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter. earth got rid of unicorns and humans destroyed the magic that the universe holds. the earth takes care of some beautiful people who may not cherish the world. It's secretive and bold but always responds to what we do to it. hunger is ever present in the earths subtext and it is present in my stomach today. i wonder what the earth eats. humans? is that where you go when you die? the earths stomach? 

The highlighted sections are the sentences which Humera liked the most, because after we had to pick out certain phrases from each others writings and turn them into a convocation. This exercise helped me to see how easy it is to write something spontaneous and turn it into a script. I really enjoyed doing this exercise as it's not often you get told to just write whatever comes into your head. 

Alphabet Box Exercise

This exercise incorporated both physical actions and media. It also explores Artaud's idea of movement and the body. He believed our movements should flow, be interesting and unique.We stood in a space in the room and imagined that we were standing in a telephone box, with all the letters in the alphabet around us. A was in the top left hand corner, I in the centre around the middle and Z being in the lower corner to the far right. Once we had established where all the letters were (which took slightly longer time than expected), we had to spell out our names, using only our hands and arms, touching the letters in their positions. We then added more movement to it, incorporating our body into touching the letters. We could use our bodies in anyway we wanted to. For example, I touched the letter E with my elbow, the letter S with my head, the letter M with my knee and the letter E with my tongue. I liked this exercise as it helped me to realise that I could use my body in ways which I hadn't originally thought of. 

When we were fluent in our movement, we then played with the structure by adding pairs, grouping people by gender, singling people out and added music to see how it would add meaning to the exercise. I noticed that the movements had new levels when the music was added on top, and when we divided the genders it became almost like an army camp, with series undertones. Each different change brought a new meaning to the exercise and gave me lots of ideas for devising our piece later on. 

I enjoyed this exercise as the movements were of the moment and imaginative. They came naturally to me and I loved how simple it was to create meaning by just changing the structure and adding music. 

Physical and Vocal Warm Ups 

Every week, before we started to devise, we would do a group vocal and physical warm up to open and awaken our bodies. Both Brook, Artaud and Grotowski believed in doing physical and vocal warm ups before starting to work, as they noted that their actors performed their best work after they had done a full warm up.  

We would do a few sun salutations http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IUyY9Dyr5w and then stretch out our limbs to reduce any possible injuries to ourselves (as the devising we were doing was quite physical) and then lie in semi supine to focus on strengthening our breath and muscularity. After the warm ups, I would always feel prepared and stretched which helped in when devising our group piece and keeping an open mind during the exercises. I think it is very important to do a proper warm up before any rehearsal, as it clears your mind and grounds you in the room.

The vocal warm ups helped my voice to continue developing and open up a wider range. Over the past weeks I have noticed my pitch range has improved massively, as has my breath quality. I think this is due to doing vocal warm ups regularly and stretching my voice. 

Soundscapes

Soundscapes are a really good way of immersing the audience in the world the performers have created and are used frequently by Brook in his pieces. he believed that sound had a greater impact on the audience and were more important than words on occasions. Soundscapes create an atmosphere suited to the style of the play which immerses the audience to new experiences. They are a main feature of Grotowski's theory of ''poor theatre'' and a prominent in most experimental work.
The Exercises:
Laying in semi supine, we all closed our eyes and focused on our breathing. We then got told to picture a beach and start to make noises using only our breath and plosive sounds to create the atmosphere of a beach. I started making ocean noises using my breath. We then gradually got louder and made the sounds more vocal. People started singing and humming beach side songs and the beach in my mind turned into a Victorian beach, with the brass band playing and the funfair music playing. The scene then changed to Piccadilly Circus and we had to make the sounds of a busy area. I started to make beeping noises to represent the buses and the traffic. As we had done some vocal and physically warm ups before we started this exercise, I felt as if my body was open and awake enough to be able to explore a different range of vocal sounds.

After the sound scape faded out, we talked about how the scene changed in our minds as the exercise progressed. To start of with, the beach seemed cold and rainy, then when we added in the humming and louder noises, it turned into a sunny sea side, old fashioned scene. similarly, with the Central London location, I originally felt quite isolated and un-energetic, as the sounds were very low and morbid. Once we had added on louder noises and varied the pitch slightly, the scene changed to Piccadilly tube station at rush hour.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWridXDgYc8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71O6E65YxM0
I think the beach soundscape was a success because it transported us all to the same place and it felt real. Possibly we could include a sea side soundscape in our performance, as it would include England's history, a Grotowski and Brook technique and be a symbolic typical location of England.
 

The Impossible Task Exercise

Artaud believed in making the impossible possible. This exercise is one which helps actors to really believe in the impossible task they have to perform. It creates a sense of reality and believe-ability in it as well which they will be able to transfer to the performance.
The Exercise:
Jack got us to write down an impossible task which could only happen in this room on a piece of paper. The task could be eating the lights or shrinking everyone in the room. I chose: become the fire man person on the fire exit sign. We then put our pieces of paper in the middle of the room and had to chose a different one to our own. My task was to fly to the ceiling. Next, we had to go about trying to achieve our task. I started to leap and stretch my arm up to the ceiling, as if I was soaring towards it. We then had to add on a noise which came with our attempts to do the task and exaggerate our movements even more. I found myself really leaping off every object and not thinking about the noise which came from my mouth. I think I made a WWHHHHIIIIISSSSHHHHHHH sound, but I'm not sure. I was alive in the moment. Having said this, I think I could have put more energy into the movement, because even though I felt as if I flew to the ceiling, I didn't stay there for long. 

This exercise helped me to get out of my head and grow as an actor, performing a task which I know I could never achieve, but believing I could and consequently I flew to the ceiling. While watching the others do their task, I noticed that I believed Khai's task the most. He had to turn the lights purple and surprisingly, as he was performing, I could actually see the lights change colour. Whether that was my sense of hope for him or real belief and honesty I don't know, but that fact that I thought the lights had gone purple proved to me that you can make people believe an impossible task. 

Artaud believed that civilisation had turned humans into repressed creatures which thought too much and weren't in touch with nature anymore. He believed that the true function of the theatre was to allow his audience to be freed and liberated, bringing them back to those animalistic qualities and instincts. He believed in breaking down the fourth wall and immersing the audience in the performers world. He did this through creating mythical spectacles, tribal rituals embracing nature and movement which would include groans, screams, ecstatic lighting effects combined with extreme props and puppets. Brook tried to provoke conditions that would force the release of raw, primitive instincts, which he believed were hidden beneath the civilised, social facade masking every human being. Brook welcomed the impulses that were brought with suffering and pain, arguing that theatre should be used to increase a sense of danger, violence and disorientation within the audience to make them feel constantly on the edge and awake. Despite its name, Brook's concept of cruelty was not sadistic or torturous. He wanted to release the honestly and truth combined with the raw cruel, feelings that we essential if the performers and audience members were to confront and experience all the situations and events which every human being experiences. sheet explaining Brook's idea of theatre of cruelty.

Theatre of Cruelty 

Artaud believed that civilisation had turned humans into repressed creatures which thought too much and weren't in touch with nature anymore. He believed that the true function of the theatre was to allow his audience to be freed and liberated, bringing them back to those animalistic qualities and instincts. He believed in breaking down the fourth wall and immersing the audience in the performers world. He did this through creating mythical spectacles, tribal rituals embracing nature and movement which would include groans, screams, ecstatic lighting effects combined with extreme props and puppets. 

Brook tried to provoke conditions that would force the release of raw, primitive instincts, which he believed were hidden beneath the civilised, social facade masking every human being. 

Brook welcomed the impulses that were brought with suffering and pain, arguing that theatre should be used to increase a sense of danger, violence and disorientation within the audience to make them feel constantly on the edge and awake. 

Despite its name, Brook's concept of cruelty was not sadistic or torturous. He wanted to release the honestly and truth combined with the raw cruel, feelings that we essential if the performers and audience members were to confront and experience all the situations and events which every human being experiences. 

sheet explaining Brook's idea of theatre of cruelty. 

Holy Theatre

Holy Theatre is a type of theatre created by Peter Brook. It involves taboo issues and discuss key points in our lives. It makes the invisible visible. It is a very ritualistic form of theatre, with a magical quality to it. Brook believed that we shouldn't just exist, but live in the moment and feel our true feelings. 
This is an information sheet on Holy Theatre:

Grotowski's Ideologies

Grotowski was a Polish theatre director and an innovator of experimental theatre, the ''theatre laboratory'' and ''poor theatre'' concepts. His work had major impacts on future experimental directors, including Peter Brook. 

Here are some of his ideologies and how we will include them in our piece:

Acting through focus and awareness

His actors were so vocally and physically skilled that they could communicate clearly through sounds and movement. The actors would create an inner harmony and peace of mind that would keep them healthy in both mind and body. Grotowski actors believe that acting is a search for self knowledge and awareness. Their style of training taught them to break free of limitations and realise their full potential. 

We will be using this level of focus and awareness in our piece, ensuring that optimum communication and focus is present. Through doing this we hope to be able to break free of our physical and mental limitations and push our bodies to new extremes. 

Working in silence

Grotowski stated that an actor must begin by doing nothing! He believed that if a group of actors could remain completely still for several minutes without disturbances, then they would be able to concentrate intensely and use it as a creative passage. 

We did multiple exercises in silence, honing in on the qualities which emerged. We used this level of focus and concentration when devising in order to keep us on task and not get distracted. Using this energy, we will hopefully be able to sustain the belief in our group performance. We are hoping to include a small portion of silence in our group performance to alienate the audience and make them feel uncomfortable. 

Physical Training 

His actors were extremely physically skilled. They developed a technique of movement which allowed them to control every move they made, even the smallest in every detail. It is our bodies that express everything about us. Everything we think and feel is expressed through our bodies and everything we experience is felt through our bodies. He gave actors physical skills for fully expressing their imaginations and their personalities. 

We have been doing physical warm ups every week before we start to devise. This helped to wake up our bodies and as Grotowski stated, it helped us familiarize ourselves with our own bodies and see what we could do with them. Our piece is very physical, especially during the ritual. Experimental theatre combines text with movement in order to captivate the audience and offer a new way of presenting drama. Our performance will include a lot of physical movements, so this particular Grotowski method is vital in helping and developing our performance. 

Voice

Vocal training was essential. They focussed their voices as though they were coming from different parts of their bodies. They used full registers of their voices from very high to very low. He emphasised clarity and used techniques such as singing, chanting and reciting poetry. All actors were so vocally strong that they were able to recite atmospheric sounds of the world such as mechanics, animals, thunder and so on. To Grotowski, the voice is an instrument. 

In every performance, the voice is key. We have done many warm ups focusing on different body parts and seeing what our voice would sound like if it came from our head, throat, chest, gut and feet. I noticed that the lower the body parts got, the lower my voice became. Grotowski noticed that one can push ones vocals by simply getting out of your head and simply testing your vocal range. Our piece includes poetry, chanting and different voices in order to captivate the audience and include this very essential Grotowski method. In my group performance, I definitely experiment with my voice, as I am putting on an old, Irish ladies voice. I found the accent hard to conquer as first, but when i started thinking about the words coming from my throat, the accent seemed to fall into place. In my solo piece, I also explore how breathe can affect the voice. My words are spoken in a breathy quality while still being clear. To ensure I could be heard, I did many breath exercises in my own time, stretching and developing my vocals. 

Human Contact

Grotowski believed in true contact between human beings. He believed that real harmony in human relationships only developed when people really learned to look at each other and listen to each other. He wanted actors to be more aware of the impact they had on other people. 

I completely agree with this method. To me, acting is two things; truth and connection. The only way to gain this kind of connection is to really look at someone and notice everything about them. I know this saying has been used to death, but the eyes really are the pathway to the soul. You can see everything through someones eyes and gain a deep connection which will translate fantastically on stage. To make sure that our group had full connection, we did an exercise when we had to look into each others eyes and say each others names. We could only say the names once we felt a bond between each other. This really helped to me understand the level of connection you can have between you and another human. I plan to use strong eye contact in our performance in order to draw the viewers in and make them feel completely immersed in our performance and its morals. 

Transformation

In his ''poor theatre'' he always aimed for the simplest possible use for staging, lighting, costumes and special effects. This forced actors to use all their skills to transform empty spaces and simple objects into a while range of imaginative worlds. Symbolism was essential in this form of theatre. In the theatre of poverty, the only important elements were the actors themselves and their relationships with the live audience. Often actors were in the audience's personal spaces, close enough to touch them. Grotowski arranged the space he was using so that the audience would be as involved in the theatre as possible. 

Our performance will push the typical boundaries of the audience performer relationship. As our piece is in promenade for the majority of it, it is very immersive and the connection between us and the viewers will be strong. Many of our individual pieces symbolise different things. For example, mine symbolises how one can get so trapped in ones mind and become completely distorted by it. My character has been corrupted by media and now sees reporters as spies and spiders crawling over them. 

Memory

Like Stanislavsky, Grotowski emphasised the use of emotion memory to recall an experience and recreate that feeling that went with that memory. He demanded total honesty and total commitment from his actors in their use of emotion memory. They had to make use of all their memories, no matter how painful or private. This made their performances genuine. Through this process, actors would come closer to knowing the truth about themselves. it is an important path to self-knowledge. Grotowski demanded total commitment and belief in every activity, even in the simplest exercise. 

In our performance, commitment is essential as the movements we do will only look effective if everyone is completely committed and focused. In every exercise we do, we always have to be totally in the moment and present, otherwise the exercise is worthless. Although in my particular performance I haven't included any emotional memory, I have recalled those key memories from others to help the truth in my performance. Even though our piece isn't naturalistic, I still believe that there needs to be an element of truth, otherwise the audience will get bored and lost. We have used this method in our piece by always being focused and present in everything we do. 

Truth

Grotowski warned his actors to avoid what he called ''the beautiful lie'', both on stage and on their everyday lives. By this he meant doing something just because it looked good or because it was what people expected them to do. 

When doing an experimental piece of theatre, there is a high risk of doing random movements and gesture just for the hell of it. we have to be careful in our devising process because we don't want the audience to be lost or confused by our performance. As we are doing an Artaud style piece, naturally it will pose more questions than answers, but that doesn't mean our pieces need to just be a series of odd images. The sequences we do must have a purpose and always link back to our theme of England. 

Peter Brook 

Born in London in March 1925, Brook was educated at Westminster School, Gresham's Schooland Magdalen College, Oxford. 

Brook was heavily influenced by the work of Antonin Artaud and his idea of Theatre of Cruelty. His main influence, however, was Joan Littlewood. He described her as ''the most galvanising director in mid-20th century Britain.' 

He was also inspired by the theories of experimental theatre practitioners Jerzy Grotowski, Bertolt Brecht, Chris Covics and Vsevolod Meyerhold. His work seems to reflect all these dramatists, but even still pushing the boundaries of 'normal' theatre, testing the relationships between the audience and the performer. 

He directed Dr Faustus, his first production, in 1943 at the Torch Theatre in London, followed at the Chanticleer Theatre in 1945 with a revival of The Infernal Machine. In 1947, he went to Stratford-upon-Avon as assistant director on Romeo and Juliet and Love's Labour's Lost. From 1947 to 1950, he was Director of Productions at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. His work there included a highly controversial staging of Strauss’ Salome with sets by Salvador Dalí and also an effective re-staging of Puccini’s La Boheme using sets dating from 1899. A proliferation of stage and screen work as producer and director followed.

In 1951, Brook married the actress Natasha Parry; the couple have a son and a daughter.

In 1970, with Micheline Rozan, Brook founded the International Centre for Theatre Research, a multinational company of actors, dancers, musicians and others which travelled widely in the Middle East and Africa in the early 1970s. It is now based in Paris at the Bouffes du Nord theatre. In 2008 he made the decision to resign as artistic director of Bouffes du Nord, handing over to Olivier Mantei and Olivier Poubelle in 2008.

Antonin Artaud 

Born in France in 1896, he was a young man during the First World War but managed to escape due to ill health. Aged 19, he was committed to a mental hospital where mistakenly, the doctors prescribed him laudanum (a liquid form of the drug opium/heroin) which unfortunately lead to a life-long addiction to drug of all kinds. Many say this is where most of his work came from, when he was high. 

In his younger years, he lived and worked as an actor, designer and theatre critic in Paris. Appearing in film and theatre, Artaud joined a new artistic movement called Surrealism. The Surrealists believed that art should combine both dreams and reality in order to create something ''surreal'' and new.

He set up am experimental theatre company in which he could try out his ideas and put on plays by other new, quirky dramatists. His Theatre, named after the first Surrealist playwright Alfred Jarry, never made any money due to it causing constant public outrage with its anarchic productions. Artaud was so individualistic, emotional and uncompromising in his ideas and presentations that he was even expelled from the Surrealists, viewing him as a threat. 

Artaud was penniless and starving throughout the 1920's and 30's. Not being phased but this, he continued to write and lecture on the subject of theatre and to put his ideas into action at the Alfred Jarry Theatre. 

By 1935, his failures as a director were apparent and he ceased to be involved with Theatre on a practical level. Nevertheless, his great Theatre Manifesto's The Theatre of Cruelty and The Theatre and its Double were published during this period and he began to seek help for his drug addiction by taking part in a series of detox programmes. 

In the late 1930's Artaud travelled to live with the native Indians in Mexico to learn about their ceremonial rituals. He was fascinated with the raw emotion produced by these very humanized ceremonies and included them in his future work. 

Returning to Paris, he began to lose grip on reality even further. He acquired a walking stick which, he was convinced, had belonged to a St Patrick and undertook a journey to return it to the Irish People. He was arrested in Dublin after a series of fights and deported back to France in a straight jacket. 

Artaud was kept in various mental institutes for the next eight years. He continued to write and draw as part of his therapy, even inventing his own language in order to communicate his ideas. He was released to semi-freedom in 1946. Artaud began to record a series of lectures which were to be broadcasted on National Radio but they were seen as too controversial and banned last minute. 

Antonin Artaud died alone on the 4th March 1948. It is un-known if he took his own life or not. 

This is a sheet on some of Artaud's theories.

Richard II 

By William Shakespeare

Methinks I am a prophet new inspired
And thus expiring do foretell of him:
His rash fierce blaze of riot cannot last,
For violent fires soon burn out themselves;
Small showers last long, but sudden storms are short;
He tires betimes that spurs too fast betimes;
With eager feeding food doth choke the feeder:
Light vanity, insatiate cormorant,
Consuming means, soon preys upon itself.
This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England. 

The sentences highlighted were the words that inspired me and stood out. I feel like these words sum up our island and to me they left an impact on my mind. Shakespeare uses copious amounts of naturalistic verbs and nouns to bring the audience back to the raw essentials of our earth, and therefore our England. 

This monologue inspired our group ritual at the end of our performance. Rituals have been around for thousands of years and are still used regularly today. The bare minerals that are exposed in a continuous, animalistic routine are extremely powerful and natural. I think having a ritual at the end of our piece will be a very slick way of including the themes and images from this speech into our piece and thus reminding the audience of what our country is like when you strip away all the modernization. 

This speech is full of pride and respect for England, focusing heavily on its past. This contrasts heavily with the appalled tone present in 'Going Going', where Larkin mentions how, as a nation, we have lost our traditional values through industrialisation and our own greed for control. The fact that these two texts differ so much is brilliant for broadening our piece and giving it a dramatic quality. As they both present different perspectives on what England has become or what is used to be, it means we can show two different views to the audience, which should make our piece more diverse and dynamic. 

Going Going 

By Phillip Larkin

I though it would last my time-

The sense that, beyond the town,
There would always be fields and farms,
Where the village louts could climb
Such trees as were not cut down;
I knew there’d be false alarms

In the papers about old streets
And split level shopping, but some
Have always been left so far;
And when the old part retreats
As the bleak high-risers come
We can always escape in the car.

Things are tougher than we are, just
As earth will always respond  (this line inspired my continuous prose)
However we mess it about;
Chuck filth in the sea, if you must:
The tides will be clean beyond.
- But what do I feel now? Doubt?

Or age, simply? The crowd
Is young in the M1 cafe;
Their kids are screaming for more -
More houses, more parking allowed,
More caravan sites, more pay.
On the Business Page, a score

Of spectacled grins approve
Some takeover bid that entails
Five per cent profit (and ten
Per cent more in the estuaries): move
Your works to the unspoilt dales
(Grey area grants)! And when

You try to get near the sea
In summer . . .

        It seems, just now,
To be happening so very fast;
Despite all the land left free
For the first time I feel somehow
That it isn’t going to last,

That before I snuff it, the whole
Boiling will be bricked in
Except for the tourist parts -
First slum of Europe: a role
It won’t be hard to win,
With a cast of crooks and tarts.

And that will be England gone,
The shadows, the meadows, the lanes,
The guildhalls, the carved choirs.
There’ll be books; it will linger on
In galleries; but all that remains
For us will be concrete and tyres.

Most things are never meant.
This won’t be, most likely; but greeds
And garbage are too thick-strewn
To be swept up now, or invent
Excuses that make them all needs.
I just think it will happen, soon.

As I said before, this poem focus more on what England has become and its future if we continue to abuse it with our modern day carelessness. Again, I highlighted the words that stuck our to me or sparked some idea's. The visionary in this poem impacted me greatly as this could be the future of our island. I was particularly inspired by the fourth stanza, talking about youth and the future being in their hands. I would like to do a piece that focus on different generations and what they feel about the youth. 

As our piece is supposed to include England's past and present, I had an idea of older people from different generations all contemplating about England and their different opinions on what this island is like. Jack told us that in older people, their short memory goes first, so consequently they are stuck with their long term memory. I thought this would make an interesting piece, exploring what memory is and how different events in our lives can effect that. I think that these speeches are fantastic stimulus, as I got all these vivid and bold idea's from just reading these two very different ideologies on England. 

Experimental Term Introduction 

This term we are devising a piece of experimental theatre, using the practitioners Antonin Artaud, Peter Brook and some devising methods from Grotowski to influence our work. Experimental theatre pushes the boundaries and limitations of what normal, conventional theatre seemingly looks like. The purpose for this type of theatre is to create a new, unseen experience for the audience, stretching their typical idea's of what an audience member should do. 

The theme for our performance this term if England. We will be exploring England's past, its present state and how the general public feel about living in this country today. We looked at this quote form Shakespeare's Richard II, 'this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, This England.' and a poem named 'Going Going' by Philip Larkin as a form of stimulus to devise our piece from. After discussing a few opinions on the poems and contemplating how we could include their themes in our piece, we agreed that our performance will be staged in Promenade around the school, both inside and outside. Various scenes depicting locations within Britain at different time periods will be shown through this setting, before fixing the audience in one space to do a final group ritual at the end. I think having the piece in promenade is a great way to stage this type of performance, as it is immerse and will challenge the audience-performer relationship, which is essentially the main purpose of experimental theatre. 

Jack asked us to lie on the floor in semi-supine while he read out the Shakespeare monologue and think of what Britain means to us, what images/locations come to mind. I immediately thought of the gorgeous forests and moors in the countryside, along with the chilly pebbly beaches outlining this small island. Due to this, I changed the background of my blog to an image of a sun setting over a field. 

This video helped me understand what a professional experimental theatre performance would look like. The use of media and sound worked in contributing to a new and thrilling performance. In our piece I would like to use sound to provoke and exit certain feelings from the audience.