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Immerse fest

To start off this year’s immerse festival, we had a few session with Jodie to help us understand ecology. From these session I learnt that the impact will become different when we’re thinking ecologically, by playing around with elements such as space, movement, sound/ words and audience. If we change any of these how will this change our system/ final piece. In this blog I will be referring to the theorist Karen Christopher and exploring what her thoughts on working ecologically. Also, I will be looking at the practitioner Jess Allen, looking at her performances and reflecting on how it links to my piece in an ecological way. I will be writing this blog to reflect on my process and start bring my awareness ecologically, by looking at the elements within the play. 

WEEK 1

In the first session my group sat down with all the scripts and started the eliminating process, keeping in mind “eventually the work begins to make itself” Christopher, K. ‘page 119’, in Small acts of repairs. This quote inspired me and help me with my future experience’s within the developing process. We read through most of the scripts, noting down what ones we resonated with. We wanted to have lots of different options and didn’t want to fixate on anything quite yet as we understand we need to be looking at, what is the impact of the play? And what message do we want the audience to leave with? In my opinion, I feel that it is best to keep asking yourself questions to come up with lots different material that can branch out and to help finalise later ideas, always thinking about the impact of every detail. 

After sitting and reading through the scripts we came across ‘You Are Not Alone’ by Nicole Pschetz. The reason we felt deeply about this play was because it was a short piece about climate change and having to come together as a community in order to create change, no matter how scary it may seem at first. We thought it was important for us to perform this play as it is about a global issue that is relevant to today and felt we had a story to tell. After we found our play, we started to brain storm ideas and we came to a group decision that we wanted to do a physical theatre piece and have a audio over the top. This was because we wanted to show on stage through movement how a community can come together in order to create change whilst the audio is talking about how people are scared of change as you feel lonely but once your apart of a community, you realise life becomes easier as you have people around you trying to better themselves/ the planet. Our next challenge was choosing who was playing what part. There were three characters in the play, River, Old River and Wind. Our first cast was formed by myself playing Old River, Olivia as River and Heather as Wind, as a group we was not set on this cast indefinitely as wanted to keep an open mind so we can work to the best possible outcomes. When writing this blog and reflecting on the work of Karen Christopher, this links to her ‘cherry blossom tree theory’, this is a method were you go into your work with no sense of direction, you just gather up lots of material by trying out different elements and selecting what works after detailed analysation. I realised we was doing this all along and I  saw the connection between my work and the theorist’s work. 

WEEK 2

At the beginning of the second week we worked specifically on the audio as we knew  that was our starting point in generating movement for the piece. I took on the responsibility on directing the audio and actually creating the finishing product. I have never done anything like this before so it was a challenge, but I enjoyed it. My thought process going into this was to get everyone to re-record their lines, portraying different emotions or tone, in order to see the impact each one brought. Working like this, thinking deeply about each detail brings you more aware of the story you want to tell, by zooming in on specific outcomes “we are looking to discover as many solutions as we can” Christopher, K. ‘page 120’, in Small acts of repairs.  This critical thinking,  I will be taking this with me for future projects as it’s important to analyse your work in order to impact the audience the way you envision.  It starts making you mindful about all the small things that can lead to the bigger picture. 

After gather all the speaking material, I then went home to piece the audio snippets together with the help of Olivia. We also added background noises such as bird chirping, wind blowing and water flowing. We thought this would help the impact of our piece. 

At the end of the week we had a show back session in class. We didn’t have any movement made as we were to focused creating and producing the audio. Looking back and reflecting on my work with ecology in mind,  this might not have been the most affiant way of working as we could have been working on movement at the start of the week, but in the moment we felt like we did not have enough time so we focused on the audio. Our feedback was to make the piece more original and meaningful for us.  After having a convocation we decided we wanted to add the Welsh language into the story as both Heather and Olivia speak Welsh, it is important for them to bring back their native language. As we know, the population of Wales do not have many Welsh speakers, only 29.5% can speak it! (Welsh language data from the annual population survey: 2022). With that in mind, we started to link it to our piece and it fitted perfectly as the play text’s message was about bringing a  community together and all it takes is that one person to step up, to not be scared. Just like it takes one person to speak welsh in convocation and then other people start to speak welsh. A good example for me was Sian, Oliva and Heather. They are all welsh speakers but decide to speak to each other in English but when one starts to speak welsh they all speak welsh. It proves it takes that one person to stand up, just like our piece. Whilst looking at ecology and looking at K.Cristopher’s work I feel you should have lots of contracting elements within your play that each impact the audience in their own different way. You go through a process of trial and error, for the purpose of selecting the fitted outcome. Therefore, having audio that is incorporated with Welsh language and movement that appears on the stage, hopefully,  will both have their own story to tell on their own as well as together.

(First day in audio booth)

WEEK 3

Tuesday morning came around and we got straight to work. The first thing we did was to change the roles of people, we did not mind as we was not set on the characters we were originally playing as we knew we wanted to keep an open mind, referring to the K.Christopher’s ‘cherry blossom tree theory’, which I mentioned earlier. After we moved the characters around we decided on heather being Old River who is welsh speaking,  Olivia being River who is a non welsh speaker and me as Wind also a non welsh speaker. After showing back the new half english half welsh audio, our feedback was a question: Why aren’t you going all the way with the welsh language? Our response to this was we didn’t want to excluded any one from the performance as non-speaker won’t be able to understand. Matt came back to us and inspired me as he told us that it isn’t our fault that people do not speak welsh when you are in Wales. It also connects to our piece as well as you can’t be half and half you have to go all the way in order to create the impact we intend of creating. 

With that being our feedback we again switched the characters for the final time and have Olivia also speaking welsh.  It was set that Heather will be River, a welsh speaker, Olivia as Old River, who is also a welsh speaker and myself playing Wind, I am a non welsh speaker. We swapped the characters because we though this would fit better as heather is a stronger welsh speaker than Olivia so she took the bigger part and everyone was happy. 

WEEK 4

As the performance dates were coming up we knew we had to get on with the movement, so at the start of this week we split off into two groups. Heather went away to translate the script into welsh with the help of her welsh teacher, whilst Olivia and myself started to generate movement material. We did this because we thought it was the fastest way of getting things up on its feet. The way me and Olivia created movement was by listening to the words in the script and picking the deeper meaning/ message within. We both started to come up with different material, from what our understanding of the plays message was. We then brought everything together, working out what fit and what didn’t but not completely getting rid of any material as we kept it for future purpose’s. This associates back to K. Cristopher as all material that has been produced, can still bloom in other areas. I learnt that you should keep everything you create for other projects as then you always have something to work off of. 

As Olivia and I were in the process of making movement we came up with the idea of using a blue ribbon as a symbol of change and delicacy of the earth, we had the phrase “the whole world is in our hands” in our minds. We wanted to use the ribbon the show the audience a sense of community. You have to work together in order to make things easier for all. So with that in mind, we started to play around with ways we can incorporate the ribbon.  After heather was finished translating the script we started to show her what we had come up with, she gave us her feedback and we all spent some time so we could fix and piece the material together. 

Here are a few pictures of us as a group trying some material out with using the ribbon (in the pictures it is a scarf but the final piece it was a blue ribbon). 

Here you can see us creating a little scene, our purpose for this scene was that when a community come together life gets easier, if you help out others and they can help you. This session was very productive as we had our first 4 minutes of our play (it was a 6 min and 50 sec piece). At the end of the week we performed what we had to Sian and Matt. We got our feedback and they said it looked to dancy and we should try work towards something, Sian gave us the example of the whole company coming together to change a lightbulb. Also, as we’re doing a physical theatre piece, Sian advised us to keep in mind that the movement that is happening on stage has to tell a different story to what the audio is telling the audience. For me, feedback is very important and should never be taken in a negative way but to use it to better yourself and the work your producing. After reflecting on the process I feel that feedback is another element on working ecologically. To keep working to benefit stronger meaning within your work. We had to put the movement on pause as we had to go record the audio for the final time. I worked on putting it creating the audio over the weekend so it would be ready for when we start next week. 

WEEK 5

With last week’s feedback in mind, we wanted to start the week thinking about ways on how we can make it more theatrical. We came to the conclusion that Heather‘s character (River) wanted to change for the better, but she was too scared to do anything because she felt as if she was on her own. Whilst Olivia’s character (Old River, who is Rivers older and wiser self) comes to help her present self, showing River what the world can be if  us as a society come together to work with one another. Contracting that, my character, Wind, represents the rest of society that do not want change/ don’t believe in global warming as they lack care and gratitude of the world around them. Wind doesn’t want to socialise with River and Old Rivers views about the world as my character fills as if it is useless. However overtime in the piece, River and Old River helps my character understand the world so we can better it and show that community isn’t scary, it can create change. This is when I started linking my work to the practitioner Jess Allen.

 J. Allen likes to push boundaries and making people feel uncomfortable by using “unlikely audiences in unusual locations” (Allen, All in a day's walk). Her work is made for the outdoors and it aims to bring communities together by understanding the world around them, bettering themselves for a healthier world. What I learnt from Allen was you should learn how to challenge people behaviours and to have meaning into your work.  Her performance ‘Drop In The Ocean’ is a non-stop movement play about water sustainability . I think this is to show the struggle some people may face when they don’t have free, clean, running water as they are always working to make sure they have the bare needs. For the rest of us, we need to learn how to be grateful for what we have In our own lives. This reflects in our piece as it was a physical piece with non-stop movement to show that the community works behind the scenes in order to make the environment around you better but, there are people like ‘Wind’ who needs someone to open their eyes and realise they are damaging the earth. I’m going on to do my PGCE after university and I would keep J. Allen work in my mind as I feel she is a positive role model with strong views. I feel it would be important for my students to understand the world around them by seeing the effect it does have on us as a society. 

WEEK 6

This was the final week of rehearsals and at the end of the week we will be showing our immerse festival performance’s. the beginning of the week we had to work with the class to work out the transitions of each group on how we’re entering and exiting the stage. 

After, my group went to finalise the ending of our piece as we wanted to keep developing until The last moment, making sure we were portraying the impact/ emotion we wanted to get across. In the middle of the week we got a chance to rehearse in the room we would be performing in. This help us as a group a lot, I think this was because we had more room to move and  express how our characters felt freely.  After our slot, I wanted to talk to the girls about our hair as I had the idea of each of us having the blue ribbon imbedded into our hair in some way. This was to show that us as humans are all connected In some way and we should be open to making new relationships that can challenge and change your views and to broaden your experience’s. Again, reflecting back on the work we always were trying out different material/ props and costume. This benefited me as I never struggled with creating material as we would brainstorm and have loads of different ideas to go from. Below is some pictures on how I did our hair for the piece. We did one run without it and one with it to see the impact it each one had. I was talking to one of my class mates and they said the ribbon in the hair helped tell the story clearer. Therefore, we kept the ribbon in our hair as I added another layer to our piece. 

In conclusion, when thinking back on my process ecologically, I have realised that every detail has an impact on the finale piece. Working as a team where everyone has job to do to help create a finishing outcome can be like an eco-system where every life in that system has a role to play,  otherwise it will start to fall apart. Allowing to share responsibilities can help come up with stronger and meaningful projects as you have more than one outside opinion. Thinking in this way, I will be taking this tac-tic with me for future projects now that I have a better understanding and can be used as a skill. 

Grace Bridges.