Rehearsing "The Most Horrific"

On December 3rd, our political theatre group divided into two groups. One group being the 'A's and B's' and the other group playing the 'C and D's'. We all used our team work skills to fairly divide up the roles in which we were all going to have. We had a few idea's that we thought we could use in our performance. Due to our work behind based around Brecht, we decided to add aspects into our performance such as labels and white tape around our props. We eventually came up with the idea that  A and B playing the disinterested media executives who only had interest for the superficial stories such as Cheryl Cole and sex whereas C and D playing the desperate pitchers wanting to receive some attention from them so that their story's make the media. We staged our piece so that the media were sitting on chairs much like a conference room and the pitchers where all standing by a board huddled together nervously flicking through papers. I found that this really helped me to understand how to present hierarchy in the performance, I also feel that it gave a comical edge to the performance which would intrigue the audience. In my opinion, I feel that presenting the hierarchy really helped me to get into character as a typical 'snob'. I decided that I would walk a certain way to collect my coffee (with froth) and turn my nose up as Rhianne held up a sign saying 'Bring back our girls'. I could relate back to one of our previous lessons when we saw Josh and Ivrory act out hierarchy. I used Josh's techniques to develop my character further.

I thought it was effective how C and D never crossed past the blocks, this showed the divide between them. In rehearsal we experimented on different ways to communicate disengagement by angling positions of chairs or having some As and Bs looking down. I turned my chair towards Felix, where we would mumble to each other whilst the pitchers were talking to show our disinterest. As a group, we came to a decision that when certain situations were brought up such as 'Bankers are cunts' and 'Terrorists in Birmingham' the media would move forward to show interest, then move back when they talked facts. I think that this also strengthened my understanding of my character and how to portray someone who is not interested yet still show a character. I found this quite difficult at first because we were sitting on chairs, however as we rehearsed, we started adding in pieces which would help the A's and B's. C and D's used a whiteboard to put topics in a YES or NO column- all the stories that gained any attention from A and Bs would be written down in the yes, all the others where left in the no. I feel that this would help the audience to understand what the media find interesting which is all the unimportant situations. I really liked how the audience got to experience two different types of people within the media. I got the sense from our rehearsal that everyone was pleased and suited their parts and I feel that we all contrasted well. My weakness in our first run through would be how I portrayed disinterest with my practicalities, however with Simon's help, we all managed to develop our understandings of how we were all going to act on stage. 

Once we had run through our play, we came together as a group to discuss any other ideas that we had to develop our piece. We came up with the idea that we could act out some of the situations before the play so that the audience can experience them in a site specific manner. I got into a group with Zoe, Tyler, Romy, Klaudia, Bret and Euwan to discuss and portray the issue of 'Being gay in Uganda'. We decided that we would perform this as a protest. We all huddled together to express just how many people disagreed with the rule. I myself strongly disagree with people being killed if they are gay in Uganda or any other country, therefore this helped me to really feel passionate about the situation. Myself and Romy decided that we would make placards in a Brechtian style to use in our protest. One by one, we would push someone into the audience to speak, using a line from an article. My line was 'I came from a Muslim family, once I told my mother and sister I was gay, they told me I was a disgrace'. Once we had said our line, we would be dragged back into the protest, representing society and how society doesn't allow us to speak out, therefore drags you in. We wanted to be as creative as possible with our mini pieces. Once everyone had spoken, we would split into three's, covering our mouths showing our lack of independences to speak out and allow the audience to move past us. I feel that this would make the audience feel on edge and slight sympathy for us. We then presented these pieces to the rest of the group for feedback and constructive criticism. We decided to make our piece even stronger by having more people and also by turning our energy level from 5 to a 9. Overall, I think our first rehearsal went really well. Everybody seemed to be committed and knew there ques.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/10668168/Being-gay-in-Uganda-they-could-come-and-kill-me-at-any-time.html

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