The performance couldn't have gone any better. Our friends from certitude loved performing in front of their audience and it made them so happy. We loved it and so did the audience and everything went according to plan. Saying goodbye was a lot harder than I thought; everyone was emotional with quite a few teary-eyed people and it was then that we realised how attached we were to our certitude group. This project was truly inspiring and possibly the best project I've done at Brit because being around them made you happy. Every Monday they came in happy, ready to work and exited because for once they weren't at their day centre doing the same thing, but they were coming here and having fun. It was nice to know that I made a positive difference to their weekly routine.
Evaluation
This project has taught me that people with disabilities are like any other normal person but they have special needs that need to be met with special assistance. I've learnt that patience, understanding, motivation,being friendly and being able to explain something clearly are keys to working with disabled people. These skills I have developed are certainly things I can take with me and use in the future and working with disabled people is definitely something I would consider in the future.
Friday, 19 July 2013
Performance Order
- The audience walk in and everyone is doing warm-ups, circus tricks (because our theme is circus of dreams), dances, vocal warm-ups, human triangle, etc. The audience take their seats
- The first ringleader introduces the show and makes an audience member burst a balloon that tells us which magical world we're transporting them to. We do our Dreams song first. We sit down.
- The ringmaster gets them to burst another balloon. We go to the mirror world and a few people have a go at mirroring. We sit back down again
- Ringmasters change over. New ringmaster has a balloon popped and we have the sea world. We sit back down
- Matthew's song
- Broadway
- Space
- Beauty and the Beast
- Joseph song
- Fin.
Rest Of The Lessons And Build-Up Of Our Show
For the rest of the lessons we have been creating and rehearsing our show. It's been pretty much the same thing each week but we've added more things and slowly introduced the order to our friends from certitude so that it's not all thrown on them too suddenly.
An idea that will be a constant in the play is Ian's pub of dreams. In this, he "pours you a dream" and when you drink it, you get whisked off to your dream, or in the case of the show, the different performances. The ideas that are being used in the piece are:
An idea that will be a constant in the play is Ian's pub of dreams. In this, he "pours you a dream" and when you drink it, you get whisked off to your dream, or in the case of the show, the different performances. The ideas that are being used in the piece are:
- Matthew's song: Matthew is a keen singer and at the end of one of our sessions he sung us two of his songs. One of them was about his mother and the other was about his dream of becoming a successful singer and the second song was taken by some people of musical theatre and they worked with Matthew and the pianist to rebuild the song with a backing track, harmonies and a bit at the beginning where Matthew danced to the intro of his song. He's a very talented and nimble dancer and he loves dancing, so it's good to see him enjoying himself
- Broadway: Dance worked with Lisa and Francis to create a short and simple dance routine with them as one of their dreams was to be a Broadway dancer. When the routine had finished, there was an instrumental where they all got into a semi-circle and had a dance-off. Lisa really enjoyed this bit and smiled all the way through it whilst Francis was shy but he was comfortable doing it
- Beauty and the Beast: This was something that us in theatre created with Ciaran and Esslar. Ciaran (who played the beast thus getting a peck from Belle at the end) began by directing it and having it precisely how he wanted it, but his directions were sometimes unclear and changed a lot. So we made a storyboard of the whole thing and ended up having to change a few things so the story made more sense, much to Ciaran's dismay. As we ran the whole play in rehearsals, he would get confused and frustrated as to why we weren't doing beauty and the beast and why we weren't being wolves or teacups or why Amaya wasn't being Belle. He soon understood why and even though we changed our section, he didn't hesitate to make it his own.
- Sea and Space: These were environments that we created by changing our physicalities, making noises appropriate to the environment, using props and exploring the audience to make them feel like they're part of the piece.
Down's Syndrome
Two of our friends from Certitude have Down's Syndrome, Ciaran and Tanisha, but they both have different forms of it. I decided to do some research for my own benefit.
Down's Syndrome is a genetic disorder where a fetus is formed with a third copy of chromosome 21 whereas the average human has two copies. This is detected before birth via ultrasound and the mother of the baby can choose to have an abortion or carry on with her pregnancy.
At birth, down's can be instantly detected by: an epicanthic fold which is the fold in the corner of their eyes which should disappear at 3 months of gestation, a gap between their big toe and other toe, a flat and broad face, short neck, protruding tongue due to a small mouth, Brushfield spots (white spots on the iris), short limbs and fingers, hyperflexibility of the joints, poor muscle tone (people with down's syndrome aren't very strong for this reason), weak reflexes and cry,smaller head than average, fontanel on the baby's head is larger due to slow growth, flat nose bridge, smaller, lower set ears and the hands are flat with broad fingers, a flexion on the fifth finger and a single crease in their palm.
As they grow older, other things can affect them such as sight and hearing issues, mental retardation (a typical person with down's syndrome has an IQ of around 50, a normal human would have an IQ of about 100), infertility in men and females will find it hard to conceive, heart disease and cancer are more common to people with down's but recently, this has been reduced with new medicine.
There are three different kinds of down's syndrome; two of them being spontaneous and one of them being genetic (particularly is the parent/s have/has down's syndrome). A child with down's syndrome can meet all the milestones a normal child can depending on their individual severity and can attend a school alongside normal children with a learning assistant if necessary. They can also have jobs and live independently with visits from occupational therapists. Being a part of an environment helps their development and allows them to interact and live lives like any other normal person. Stimulation, good healthcare and quality education programmes are key to helps those with down's syndrome lead long fulfilling lives.
Ciaran has the personality of an average young man. He is outgoing, likes his women, has a strong personality and loves to chat with people. He's more known for his productions that he likes to put on. For Wizard of Oz, his group was only meant to perform one scene but he was adamant to finish the whole thing, and he directed the whole thing and he was very proud of it. Ciaran seems to love his disney stories and he knows them of by heart.
Tanisha seems to be more laid-back and a little bit more quiet. She likes to talk to you and she's very affectionate; she will hug you and not let go. She understands things (like ciaran) very well and has a very individual way of dancing.
Down's Syndrome is a genetic disorder where a fetus is formed with a third copy of chromosome 21 whereas the average human has two copies. This is detected before birth via ultrasound and the mother of the baby can choose to have an abortion or carry on with her pregnancy.
At birth, down's can be instantly detected by: an epicanthic fold which is the fold in the corner of their eyes which should disappear at 3 months of gestation, a gap between their big toe and other toe, a flat and broad face, short neck, protruding tongue due to a small mouth, Brushfield spots (white spots on the iris), short limbs and fingers, hyperflexibility of the joints, poor muscle tone (people with down's syndrome aren't very strong for this reason), weak reflexes and cry,smaller head than average, fontanel on the baby's head is larger due to slow growth, flat nose bridge, smaller, lower set ears and the hands are flat with broad fingers, a flexion on the fifth finger and a single crease in their palm.
As they grow older, other things can affect them such as sight and hearing issues, mental retardation (a typical person with down's syndrome has an IQ of around 50, a normal human would have an IQ of about 100), infertility in men and females will find it hard to conceive, heart disease and cancer are more common to people with down's but recently, this has been reduced with new medicine.
There are three different kinds of down's syndrome; two of them being spontaneous and one of them being genetic (particularly is the parent/s have/has down's syndrome). A child with down's syndrome can meet all the milestones a normal child can depending on their individual severity and can attend a school alongside normal children with a learning assistant if necessary. They can also have jobs and live independently with visits from occupational therapists. Being a part of an environment helps their development and allows them to interact and live lives like any other normal person. Stimulation, good healthcare and quality education programmes are key to helps those with down's syndrome lead long fulfilling lives.
Ciaran has the personality of an average young man. He is outgoing, likes his women, has a strong personality and loves to chat with people. He's more known for his productions that he likes to put on. For Wizard of Oz, his group was only meant to perform one scene but he was adamant to finish the whole thing, and he directed the whole thing and he was very proud of it. Ciaran seems to love his disney stories and he knows them of by heart.
Tanisha seems to be more laid-back and a little bit more quiet. She likes to talk to you and she's very affectionate; she will hug you and not let go. She understands things (like ciaran) very well and has a very individual way of dancing.
Thursday, 18 July 2013
Warm Ups and Exercises
The warm ups and exercises we played with our friends from certitude have been handpicked to suit their abilities and some were even used for our show. I present you with a list of the exercises:
Freeze, Clap, Jump.
We walk around the space and listen our for Jack's commands. When he says "jump", you jump. When he says "clap", you clap. When he says "freeze", you freeze and remain frozen until he tells you to go. When we were all getting the hang of it and more into the game, Jack would change the rules and make us clap when he says jump and jump when he says clap or freeze when he says go and go when he says freeze. The people who got confused or slacked were out. This was a good game to get everyone's awareness boosted up and we were all pretty exited when it was getting narrowed down. This is fun as a warm up but I don't think an audience would find it fun to watch.
Musical statues
This game is known worldwide but a recap of the rules: Everyone stands up and dances to the music. When the music stops, you freeze and if you move, you're out. The final two faced a dance off or we sat and waited. The dancing part was something everybody was able to do, but the freezing bit was difficult for some of the adults. Lisa couldn't stay still or quiet when the music stopped as I don't think she understood that part of it, so one of the carers danced with her and told her when to stand still, but she still carried on dancing. Our friends from certitude absolutely loved this game, it was probably their favourite. To shake things up, sometimes we would have to dance like an animal or object.
Send a movement
This game required us to stand in a circle and we had to send a movement across the circle to one person. They would do the movement back to you (retrieving your movement) and send a new movement across the circle. This was a simple game and everyone understood it.
Mirroring
For this game we were in a circle again and one person was selected to start doing a movement and everyone else would copy/mirror them. Our pianist would play some music appropriate to the movements for example, a light tune to delicate movements. You had to be slow with the movements and not move around too much because people had to follow you. Some of our friends from certitude loved this one, especially Matthew because he is very fond of dancing, he loves it, and when he was doing his movements you could see the concentration in his face. He loved this exercise and showing everyone what he could do.
Tribes
For this exercise we got into groups of about five to six and moved around the space as different clumps of tribes or different types of animals and we all had to follow the leader who would change every so often so that we could all have a turn at leading. This was fun because leading something is something that a few of our friends from certitude love to do, especially Ciaran. The only problem with this game was Ian keeping up with everyone. Ian was in my tribe and they were all enjoying it very much but they were using a lot of arm movements, moving around quite quickly and accidentally forgot that Ian was physically unable to do this. Ian has a buggy that he has to use in order to get around easily and he couldn't do much of the movements, but when he became the leader it made him very happy and he slowed down his walking pace and occasionally moved his arm around.
Freeze, Clap, Jump.
We walk around the space and listen our for Jack's commands. When he says "jump", you jump. When he says "clap", you clap. When he says "freeze", you freeze and remain frozen until he tells you to go. When we were all getting the hang of it and more into the game, Jack would change the rules and make us clap when he says jump and jump when he says clap or freeze when he says go and go when he says freeze. The people who got confused or slacked were out. This was a good game to get everyone's awareness boosted up and we were all pretty exited when it was getting narrowed down. This is fun as a warm up but I don't think an audience would find it fun to watch.
Musical statues
This game is known worldwide but a recap of the rules: Everyone stands up and dances to the music. When the music stops, you freeze and if you move, you're out. The final two faced a dance off or we sat and waited. The dancing part was something everybody was able to do, but the freezing bit was difficult for some of the adults. Lisa couldn't stay still or quiet when the music stopped as I don't think she understood that part of it, so one of the carers danced with her and told her when to stand still, but she still carried on dancing. Our friends from certitude absolutely loved this game, it was probably their favourite. To shake things up, sometimes we would have to dance like an animal or object.
Send a movement
This game required us to stand in a circle and we had to send a movement across the circle to one person. They would do the movement back to you (retrieving your movement) and send a new movement across the circle. This was a simple game and everyone understood it.
Mirroring
For this game we were in a circle again and one person was selected to start doing a movement and everyone else would copy/mirror them. Our pianist would play some music appropriate to the movements for example, a light tune to delicate movements. You had to be slow with the movements and not move around too much because people had to follow you. Some of our friends from certitude loved this one, especially Matthew because he is very fond of dancing, he loves it, and when he was doing his movements you could see the concentration in his face. He loved this exercise and showing everyone what he could do.
Tribes
For this exercise we got into groups of about five to six and moved around the space as different clumps of tribes or different types of animals and we all had to follow the leader who would change every so often so that we could all have a turn at leading. This was fun because leading something is something that a few of our friends from certitude love to do, especially Ciaran. The only problem with this game was Ian keeping up with everyone. Ian was in my tribe and they were all enjoying it very much but they were using a lot of arm movements, moving around quite quickly and accidentally forgot that Ian was physically unable to do this. Ian has a buggy that he has to use in order to get around easily and he couldn't do much of the movements, but when he became the leader it made him very happy and he slowed down his walking pace and occasionally moved his arm around.
Sunday, 14 July 2013
Presentations
As part of our unit, we had to choose a community outreach project/company and make a slide show containing information about them. I chose to do mine about Little Fish, a company who work with disadvantages youths of society in hope of helping them. Please find a link to my powerpoint below.
Little Fish slideshow
There are two other companies that caught my attention and that I will include in this post. These are:
Candaco Dance Company are a contemporary dance company who use able and disabled dancers. The company was founded in 1991 by Celeste Dandeker and Adam Benjamin. Celeste used to be a ballet dancer until she was involved in a serious accident where she broke her back and was confined to a wheelchair, not being able to follow her dream as a ballet dancer. Her teacher told her to use her talents in another way and she did.
Candoco has won many awards for it's work inspiring people, able and disabled, and uniting them using something that they all love: dance. They also performed at the opening ceremony for the Beijing Olympic and Paralympic games, a very honouring thing for them.
This company stood out to me for it's success and particularly because of the background of one of the founders, Celeste. I think that she was very brave and it must have been horrible for her to have gone through what she did but she ended up achieving something bigger. Their dance pieces are beautiful as well.
There are two other companies that caught my attention and that I will include in this post. These are:
Candaco Dance Company are a contemporary dance company who use able and disabled dancers. The company was founded in 1991 by Celeste Dandeker and Adam Benjamin. Celeste used to be a ballet dancer until she was involved in a serious accident where she broke her back and was confined to a wheelchair, not being able to follow her dream as a ballet dancer. Her teacher told her to use her talents in another way and she did.
Candoco has won many awards for it's work inspiring people, able and disabled, and uniting them using something that they all love: dance. They also performed at the opening ceremony for the Beijing Olympic and Paralympic games, a very honouring thing for them.
This company stood out to me for it's success and particularly because of the background of one of the founders, Celeste. I think that she was very brave and it must have been horrible for her to have gone through what she did but she ended up achieving something bigger. Their dance pieces are beautiful as well.
Another Company I chose was Mousetrap Theatre Projects.
Mousetrap Theatre Projects gives theatre students theatre tickets at a lower price so that they can watch theatre for less and it gives everyone equal opportunities. It does the same for children with disabilities but the environment they see the show in is accustomed to them. Everyone in the audience are children with disabilities, their carers and families and it takes the pressure off parents in case their child has an outburst and starts making noise. They don't have to worry about it there because everybody is in the same boat, the all understand. The music is quieter and the lights are softer so that it won't trigger seizures or scare the children.
Mousetrap caught my eye because it's not like all the other companies that were chosen, it was unique and I like what it does, that it takes the pressure off carers and that everyone there can enjoy themselves. It helps the community and gives them a rare chance to see theatre in a comfortable environment
Mouetrap's mission statement:
"We believe that all young people should have the opportunity to attend outstanding theatre, irrespective of their cultural, social or economic background. Our mission is to increase young people’s access to the best of live theatre in London (particularly young people with limited resources, opportunities or support) and to enable them to engage creatively with that experience."
Mousetrap's core values:
"To develop programmes in consultation with users and in response to an identified need
To work collaboratively with other arts and education organisations and theatres
To maintain our strategic and programming independence
To deliver our programmes with rigour, integrity and artistic excellence
To evaluate and refine programmes on a continuous basis."
Now a video that explains Mousetrap more in depth:
Augusto Boal
For our piece, we are using Theatre of the Oppressed as a devising method. Theatre of the Oppressed is a theatre technique founded by a theatre practitioner, Augusto Boal.
Augusto Boal was born in Rio de Janeiro on the 16th of March 1931 and took an interest in theatre from a young age, preparing skits for his family with his three other brothers but took his undergraduate degree in engineering at a university in Rio de Janeiro. He later moved to New York and did a course in theatre whilst doing his masters in Engineering. During his theatre course, he learnt about the ways of Chekhov and Stanislavsky which he took with him when he went to sao paulo when he was asked to work at the arena theatre. The new methods he learnt have a left wing approach and he had to adapt them to the times because Brazil had just been through a dictatorship.
Boal's aims was to give voices to the oppressed people of society who were the underdogs (society was ruled by the church and middle/upper class) and didn't have voices. This caused great controversy and he was seen as a threat due to his cultural activism. In 1971, Boal was kidnapped off the street, tortured and exiled to Argentina for five years where he wrote two books; Torquemada (1971) and Theatre of the Oppressed (1973). Torquemada was about the rough treatment in prison and Theatre of the Oppressed was about his theatre and all the different elements to it.
After 15 years in exile, Boal returned to Brazil and established a Centre for the Theatre of the Oppressed and created a company within the centre who's objectives were to discuss issues relating to nationality, society, culture and other forms of oppression and find out how to address the issues through various forms of theatre. Augusto Boal traveled the world working with different groups of people and spreading his method in order to help others and give oppressed people across the world the ability to express themselves and for a new genre of theatre to emerge.
Theatre of the Oppressed has really helped many theatre companies who specialise in working with disadvantaged people of the community. Aspects of it have been taken and used by them and they now have a different approach to theatre themselves and know how to let the oppressed enjoy theatre and make it their own. We have also benefited from Boal's methods because if we were just to devise something ourselves and teach it to our friends from Certitude, then they may have enjoyed it, but it wouldn't have been from their minds and they wouldn't have been able to say "I made that", because they didn't. Through Theatre of the Oppressed, you're giving these people the ability to roam and express themselves because society makes them suppress their feelings all the time.
I'm going to end this post with a nice quote from Boal.
"its most archaic sense, theatre is the capacity possessed by human beings—and not by animals—to observe themselves in action. Humans are capable of seeing themselves in the act of seeing, of thinking their emotions, of being moved by their thoughts. They can see themselves here and imagine themselves there; they can see themselves today and imagine themselves tomorrow. This is why humans are able to identify (themselves and others) and not merely to recognise."
And another one.
"In truth the Theatre of the Oppressed has no end, because everything which happens in it must extend into life….The Theatre of the Oppressed is located precisely on the frontier between fiction and reality – and this border must be crossed. If the show starts in fiction, its objective is to become integrated into reality, into life. Now in 1992, when so many certainties have become so many doubts, when so many dreams have withered on exposure to sunlight, and so many hopes have become as many deceptions – now that we are living through times and situations of great perplexity, full of doubts and uncertainties, now more than ever I believe it is time for a theatre which, at its best, will ask the right questions at the right times. Let us be democratic and ask our audiences to tell us their desires, and let us show them alternatives. Let us hope that one day – please, not too far in the future – we’ll be able to convince or force our governments, our leaders, to do the same; to ask their audiences – us – what they should do, so as to make this world a place to live and be happy in – yes, it is possible – rather than just a vast market in which we sell our goods and our souls. Let’s hope. Let’s work for it!"
Boal's aims was to give voices to the oppressed people of society who were the underdogs (society was ruled by the church and middle/upper class) and didn't have voices. This caused great controversy and he was seen as a threat due to his cultural activism. In 1971, Boal was kidnapped off the street, tortured and exiled to Argentina for five years where he wrote two books; Torquemada (1971) and Theatre of the Oppressed (1973). Torquemada was about the rough treatment in prison and Theatre of the Oppressed was about his theatre and all the different elements to it.
After 15 years in exile, Boal returned to Brazil and established a Centre for the Theatre of the Oppressed and created a company within the centre who's objectives were to discuss issues relating to nationality, society, culture and other forms of oppression and find out how to address the issues through various forms of theatre. Augusto Boal traveled the world working with different groups of people and spreading his method in order to help others and give oppressed people across the world the ability to express themselves and for a new genre of theatre to emerge.
Theatre of the Oppressed has really helped many theatre companies who specialise in working with disadvantaged people of the community. Aspects of it have been taken and used by them and they now have a different approach to theatre themselves and know how to let the oppressed enjoy theatre and make it their own. We have also benefited from Boal's methods because if we were just to devise something ourselves and teach it to our friends from Certitude, then they may have enjoyed it, but it wouldn't have been from their minds and they wouldn't have been able to say "I made that", because they didn't. Through Theatre of the Oppressed, you're giving these people the ability to roam and express themselves because society makes them suppress their feelings all the time.
I'm going to end this post with a nice quote from Boal.
"its most archaic sense, theatre is the capacity possessed by human beings—and not by animals—to observe themselves in action. Humans are capable of seeing themselves in the act of seeing, of thinking their emotions, of being moved by their thoughts. They can see themselves here and imagine themselves there; they can see themselves today and imagine themselves tomorrow. This is why humans are able to identify (themselves and others) and not merely to recognise."
And another one.
"In truth the Theatre of the Oppressed has no end, because everything which happens in it must extend into life….The Theatre of the Oppressed is located precisely on the frontier between fiction and reality – and this border must be crossed. If the show starts in fiction, its objective is to become integrated into reality, into life. Now in 1992, when so many certainties have become so many doubts, when so many dreams have withered on exposure to sunlight, and so many hopes have become as many deceptions – now that we are living through times and situations of great perplexity, full of doubts and uncertainties, now more than ever I believe it is time for a theatre which, at its best, will ask the right questions at the right times. Let us be democratic and ask our audiences to tell us their desires, and let us show them alternatives. Let us hope that one day – please, not too far in the future – we’ll be able to convince or force our governments, our leaders, to do the same; to ask their audiences – us – what they should do, so as to make this world a place to live and be happy in – yes, it is possible – rather than just a vast market in which we sell our goods and our souls. Let’s hope. Let’s work for it!"
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