1930's gangs and music

I
To summarize some of the major genres in the 1930's: Jazz in several forms; in particular, small groups and larger dance bands. Many dance bands played a more heavily arranged form of jazz known as Swing. Blues, mostly performed by black musicians in that terribly segregated era. "Sweet" music, sort of like jazz in orchestration but (at least in my opinion) with a lot of saccharine easy-listening aspects to it. Vocal groups such as the Mills Brothers, the Andrews Sisters, the Pied Pipers, and so on. Solo vocalists such as Bing Crosby, usually backed by an orchestra and sometimes by a small vocal group. 

So I think for our group we need to find a lot of jazz music that is fitting for the time this is set in.  So far I have found two songs that I like the sound of, which i think will sound appropriate for alot of the scenes we have, for example bar music, or dance music. Of course in this day, jazz was the most popular genre of music, so we will only be using this sort of music to help the audience understand what time period our performance is set in.

  

Mr kelly double drama

Today in lesson. Me and meg wrote down everything we are doing in the movement piece, these notes are vital because they help us when trying to learn our lines, in this lesson we also all sat down as a group and planned everything out (discussed our piece) I do feel we maybe need to run it a few more times so we can recap on what we have done. We will be performing this to year 11's in the new year! 

Mr Kelly's lesson

We have been continuing devising our dance which we will be performing at the end of term near Christmas, hopefully It will go well. it's really coming along in lessons, and our timing is good. All we need to do now is work on our small monologues. Mine takes place after dan and mega "rape" scene. I walk in after, when meg is on the floor after cheating on me, or at least that's what I believe because I didn't see dan forcing her. I say " Roxane, I loved you Roxane. You do not sell yourself Roxane. You do not sell yourself to the night, you belonged to me. You are worthless to me now". After this meg pushes me to the ground then runs off. Later on in the next scene. Freya and meg kill me and dan. For cheating on  and abusing them. 

Our piece

We are using the piece called "in a sentimental mood" by duke Ellington. We are using this song in the bar scene. It's a really good piece if music and sables the audience what time period the performance is set in, in our last lesson we had an opening scene where the stage is in blackout. And there is a gang questioning someone about not giving money that is owed to the gang. It sets the scene well and shows the audience that the play is set in a time with Gangs.

I was at first concerned with the fact that our storyline may come across quite cheesy, because the main storyline is Kyle falling in love with Ellie. 

Emotionally Connecting the Audience to a character

Also known as Actor sympathy, this is a psychological process wherebe the audience experiences the same emotions and feelings as the characters who they're idendifying with. When you can capture audience sympathy for your characters, you will hook them into your story. This is called, "Identification."

One of the first goals of a devised piece is to get the audience involved in the story by creating a bond between themselves and the characters. After you have captured the hearts of the audience, your goal is to elicit emotions in them by showing your characters experiencing emotions. If the audience has no sympathy for the hero, then the story will be flat.

In our case, we need the audience to feel sympathetic to Kyle and Ellie, we had the idea that after Kyle bumps into Ellie, she is brought back to the gangs den (headquarters), however all the other members of the gang hate Ellie,because kyle is focusing more on her than the actual Gangs tasks and operations. So the members get a bit annoyed and send Kyle to do a misson on his own, however kyle is blind to the fact that the other members dislike Ellie,and while he is gone, the gang, rape and abuse Ellie and kick her out onto the street, then when kyle (A slightly weak member) returns, the gang lie and say she left,leaving Kyle devastated, this will be a great way to get the audience to have a connection with the two characters, we need to in a way show Kyle and Ellie to be madly inlove, this will then get the audience to imagine themselfs in the play being in them characters shoes.

This will enable the audience to feel really sorry for the characters, which is what we want because we want the Audience to emotionally connect with them 

Ideas for the Author - With pictures

I Absolutely love these images, i uploaded these to show my interpritations of the author character, and what he looks like/does, i feel they both show the author from being sane, to growing overwhelmingly mad,  especially the top one, at the start, Dan could be casually sat down thinking of writing a story, it could all be going well until he realises there are no happy endings, over time he grows more and more insane, ripping out pages and launching them everywhere, this will show how mad he is becoming, the cruelty of life has taken over his story and its driving him insane. We could also show the change in Dans appearence, from being quite formal and smart looking at the start, to being all messed up and creepy by the end, its a very peculiar yet interesting character. We had the idea that somebody is also maybe writing the authors story, to add a cool twist to the end, it allseems extremley confusing now, but when we start merging our ideas together it will look seriously awesome. We also want the author to be drinking strong alcohol when he starts going mad, it will add effect to how insane he is going

I think this character will be the most interesting throughout the play, and it will keep the audience engaged throughout, if the character is acted and plated well. Alot of people whoare depressed normally drink strong Whiskey, so this idea of him drinking is showing us that hes loosing control of the story and its only heading one way. But drinking is just making his behaviour worse and worse.

I think in the end,the author ends up killing himself because he cant take it anymore, he cant take the fact that his story wont end happily.

Final ideas for Chasing pavements

Today we came up with final ideas for our piece for 'Chasing Pavements' today in lesson we finally managed to come up with a really cool sounding idea, miss cordell helped us out alot and told us to think outside of the box, because obiously everything in drama has been done before so we need to add our own spark to our piece

In the end we decided that the soldier idea, despite it being really good, would not be able to entertain the audience and get us the grades, for example, the crash at the beginning would have been really effective, and the soldiers individual stories but the play would get a bit dry and boring and we need the audience to stay engaged and feel sorry for the character who in the end is going to die

 We are also not going with the idea of the gang idea, however we are using the story in part of our piece, we had the idea that the performance starts as a blackout, and you can hear shouting and screaming, then as the lightrs come up, you see a dead body with a gang, who are tying up loose ends, (Basically killing someone for not doing something), and then the soppy character of the gang, a stranger (Ellie)walks around and sees the dead body, the rest of the group run away but the emotional (wet) character that is played by Kyle,doesnt run, and this shows them falling in love in a way. We havent planned out the full story, but in a nutshell, Dan Mckay is the Author, writing the story, which we are the characters of, and it shows him writing the story and us acting it out, which will look really cool. Initially before this amazing idea,we allcame up with origional ideas, which were in fact really good, but it wasnt outside the box or strange in a way, we dont wan the audience to be able to relate our play, to a film or other play. Because its our owndevised piece

We had the idea that Dan canever finish the story with a happy ending (showing the cruelty of life), and he gets more and more frustrated, and drinks alcohol while writing, so to the end of the story, Dan ends up killing himself, its really difficult to explain, but when we sort out the order of the performance and look into more depth about each character, i will be able to tell you more about each individual character, how they feel and why they are behaving like they do

Personally i wanted the Author because i can act really well at being stressed and i feel the part would have suited me, hopefully i will have a good role in the actual story, me and theo need to come up with important characters to play otherwise we will hardly be in it and wont be matching the grading criteria, im slightly dissapointed i didnt get the part,but it was done in a random draw so i cant complain. Apart from this our story is odd but unique and i feel it will seriously entertain and interest the audience,and they will be engaged throughout the performance/

 One thing im worried about is the idea that Dan Screws up the paper and re-writes it, i feel that repeating it too much will bore the audience, although its a really good idea and it really shows how the author cant find a happy ending, it may confuse the audience,

Next lesson we should sit down again and structure the play, then once we have more knowledge on the play, we should start devising the opening scene, i really want to start trying different ideas, because fir the past few lessons we have just been talking about ideas, and havent peen putting them into action tosee what works well, and what doesnt, i cant wait to start working on this. But i seriosly want a part that i will be really good at acting, i know i could have shown my potential by being the Author,so next lesson we also need to tactically assign the appropriate characters to each actor.

Chasing Pavements Initial Ideas

Today in lesson we found out that we were doing a devised piece, weve been giving the Adele song 'Chasing pavements', we came up with alot of different ideas like somebody chasing a dream, or chasing something thats never going to happen, one of our ideas that i like is that their is a gang in new york in the 1930's and one member wants to break free and follow his dreams, another idea is that a helicopter gets shot down stranding a group of soldiers in the middle of nowhere and we could show their journey home,and how they want to see their loved ones. Theo had the good idea of us basing the story around a relationship, i think that is the point Adele is trying to make in the song,

 'I've made up my mind, don't need to think it over if I'm wrong I am right, don't need to look no further happening This ain't lust, I know this is love- This shows us that the girl is in love, she doesnt need to think twice, she knows something is right about this person.

 'Should I give up or should I just keep chasing pavements Even if it leads nowhere? Or would it be a waste even if I knew my place Should I leave it there?' She's wondering wether to go after this person and go through pain and hurt, to finally be with that person, or to just stop, give up and be unhappy without them.

'build myself up and fly around in circles Waiting as my heart drops and my back begins to tingle Finally could this be it? I think this means she makes herself look amazing for this specific person she loves, just for them to not notice her in any way, so her heart drops whenever he doesn't notice her.

This is why I've come to the decision that the an idea based on relationship will be a good one, because we can use alot of ideas from the songs, and also we can do alot of cool drama techniques that will help tell the story of someone being so in love. However we would have to make it look professional and not childish or cheesy.

The lyrical meaning of the song shows  A fruitless search or mission, particularly relating to love and romance. Coined by singer-songwriter Adele, it referred originally to her running after a boyfriend with whom she had just fought, before realising she was 'chasing an empty pavement' as he was no longer there.

So from this i can see that devising a relationship themed piece will be much easier to work with, because its what the song is about and we can use ideas from the lyrics to aid us, this idea in my opinion is more tactical and appropriate than any other idea we have so far.