Duet w/ Jordan

Firstly, myself and Jordan created something that was more close to us than of the people that fought in the war and that was the wrong thing to do. So with one day to go till the show we had changed up the whole sequence of movements to make it much more accurate in the eyes of the audience.

We start off looking deeply into one another's eyes then he grabs my hand and then checks to see if I'm physically ready to become a soldier, then he drags me back and forth and we both get up at the same time. Then this is where it gets deeper in thought, he spins me around, brushes my shoulders and kicks the achilles on each foot to see if I'm able to stand for a long period, then sits me roughly back down. That's when he gets his paper and writes in it carefully then looks at me convincingly. That's when he raises his arms in salute and I do the same and we shake hands. The only technique we felt could work would be slowing down each round of movement and then gradually progressing speed as each round came. The slower it was the more muscle work and facial expressions was needed and the fast it became the sharper they had to be.

Creation

Having started from the stimuli of the first world war, we didn't look at practitioners, as a matter of fact we were our own practitioners, using improvisation techniques and just general knowledge to create something that would be accurate and truthful. The work we did started from an initial 3 movements each duo to 6 each to make it more durable and entertaining. For me this was really enjoyable because my partner and I have great chemistry and it's only best that you work with someone you're really comfortable with so to work alongside him was a pleasure.

new material

Right now we're working on material that will help us as an ensemble to make the performance a really good deal; and I'm looking to do much better this time round mainly because of my poor performance in my solo piece.

To begin with, we started with a duet piece, starting with 3 movements each and the stimulus started with one veteran soldier recruiting another to go and serve in the war. The veteran would be the one with most confidence, eyeing the young soldier who would be vulnerable and probably emotionally unstable but that wouldn't stop him from making his country proud. For me, finding the moves through improvisation was the best option. So after finding our moves we had to find points of tension and points of relaxation (the times when the movements can get hectic and fast and when they could be slowed down and then built up into something massive). Right now I feel like we could do something different with it so me and my partner will be doing extra rehearsals before the Christmas holiday to sort out new moves that will make our duet more effective and different from the rest.

Doing the terrible performance I did in my solo piece made me realize how hard physical theatre actually is but in all honesty that has put me in a place where I feel like now I have so much to prove not only to other people but to myself. Now we're working on a piece which has duets and all group pieces and which will build my confidence after I recently brought it down myself, which I know can be restored in the future.

As each week goes by the more things we get done and it should be a productive piece of physical theatre. 

Evaluation

My overall progression in Physical Theatre has been a positive one but not putting in enough effort in this solo piece cost me a lot, something that I'm going to tackle hard come the whole group piece. The beginning was really tense as I had improvised the whole piece on spot and my grade was understandable because of my lack of work effort. I now realise the situation I am in and how it must change for me to obtain my predicted grade in physical theatre and I know I will through hard work and proper preparation for the piece.

my stimulus..

I found that the topic that I worked on/working on was one completely different to everyone else's and something that in order for me to do well, I'm going to have to put in a lot more work than everyone else. I used a picture from 1921, the year the Treaty of Versailles was signed was 28 June 1919. It's a picture of German soldiers standing outside the windows while the treaty was being signed by German officials. As known, the treaty was to bring many bad things to Germany and that it promised. So with this problem I decided to use a view of people that benefited or found the treaty a positive and a side where people didn't benefit at all or just found it a tragedy to Germany.

Material and Techniques

The techniques I used varied from Frantic Assembly's work to DV8's work. I decided that studying two different physical theatre techniques and bringing it to one would create something special, unfortunately that didn't work out too well for me as I got a BRIT Grade of two. I did around 30 minutes of improvisation to try and find the truth with the topic but I believe I went to the extreme and ignored the simpler things such as a husband leaving for war, leaving everything behind or a husband at war and going to a time where things positive and not in jeopardy. Instead I chose something that was hard to do, the Treaty of Versailles, something that was completely different to trouble in England.

In the future with the whole group piece I'm due to put in a lot more effort, I just feel that doing solo was a real challenge for me mainly because I'm used to doing top quality physical performances in groups.