Evaluation so far...

I think that our immersive theatre topic is a more challenging topic then our pervious ones. This work involves us devising our own scripts, sets and characters. Although we are basing our work on 1984, we are devising a completely new, fresh piece of theatre. During this unit of work not only are we the actors, we are also the producers and directors. 

I am finding that creating immersive theatre is very challenging and involves much more detail then a non immersive piece. Each and every detail needs to be thought about and worked on because the audience will be coming into our world and they will need to feel like they are in a completely different place to the one they are actually in. If there is a detail missing that wouldn't be missing in real life, the illusion of the play will be lost. 

We also need to factor in, when devising our performance, that we have no idea what the audience will do when we interact with them. There will have to be an element of improvisation and as actors we will have to stay in character no matter what the audience do. This will be a new challenge because it is something I have never done before. To make sure that this doesn't effect my performance I will make sure I am clear on everything thing that I am going to say to the audience members. This will help me to give a stronger performance, because I will be able to predict the reactions from the audience, which I can then use to think about what I will say next. 

1948

George Orwell wrote 1984 in 1948. This is what was happening in 1984...

-London Olympics took place. 
-the national health service was introduced
-Berlin Wall was put up
-first remotely controlled airplane took off (technology developing)
-gandy died (he achieved independence for India)
-Burma gained independence from Britain 
-all the railways were connected in Britain. You were able to go from one end of the country to another 
-Ashcaba earth quake erupted 
-colour TV was beginning to be introduced
-women's fashion was becoming more daring (bikinis)

In 1948 the war had just finished and you can see that technology was developing. Lots of countries had gained independence from Britian. The world was beginning to move on from World War Two.  

Timeline

In our lesson we devised a timeline for what will happen over our 1 hour period.

Timeline
6:45- heating soup and cutting bread. Making sure the live feed is set and properly
7:00- cutting bread, sweeping floor, serving soup
7:10- meal time ( an alarm rings, everyone rushes into the food hall to get a meal. Two people follow in after the rush, whispering and acting suspicious) 
7:20/25- stealing food
7:35- cleaners and cooks talking to audience
7:45- rebellion leaflet 
7:50- soup spills 

There are nine hours of material because there are 9 spaces.  The show is going to be massive and no one person will see the same performance. 

Response to film

We watched the film of 1984 last lesson. I took some ideas away from the film, here are my notes...
Themes of 1984
Hope
Oppression
Control
Poverty
Freedom
Privacy
War 

Setting 
Bleak 
Grey
Dark
Dirty
Bare
No personal belongings
Screens everywhere 
Everything is very uniform

Key moments
-when winston and Julia meet for the first time
-Julia gives wins ton the note, 'I love you'
-Julia and Winston have sex
-Julia brings food for Winston that they're normally not allowed, (coffee, tea, sugar, chocolate etc...) 
-when Winston meet O'Brien. O'Brien offers to show Winston the 10th edition of the new speak dictionary
-Winston realises O'Brien is against him

This quote stood out to me in the film. It shows how people living in the world of 1984 are brain washed and have strange views. 
'Its a beautiful thing, the destruction of words' 

Immersive theatre companies

Our performance will be an immersive piece of theatre. I have researched some immersive theartre companies to gain inspiration and understanding of what immersive theatre involves. 

Punchdrunk 
Punch drunk are an immersive theatre company. They first started up in 2000 and they were founded by its artistic director Felix Barrett. Punchdrunk works on creating unforgettable pieces of theatre that break the boundaries of typical theatre performances. the audience are able to walk through the world of their productions, being bought into that world by the actors. it is left up to the individual audience member as to where they want to go or what the choose to watch. The set is always incredibly detailed, so that the audience can be totally immersed in the world of the show. The boundaries between space, performer and spectator are constantly shifting. 
Quote from the Punchdrunk website- 'Punchdrunk works with producing and commissioning partners to create the unforgettable theatrical experiences of the future'

YouMeBumBumTrain
You Me Bum Bum Train is an interactive performance , which was created by Kate Bond and Morgan Lloyd in 2004. the audience is advisd not to research the play before you go to see it, because it is better to know as little as possible about the play before you go and see it. the play gained various awards, but has also caused controversy as none of its performers get paid.  

I really like the idea of not knowing much about the performance before you go and see it. I think that we should take this idea for our own play. it will have more shock and impact for the audience if they don't know what to what to expect. 

my prezi link

http://prezi.com/hkt2qvfv6lmn/big-brother-is-always-watching/

Dramatic moments

In our groups we had to think about what would happen in our space. There needs to be dramatic moments in our 1 hour period of performing. The characters need to have interactions with the audience and each other. There always needs to be something to look at or something interesting happening in the space at all  times. Each audience member will have their own individual experience of the play, which means as the actors we need to always being doing something different and interesting over the 1 hour period. 

We came up with some dramatics moments :

- a cleaner will hand a leaflet to an audience member promoting the revolution, a waitress will see her and take the cleaner and audience member out of the room and start shouting at them. 
The idea behind this is that the waitress is a strong party supporter and is very against the revolution. She will be threatening to tell the thought police about the cleaner and audience member.

-a cook will spill some soup as she walks over to a table with it. This will mean that she finds herself in trouble with another worker. 
She is another rebel and lives in constant fear of the thought police finding her. Therefore is very nervous when she does something as insignificant as spilling soup.

-the cleaner will be putting more posters up on the wall. At one point she will go over and look at one particular poster which is promoting children to join recruitment, army like camps. 
This will bring back a lot of hidden emotion for the cleaner as her children went away to one of those camps and have never returned. 

-the same cook who spilt the soup, will be caught stealing food. When she is caught she will tell the others that the government don't give here enough food to provide for her family. 
This will get her in trouble with the thought police. 

Props list

In our group we also worked out which props we would need for the food hall: 
-tables
-chairs
-soup pot
-electric hot plate
-utensils 
-bowls
-metal water jug
-posters 
-camera (live feed)
-leaflets
-serving table/counter
-costumes
-broom
-cloth
-gun (for the guard)
-food
-TV screen

Ideas for the food hall

In our lesson on Thursday we got into groups and our teacher asked us to begin to devise the setting and performance for one of the rooms that will be in our play. My group were given the food hall. First we discussed what technical elements we should use, we decided to have dim flickering lights, to have a live feed of the food hall going into a different space and have a screen with various notices and warnings showing in the corner of the room. We then thought about the staging of the space, so we thought that at one end of the room we would have the perpetration table and serving counter, then have rows of tables or benches filling the rest of the space. We want the room to be very bare, apart from on wall covered with posters that the audience can look at as part if the performance. 

I found this exercise to be very productive because when the whole group came together we came up with really creative and exciting ideas. It was also a development of the three experiments we came up with. We decided to use the live feed in the food hall, which was one of my experiments. 

3 experiments

In our lesson on Thursday we got into groups and tried out some ideas, experimenting for how we would like to use multi media in our final performance.

Experiment 1
In our group we thought that we could project a documentary onto a black wall. The documentary would provoke reactions , for example there might be a funny line in it or something that would shock an audience member. Then one of the cast members would be watching and pick out an audience member who had a reaction and take them out of the audience. We thought that this would be effective because in 1984 everyone is told to think and act the same, therefor it would be seen as wrong to express any emotion towards something, in a world where big brother is always watching you.

Experiment 2
My second experiment was projecting onto audience members when they first come in. I think it would be really effective to project the words 'thought criminal' onto selected audience members. Some of the actors would then play the thought police and bring them out from the crowd. I think this is a good representation of 1984 because all the thought criminals that were caught would be singled out and humiliated.

Experiment 3
finally I thought that there could be a live feed of one area, being shown in another area. The play will be spaced around different rooms, but if there is a holding cell or police room, audience members should be able to walk in and see the thought police watching people in their homes or in their work places. I really like this idea because it is a good representation of how no one has any privacy or freedom in this controlling world of 1984.

I really enjoyed the exercise we did and found it very useful. Being able to use and see the equipment that will be available (projectors, cameras etc) helps you to visualise your ideas more clearly. I can now see how using multi media in performance is very effective.