Campaign Log

Our lesson was based on the importance of music and sound in a piece of performance, and ways to extend our movements to be interpreted in various ways. We had to all create a move for each letter of our name (if 'a' is in my name twice, i would use the same move for it), to put together a sequence of actions/ movements, almost like a dance. We had to air up and teach each other our own name dance sequence and put them together, adding in transformations, effects like cannon, repetition etc, to create one big dance sequence. Then we had to present it to the class in our pairs. First we performed to a comical, bouncy, happy type of music, which made many laugh and feel they wanted to jump up and dance with us. The music was changed the second time we performed, to a more serious, spy kind of, heavier, darker toned piece of music. The audience expressed that rather than the previous comic feel, the performance now had a more timed, sharp, reformed touch to it. From this activity we learnt how a simple piece of music can change completely how we feel or think about a scene. We agreed that we would use various pieces of music like this in our performance to change the mood in each scene etc.

Then we looked at Tracy Chapman's poem/song 'Behind the Wall' and we devised what we thought was happening in each line of it. Creating numerous different interpretations of what was actually happening in the scene. We thought about the issues it touched on i.e domestic violence, police's tolerance of domestic violence at the time: they were not allowed to step in even if they knew it was happening, if it was between a man and his wife etc. This helped us date the work to the 80's.

From this song, we had to take 3 lines we liked and develop 3 still images for them. Our group used physical theatre also as some of us became the wall between the married couple, and the children.We later went on to use transformations from one still image to the other, we used a turning in spirals while yawning tranformation for one of the still images. We performed this to the other group using 2 different pieces of music, again looking at how music was a large factor in creating the mood and emotions the audience felt. We also had to use sound scape here, to introduce sound made by us, and build up tension etc in our piece. we used the clapping of the two girls, Abisola & Moshoumi, who were the wall, followed by me repeating 'shhh', then Tiyonne whispering 'Listen'. After that we had Zara creating a heartbeat thumping on the floor by stamping, and then Abigail increasing the speed and force of the heartbeat, as if the person is feeling scared and their heart is racing. We learnt through this that as well as music being an impact, sound is equally as important to create mood and interpret the message and meaning of your performance to the audience.