Lesson 2 - 8.11.16

Lesson 2 - 8.11.16

In today's lesson we started by working on our political protest pieces. My group did some devising so we had a bit to show to other groups, we also did some research about our individual characters as one part of our performance is that we will have facts and stats written on our costumes. As my character as a guard, I looked at understaffing and how patients are treated in mental facilities and prisons. The rest of the people in my group are playing the parts of mentally ill patients. We also made a decision that the mentally ill will wear white jumpsuits with statistics written on them. We received feedback from people who watched a bit of our piece and were told that it was very engraining. We still feel we need to work more on doing more rehearsed parts instead of improvising so much of it.

SOURCE: http://www.mind.org.uk/news-campaigns/news/mental-health-crisis-care-services-under-resourced-understaffed-and-overstretched/#.WCIqjOGLT9A

Services are understaffed: Four in ten mental health trusts (41 per cent) have staffing levels well below established benchmarks.

Services are not available all the time: One in ten (10 per cent) crisis teams still fails to operate 24-hour, seven-day-a-week services

There is a lack of respect and dignity: Less than a third (29 per cent) said they felt all staff treated them with respect and dignity.

We also did a lot of work in the afternoon in the style of Brecht. We looked at characterisation in the style of Brecht and did an exercise where we had to create inanimate objects in groups and then we were told to give them a mood/feeling. For example - angry motorbike, depressed chair, sexy esccalator etc...
This is a method used by Brecht to help give character to objects, which in turn links them to certain characters. For example, if the depressed chair looks old and decrepit, then an audience can infer that it belongs to someone of that similar description. This is useful as an actor to help you with working as a group and understanding characterisation.
We also did an exercise on characterisation where we were told to lead with a certain part of our body, and from there, instinctively create a character. A few people had to keep in these character's while the rest of the class had to infer what kind of person they were portraying, and their social class. Brecht used this method to make it clear to audiences about what social class someone may be. One that stood out to me was Jacob when we were told to lead from our knees, he seemed to have made the character of a drunk person. It was difficult to infer what kind of class he came from as alcohol is not necessarily associated with any social class. However, as soon as he was instructed to pretend to have a cigar in his mouth, it immediately infers he is from a higher social class as cigars are expensive and usually scene as a sign of wealth. This is interesting to take part in as an actor as it really shows how little you need to do for an audience to before they start making assumptions.