13/10/2011 Non-Naturalism

We began the lesson with warm up games to prepare us for the lesson. We then got into the groups we were in last week to work on our performance of "The Arsonists". We now have a new member in our group as she wasn't here last week. This gave us the challenge of incorporating her into the group. We first did a runthrough of what we came up with last week. We decided to change a few parts to prevent masking on-stage, for example, the people controlled as puppets/mannequins now kneel down. Another thing this does is elevate the masters over the puppets. We've added a canon on the line "No need to ask how the terror began" with each of the four puppeteers beginning their line after the last person has said: "No Need" and then pushing over their puppet. We now have the new group member coming in as an overall puppeteer after the line: "To wipe out a few human beings" who moves us all into our positions for the clock section where we all sing a clock chime. Our synchronisation in this section has improved greatly since last week as our singing and head movements are now more fluid. For next week, we want to work on a new concept we've made called "The Circle of Evil" which involves us all in a circle around the new group member as lines are spoken. We interact with the audience in this section, which is one of Brecht's techniques we have incorporated.