Hi all, I really enjoyed coming in earlier this morning, and felt it made a good and positive impact on the work we produced in this morning's session. I really liked how it progressed from what we got done yesterday, with changing parts like the lift to make the scene less busy and messy, and found that what we did, fitted with the speech, a lot more.

I like the link between the line about his feet (as Sophie, myself, bronya and Nate are with our feet in the air, shoulder stand, feet in 'ballet' first position above our heads) and the way it can relate to a mermaid tale, which has been brought up a fair amount throughout this process.

George's story, was very interesting, as I feel it has brought back a sense of naturalism, and realism back into the work, as we have been very focused on myths, legends, and absract work.

I will expand on an idea over the weekend, but with the idea of mermaids, but possibly when on land having legs, so that it makes the more movable in scenes or being able to do a more physical scene with it. I have this idea of possibly having the mermaid in love with a man from main land, and everyday, or week, or month, she goes to land to see him. Over the years, he ages as she stays the same, (mermaids dont age) yet, she finds her love for him gets greater and greater. One day something appears to have washed up onto the shore, but further than the shore, a still mermaid is found, one hand clasping the leg of a bench, which is in memorial to the man she loved so greatly. let me know if anyone has any thoughts on this as i would love to expand and explore any further possibilities of this idea and see where it could go.

Samantha, over and out.

This is an old lady I found in Wales.
She is of an age where she has seen and experienced many things; I wondered at the time what she was thinking. She looked so content and happy sitting on this bench, I had to take a picture. (2001).

Improvisation work

Very productive afternoon with Katya, Yannis, Antonio, Gwen and Bronya. We created some beautiful moments through practical improvisation combined with instrumental music. Yannis has the recording on his phone but it's better seen live. There was great focus which helped to progress the performance. The high energy was made to good use with an improvised scene on a cruise ship using appropriate characters eg sailors. My runny nose did annoy me (!) but it was great to create something which we felt worked well without assistance from a lecturer. Hopefully we'll have the opportunity to perform our work at some point tomorrow.

Inspiration??

These are a couple of videos that I mentioned in class that may well form an inspiration for some of the voice work in our piece...

The first is an impression of Sir Ian McKellan that a bloke does on YouTube. There is an irony to it as it is a verse of the theme tune to the American theme tune of 'The Fresh Prince of Bel Air'.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1HSNV9y25A

The second, is from the world science festival and involves Bobby McFerrin using Pentatonic Scale with the help of audience participation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne6tB2KiZuk

Both of these could be sources of ideas for our show about how to use a) the voice, b) dramatic irony and c) audience participation :)

Dentist scene

Worked with Yannis, Antonio and Sean to create dentist scene. The scene looked better with Antonio facing towards the audience, feet up on a foot stool and lent back further as if on a reclined chair.