First Meeting with Niki (15th October)

So today called for the first meeting with Niki our supervisor. Sarah was still in hospital and as Jack couldn't get childcare for Alana (4 months), we thought it best for him to come along but just bring her with him. (Can't say this was to much of a problem though as she was extremely cute). This was our first meeting with Niki and I feel like, personally, it was really needed because we seem to be spinning round in circles completely lost within the story of the first idea.

Within the first 15 minutes of the meeting Niki had drawn us a diagram which completely encapsulated why we were struggling with the piece. She firstly drew a circle with the theme deafness in. She then proceeded to draw a venn diagram, with all the different themes and idea's we had in the piece. It was quite obvious that we had far to much going on at once! Niki stated that we seemed to have a real focus on the deaf boy - which is a big enough idea to explore in itself - and all the other things going on were very dark and would just dilute to many themes and topics into a blur.

As a group, we weren't very keen on just having a piece on a deaf boy and four friends so Niki suggested we do a more physical and contemporary piece exploring what it feels like to have this loss. She told us about another student who, for her PRP, who wanted to explore OCD within performance. Instead of telling, just another story about OCD, she wanted the audience to actually experience and feel what it is like to have the condition. She explained, that although extremely complex and a lot of hardwork, the student devised a durational piece based upon the entrapment of routine that people with OCD go through. She had the room in four sections and had to complete various difficult tapping routines perfectly; any time someone walked through the door, or she made a mistake, she had to go to the beginning of the routine again. I can imagine that people were sat on the edge of there seats in a state of anxiety and annoyance completely engulfed by the routine; this is exactly what people with the condition go through. Even the symbolism of them being in control of leaving through the door but not wanting to or being able to. We then decided this is a route we would like to go down with a focus on deafness or sensory loss.

The topic of discussion then moved onto us doing a piece on deaf and blindness. Niki made the suggestion that it would be best to keep it simple as they are such vast topics. A piece simply on, what it feels like to see then not see, and then be able to hear and then not hear.This idea really resonated with me as, not only is it clever in relation to physical theatre as a style but it is also something that has directly affected people very close to my family. I think there is also something very beautiful about its simplicity and I can envisage the mood of the piece being beautiful but also quite neutral in mood so that the audience can just feel instead of think. It reminded me of the quote "people don't remember what you said to them but they do remember how you made them feel" and I think this is exactly what we would want to achieve in relation to this piece.

Unfortunately, due to a delivery that could not be changed I had to rush off after this and leave Jack and Kane to finish the meeting. Kane caught me up later with the rest of the meeting and some idea's they had had including bringing the audience into the performance wearing blindfolds. A big focus on denying the audience something or a sense. We decided that to fulfil this idea we would spend a rehearsal blindfolded and a rehearsal deaf so we can have a slight experience on what difficulties people face and things that are scary that you don't think about.

Bibliography 

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