Prep for Shadow Screen. (12th November)

Today's rehearsal, we again did not have a room to rehearse in but managed to find a classroom. We decided to do a 'music warm up' to old songs we really liked and did some stretching before beginning the practice. I did suggest we do the warm up's from 'The Body Speaks' but was not forward enough with my idea and it got shrugged off. I think I need to be more diligent within group work as otherwise, everyone just ends up holding in negative emotion which isn't helpful.

As there was just something not right about using the 'Intro' by The XX for the song without sound I suggested we looked for a piece related to the theme of our piece. I typed into youtube 'silence' and then, before we knew it, the very well known and beautiful song 'The Sound of Silence' popped up. It is rather mellow, soft and neither happy nor sad so totally reflects the mood of our piece. Or the mood we are going for within our piece. As we were working on this, Niki came in for the meeting, whilst she was here we seemed to progress quite well. As a group, we decided that Sarah would learn the sign language for the lyrics, Jack would mime the words to the audience, kane would dance to the rhythm and with ribbon I would represent the rhythm.

Niki then suggested we used headphones to obviously deny the audience of any sound. I liked the simple bluntness of this; I think this will spark an emotional reaction of the audience as they will want to know why and what we are listening to. Emotions someone who is deaf experiences. By the end of the session we felt much more positive that we had more solid scenes in place. We were aware though, as Niki said, that this scene did need developing in some way as 3 minutes is to long to keep an audience engaged. We also had a discussion on the rest of the piece and showed her the running order. Niki said we should keep the momentum going in the rehearsal and carry on working on the piece, as we knew Jack had to leave to catch a train, I was really deflated that people started messing around and wasting time. I tried in different ways to get people to work but by the time we had ran through it once more, our session had ran out. Time is very precious in rehearsals and as I am not well it is annoying when the little energy I have is getting wasted. I went home and cried after that session but decided that next session I would just not tolerate the joking around. It's fine to laugh but the work and focus should always keep progressing.

One thing to note is that I do really need to try and hold my attention; after an hour of constant talking, I find it very difficult to concentrate. I think I need to put more things in place. like every 50 minutes have a 5 minute break outside in the fresh air, to try and combat my fatigue. I feel a tremendous about of angst when I am sat in these meetings - actually interested - when my body is slumped on a chair. In the professional world, I know it is not realistic for me to be able to be like this so I need to really try and find ways to get on with it! Throughout this process I have had the harsh realization that, in a professional environment, devising like this is just something that can not be made accessible to me. Especially in a competitive world. However, I am very enthusiastic about our piece, I feel like Drama can be accessible to all and I do want to bring about change!!

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