Shadow Screen Day 2. (17th November)

Due to my late finish the night before; I arrived late. To be honest, I woke up like I had been ran over by a truck. When I did arrive, however, I was ready to get completely stuck in to work! Everyone was sat around and had been discussing a cue card idea to transition between scenes; or find a way to incorporate the idea's of the shoe scene from '4 bar and rising' I have previously discussed. I said, that in regards to transitions, like with epic theatre style it can be as simple as taking of a coat and putting on another one. If we don't have the scenes blocked to make transitions with there is no point discussing transitions yet!

We then decided to run through the first half of the piece. We started off with the running order which is as follows: the light scene, Charlie Chaplin scene, Circuit scene, bird scene and then we went through which would become The sound of silence scene. Today didn't go to well because we were, if I am honest, panicking at how short our piece was. We also realised, we didn't have masses of material on how it feels like to be deaf. Again, we were sat around, deflated, going round in circles discussing things. 

As Kane had work at 1:00pm at half twelve we went for a lunch break. Jack went home for his so I decided to show Sarah some documents I had previously researched for deafness. Here are some I found particularly inspiring:

• Shit Hearing People Say (Things You Don't Say to Deaf & Hard of Hearing Personally I really like how this girl spoke about deafness; punchy, not patronizing, informative and funny. The 'never mind' concept is definitly something I think we should incorporate (Poynter, 2014). 
• Deaf Awareness: Talk Normally Having a misunderstood condition myself I didn't like the way these videos were presented but none the less they were informative. It is a natural human response to over exaggerate your speaking, I feel, to those who are hard of hearing but actually does not help the other person at all; plus they are no different to anyone else (National Deaf Children's Society, 2012). 
• Deaf Awareness: Face me when you talk Again, didn't like way video was presented but I do feel this video was informative and picked up on a good point people do in conversation without realizing it. It also touches on the vulnerability aspects of sensory loss (National Deaf Children's Society, 2012). 
• "Hello" Adele - ASL Interpretation This was one Sarah found on facebook and it touched us all. Even without the music, can you see the heartbreak in the lady and even have some interpretation of what she is talking about (MBartholomew22, 2015). 
• Beautiful Soul Signing "U" by Gareth Emery to her Deaf Friend at TomorrowWorld 2014This is something that had really touched me a few weeks previous on facebook. Often we get a lot of negativity on facebook and it was really nice to just see two young people having fun. No exclusion, no isolation and actually gives hope that things can change (Sappho, 2015).
• ASL story telling I was quite interested in looking at the story telling aspects of signing and how the body communicates. Already physical theatre explores performance without sound; this just offers a new layer of language into this. In its own way, physical theatre has created a new language with the body that everyone can read (Dack Virnig, 2015).

I had an idea when we got back into the room, in relation to deafness, of having a scene with words coming out of someone's mouth with poignant quotes. The other person would just have the constant reply of 'nevermind'. As Rikki Poytner pointed out in her video; 'nevermind' is seen as deaf people's biggest sware word. If we are exasperated explaining, think for a second how they must feel not be able to hear!? I know which position I would rather be in. As we were wanting to incorporate audio description, I felt it was also important to use subtitles and this would be a creative way for this to happen. When we tried writting on card behind the shadow screen, it obviously didn't work. Although creating the words would be time consuming, I feel it would be a commitment worth taking. A lot of hands creates steady work. 

As we couldn't really rehearse this - due to not being able to source any string - we tried to come up with another scene. Sarah said about recreating the scene between the two girls at the festival. I said as we already had a scene about music that, really, we should incorporate it into that scene. Otherwise, the denying of sound in the piece is not so much on language, but more on not being able to hear music. We argued for about 20 minutes over this and by the end of it, I just went along with her idea. We seemed to be in a state of block today so it was better to come up with another part of the performance rather than nothing at all. Maybe we could tease out elements of it later. Sarah then got jack, on his laptop, to muffle out the sound of "How Deep Is Your Love"by Calvin Harris and the Disciples (Harris, 2015). We then had a play around with the torches and I found by placing my hands on the white sheet of the shadow screen I could actually create a rippled pulse. It did look effective and have emotion but I still didn't feel it fit within the mood of the piece. 

When Kane arrived after finishing work we, firstly, discussed through my idea of having words coming out of the mouth before moving on to Sarah's idea. He didn't like it all and shut it down. I did agree with this however although it did give us a new developmental aspect with 'The sound of Silence' section. I then ended up, frustratingly, falling asleep! I am unsure what happened during this time but when I awoke half an hour later Kane mentioned, following on from Sarah's idea, that we hadn't actually explored the 'abusing every sense' idea we had.. He had asked if I would be comfortable singing and ,although I get great stage fright, I said this is something I needed to overcome and that I would be able to do it! I then did a rendition I had reworked from an instrumental I found of Katy Perry's Firework. Kane then said that we should pick up on the earlier idea and ruin my singing to deny the audience of the nice sound (Om Iyay, 2015). We didn't feel this had to be done harshly; but like frantic assembly at there preshow, we wanted to make the audience feel denied of something and evoke feelings of missing our and irritation that those with deafness would feel. Maybe it would be more effective if it wasn't done so purposefully?

After this, Jack was absolutely desperate to do a full run through and get some timings of how long our piece lasted. We tried to do 3 run through's but each time hit bumps that needed smoothing over. Kane also made the decision - we I argued maybe to forcefully - to cut out the scene where we wanted to have it in total darkness and just noise, then have the audio description. This was my favourite part of the piece. It is actually what made me want to explore a piece with sensory loss in the first place; I thought, from an audiences perspective, it would literally encompass what it feels to be deaf or blind. After a heated discussion; I got voted out although I did say I strongly disagreed and it was a mistake. I said if that idea is no good, we do need to think of another way of incorporating it in. Today's rehearsal was really hard work. It seemed a shame after yesterday. I was also physically struggling so maybe this did not help with the already flat mood. In hindsight though, we did get through much more than it felt like we did. The piece is starting to come together. Again, I think we all work better when we approach the rehearsal more professionally and really commit to it. 

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