Everything is finally coming together.. kind of.(24th November)

So today, feeling rocky still, I was extremely excited to arrive in the SU to find everyone was in a really good mood! It appeared Kane and Sarah had hit on the jackpot. Basically, we were very much struggling with finding a linear linking pattern that sewed all our segments together. Although our performance is workshop based, that does not mean it should run from section to section to section. Luckily Kane then had the idea of how to have 'She' as an overarching theme throughout the whole piece.

His first suggestion was that it would be really good to have the 'Hello' scene -  in which we help 'She' map space through touch, smell and texture - to follow the actual journey to the auditorium that the audience themselves walked. Then when she arrives its runs straight into the narrative of her sat in the hall at her school; this means they would be effectively experiencing 'Charlie Chaplin' through her eyes. I thought this was a fabulous idea and by the time I arrived Sarah had finished writing out the narrative. 

We decided to put the 'Exposing the audience and flocking' section before the 'Hello' scene as it puts the audience in a vulnerable state. It also contrasts nicely as the 'flocking' scene is quite high energy. We hope this means that it will draw the audience into the mind of 'She', and give them a greater feeling of the pain and humiliation that comes alongside not being able to keep up.  The extra work you have to put in to navigate yourself when blind is very draining; your brain must be constantly aware of its surroundings; this is something we wanted the audience to understand and feel. Kane kept saying he felt the scene was 'boring'. To be honest, I didn't necessarily feel this or think it was a bad thing if it did, it must be boring and tiring to navigate yourself constantly like that; I know Louise said she gets frustrated and tired! Later on, it then came to our attention that actually, this also had a perfect transition. As 'She' walks off stage, shouting out in the conversation, unable to keep up, it fits in perfectly that we follow with the 'Hello' narrative that effectively guides her to the hall. It all brings to life the story Amy told us. 

We then took a break for lunch before returning back to do some rehearsing. Unfortunately, we waisted a lot of time looking for a room. In the end we ended up going in the white room. Although this sounds fine they were actually painting so our rehearsal had to be moved out into the corridor. There was a massive part of the floor cornered off and was wet. This really dampened our mood and did not help when trying to practice the 'flocking' scene. It became apparent, as we were rehearsing, that it looked sloppy. Kane was good at leading the conversation and walking but Jack and I were stumbling on conversation and were not forward enough to push through. This was really frustrating me; it was more of an inner battle than anything else. I try to run a no excuses policy but even with this it was still very much out of my comfort zone. It also became apparent that we needed some form of choreography as our placement on stage just looked sloppy and messy. 

As there was no space to move properly in the corridor we went to a square space outside the radio studios; its not that much smaller than the white room and is a good open place to move around in. Kane with me and Jack then formulated a moving sequence. It took ages of repetition before we all started moving in the same rhythm and tapped into each others frequencies. There was one part of the sequence that kept falling out of sync so Kane and I just did it to see what the problem was. Kane then exploded on me and proceeded to tell me that 'If I kept on doing it wrong I just won't be in the sequence' as I do not accept being spoken to like that and actually was following the moves correctly; I walked out of the rehearsal. I went for 10 minutes outside to cool down. It is hard enough not being well and having memory problems to have other people angry at you because of it. I can totally understand though as I am frustrating to work and overall, everyone in the group dealt with this very well! 

After, we met up again and ran through it for the final time before we decided to call it a day. I feel like I let myself be unprofessional today, for Jack and Sarah's sake, but actually we managed to smooth it over and I think everyone's nerves are just getting the better of them!

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