WEEK 3

We decided to use the two ideas of, a camping background theme and then to tell twisted versions of fairy tales through physical theatre, to use the ideas of Kneehighs twisted fairytale links.

 We agreed this would be a good idea, as Kneehigh is based on the unexpected and we thought that by creating a piece with such split scenes, that are so clearly differentiated in the performance, people would be brought in by trying to understand the split. We also done this as we couldn't really decided, which Idea we'd prefer to use and agreed that both clashed well together, and that we could use both to try to aim for a Kneehigh effect.

 The three characters of the campers, have been created to have very opposite opinions and personalities, this is because it shows the contrast in teenagers and we aimed to try and pass along the themes that were taken from Red shoes, such as selfishness, addiction and guilt. We also tried to show these off by using the camping group as a child support group, to try and help them resolve problems, and then decided to pick fairy tales that we all agreed most likely fit in with the themes we had chosen, so that we could spend time highlighting certain aspects of Red Shoes and Kneehigh in general. We also decided to do this and choose the fairytales after we decided the themes as we would rather take as many themes as we could from Red shoes, instead of trying to take themes after deciding the fairytales.

As well as this we also decided as a group that we would create an unexpected plot twist that the camp leader would become a serial killer. Kneehigh company tend to create scenes that are dropped into random parts of their performance to create an unexpected turn that almost shocks and confuses the audience. They do this too grab the audiences attention as they always are engaged to find out what's happening next, so we used this idea and created our own unexpected twist to keep the audience engaged throughout. We wanted the audience to have full engagment on our piece and decided that if we added a confusing and unexpected twist to it, that tjhey would have full attention on our piece.

WEEK 2

In todays lesson we had lost a member of the group who played a main role in the camping scene we’d been so focused on, so we decided it would be a good idea to pay attention to creating a scene that fixated on expanding the idea of a camp throughout the performance. Whist doing this we thought adding in a plot twist as well as focusing on the idea that Kneehigh devise around being twisted and spontaneous. In this lesson we began crafting a short scene, showing the ‘happy camper’ to be a serial killer that uses her camps to lure campmates into a trap where she is to kill young teens. During the focus of creating a new scene, we also used the time to talk about ideas on how to expand our storyline, and came up with the idea of using the fairy tales to explain how each happy camper was murdered.

We used the idea of a stabbing in Cinderella to show one traumatic event, and then created the idea of using the fairy tale of Alice in wonderland. This was to show being stalked and killed, by 'The mad hatter’, who is used in the happy camper in the scene. We didn't really go through with this idea, as we struggling to find a good confident starting point, and some of the group didn't feel confident enough on the idea of the story, and thought we would be able to expand more on the piece if we knew the storyline better. We also did research on different story endings of Cinderella and chose the idea of a Young Cinderella, having to cut off her toes to fit into the glass slipper that was left at the ball. Cinderella ended up murdering her sisters so she wins the princes heart and gets to live happily ever after. We also choose to add humour into the story line by creating a drag queen mum, who enters the scene at random moments to bring a sense of humour to the scene. We used the idea of drag queen/ transvestite after watching some small clips of Kneehigh performances, and took the idea from them so we could create a Kneehigh effect in our piece as much as we could. By watching clips of Kneehigh performances we managed to gather ideas and also got ideas by researching Kneehighs background on what we could use. We used Kneehigh a lot as we felt comfortable with the idea of it, as we had done research on it before for a previous ISP.

WEEK 1

Our first lesson of devising, we were put into groups of 5. Once grouped, my group sat around in a circle and decided that we were going to try and base our performance on the idea of twisted fairy tales. After discussion on whether we should use a well known fairy tale like beauty and the beast, or whether we should choose a fairy tale/story that isn't as well known so that the twists could be more detailed and wacky. After discussion we decided that we would base the performance of the tory line of Cinderella. Initially I was very happy with this idea, as I know the story line quite well and was excited to see what twists and turns we could put into it to create it to relate to the sinister and dark topic used highly by Kneehigh. We then sat round as a group and decided to research, different twisted stories of Cinderella, to see if we could get any ideas from performances or texts wrote about. In the end we choose the version where Cinderella cuts off her toes so she can fit into the glass slipper, and marry the prince to live a happy life. Instead of devising for the piece, we decided as a group that we would start by improvising a Cinderella scene based on what we knew about the characters and the storyline. I was Cinderella in the scene, and had to create an angry character that was fed up  with the way things were going for her, the idea of Cinderella being angry can be expanded to help create the sinister idea during the performance. 

Once we had started improvising a piece, we decided on pieces from the scene we liked and pieces we wanted to get rid off, the reason we decided to lose some of the scenes we created was because we felt they didn't have a strong enough link to the Kneehigh idea and we wanted to related the performance to Kneehigh as much as we could, we then spoke about how to link the performance back to the idea of Kneehigh. Kneehigh theatre company buts a non naturalistic approach into their performances. They improvise throughout like we had been doing, and the script is one of the last tasks they do before the real performance. We used the idea of having a sinister and scary story and set, but to put fairy tale like props into it to contrast the stereotypical idea of what a fairy tale story really is.

Once we had done the first scene, I was beginning to really enjoy the idea of using Cinderella, and was really excited to see what further more there was too expand on , and to be able create a sinister story based on the perfect fairy tale. Throughout the lesson I contributed to the group by using techniques to create small scenes, as well as giving information I had researched. Once the lesson had finished I decided that once I was home, I was going to expand my knowledge by looking up more information on Kneehigh, to help myself get a good idea of what the performance should be like.