WEEK 6

This lesson we decided to focus on the idea of the beans in Jack and the beanstalk to represent a type of drug brought into Jacks life. We focused on the themes of Guilt and Addiction taken from red shoes and decided that the abuse of drugs and addiction to them would be a good way to show them, in this scene we learn more about Jack and his relationship with his Mother and Grandmother, we felt as a group this was an important thing to focus on in the scene, and I thought in general that by showing the bond of the relationship it will expand on the affect drugs can have on a person and their relationships, which would make the audience more emotionally involved later on in the performance. We also wanted to show how drugs can come into a family situation and tear it apart so by using the affection and love towards his family we could then show Jack begin to fall apart from his family and lose the people close to him.


We discussed the music options for the first scene and decided to use a song that contrasts against the love and connection in this scene, to create the theme of Kneehigh and to add something unexpected and almost weird into the scene. We used the song 'Animals-Cocorosie' as we sensed a hint of lullaby beats in the background and compared that to the idea of sleeping, which we done because we thought it would bring a small sense of naturalistic feel to the scene as we didn't want the first scene to be too surprising as we wanted it to build up throughout the performance. However we liked the contrast of the lyrics in the song as we felt it brought a real, mysterious vibe to the scene. We were very aware and careful when picking our songs as we didn't want to pick a song that had lyrics that could be related to the scene as we didn't want to confuse the audience by creating too much of a strong link between the song and the script.


CocoRosie- Animals


We also decided to have natural lighting to create the set of a bedroom, so we used the natural yellow lights focused in on all directions too open the whole space to be used in the scene instead of focusing on just one space on the stage so we could expand ourselves over, and create a natural way of life instead of trying to focus on only one spotlight.

WEEK 5

After discussing where are piece was going, we decided as a group to start again and change our idea as we felt that none of us were really getting an attachment to the piece and couldn't get comfortable in the character and the story line and felt that our piece related to Kneehigh but had a small amount of relation to the story of Red shoes and we wanted to create a piece based on the themes taken from Red shoes and also wanted to focus on the idea of a twisted fairy-tale/kids story, and used the idea of Jack and the Beanstalk, we decided to use this as we knew it was well known so people would understand it but hoped that the twists we were deciding to place into the piece would catch the audience off guard and be really unexpected, which is a strong aim for a Kneehigh company production to create.



We decided to create the original characters of Jack and his Mum to stick to the story line, however with the two extra people in the group we created a character of Jacks Nan and a best friend figure for Jack, we done this as before we started devising we made a list of ideas of plot twists we wanted to create, which contained of twists such as jack potentially dying near the end of the piece as a result to the drugs,a longer expand on his family finding out about past generations and how there amily evolved to become what it is today, the story relating to Jack and the beanstalk but having a wtist at the end linking the charcter of 'Jack' to actually link to Jack the Ripper and an unplanned pregnancy occuring into the story  and then based the characters in the piece on what would look best whilst adding the plot twists.We decided to use the Jack the ripper plot twist as we felt that we could relate this back to the story of red shoes and the idea of her feet being cut from her body as a result of addiction, as well as using Kneehigh overall to create the most unpredictable plot twist and something none of us had ever really seen in theatre before.

We only then focused on creating the first scene as we had spent a lot of the lesson speaking about new ideas and costumes and set, we decided to keep the natural world costumes quite predictable and stereotypical, such as black leggings and then a coloured top for the charcter of the bestfriend, and like a pair of trousers and a patterened old fashioned top for the Nan, as we wanted to create the most naturalistic vibe we could gain for the 'life' scenes, and then decided the costumes in the 'Dream' scenes would be vibrant and quite strange so that there would be an obvious change of normal day life and dream scenes, as well as using the costumes to show how strange and unpredictable the dreams can become.
We decided to keep the first scene quite relatable and naturalistic as we wanted the magical and mysteriousness of it to grow stronger as the piece went on, so we created a scene where all characters were introduced by names and personality, so that the audience could get a good point of view on the relationships in the storyline.

We created a small set that remains the same through out the whole piece, which contains three different levels, and holds a tree in-between the three of them. We decided to use this as we thought it was very un-naturalistic and unexpected and links to the idea of weirdness in Kneehigh. We are going to expand on this and cover the whole of the stage blocks so they relate back to nature to really contrast against the piece, to create an unexpected set against the performance ideas. We tried to show the personalities in all characters strongly because we have multiples scenes were dreams occur and in these dreams our fairy-tale characters are based on our normal life characters personality.

WEEK 4

This lesson involved creating a presentation around the theatre company Kneehigh and how they work and create performances. I worked alongside Charlotte and we created a PowerPoint about the techniques and ideas they use and how abstract and twisted their ideas really are. Too show this we linked back to some of Knee-highs well known plays , such as 'Dead Dog in a suitcase (and other love songs) and used a small trailer like clip from YouTube as part of the presentation to try and portray how unique the theatre company is.

This is my presentation


Kneehigh have a strong non-naturalistic insight into the scripts and performances they create. Knee-high company focus on creating and improvising a piece around ideas and the connotations of the ideas, and keep a settled order on how to create a performance, ending with creating a script to fit round what was improvised. Kneehigh often base their performances on the idea of twisted fairytales and 'magical' ideas, to create a eye catching and tension filled piece.


We researched Kneehigh and went through their webpage,we found the webpage to be very informative, and helpful and managed to create a powerpoint about Kneehigh and its background from the information found. Kneehigh are a Cornwall based theatre company with a local, national and international profile. For over 30 years we have created vigorous, popular and challenging theatre and perform with joyful anarchy. They tell there stories through the architecture of Cornwall, using an epic to tiny scale and keep a group of ensambles with them to create performances.

How to be more analytical - Half term challenge!