Devising

Keeping a track of coursework process in case the word document deletes itself.

Working Notebook – Working It Out

Section 1

The Rationale for the Starting Point

We chose our first stimulus, 'Simply, the Brain', inspired by the human condition and psychology, and were particularly intrigued by the section detailing why humans make moral decisions. We researched the extremes of this question through stories of acts of sacrifice and suffering. After searching for articles related to moral philosophy through an existentialist lens, influenced by my previous reading of authors such as Albert Camus of the same existential movement, we found a paper about psychologist Viktor Frankl titled 'Searching for Meaning in Chaos'. His work tied into previous research as he explained humans find meaning in suffering because of persistent hope and sense of responsibility. The crux of his ideas lies on the fact that humans have a 'will to meaning' – and that they, contrary to previous theories that psychoanalysis was rooted in of humans being susceptible to more instinctual drives, are instead driven by this more 'spiritual' search for meaning.

We attached to this figure not just because of the fascinating ideas but the potential for storytelling – Frankl lived his philosophy and developed logotherapy, treatment grounded in these ideas, after enduring the horrors of the Holocaust. These stories of human compassion and sacrifice were inspiring and his passion as a lecturer even gave a natural device to tell stories.

The Explanation of Dramatic Influences

We took inspiration from A Disappearing Number and Mnemonic as both (and many other) Complicité pieces use a lecturer as a tool to reveal information to the audience. A lecturer is a reliable narrator, brings science into it, speaks with passion, and tells a story that he is separate to. Direct address and frames knowledge and science – science without being boring.

Research influenced the whole character of John along with obviously Frankl. Deep dive into the story of Frankl here, as well as his patients for the psych ward scene

Punch in part influenced by physical theatre (might not include this however)

Complicité also used the idea of a journey to show how a character changes

Did so much bloody research into Frankl, don't waste it – do small nuggets of specialist sounding philosophy jargon followed by a clear message of what this means.

Work in the stylistic and contextual influence for the majority in this section or in previous section – we are young and making a large transition, deciding what we want to do with the rest of our lives, hence the search for meaning is particularly relevant for ourselves which is why we are passionate about it. But in a broader sense, the audience is secularly post-Nietzche (a huge influence on Frankl) and currently in a further societal decline of religion, as well as facing various imminent catastrophes, and bombarded with information and ideas unlike any other time in history, whilst also being technically freer due to technology and nice living standards than ever before. It may be more difficult to obscure meaning in this mess than any other time in the existence of homo sapiens, whilst having more time to think about it.

The style is physical, multimedia, and ensemble. We create a world around John as explained and we use non-naturalism to weave stories to get a more complete view of the message, contrasting Frankl and John and having them work together to portray similar things but in very different contexts. One was a victim of the Holocaust, the other is empty after 20 years of work, but both (in fact everyone) still is driven by a search for meaning.

The Original Dramatic Aims and Intentions

Use the nice sentence from other parts defining a clear initial dramatic intention but maybe make it slightly different from the one you use in the final paragraph. Talk about how the whole piece will achieve this and how the audience is supposed to feel and respond. Then your characters – Frankl is a lecturer with a developed character, compassionate and caring, hardy, and very passionate, represents his own ideas. Office people and police are mechanical, Kafkaesque nightmare, Viennese jazz lovers are similarly passionate about life, Holocaust are suffering but enjoying and rioters are also quite passionate – maybe, in a sentence, all of the other characters that I played were either decidedly passionate and enjoyed what they do, hence found meaning in it, or were basically dead and represented a system, undeveloped, working around John, showing absurdity etc.

Section 2

The Approach to Devising, Development of Ideas and Application of Skills

We started devising using Complicité exercises in rehearsals. Once we had decided on characters, explained in the previous section, we looked into their stories through play, ensemble work and physical theatre.

Look back to the devising log and see the order in which stuff was developed.

The office scene (adding stuff about John in its entirety before the Christmas Party scene where John quits) is thought of by Kirk to be a fundamental albeit late change that is a very clear development of idea, that achieved the original intention of the piece that I feel we nearly lost sight of (making John have an existential vacuum), and used great Complicité techniques (physical theatre, mime, deep focus on precision and dynamics in movement for individual as well as the function of the scene to make us care about John as someone feeling 'empty') to develop it.

Definitely need to watch the piece again before writing fully about it.

The Final Ideas, Aims and Intentions

We ended the final process with aims very closely matching what we originally wanted to work towards, although we did find other messages coming out of the piece, such as the idea of change and mental health (from our cast members and some audience members perspectives), both of which would have originated from aspects of Frankl's work.

Notes

• Research should be far-reaching (this means not being immediately related to the first point and going to areas that are far away) and logical (shows a clear progression)

Section 1

• Rationale for starting point – giving clear personal influence and why you started at a given point
• Dramatic influences from live theatre, research and practitioner – there needs to be a very clear influence. Live theatre needs to explain why it was interesting and powerful in their piece and how you used the devices and why these were so good. As well as from research and practitioner.
• Individual and group dramatic aims and intentions – as well as connections between theory and practice. Theory of Complicité and practice of our group. Individuals can talk about multi-rolling or individual characters but how do they contribute to the dramatic intention, what role do they play within the piece, function of specific things that they do. Theory – what does Complicité want to do with their theatre. Complicité wants to use science and relationships and many different tools to describe and demonstrate parts of human nature, using play and ensemble and stuff.

Mix stylistic and contextual factors that have been considered. This means spreading it throughout and talking about the style of the piece (non-naturalism, physical theatre, ensemble etc.) as well as the context – the context of the stories you tell (socioeconomic historic) and why it will impact YOUR audience today.

Workshop in section 2 hopefully, this will be useful

These also work as pretty good headers for the section

Section 2

• Approach taken to devise – influenced by Complicité, write about playing and ensemble etc. as well as rehearsal techniques and what you did to develop
• Development of ideas, how and why – experimenting, decision making as a group and as an individual, theory and practice. How it evolved each time and refinement of ideas.
• Application of theatrical skills – why did you use certain performance skills and how did you develop them for yourself
• Final ideas for the piece –contrast this to the start, with dramatic aims and intentions too. Do NOT be negative.

Talk about how it was developed, refined and how the final piece contrasted the original aims and intentions and how it changed over the course of the devising process. They really like a bit of theory and practice

Start doing a bibliography at the end of this – references of sources from film, YouTube videos, plays, books, articles, websites etc. Does not have to be a Harvard reference.

These bullet points don't really work as section headers. Write two parts – one slightly longer one about parts of the piece, saying why an idea developed to reach your aims, what techniques or approaches you used and what theatrical skills you applied as an almost chronological log weaving through to the end, then one slightly shorter about the final ideas and how they ended up plus maybe a separate header or paragraph for the aims and intentions (last part for the examiner to know what the recorded piece should be about).

Remember that the examiner is going to read this before watching the piece when moderating. Make it relate to what was on stage and make it positive.