Day 4

Day 4 

On our last day Paul allowed us to go an explore on the techniques we had learned. We was also accompanied by the Max. We showed them each our maps and they gave us feedback on how to work on them. We split into small groups and continued making pins with the methods we had been shown throughout the week.

My group visited the Royal and Derngate and created some living news papers to try and explore the shows which we're being performed at the time. It allowed us to bring the poster to life. Living newspapers have to be current story's which are interesting and appealing, using this poster combined the two. Using the celebrity status of Eastenders star Charlie Brooks and a few other cast members allowed us to talk more extensively about the back ground of the actors in the performance. 

After this we used the Ghost Lens app again to create sightings of the grey lady which is rumoured to haunt the theatre. The group I was working with had never used this app before so I found it benifical teaching the other two members how it works as it furthered my knowledge too. 

Overall I found the experience with C&T beneficial. I found ways to explore the technology world and combine them with performance to make a dramatic impact and share them online to try and show people what life is like within Northampton. As an individual who does not have any interest in pursuing technology as part of my future, I feel what I have learnt working with Paul, is that there is much more to technology than just lights and sound. You can create a whole performance using an app or even just a song. The question raised by Paul through out the week was, do we believe what we are doing is theatre?  In response to this, I do not believe its theatre, however I simply put this opinion down to what I define as theatre. I feel that what we did this week was in essence a performance, a different type of performance that gives you a wider audience and can open many people's eyes up to what happens in other peoples life's/cultures. Reflecting on the week I most enjoyed the lip syncing and the methodology behind it, I felt that this is a method I would like to use in future work. Lastly I'm very grateful for being involved in this week. 

Day 3

Today we started off with two warm up games again once again just to get us moving an engaged. Paul then showed us a number of videos of groups and individuals lip syncing. One video that stood out for myself was the one filmed in Nairobi. There was a young man and woman performing on the slums of Nairobi juxtaposing the location with the song they used the soundtrack to "my favourite things" the powerful juxtaposition is such a clever yet simple way of showing how happy some people can be even in the poorest conditions in the world. This used the idea of lip syncing and song to explore different themes and concepts such as emotions, politics, culture and more. We used lip sync to access a performance Ethnography to repurpose a song to give it a different meaning or context.

To warm us up we got into groups and Paul played continuess for an hour "What makes you beautiful by One direction". We then had to use the song to explore a deeper sense of meaning. My group decided to look a body image. We used paper signs to hold up different insecuritys that we have about ourselves which were later on ripped up to represent how they don't mean anything, and that we should be happy in our own skin. 

After performing this to the group we then went and created our own lip sync videos using our own songs.

Angels - Robbie Williams

We choose this song at the start of our car scene lip sync on the way to university to simply enhance the script we had before starting the lip syncing. "We always wait for traffic lights in Northampton"

Uptown funk - Mark Ronson ft. Bruno Mars 

This song was chosen simply because it's fun and we had the chance to express our emotions and show off our lip syncing talent. The song also represents how much fun we have as a friendship group when we come together at university. 

Girlfriend - Avil

This song was used in the second video. We used this song choice because it fits perfectly with girls wanting a boy, as i have had members of my cast experience this. It's very relevant to Northampton univesity night life. 

Lazy song - Bruno Mars

The lyrics fit exactly how every student feels when in a lecture "today I don't feel like doing anything" the song fitted our theme and was performed in a lecture room.

Although we did not contradict or use a strong juxtaposition in our videos,we used these songs to fit in with the theme of our maps. " Life in Northampton". We explored the journey into university, lectures and tensions between class mates. 

Day 2

On day two we used some simple interactive games to wake us and get the group engaged. The body part game and jump, clap, stop. 

We then were given an article and had to bring it to life using performance. The article was about women in employment. We had to use the facts and we had to be creative. In my group we used the facts and transformed them into a poem, which was acted out by another girl in my group to explain the story. The use of poetry allows the audience to become more engaged, rather than using spoken word, rhyming the sentences is more intising. The reason for this was to introduce us to the idea of the living newspaper which was explained to us later on that day.

After watching everyone's interpretations of how to express facts and news reports creatively, Paul placed sheets of paper down for us to write all our dislikes, hates and things that annoy us. By doing this we started a short debate about the opinions that had been written down. This was so to give us some idea about what we could use for our maps as a theme or even a theme for our living newspaper. Here is a photo of what we had written down.

 "The theatre must face problems of the time" The living news paper. 

Living news paper are not CnTs invention it's a theatre form that roots in the USA. American governments invested in the theatre and the concept of" new deal". This was set up to get the economy moving by investing in public projects after the Great Depression. One of the projects set up was the federal theatre project it allowed lots of groups that were networked to share their practice with one another, as part of this project they created the living news paper. They used unemployed journalists to collect news so they could turn them into performances using huge cast and huge stages. They Stood up for the "little man" people who were affected by the Great Depression. It's been mentioned that there performances were very Brechtian with the use of Satire. They spread across to the UK in 1934 with one project which was called Bus man. This was performed when London bus drivers were on strike, they would turn up to the theatre and watch what was going on in the dispute. It's basically watching the news, live on stage. That was generally speaking the end of it.

C and T use this the living news paper for children to explore and research news articles. They created a website to use as a starting point to create your own living newspaper and to share them to people over the Internet. To allow children's view points to be heard and understood. To put it simply it is a documentary play to change things and opinions on the world.

On the C&T's website their are 3 people showing tutorials on how you can create your own living newspaper.

Rule 1- be funny , slapstick, weird stuff, it makes it more interesting.

Rule 2 - be direct, talk to the audience, such as a fact or poem don't be afraid to look them in the eye. 

Rule 3- Juxtapose ... Put different things together. Serious- funny, Makes it more interesting.

Rule 4- agitate ... get under people's skin. Get people to react!!! 

Rule 5- let the facts speak for themselves - they are interesting. People want facts back yourself up ... Illustrate them.... Put them at the centre of what you do!! 

After this we then had a go by ourselves to create our own living newspapers. My group decided to use the theme history of hauntings in Northampton. After deciding on our theme we found an app called Ghost Lens.

It allows users to create ghost pictures by fading objects and people In and out of shot. It took a while for my group to figure out how to use the app. After two hours of playing around with it we managed to create some great shots and videos of different historic Hauntings in Northampton and we was then able to pin them on to our maps. 

This was taking in the Royal and Derngate. A recreation photo using the app, of the ghost that haunts there. The grey lady. 

Before leaving Paul introduced the idea of Camera voice. We used our phones to take pictures on our journey home. The methodology behind this is to personify the camera. We used the camera as a witness to events and if it could say what it seen, what would it say? The camera voice is a great method to capture life in still shots and get to the heart of what the meaning is. Here is a short example I have pinned on my map.

Introduction Day 1

Lauren Head 

13421210

Professional practices

"C&T is about humanising technology through creativity,drama and digital culture"

To complete the second half of our professional practices we as a drama group were introduced to the theatre company C&T. Our sessions were lead by Dr Paul Sutton the founder and Artistic director of C&T.  Through Paul's first PowerPoint about the theatre company it was clear that they are very tech based and work a lot with applied theatre. The main quote I took from Paul's introduction was " we use theatre to benifit people's lives". This allowed me to vision the importance of their work and how influential this type of theatre is. 

Our performative outcome is our online map this is called Strata it allows people to pin things on the map such as videos, films and pictures and to share it to the online world. They've worked all over the world trying to create a sense of globalisation bringing different countries and peoples together, through the use of Strata and performance. To introduce us to the idea of the maps Paul showed us the "Hereford Mappa Mundi it is a unique in Britain's heritage; an outstanding treasure of the medieval world, it records how thirteenth-century scholars interpreted the world in spiritual as well as geographical terms". This map uses codes and symbols to depict what is there, which in essence is east lay what the Strata map is. 

The first game we played we had to choose two people in the room and then make an equal sided triangle with the two people chosen obviously through other people moving around it became quite a struggle, however we did manage to resolve it in the end.The second game we played Paul asked us to choose two people again one A and one B. A was the bomb and person B was the shield, we then had to use them people as the given objects which literally was one big mess with everyone running around trying to defend themselves from the bombs. Then the a and b swapped round.  It's either a mathematical resolution or on the other hand it could be fate in my opinion. It all depends on who had chosen who and also how many people their are in that room because there is a possibility that it would not work out. It could represent the world working together with different country's bringing different influcences and cultures together. The resolution whether it works or not would depend on how well they work together. In the idealistic world it would be beneficial if all the world could work together, however the second game emphasised that this is not possible. 

Throughout the week working with Paul, he showed us different apps and methods which would could use to add pins to our maps. He introduced us to the app Aurasma. It allows you to take a picture of something e.g a sign, 2d picture and then place a video over the top of that picture (trigger). This app allows you to create moments and even a whole story to an object or sign literally anything and bring it to life. Here's what it looks like on my screen.

The methodology behind Aurasma is Augmented reality. The app allows the user to add Layers of meaning and giving a 2nd picture depth and a story. When using the app it became clear that their was endless possibilities with the app, as a group we used the app to create a story that used triggers to show up on our smart phones a missing persons case and used videos to show clues to where she had gone.