In this lesson we finished devising the group piece, as well as refining and changing certain parts.
To begin we replaced the foetuses growing up, with a similar idea, however instead having torches on our heads and a sheet covering us to we explore the "newly found" movements of our body parts, predominantly our hands. This idea is to replicate an ultra sound scan because the dark shadows bare a likeness to the procedure. We hope to encourage some audience participation as they're asked to touch their hands across the sheet like a mother would whilst having a scan, giving them a more sensory experience which will help to keep them engaged and hopefully create a larger impact, causing them to think and evaluate the debate. Again the idea focuses on the nature side of the debate.
Next we also added in a short transition into the mother-son scene, where as foetuses we are seeing/using a part of our body for the first time before growing tall and pretending to play as planes. As well as being a helpful tool to guide our audience out of the performance space, it enforces the idea of childhood and how people's differing childhoods can change who they become; a key argument for the nurture side of the debate.
To follow the mother-son section, that we created in the previous lesson, our group split into two and we had to devise a short scene surrounding the idea of puppets, again highlighting nurture. My group focused on Will as the puppet, guiding him physically in order to represent how children can be brought up and encouraged to do/believe certain things. The physicality of controlling his body and movement, is an exaggerated literal portrayal of parental influence moulding a child into what they want and what they do. I found this to work really nicely because it enforced how easily it was to do what adults say and not do anything for yourself, just doing what you've been taught and not discovering anything for yourself.
After this, we used articles based around the nature-nurture debate to create short images/pieces, eg. 9/11, 7/7, Lee Rigby's murder, the Jamie Bulger case, GCSE results, homophobia in Mosul, Iraq, a blind man learning to ride a bike. We used the range of articles to explore both the good and bad results of nurture, trying to lighten the mood with the positive stories for the audience as they listen to the over head recordings of Michael Adebolajo, a 9/11 voice mail and a news report on GCSE results. We also wanted to suggest that the nature-nurture debate isn't just negative and showing them visually I thought the audience might find it easier to picture and relate. Tia, Mia, Shayde and I looked into a picture of the 9/11 attacks, with the victims walking from the wreckage coughing. We chose to to replicate this picture by bringing it to life through coughs and slight movement, because we felt that we didn't want to over play it, making sure that it remained respectful.
For the final bit we went back repeating the beginning formation, breathing in a more exhaustive way to fit the sombre tone of the piece. I found that this would allow the audience too reflect on what they had just watched and form a solid opinion on the debate. It also just have an solid ending which could then flow into the final group section.
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