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The Context of Choas

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Once we had started rehearsals for the chaos we had a lot of discussions figuring out the context of the play, our two main themes turned out to be the butterfly effect/chaos theory and also the life of the teenager. The butterfly effect and chaos theory. An example of the butterfly effect that is most common is “when I butterfly flaps its wings in Brazil it can cause a hurricane in Texas” this analogy is also repeated throughout the play in short scenes. If the butterfly had not flapped its wings at just the right point in space/time, the hurricane would not have happened. A more rigorous way to express this is that small changes in the initial conditions lead to drastic changes in the results. Our lives are an ongoing demonstration of this principle. Because we can never know all the initial conditions of a complex system in perfect detail, we cannot hope to predict the long term effects of our actions. In our reality, small things in our system have a massive impact or mayb...
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Inspiration

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On the 22nd of January 2019 while staying in London I was lucky enough to get the chance to “the curious incident of the dog in the night time” by the national theatre on Broadway. This show was truly an inspiration not only to me personally as someone who has grown up caring for someone with autism but also as a performer the skill, choreography and the directing of this show was truly amazing. Throughout the show, the cast mostly stayed on stage, the same as we are doing with the chaos it's not only challenging as a performer to be actively engaged in the show all the time but also reminds the audience that what they're watching is a show. I started to notice a lot of Brecht techniques like this, as well as the minimal set which I find, is more interesting to watch than some more classic kitchen sink style plays I’ve seen in the past. - trailer from a dog in the night-time. The ensemble participation was really something I took from this performance and wanted to ad...
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The Rehearsals

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Monday 10:45 -5:30 Tuesday 10:45-5:50 Wednesday 9:00-1:00 Workshops throughout the rehearsal process. When we learned about Meyerhold the practical part of the lesson was a workshop using is techniques exploring the way we can use our bodies. We started by walking around the room in neutral then exploring the way our bodies change when we only change one way we move. E.g.: the first change was walking on our heels, this made us more curious while walking around the room. We also walked while leading different parts of our bodies like our elbows, nose, chest and thought about what type of character this would make, regarding back to creating a character from the inside out. - video of a master all we used in the workshop. Another workshop we had was using balloons; initially we used these exercises can an icebreaker to free up the body and disconnect the brain from the body. However, once we started to get the show up on its feet we've decided to use the ...
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Vsevolod Meyerhold - Biochemical techniques.

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Meyerhold was born in a Lutheran German family which lived in the Russian city of Penza in 1874. He attended Moscow state university to study law however it was at the university where he began acting in 1896 as a student of the Moscow Philharmonic Dramatic School under the guidance of Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko. It was during this time that he met Stanislavski, both men though having similar core values about the ideas of theatre “theatre is a changeable human construct” had very different views on how this should be achieved. Where Stanislavski believed in the (what if) ideas and using personal experiences and feelings to create a character (go to Brecht vs Stanislavski page for more information) Meyerhold had his own theatre practice that he created called biochemics. Biochemics is a system of actor training where the purpose was to widen the emotional potential of a theatre piece and Meyerhold believed it represented futurism and symbolism. photo of Stanislavski  “I...
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Problems

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Going into this how we didn’t want them meaning of the piece to the lost in the abstractness of the blocking   which it definitely could have been but we wanted it to mean something to be a new piece of theatre that might actually make a difference and influence someone even if it's just one person. To change the perspective of how society looks at young adult and to give us a vibe in our opinion so in the world that so often gets ignored. When we first started we never saw our sleeves of being able to win the competition or get the chance to perform at the national in London but as rehearsals went on and we all became more invested that hope that we could go further started to grow.   A massive problem we faced was people not coming into rehearsals this lead to a group message being sent as a warning “this is a warning… if anyone misses any more rehearsals without a doctor's note will be cut from the show we haven't got enough time, you will be allowed to create an...
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The set and costumes.

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The set of chaos was in the round, with four life decks a form of rostra, each seating ten people, and five on each level. We wanted a small audience in the round so that there is a sense of intimacy and so the audience can feel completely immersed in the performance. The stage was boxed on with black curtain and the floor was covered in white carpet which went up on the rostra so the entire stage and seating were all covered. Unfortunately, with the entire acting space covered in fabric, this damped the volume of us, as it would just absorb everything we said, this was an issue we faced throughout the entire week's run. With the carpet being white we asked every audience member to take off their shoes or put on shoe bags to keep the set as clean as possible; we ourselves were also barefoot during all of the performance. With this aspect, it already left the audience with anticipation and curiosity of what the show could be about. This set was very Brecht, with there not really b...
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Show week at Grange Arts Theatre.

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Technical rehearsal dates. Friday 22nd    11 am-4:30 Monday 25th 11am-4:30 Tuesday 26th 11am-1pm We found that we didn't want to over rehearsal the show as we felt that it would lose its emotion and the “in the moment atmosphere” that the whole show projects so some of these rehearsals were ended early. Performance Dates Wednesday 27th 1pm matinee 7:30 evening Thursday 28th     1pm matinee 7:30 evening Friday 29th          1pm matinee 7:30 evening Going into the theatre to Tec the show was by far the exciting part of the rehearsal process, seeing the set in real life for the first time was definitely a real eye opener to the whole show being real, and the anticipation of having an audience see this for the first time increased massively. One of the major issues we had once we were in the theatre was the spacing, within the rehearsal space we didn't the rostra’s to practice on we ...
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