Vsevolod Meyerhold - Biochemical techniques.

Creating our piece: techniques

After finally having a plan, we started rehearsals with rewriting the scrip. We knew we wanted the main focus of our piece to be drugs not consent compared to the previous piece. although personally I didn't take the role of leading or directing I did share ideas for scenes and how we wanted the piece to end. I as a person struggle taking direction and this is something  I really tried to focus on and using constructive criticism to improve my performance.

During our first rehearsal after deciding on the piece we knew we wanted to keep the aspects of being abstract, we started using white sheets in movement and adding words on top, after watching this back the sheets started to show the death of the lead character who end up taking drugs. We later used this at the end of the piece but instead of using sheets we used scarfs that we wore through out the performance.

This was alienation effect a technique created by Brecht where it involves the use of techniques designed to distance the audience from emotional involvement. The use of the scarfs at the end of the performance brought the audience out of the story as it went from being naturalistic to strange and abstract a sudden shift they most likely didn't expect. We thought about adding narration to make the story, especially Poppy's back story clear but the idea didn't fit with the theme of the rest of the performance. It became clear that with a narrator it distanced the audience from the characters which lost their emotional investment, instead of using narration we decided to drop subtle hints to Poppy's back story with line such as " It was like we finally got our best friend back, ya know after what happened to her last year"  We decided to use Brecht's technique of minimal set, due to both efficacy in moving the set from venue to venue but also because we wanted a set that would always be stationary but easily transformable to be different settings. However with the use of props there was authenticity in creating the different settings.

Our piece is set over one night a group of friends are going on a night out drinking celebrating getting into university there are intercuts of six between each scene where the scene transforms into a police interrogation. The change is shown though a sudden lighting change from fairly neutral to stark hash white light. This is similar to the way Stanislavski used lighting, keeping the lights natural and realistic to the setting, during the other scene we used a low light as a dim bar.
 We used many of Stanislavski techniques in this piece, the majority of the piece is naturalistic with us not only saying the lines and understanding the motivation behind the lines but us all knowing the back story and circumstances of our characters. 

Our performance was meant to show realism portraying life as it really is, this was relatively easy for us as our characters where very similar to our selves and as not only class mates but as friends we've been out together drinking so we used this to help each other give a realistic performance. 

Creating our characters.

To keep things simple we wanted our characters to be quite similar to ourselves, so it would be easily for us to improvise and create scenes quickly.


Poppy: She is the lead character in this story, a quite girl who is still struggling to over come being sexually assaulted the previous year. She hardly ever goes out but being convinced by her friends she dose come on the night out but refuses to drink or enjoy herself. After a huge argument between the group poppy runs of to the bathroom where she meets a woman hiding from bouncers with drugs. She convinces poppy to take a pill where she later has an allergic reaction and dies.-Played by Nathaly Godoy

Rebecca:  Often seen as the leader of the group, Rebecca referred to as Bec is your classic girly girl, she's has just been excepted into Leeds university studding nursing, however she is also the first person that the audience see on drugs. She is often dancing to the left of the stage while drinking a bottle of wine. Bec is also one of the first people to fine Poppy unconscious in the bathroom, during the police interviews she is only person in the group who didn't lie about what happened that night. -Played by Chloe Haywood

Tom: He's outgoing loud mouth best friend to everyone, confident in his sexuality he's seen mostly flirting with Jake. When Poppy finds out that her group of friends are on drugs and its horrified Tom is the first person to call her our for being boring. During her death his cool demeanour vanishes as he frantically lifts poppy out of the bathroom. In his police interview he is the second of the group up to lie, saying " Its just not something we would do. I have too good a reputation to ruin and Bec well she's training to be a nurse... she wouldn't touch them."  Even though in previous scene there is obvious drug use. - Played by Rowan Curran



Jake: Frequently seen being dragged around by Stacey, Jake is awkward and seclusive guy who's only real conversations he has are with Tom and Poppy. During the club scene when the audience find out the group are on drugs they also discovers that Jake is also a dealer. During an argument with Poppy  he offends her by bringing up her sexual harassment , this leads her to 'swill' (throw a drink) him. Hew is later convinced to apologise to her and all is forgiven; during her death however he was distant but concerned due to shock. -Played by Elliot Ullah

Stacy: She's often characterised as a flirtatious and is currently obsessed with Tom. Stacy is from a less influential back ground compared to the others, this is relatively clear from the way she dresses and talks about her life. She's an angry drunk which leads to the argument with Poppy causing her to run away. In the interview she barley even mentions Poppy as she is so caught up in her own drama between herself and Tom.- Played by Megan Callaghan




Shannon:  She's a quite and intelligent girl who is the closet to Poppy out of the whole group, Its revealed by Jake that she was the first one Poppy told about her assault. She has just been offered an unconditional at Edinburgh University studding Media, this is one of the main reasons the group went out in the first place to celebrate. This causes her to blame her self for what happened to Poppy. She finds Poppy in the bathroom with Rebecca and is the one to call an ambulance, however she still lied in the police interview saying " We were all having a ball, well at least I thought Poppy was " when she knew very well that Poppy wanted to go home.-Played by Ruth Jones

As a group we all have different strengths and weakness and as a team we know what each others is as well as how to use them to make the best performance. For myself I find it hard to express ideas and making my opinion heard. I  don't particular enjoy physical theatre either which was difficult as its what we wanted in the piece. Luckily I had help from the other members of the group to improve on this .Together we all discussed our opinions and took them into consideration when directing the piece. My strengths during this project has been organizing when extra rehearsals where needed, making sure we had all the props lines learnt and giving others ways to improve there performance.
As well as myself we had two strong divisors who are excellent at coming up with ideas and directing us accordingly, they can portray their ideas in a way that the rest of the group can understand. We have two great dancers as well who were a huge part in creating the physical theatre at the end and supporting the rest of us who where less confidently in movement.



Unfortunately for myself a week before our first performance to other student and staff in college I ended up in hospital for four days, due to this I missed three rehearsals which affected me quite badly. It felt like I was letting the rest of the group down even though I know it was something I couldn't control. After returning  to rehearsals we had to work quickly for me to catch up with the others and learn the new scenes that had been added while I was in hospital.