The show and rehearsals- The TEA
The rehearsal process started when we had decided the topic of our piece, being in a group of 5 girls a topic close to all out hearts was sex education and the topic of consent. We spoke about our own experiences in confidence with each other, even though this wasn’t exactly easy we all trust and now each other well enough to be open with the situation. The first thing we did was plan out the scenes we wanted to have in the performance, with the topic being consent we didn’t want to go down the route of what has been done before. We steered away from a singular timeline with set characters instead our show was a montage, a collection of scenes that are contrasting but have our theme and style throughout so the piece still flowed well for the audience. Brecht had this idea by taking it from silent film, this allows the audience to focus on the topic rather than being lost in the story or characters. We were very aware that we didn't want characters with names or stories that the audience were forced to be engaged with, we took away the emotional investment not only because it is one of Brecht's techniques but also because we didn't want to tell one person's story because personally, we know so many people who have been involved in sexual assault or rape that is a numbers of peoples story we wanted to tell. When we take away the emotional investment the message of the story isn't lost.
A repeated idea kept coming up while we were discussing how we were going to go about creating this piece, there is a video about consent with the metaphor about tea. This is the video that we have repeatedly seen and we find gives the information clearly and effectively this was the same goal we wanted.
This was the inspiration behind the opening of the show, we used this specifically because we knew that some people would understand the metaphor from the beginning and other wouldn't until we repeated the sequence at the end. From the very beginning, we knew we wanted to have lots of movement and physical theatre but as we went on the more that became the focus. We tried adding in scenes where we played characters but it never seemed to fit with the rest of the show. I believe it was the right decision to scrap the more classical scenes where we had characters and a story. Instead, we decided to use monologues and poems where we directly speak to the audience, we also added movement behind so we were always performing in some way. There wasn't any time where we were off stage, we were always with the audience as we wanted them to be apart of the show.
As we didn't want to show “rape” happening on stage because not only would it be inappropriate we didn't feel that it would add anything to the performance. It would've more likely upset the audience and made them not want to watch and the message we wanted to show would have lost completely. We decided to use movement as a symbolic way to rape. We used a bed sheet in many different ways between each scene with the same music but we took it in turns to be the main person at that moment.
We used “the ripe and ruin” by alt-j in theses movement parts because it isn't exactly a song it's an unaccompanied acapella. I was the main focus in this first movement part and we used chairs with the sheet.
The second movement part involved us all repeating a simple movement from the previous scene sat cross-legged in pairs leaving Courtney in the middle her monologue. And lastly, the sheet is used to rap us Sarah for her poem. The sheet is used as a continuous representation of a relationship at some points its used violently so change someone positioning, or it is used to cover someone in a protective way. At one point the sheet is used as a mirror, on one side there is dialog and other two people are mirroring each other acting out the scene that the dialog is describing. Half the audience can only see the mirroring while the other side can only see Courtney performing her monologue. It wasn't planned to be we found it really amazing how you can see a shadow of the other side which was very visually effective on the emotions of the characters.
We asked Elliot because we found it difficult to show a toxic relationship with only us girls and although we could have taken away the roles of gender and the piece was symbolic we found it more effective when a man was included. We had him sat in the audience and only a few people knew that he was on the show as all. The movement used a lot of intimacy and it was something both myself and Elliot discussed but we both agreed that we were comfortable with each other enough to do whatever looked the best for piece. We used a power dynamic that switched between us both rough out this was not to confuse the audience but to make it unclean about the rape and who did what. I also wanted to show an obvious relationship that this was somebody she knew, we had had what most would consider “sweet:” moments like hand holding and cuddling which then turned violent. We used another song by Alt-J “tessellate” which we thought was appropriate as some of the lyrics include “you're a shark and I am swimming” which we felt was how it must feel like when you're in a toxic relationship.
By the end of this section we are both lying on the floor without heads on each other, the other four are shouting insults at is both, we chose two opinions one for supporting me and one for supporting Elliot. We desperately wanted to avoid attacking men as this seems to be a common trope in most shows about rape or consent. I think we could have made it clear to the audience by possibly having the opinions one after the other rather than them all overlapping. Followed the next movement scene Courtney is left facing one side while Jade and Ellie are mirroring what she is saying. This was first come up with as a party scene after I suggested the idea of holding up the sheet as a curtain. We had some deliberation with the party idea however, we wanted to use a party because most of the time this is when assaults or rape happens however we knew it had been done so many times before and that we might end up repeating the same thing that has been done hundreds of times before. Then we moved on to discussing sexuality in the workplace, it happens quite a lot but is never discussed openly out of fear of losing a job. The monologue used was written by us and it begins as a basic workday as it goes on its implied that she is raped by her boss at work, it then discusses the reaction her boyfriend has when she tells him and the supportiveness he gives. We felt that the piece so far might have been very anti-men so it was important to at least mention the response of a man and in a way, we feel the men we know and are friends with would react. The last scene is when Sarah is wrapped up in a sheet and performing a poem. From the very beginning of the rehearsal, process poetry was something we definitely wanted to use.
There was some difficulty in finding one as many of them over victimized the women they were about and we didn't want it just portray the women in these scenes as just victims. In the end, the poem used Sarah reappeared and cut out the parts we didn't feel fitted without performance. We also used facts, when the poem is repeated. Brecht wanted to inform his audience and we found that the most direct way to do this was to include facts we had found. However, we wanted to this in a creative way rather than just repeat them to the audience. Has the poem goes on at the end of each verse a fact is said, then the second time the poem and all our facts overlap. As they are being said the sheet is pulled off leaving Sarah exposed. The logic behind the anger we used while saying the facts was that women are being ignored even though the poem is emotional and heart-rending the facts are taking over and women who have been through rape and sexual assault are being seen as nothing but statistics. The scene ends in silence as we then repeat the movement from the beginning but facing the opposite direction. The ending then includes a new part when at the end we are shouting at Sarah who is refusing to drink the tea, it's very aggressive and I feel that is was done last minute if we had had more time we could have done it better but after shouting things like. “I made it for you” “you said you wanted it before” all of which are a metaphor for rape we stop and speak directly to the audience. Brecht also used this in many of his performance and we chose to use at the end to get the audience to come out of the scene that had just watched and pay complete attention to what we were saying. We spoke individually addressing that if you don't want “tea” you don't have to. I think that by the end of the show the tea metaphor was very clear and everyone knew we were talking about sex.
Overall I think we had a really good piece, we used Brecht techniques throughout and although while creating the piece we didn't think directly “this is a Brecht technique” the one we did use definitely made out piece as successful as it was. After speaking to the audience after the show many people said they were moved and although we didn't want that emotional connection to the character the way we performed didn't make the audience emotional distance from what was going on. To improve I feel that we definitely could have researched more into people's own stories and used them more instead of focusing on what we have experienced. With some adjusting, I think this could be a great theatre in education for older school pupils or college students. This was most differently a group effort and we all tried our hardest to make this performance. We spent a lot of time in our group chat sharing ideas and organizing extra rehearsals as well as sharing video ideas. Without the effort we all put in the show would not have been as good as it was.
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