Final outline

Ground floor:

Brenda's book launch, set in the present day.

First floor:
The character, Brenda, as a child around 3 years old, she is telling the story at that point in time when she was expecting her brother and her relationship with him as children. This introduces the audience to this character and helps them understand the relationship she and her brother had.

Transition:
Me and Andrea stomp in synchronised style up and down the stairs to show that the next level will include a part of the story where war is involved. We took inspiration from all the straight lines in our space, most of the movement in our piece is very linear.

Second platform:
Tia is playing Brenda at about 16 years old in this section, this is where her main problem is introduced in the piece. The war has just started and Brenda is convincing her brother to go to war even though he is under age. This is the reason the guilt of losing her brother follows her for the rest of her life.

Transition:
Me and Tia start to walk up the stairs as if were in the army then we get shot and sink to the floor. This shows that the brother has died. We then jump up and start to shout "brother" "has anyone seen him?" This shows how distressed Brenda was when he died and we address the audience in this part to make it more inclusive.

Third platform:
This platform shows Willa who plays Brenda at around age 30, obsessively writing letter to her brother. She cannot get over the trauma of feeling like she is the reason he died.

Transition:
All the Brenda's are sitting on the stairs writing letters and one by one the start to grab hold of the bars and pull themselves up the stairs to show the struggle she goes through to move on.

Fourth floor:
Mia is playing Brenda aged 90 in this final part, she is using her typewriter to write her biography and tell her story of her and her brother. She has finally come to terms with her past and she is willing to share her story.

 

Basic outline of our piece

In this rehearsal we started piecing together some rough ideas for our final performance, we decided to have four different versions of our main character in the piece. Four different actors playing four different versions of the character as the story develops. For example, I will play the child version of the main character and I will be telling my part of the story through paintings and drawings and physical movement. Then Tia will be playing the teenage version who is trying to convince her brother to go to war, she will communicate this to the audience by addressing them as the brother. Willa would play the character as a middle aged woman and me and Tia would follow up the stairs to be with that character as she scrunches up all her letters to show that the guilt of loosing her brother as followed her through her life.

We are also looking at using different music for each section to signify that each floor is a different time point in time. It makes the transitions more obvious to the audience.

Using the space to reveal a story

Our performance relies greatly on the stairs, for the progression of the story, the travelling of the audience and taking the audience through time. We decided to really accentuate the meaning of climbing the stairs by using the curtains separating each level in an interesting way. We decide to have interaction between the characters and the curtains to have them there not just as something to decorate the space. We could reveal the next part of the story through them.

In previous rehearsals we had looked at using the stairs different levels to show different levels of status in society and our ideas mainly developed from that point.

Audience and devising

Our performance is very immersive so the audience play an important role. Because our piece is a journey through time in the perspective of an author the audience begin in present day at the launch of her autobiography. We use the stairs as transitions through different scenes from important parts in her life.
She tells her story as the audience move through the space and they can feel involved in the performance.
Because we are using the stairs to travel through time and let the story progress I definately think that the audience will have a stronger connection to the character.

When we were working with different ideas in our deivisng process we liked the idea of using different types of theatre, not just the generic conventional type of theatre. We want to show aspects of physical theatre and possibly some political.

Exploring our space.

The site we have decided to use is the BDC stairs, the site is quite small and can only contain a few audience members. We found a lot of properties qualities and meanings that could inspire our final piece.

The properties of our space are mostly very dull and grey, and are very metallic based. The metallic railings reminded us all of a cage and that was an idea we put forward towards our piece. We saw the grey, dull, dark as a stimulus that we could work from.

One of the qualities our space has is the fact that it is quite hidden and quite. We used this to our advantage and thought it could inspire a dark, mysterious themed performance. We really like the number of stairs and platforms there are in that space and we can use those many floors to our advantage.

We all agreed that the meaning of the stairs and platforms are very important and we want it to be a big part in our final piece. We want to tell a progressive story using the stairs.