Week Four 

This week our group continued to do organic improvisation, bouncing off the idea's we had from last week. I told our group about the personal accounts I had collected over the week and we started to incorporate the common themes of isolation and alienation into our piece. We are still unsure about how to include this point of focus for isolationism in our piece, but we are all going to come with fresh idea's for it next week

Today we roughly finished our piece, ending it with buckets of water being thrown at the audience and Danny, Lizzie and Rebecca all melting to the ground as if they are the flames we have just put out. I found rehearsals today a bit of a struggle, as not everyone in our group was initially focused so it made devising hard. We have found trying to make everything we do  relevant to our site and because of this our group have struggled with keeping the piece interesting. I don't think our piece has a strong narrative yet, so after a short discussion, we started to plot a story for our characters. We start off by having breakfast and walking to work, then the fire happens and we get trapped, eventually dying.
Here is a rough running order of the movements and scene's in our piece:

1. Having breakfast-drinking and eating
2. Direct walking, as if we are walking to work (this represents the daily routine of people's lives)
3. All line up in single file against the far wall
4. Slow motion running into the centre of the space, then fast running away from the fire, while looking up at it
5. Ashley shouts 'fire' and he falls off the railings
6. We all run to the railings and shout 'help'
7. Run to the windows by the audience and start mirroring each other (I mirror Rebecca. This symbolises how fire becomes you and takes you over)
8. We then throw the ''fire'' off
9. I stand in the middle as the others circle me, imitating the fire as I scream 'fire'
10. We then all go to separate spaces and pretend as if we are trapped in our own box, suffocating from the smoke of the fire
11. We then do the trust exercise, one person puts up their hand, coughing and chocking and the others catch us
12. Fire man lift into the centre of the space
13. Daisy, Rebecca, Lizzie and I all fall in the middle of the space
14. Ashley and Danny then investigate our deaths
15. Walk towards the audience
16. Throw water at the windows as if we are putting out the fire
17. Turn and run too the railings, finial plea for help8uy

All of the movements here have been inspired by the site's old purpose. Although I feel like this performance has potential, I think we need a centre focus. The audience wont be able to hear anything, so there isn't much dialogue apart from when we shout out help or fire. We will have a backing track which will hopefully harmonise and contrast well with our piece. Daisy suggested Fire Starter by Prodigy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTYRGi-Q7U4. At first we loved this song for our piece, but when we played it over the top and watched it back, we discovered that it didn't really fit with our movements or the message we were trying to convey. We decided we needed a slow song, one that would highlight the delicate undertones of our piece. In the end we chose Let Her Go by Passenger :

After listening to this song and then playing it over our piece, I think it makes up for our lack of dialogue as it has similar messages to our piece. I think our narrative now is more vivid, as our piece has a story one in which I think our audience will be able to relate to.

We started to think about some prominent colours which could run throughout our piece. As we got a strong sense of fire from the site, we thought that the warm colours yellow, orange and red would suffice as inspiration to our piece and could possibly be included in our performance. These colours are normally associated with fire, so if we include at least one of them then I think our audience will understand fully that we are both being affected by the fire but also the flames themselves.

These three colours can also be connected with lazy sunsets, which one would normally think of as happy things. So, we are also going to use that alternate meaning of the three colours to inspire the more humane sections in our piece. For example, when we do the trust lifts, we have to rely on others and their kindness.

For me, the colour red stands out the most and I would love this to be the main colour in our site specific performance. I also noticed that there is a small smudge of red paint on one of the fire exit signs, so having the colour red in our piece links it to our site, therefore making the choice of colour relevant as well as symbolic.