In the following lessons with Starbuck we will be working on Forced Entertainment. Forced Entertainment is an experimental theatre company based in Sheffield which was set up by the artistic director Tim Etchells in 1984. The core members of the company include: Tim Etchells, Richard Lowdon (designer and performer), and performers Robin Arthur, Claire Marshall, Cathy Naden, and Terry O'Connor who have been part o the company since it began. They devise their pieces through improvisation, experimentation, and debate, sometimes focusing on current politics much like Brecht. They think that their work should look like it got thrown together - "chaotic, out of control, unintended" from Tim Etchells' book Certain Fragments. When they were working on their production of Nighthawks (1985) the company went around Sheffield and picked up loads of objects from all over the city, however, they didn't want anything in the performance to be recognisably British. Tim Etchells said "We did once think of putting Look Back in Anger with all the performers drunk on cider but, rather fortunately, we didn't pursue the idea" which I think shows how prepared the company is to break the rules of theatre in order to make a statement of some kind (or rather just to have fun). Etchells also comments that "A confident audience understand and enjoy that. An unconfident audience take it personally and think we are attacking them" which again shows that they are prepared to break the conventions of theatre to make the audience feel uncomfortable which is in some respects is similar to Artaud.
Tim Etchells wrote Status Update which was one of the plays that the upper BTECs chose for their Director's Challenge assessed piece of the course. The version that I saw of this piece often jumped from topic to topic with seemingly no relation to what the actors were speaking about before. In the play there are no characters and the actors are just relaying things that they know to the audience. We used some of this in our piece. For example, we spoke directly to the audience and listed some things that we knew about the world that we had created.
At the beginning of the lesson, we were told to write down rules, tasks, and characters that were to be presented within the piece that we would be creating. We were then given a random profile that someone else in the class had created; mine are shown below.
Task: Eat a piece of paper
Rule: You are not allowed to touch the floor
Character: Homer Simpson
Characteristic of character: He is fat
Secret Task: Touch everyone's head in the room without them noticing it's weird
My rules influenced the piece. We included eating the piece of paper as a random moment within the piece, which is somewhat like how Status Update changed from topic to topic which would remind the audience that the piece they are watching is a performance something which Status Update does to some extent. My rule of not being able to touch the floor meant that I was 'office chair' bound for the entire piece which allowed for some moments of humour (which I saw in Status Update) such as trying to move myself along the space with a crutch to the Wallace and Gromit theme tune.
We were allowed to share every rule/task/character that we had been given except for the Secret Task which we had to carry out in the middle of the piece but not tell anyone else in our group what we had to do. We were also given an additional rule from Starbuck whereby the start of every sentence had to be in alphabetical order (for example: "An apocalyptic forest in Russia many years ago" followed by "Billions") which made creating a piece much more difficult.
The group that I was put in consisted of Alex, Bruce, Hannah1 and Izzy.
The 'storyline' that we came up with was that there was a group of creatures in the Ural mountains separated from the rest of society by an electrified gate. These creatures have evident malformations - one is a werewolf, one is 'office chair' bound, one has a crutch, one has a limp and can only count in numbers, and one can only walk with their legs crossed. We talked about how these creatures were not allowed through the gate which made for a serious social message, something which was sometimes evident within Status Update, of how different (disabled, from a different country etc) people are often treated. We also added in the character of zombies which was a random element within the piece which only came about because we had to fit within the 'alphabet' rule. Despite the obvious despair that these characters have, they still "like to have fun" which is shown when I moved across the space on the office chair to the theme tune of Wallace and Gromit. Behind me, the other characters are turning into zombies which allows for humour (and I'm still not entirely sure why we included it within the piece).
Alex's Tasks etc.
Task:
Rule: Must always have legs crossed
Character: A Russian woman
Characteristic of character: She is old
This had some influence on where the piece was set. We based the piece in the Ural mountains of Russia which has an extensive forest area making the piece more believable (if members of the audience knew what the Ural mountains were like). This also allowed for a fairy tale feel to the piece which was made more evident with Hannah1's character of a werewolf. As Alex always had to have her legs crossed
Bruce's Tasks etc.
Task: Stand on a chair
Rule: You can only stand on one leg for the entirety of the piece
Character: Hal
Characteristic of Character: Lives in an apocalyptic forest
I wrote the tasks for Bruce's piece which made it easier to incorporate the character of Hal into the piece. Hal is an original character of my own creation who lives in an apocalyptic forest (hence why we based the piece in the Ural mountains) with his so-called mother. There is an electrified gate in the middle of the forest that he lives in which separates the apocalyptic forest and the wonderful city on the other side of the electrified gate. This influenced many of the ideas within the piece. The electrified gate element of this original character was woven into the piece as a barrier between the apocalyptic forest of malformed creatures and the 'beautiful' land which lay beyond the gate. The rule of standing on one leg meant that Bruce used a crutch for the majority of the piece which added to the malformations that every character had.
Hannah1's Tasks etc.
Task:
Rule: Has to remain standing
Character:
Characteristic of Character: A werewolf
Hannah1's character of a werewolf shaped the piece into becoming about how people treat others who have malformations or are different. It also added to the element of living in a forest and also the fairy tale element. One thing that we decided that Hannah1 would do whilst playing the werewolf would be that she would have a mask on when she turned into the wolf part of her character. She would have the mask on the back of her head which would mean that when she would turn into a werewolf she would turn around so the audience could see the mask on the back of her head, creating humour within the piece.
Task: Stay in the drama office for 15 mins (which we then changed to walk up and down the steps 15 times as we couldn't make the piece 15 mins long in the short space of time we had to devise and rehearse the piece)
Rule: Has to walk with a limp
Character:
Characteristic of Character: Can only speak in numbers.
Izzy's character also shaped the piece in some aspects. As she had to walk with a limp, this emphasised the malformations that each character would have. And as she could only speak in numbers this reduced the amount of lines that she could speak. One of her lines that she did get which was quite a clever play on words was when Hannah1 bit Izzy when turned into the werewolf. Instead of saying "no" Izzy said "nine" which sounds like the German word for no - nein. This allowed for the 'story' to be conveyed as well as sticking to the given rules.
Below is a run through of our first run through as I don't have access to the final version. Much of what was done in this version is largely the same as what was don in the final version.
I think that if we had more time for devising and rehearsal, we would have made the piece longer and more efficient. As such, we had no time for rehearsal because of the Director's Challenge performances running throughout the week which we paid more attention to, to help the Y13s.
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