It Snows - Part 4

Yesterday we performed a full run of It Snows. The video below shows the piece in its entirety:

The video below shows my analysis of the above video:

It Snows - Part 3

In the following few lessons, we plan to block the whole of the piece in order to have a solid foundation on which to improve upon. In this sense, we are using the Frantic Assembly style of starting with something simple and improving on it later making it more complicated as we go which will impress the audience a lot more.

On Monday, we showed the class the worst 5 minutes of the piece thus far and we believe them to be the waiting for the party sequence and the actual party itself. Most of this is repetitiveness and feeling as though we could do more in the Frantic style like we learned on the workshop. Unfortunately, we didn't take a video of the worst part, but the following bullet points detail what we felt was wrong with the piece and also include what the class thought the next steps we should take are:

• The party feels too similar wherein we seem to be going in circles for the duration of it. Additionally, there appears to be a lack of progression to it. The class suggested we have further moments of stopping (such as the shoes off section) which would interest the audience a lot more. 
• The split scene is not smooth enough and thus feels clunky and out of place.
• The lack of sound that we make in the party. When we do make sound it blocks out Kathryn's words. This may be solved by Kathryn saying these lines out to the audience so that they can be understood better. 
• Music is needed and we need to find music to fit each scene. There are some recommended artists for the piece that the author and director suggested which seem to fit. 
• Everyone looks awkward. I think this is because we feel as though the piece is not at the performance standard we would want.

In the following blog I will analyse the changes that we made to the party and why we made them. In the next blog piece we did record a video so the analysis and reasons why and how this links to Frantic Assembly's style will be there and available. There will also be the changes we made to the bus stop scene as well as attempts made in creating the final scene.

It Snows - Part 2

The following video is the Snowball Sequence with Kathryn. In the analysis video (found at the end of the blog) I will explain the changes made since Kathryn was introduced.

The following video is the Freeze Frame/Split Stage/ Talking About the Party sequence. Again the analysis of the video can be found in the final video in this blog.

The following video is the start of the Party Sequence, of which the analysis is in the final video in this blog post.

The following video is an analysis of all three sections (as above): 

It Snows - Part 1

The next play that we've chosen for the Contemporary Theatre Unit is It Snows written by Bryony Lavery in collaboration with Frantic Assembly. This play differs from Heart's Desire mainly because of the physical movement incorporated into the script and the lack of political nature from the author - Lavery states that she wrote the play to be lighthearted and for something for the audience to enjoy watching whereas Heart's Desire was not as relaxing and the audience had to focus on what was happening for it to make some kind of sense. The images below show the plot and some of the intentions by the writer such as the setting:

We first started by reading through a section (which we'll be using) and assigned characters. There weren't many main characters and thus instead of having a character, I am much more involved in the physical element relating to Frantic Assembly which is assisted by the attendance of 2 FA workshops.

One of the first scenes that we devised using the script was the first part of our section - the snowball fight that is detailed in the images above. Kathryn was unfortunately ill when devising and so we will need to incorporate her into the scene. The following video shows a rough version of the snowball fight:

The video below is an analysis of the above video: