Paper birds.

Our stimulus:
Another Place.
Based on Crosby beach, Antony Gormley created these cast iron sculptures. Another Place consists of 100 sculptures, spread out across the beach. They appear almost ghost-like and sink into the sand.

Throughout the day, we completed several exercises and techniques. We worked on them separately but at the end of the day, they built together to make one whole performance.

Collective movements:
After doing several warm-ups and games, we were asked to get into pairs and face each other. We then had to create fluid movements, however, we both had to do the same movements, without discussing them beforehand. Primarily, it appeared as if we were in front of a mirror, as we made the movements as in sync as possible. This was quite difficult as we were not allowed to talk to each other yet, we had to remain as in sync as possible. After perfecting this, we were then told to continue in our pairs but to move across the room together in a similar way- we had to move in sync but without talking. This was particularly hard as we needed to make it look as if both of us were leading the walk, rather than having one particular leader.
Next, we were asked to form into a larger group of four by merging into another pair. In our fours, we had to continue walking as a group. When someone new got to the front of the group, they lead the movements. After looking at our stimulus, we added in speech and lines to our movements:

Firstly, we had to look into our stimulus and simply state what the picture showed. An example of this is, 'The sky is dark'. We went round the group in our fluid movements and as soon as a line was said by someone in the group, the next person took the lead in the movement, fought to the front and then spoke their line. This continued until everyone had stated a line simply saying what he picture showed. After this, we did the same but rather than saying what we saw, we said what we thought it was about.

Physical interpretation of the picture:
Our next exercise was to physically portray the picture as an image. To do this, my group decided to portray each piece of the picture separately. As we came on, we held hands and formed a large circle, thrashing and spinning, as if we were the ocean. Then we broke apart and stood facing the audience, staggered, as if we were the statues. We incorporated levels and proximity as Millie stayed at the front, on her knees and the rest of us stayed behind and stood still in slightly staggered positions. Then, to portray t he sky, we picked up Millie and raised her above our heads, then we laid her down, to represent the sand. The back three remained standing as if we were statues. Chloe began to shake slowly and tremors went all around her. Once the tremors got wilder, she reached out and grabbed my shoulder, which spread the tremors into me. She then grabbed Fiona and we all held hands again and became the sea yet again. We finally grabbed Millie and dragged her into the sea formation. Finally, we then all stood up and formed a line, pulling against each other as if we were having a tug of war. We then broke apart and ran off stage.

Elderly people caricatures:
Next, we needed to create four different short caricatures of stereotypical old people. These had to be exaggerated and very stereotypical. We created four phrases that we felt were stereotypical of the older generation and then had to add a movement to each phrase. For example, we said "oh, my back" and then struggled to sit back down whilst clutching our backs in mock pain. We then took all of our movements and blended them so they morphed into each one.

Facts and figures:
Each person in our group took a piece of paper that had either a story, facts or a definition on it. This section of our exercises was based upon loneliness and each piece was based upon loneliness. We then took the pieces and began to read. Each person would read a section, and then the next person would interrupt the first and steadily, each person would interrupt and overlap and it became almost a fight to be the one talking. In our group, Chloe started by reading a definition of loneliness and then stopped once we began to interrupt each other. At the end of our piece, we began to interrupt but instead of stopping when another person read their piece, we continued and created an overlapping sequence where we all spoke at once. This ended like it began, with Chloe reading out her definition of loneliness. When she had reached the end of her definition, we all fell silent.

Chair duet:
To create a chair duet, we split into pairs and created five different movements focusing on the chair. Each movement was revolving around trying to get the person off of the chair. However, the person on the char was 'attached' to the chair by an invisible string that connected to her back. Because of this string, when she was pulled off the chair, she sprung straight back to her original place. After performing the five attempts to drag the person off the chair, the section started again and became far more violent and the piece sped up. The section started almost caring and slow, however, it became far more violent and aggressive towards the person in the chair.

Final Piece:
Finally, to draw everything together, we had to merge all of the exercises together to make a dynamic final piece. Overall, we felt that our physical interpretation was strong and was a good place to begin our piece. Because of this, we began with our interpretation and built in each piece. To include all of our pieces, we changed our interpretation slightly.
It began the same as before, but before we lifted Millie, we did our facts and figures section on loneliness. We overlapped and finished our facts and figures piece and then ended this section by raising Millie into the air and lowering her like the sand. Next, to include the chair duet, we dragged Millie up and onto a chair rather than leaving the stage. Chloe and Millie then did their chair duet, aided by me and Fiona. Finally, we then pushed Millie off of the chair and continued from the end of our original interpretation (we created tremors and dragged Millie off stage).

In conclusion:
Overall, I believe that this workshop was rather helpful towards our devising process. It has given me ideas about how to structure our division process. The workshop as a whole was quite helpful as it showed me how we could create small pieces and then merge them together to create a dynamic performance.
However, I believe that on their own, each exercise was a little repetitive. Many of the things we did in the workshop we had done before. For example, we looked very closely at chair duets at the beginning of our devising in year ten and the workshop gave us no more information about them than we previously knew.
Moreover, I believe it would have been more beneficial to focus on particular sections more. Rather than stuffing as much information in as we could, we could have focused more on specific parts and created shorter, yet more interesting performances.