Weekend 2 of Research and Development

This is our second weekend and things have begun to settle and take hold. We want to have a clear selection at the end of this weekend of scenes that we will perform at the showing at the BAC on the 28th of March. We have a new source of inspiration to play with a book called The Rubaiyat by Omar Khayyam, Illustrated by Robert Stewart Sherriffs. We are keen to see how we frame our piece and what comes from this device.

Day 1: BOVT Basement
Warm up and movement exercises. We looked at the images in the Rubaiyat and chose one as a tool to improvise from and around. Setting up the tableaux with the objects and materials in the room. We have also generated two animal puppets a bird and a cat that are in the image.  This takes us into a series of improvisations. Where is she going, what is her choice, why is she so determined, how do the animals around her respond. Is it a question of staying and being domestic like a cat or free like a bird. How can we play the scene with to puppeteers, then the puppeteers take on the qualities of the animals and pursue one another. Combining the puppet as a costume for the puppeteer to have more freedom and movement.  After lunch we discovered some masks we could use instead of objects for our puppet faces. This lead on to a series of improvisations around manipulation and passing around characters and letting the puppet dominate the puppeteer.

Day 2: Bridewell Dance Space

A personal research day, we all needed a bit of a pause so consider what was being created and so we each carried out different task. Miranda developed some choreography, Lizzie research arabic music and chanting. Liesel found more material and clothing to use for Sunday. I read passages from the Rubaiyat to think about how to frame our stories.  Physically my back was playing up so we decided not to carry out movement work today.

Day 3: Bridewell Dance Space

Warm up. The Morning was a puppetry skills session. We worked on passing, dancing and maneuvering in and out of characters giving them two hands, spins and couple dancing. Keeping the puppet alive and moving whilst being able to dance and swap between them. Then we carried out vocal work, learning a song. We then had the space set up and carried out a long improvisation and discovered new characters with mask puppets and found them to be more sinister than objects. They seem to be better able to connect with a human character, we had some haunting family scenes.

After Lunch there was long discussion about FRAME. Was this coming out of a dream, a book that a character reads, a story on character is telling another. We decided that the most playful option was to come at it from the child and mothers relationship. We have a list of established scenes we have found in our 6 days. We now want to polish these of and reduce them down. We have a list of characters that we will work with.  We then recapped on existing choreography and packed up.