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listening to the radio

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creating the Polar Bears performance for the immersed festival!

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Market Based Solution!

After all of this, the question I ask myself and my group is; did this performance portray our message of ecology and climate change to audiences? Personally I believe we did, even though I struggled to understand some of the other performances and how they possibly connected to climate change or ecology I believe each group had their own specific objective and message and this might work even better instead of every performance being the same. Every group should have its own message and our group in my opinion, achieved this. With the portrayal of our characters leaving the viewers wondering if we were polar bears, humans or both and how our characters show how we think through climate change today which is that we allow things to get difficult and change and we possibly leave it too late to change and we are using pointless solutions or we just feel so defeated by our eco system that we have given up trying to think of anything that can really change our world. I think that our performance shows how not just one person can work towards helping the world or destroying it and that we cant make change when we are apart, like these two polar bears who struggle to get each other to get on the same page and try to find real ways of saving themselves from a dark future just like humans. Hopefully if we do come together to find the solution and dedicate to it, it’s not that we should eat the audience!

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Polar Bears take the stage

On the day of the performance, we spent a lot of time with our exercises to make sure that we were ready for the big show. This consisted of voice, stretches, staging and more which helped us get in character and loosen up from all the stress. However, a couple days before we were told that our group would have an extra performance in the theater which we were really excited for but then we’re told that the performance would not be traverse which meant we had a couple of days to prepare the performance but blocked completely different with no idea what props and items would be there because we weren’t able to bring the ones we used originally. Quickly we tried to figure out ways of doing it but had to be open to change due to us not knowing what would be on stage and it was good we decided to leave it more to improvisation because this performance in our opinion would be our best. Finishing in the morning performance meant we had some time to get in the mindset of a different stage and audience but when we entered the theatre we saw multiple large chairs and a small table from a talk that happened previously and no time to practice with this because there was multiple other seminars and talks happening before and straight after we left the stage. Although we met with multiple problems, myself and Leon with Henry’s direction was able to make this performance more outgoing and entertaining than before as we relied on our characters to lead the way instead of our staging and interactions with audience members. Finally, I personally felt that the festival and our performances were very successful and that we had a clear and simple message that were communicated to our audiences who would leave that theater and continue to think and maybe even act on the issues of climate change.

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Dead Planet

 For one of our lectures, guest speaker Pauline Bourdon came in to talk to us about climate change and how we and others can make a difference. The talk started with a video that shows other parts of the world that have had a great negative impact from climate change. The talk continued with Pauline telling us how people help with securing our beautiful world and reduce the amount of fossil fuel and rubbish that causes the world to change. The talk then opened to audiences discussing these issues and how changes could be made with the first unsurprising question being, “how can we help?” this was met with what I thought was quite controversial. “grow your own food” was what we were given and considering most people in that room bar 1 or 2 don’t own a garden but what I thought was just one of many suggestions turned out to be one suggestion which started a debate of how we are told by Pauline “we are responsible for our future” and we “should be doing whatever we can” was hypocritical and a little insulting since climate change has been around for a long time and that everyone else is just as responsible as people who have not been around long. The question I would ask is why is climate change placed and pressured on us when the rest of the world and people before us should be just as responsible? This world is all of our home and should not be placed on the younger generations to be responsible for the world becoming worse.

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so, the problem

Throughout our rehearsals we had a few problems that we was soon able to solve but took time and really helpful techniques. One example of this was how we were never able to practice with people sat in the audience until the last couple of rehearsals which was a difficult task as our performance required audiences to interact with and not having this made us look off into the void instead of looking at people and we worried we would have this issue on the day of the assessment. Our director Henry came up with an idea where we would sit and talk to him while he held a camera to make sure we did it right and we could practice addressing our lines to a person instead of the void. Another issue was how we spoke and that we were going through the lines too fast making the piece too rushed. The solution to this was not speaking slower as our characters needed the quick back and forth so we made our lines fast but the pauses between them longer and it worked a lot more smoothly.

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Drop in the Ocean

drop in the ocean

“What happens when you throw a stone into water? Make a wish in a well? Have a wash in the sink? What are the stories and statistics that come flooding out the tap? Water shapes our landscapes; enters, leaves and fills our bodies; connects us all. But how much do we need? And where is it all coming from?”. This is Jess Allen’s message to the world.

During some of our lectures we looked into different practitioners of performance and ecology and one of them stood out to me with their unique techniques and mindset towards ecology in performance. Jess Allen brings awareness to audiences through walking in circles around a point but get larger as she goes so that it looks like a ripple in water when a stone is thrown to symbolise our impact on water. She does this whilst carrying a yoke and buckets over her shoulders, one filled with water and the other with stones. As Jess goes on her adventure she will stop and talk to people and ask them to pick up one of the stones, make a wish and throw it in the bucket of water.

Jess Allen expresses the connection of water and how it brings us closer to one another but also reveals more about ourselves. She mentions how this can remind us of how we use water, why we need it and why it is so important. Jess talks about our feelings and senses and that we should reconnect with water to make every day feel more extraordinary. When Jess had finished with her walks she would have a gallery of all her work set up for people to see and experience with maps, stones set out to picture her journey, bags of water containing items found on her journey and many more items to show humanities connection to water.

Jess is a performance artist from Aberystwyth, she mainly works as an eco-activist with her walking art in rural landscapes but she also has a PhD in biology and a PhD in contemporary performance. Jess also trained as a dancer and worked as a landscape and conservation officer.

I personally felt a connection between Jess and our Polar Bears piece as they both strive to bring audiences closer to their message in unique ways and instead of just performing, they actually interact with audiences which allows that stronger bond to be made and makes our message more clear. I also was inspired by Jess because of her social media and constant uploading of beautiful pictures and videos of her adventures in nature and meeting strangers to include in her project. This inspired this blog and how I needed to show audiences not just in person but over social media the work that we are doing and the message we want to spread about climate change. She has inspired us how small ripples can make such a large impact on the bigger picture and those around us and that we can cause more people to create ripples in the water, spreading our hope of a better future.

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Setting the stage

The first task was blocking the stage and how we would move with the stage being traverse. This forced us to have a simple set so we had blocks for the two characters to sit on and then a larger block for us to place items on. We did struggle for a time on going back and forth, making sure we didn’t cut off audiences but also moving enough so we weren’t stuck still and making the piece stiff and boring. Once we had figured out how to traverse the stage we moved onto what we could use for props and the first item we thought of was a radio that would play news about climate change which would start the piece and tells audiences what the subject of our performance is. Other props we used were a water cup which shouldn’t be logical in the arctic because it should freeze but it was a good symbolisation of climate change and we used a vape which the one character would use to calm his nerves.

Another thing we looked into was costume and we knew it would have to be simple because we had no budget. The first idea was to get polar bear onesies but we gave up that idea because we wanted our characters to look more human and for audiences to realise that we were polar bear and not people. For Leon, he would wear white jumper, black trousers and white socks but for me who was the more human-like bear I would wear a large fleece with a shirt and tie over the top to show the character was different.

We knew instantly that our voices would not be good enough for the performance so we decided to make them more comedic with my character having a nasal voice for a stereotypical nerd and Leon would have a more deep voice and his words would be more dragged out to present his more simple minded character. Doing a different voice was difficult to start with as I didn’t know what voice Henry wanted exactly and how to practice the voice but with enough time I was taught some techniques so that I could get the right voice and get the voice perfect before performances. The same went for Leon who had to act more like an animal and spent time practicing roars and deepening his voice.

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Polar Bears

The purpose of our performance was to make audiences more aware of climate change during the immersed festival at USW. Myself and the group I was with had multiple performances to choose from but as we read through them, we noticed that a lot of the shows didn’t look like they connected to climate change that much or at all and we though that audiences wouldn’t know the message of this performance if they were not at a festival about climate change. Eventually, the group came to a decision with the performance Polar Bears which was about 2 polar bears who are getting continuously hungry and warm and attempt to find a solution to their troubles whether that be standing up to the government or eating the audience and we knew that this would be a fun show for our audiences who would be able to understand our message and enjoy it at the same time with a laugh.

When we started looking into the play we thought that the characters had very good chemistry with one being nerdy and trying to find a civil way to solve a problem and a more simple minded character who just thinks about eating audience members. This gave us the thought of having these characters dress and act completely different from each other even though they are both polar bears. We also noticed these characteristics would affect their voice, posture and how animalistic they acted.

As a group of 3 but the performance only being a 2 man show, myself and Leon would perform with Henry directing us. I was given the nerdy polar bear who would lecture the audience with his annoying voice and Leon was the hungry bear who just wanted to eat and wasn’t the brightest spark. Our first session started with us reading through the script and brainstorming our ideas which is when we decided the characteristics and how we would set this especially after finding out that the stage would be traverse, giving us a bit more of a challenge.

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bibliography

Homer, 8th century BC. The Iliad. Ancient Greece. Homer

Homer, 8th century BC. The Odyssey. Ancient Greece. Homer

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Personal assessment

Personally, I do not think I have developed in any way as a performer or learnt anything new from this performance. I do not believe their were any real challenges that i would normally have when creating other pieces, instead it was challenges like trying to manage my fellow group members and their absences, lack of interest and dedication to the piece and not having simple things in the piece like sound and music which felt like it took away from the piece. I wished that I would be able to be more free with the piece as it felt forced towards things like the genre and having to use Greek tragedy and not being able to change it into something new and unique from a different point of view.

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4th and 5th session

Another thing we had to work on was the costume which had to become simple due to the constant multi rolling and too much costume would create long waits in between scenes so we stuck with white shirts and black jeans with slight changes like adding some armour and masks. The next thing we had to come up with was sound and lighting. Lighting went quite well with us having everything we wanted with some compromises over some things being too difficult to create. The main disappointment was sound as we were not able to have any due to the fact that we needed two people if we wanted both and could not get a second person.

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2nd and 3rd session

The next thing after assigning characters and creating their personalities was getting it up on its feet and going from scene to scene to block it. This worked quite well but there were things like sets which bothered me as we didn't have much through the piece except the end and there was a lot of scene changing and multi roling. 

After trying to fix these issues, we decided that we have no choice to keep it the same due to the story containing too many characters and cutting them would be making it even more difficult and confusing as the story would be missing pieces. The other issue for this was having such a large story with so many characters and only having a 4 person group which was cut down to 3 due to constant absence creating further issues. The other issue was the set which we could also not use because of constant scene changes but we had to deal with it because of the same reasons as characters, cutting out pieces would confuse the story. 

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1st session

Our first session took place a few months after due to many lessons being taken up with games, warmups and dancing with little time left to discuss the pieces but we did come up with small ideas and suggestions for things like set, costume, scenes, etc and even some suggestions from group members to the genre and theme like turing a comedic war between two pathetic kings into a gay romance which didnt end up making it in the final piece as i felt it made no sense or connections to the story we was trying to tell. 

After this we were able to start with characters and how they would act, whilst making small adjustments to make them more comedic. As a huge fan of comedy I was able to pull inspiration from many places but the main source was the group Monty Python who have made multiple stories like this and have turned events and stories that people take seriously like Jesus Christ and turned them into comedies. This inspired characters for our piece like Paris and Menelaus (the two kings) to act like idiots and made to look stupid which would relate to the actual point of their war.