1.

What was your initial response to the stimuli and what were the intentions of the
piece?

The stimulus we were presented with to spark ideas for our devising was a quote stating "The
21st Century addiction to technology". Following collaborative discussion, we presented all
of our ideas on a mind map as seen below.

*Pic*

We were also presented with two other forms of stimuli, the second being an image of a sand-
glass timer and the third being a famous quote from Albert Einstein stating “Insanity: doing
the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. However, we felt more
connected to the concept of technology and therefore decided on the quote from stimulus one
as our primary stimuli. As a group we began discussing all of our ideas which related to the
stimulus and connected to us as people who have grown up with technology all around us.
The theme which were integral to our ideas were, addiction, parental control and the idea that
those engrossed within technology become detatched from the real world. Following group
discussion, I suggested that our piece could follow the narrative of a girl who is addicted to
technology and thus is having a huge impact on her life and those around her. This was a
successful idea as we intended to make our protagonist relatable to our audience members. I
also suggested that our protagonist was of a similar age to our audience members, with the
intention of not only connecting our audience to our character but also for our audience to
feel empathy and understanding of our character. Following further discussion about this idea
of a narrative, we began to consider key figures in the life that play an integral role in
supporting our protagonist and her addiction. As we are a group of 4, we wanted to ensure all
members in the devising group played an equal role in the narrative. I suggested that the key
figures in her life would be a therapist, and two parents. In order to highlight our idea of
addiction further, I suggested that we presented the notion that all characters were somewhat
addicted themselves. We discussed different forms of addiction, such as drugs, alcohol and
exercise however, we wanted to continue to focus purely on technology to ensure that we
would not saturate our piece. We therefore decided to solely focus on the addiction of social
media. Our dramatic intention of our devised piece was to education our audience members
about not only the impact of technology but to be aware of the amount of addiction we face in
our daily lives and how we are reliant on technology.

2. What work did your group do in order to explore the stimuli and start to create ideas
for performance?

The first rehearsal exercise we explored practically was the idea of creating still images
which represented the concept of being attached to technology. In our first image, we had one
performer holding placard which stated "screen" (representing technology), behind the screen
we had another performer pulling a third performer towards the screen. This image
successfully represented the idea that we are drawn towards technology beyond our control.
*Pic 1*
In our second image, we were inspired by our study of physical theatre and in this image we
had one performer using her body to represent a table, with a computer on her chest while a
second performer was typing on the computer. This image once again represented how
technology has become such a huge aspect of our lives.
*Pic 2*
The third image resented one character being happy, this was once again achieved using
physical theatre of a girl demonstrating her acrobatic skills. Also in the image we had a girl
holding a mobile phone while being blind folded by a third character. This represented the
notion that those who watch others happiness through social media are blinded by perfection
and the expectation of happiness.
*Pic 3*
As performers in each of these images, we had to ensure that our facial expression
communicated our emotions clearly to our audience, as you can see in each of these images
our facial expressions are bold and expressive, whilst also communicating our characters with
bold physicality. The incorporation of physical theatre successfully enabled us to use each
performer effectively without the requirement for set and props on stage.
In order to commence the script writing process, we discussed potential ideas for scenes that
we could include in our piece. I suggested that we created a scene demonstrating conflict in
our character life. We improvised a scene based on the idea of parents shouting at their
daughter for spending too much of time on social media. This scene was staged with parents
standing stage left, whilst arguing with the daughter stage right. Following an evaluation of
this scene, we decide against using it in our final piece, although we wanted to keep the idea
of parents trying to help their daughter with her social media addiction because this directly
related to our dramatic intention of our piece. I also wanted to ensure that we kept these key
integral roles in our narrative and therefore we decided that we would use these characters in
our script for later scenes.

3. What were some of the significant moments during the development process and
when rehearsing and refining your work?

During our early rehearsals stages we wanted to establish a central location for our piece of
theatre. Following a discussion of our dramatic intention which was to educate our audience
about mental health, we felt it would be integral to locate our piece in a therapy session. We
considered different ways of staging the scene, and following a practical exploration of
improvising scenes using different configurations, such as in the round and end on, we
decided the most appropriate would be an end of configuration with the therapist sitting stage
right and the mobile phone addict sitting stage left. This configuration successfully enabled
us to ensure that the audience to see both characters facial expressions clearly throughout the
scenes. Following further spontaneous improvisation, we spent a considerable amount of time
refining the dialogue within the therapy scenes. Following extensive research, we wanted to
ensure that we were using the correct language which would be heard within a therapy
session. I suggested to my group that we would write a script, to ensure not only the language
was authentic, but it felt natural and had depth. The script writing process was successful as
we were able to agree collaboratively on what would be included. However, as we lacked
knowledge in script writing, this could have been developed and refined further with more
experience. We also discussed the idea of taking inspiration from our second and third stimuli
in this scene. Initially we discussed the connection between the quote from Albert Einstein
and the application of tik tock, watching something over and over. Following research into
social media, we came across the abundance of tik tok dances and reels which fill the home
page on most accounts. We wanted to include this in our piece in someway to show the level
of repetition people face when spending a significant amount of time on social media. We
came across one dance in particular and decided to include this in our piece as a visual
representation of my character's online experience. To make this engaging for our audience,
we performed this is a stylised way. It took a considerable amount of time to rehearse and
refine the dance, ensuring that all members of the cast performed in perfect synchronisation.
We successfully included turns and gestures in a dramatic way. As the scene progressed, we
repeated the dance a number of times, the first being Eva on her own, second with her
mother, then her father and finally the therapist. As each dance progressed, we wanted to
communicate the level of addiction to our audience and in doing so we increased the volume
of the sound and added another character into each dance with the final dance encompassing
all 4 characters in the piece. I particularly felt this was relatable to our audience, as we often
see dances on tiktok and we see people learning the same dances all over the
world. Throughout our piece, we also included the third stimuli which was the sand-glass
timer. We used this image which was projected onto our cyclorama as a visual representation
of a passing of time to our audience. Throughout of piece the timer was going down, which
successfully communicated a progression towards the end of our piece. This was my idea and
I was pleased we could include this in our final performance.

4. How did you consider genre, structure, character, form, style and language throughout
the process?

I was aware that the concept of mental health and addiction is quite a sensitive topic and
therefore wanted to approach this in a light hearted manor. Following numerous discussions
with my group, we decided to stage this in the genre of comedy. We not only wanted to
successfully educate our audience about the impact of technology addiction but we also
wanted to entertain them. In order to make this a successful comedy we initial made our stock
characters comedic, firstly with the parents in the way they spoke. Firstly the mother and
father had an interesting dynamic where they would argue frequently and be patronising to
each other. In terms of their vocal skills, the mother would often raise her voice, in
juxtaposition with the father using a downward inflection. This would reinforce the
dysfunctional relationship between the parents. Anther comedic element from our piece was
the repetition of the TikTok dance. We knew this would become frustrating for our audience,
but the repetition would represent the absurdity of how reliant we are on technology. The
structure of our piece was linear as followed one therapy session into a consecutive scene
where the main character Eva was attempting to arrange a follow up session. I felt it was
integral for our piece to be linear as they were discussing the impact of technology in the
moment. We discussed ideas of including flash backs of scene went technology had an
impact of the lead characters life, however, we wanted to focus the majority of our piece on
the single therapy session as this would be more clear for our audience. In terms of the
characters within our piece, we had 4 key roles. The daughter (Eva), the mother, the father
and the therapist. Each of these roles played an integral part in the piece and were seen
throughout. We wanted to communicate a familiar family dynamic to the audience and
therefore decided on the mother and father figured. The therapist was a serious character who
took her job seriously, we successfully communicated the therapists frustration by the family
in moments such as unplanned entrances and a lack of focus. This character would contrast
significantly from the daughter and her parents. Each of these characters aimed to be relatable
to our audience, whilst providing a contemporary feel to the performance. Finally the lead
protagnist performed by myself was your typical teenage girl who spends a considerable
amount of time on social media. Following reflection, it would have been worth changing the
name of the character as I could have explored the character in more depth, considering more
of her own backstory, thus adding complexity into my performance. The style of our piece
was very naturalistic given the dialogue within the therapy session. The language we used
was very colloquial and with formal language used by the therapist which contrasted with the
family and Eva. However, the naturalistic language contrasted with the non-naturalistic
repetition of the dances. This added a different layer to our piece to successfully make it
engaging to watch for our audience.

5. How effective was your contribution to the final performance?

Overall I was pleased with my contribution to both the devising process and the final
performance. Firstly, I was pleased to be able to take on the principal role within this piece,
this was initially a significant challenge for myself as I had not performed a principal role
before. In terms of the final performance, In order to successfully communicate my
characters frustration to her parents, I raised my voice and delivered lines with a patronising
tone. My character would often avoid questions, I would often do this my being distracted by
my phone. In order to communicate this to the audience I would avoid eye contact with the
other characters in the scene. On the line "Mum, you have been spying on me", I raised my
voice and presented a shocked facial expression to show her anger towards my mother. In
terms of proxemics, I successfully communicated her anger by standing up on this line and
confronting the mother character face on. Whilst I was pleased with my performance of my
character, on reflection I could have explored my characters back story further using a hot
seating task. This would have enabled me to understand my character in more detail. I also
feel I could have considered my characters costume more, as the costume I wore was very
neutral and it didn't represent my character enough to my audience.

6. Were you successful in what you set out to achieve?

The overall dramatic intention of our piece was to educate our audience about not only the
impact of technology but the notion that society is never protected from addiction and that
addiction is all around us. On reflection, I do believe we weren't wholeheartedly successful as
our audience members lost the intention of being educated due to our inclusion of comedy
within our piece. I feel that the comedic moments over-shadowed the serious topic and
therefore the intention to educate our audience was lost. If we were to perform this piece
again, I would have focused more on the therapy session and the conversation between the
daughter and the therapist. I also feel we could have included scenes from just the parents
discussing the impact that technology addiction is having on their daughters life to express
the importance of the message further. Whilst the intention of this piece was to educate the
audience, we were successfully in entertaining them. Throughout the final performance,
audience members were laughing and following conversations with audience members they
had enjoyed our piece and were clear on our message. I also believe that it would have been
more useful for us to study different styles and forms of theatre in preparation for our
devising project, to take inspiration from different theatre practitioners. Prior to this we had
only studied naturalistic devising methods and therefore we were limited with devising ideas.