We then were told to think personally about the theme change firstly what came to mind when we thought of the word, I thought of choice, to be open, individuality and voice. Secondly we where told to think of where we personally feel the most free, I descovered that to me this was when I was in a large field as I was able to run, skip, lay, observe and just be. Then we had an open discussion about personal finds we descovered that Freedom itself is a very personal thing as it is not only a literal and physical thing but mental and therefore everyone has there own definition.
We then got into groups of 4 to begin devising a peice on Freedom. We decided to pick a type if person that may feel trapped this would be someone with a gender problem (Tyler played this person) we decided to pick this type of person as we descovered that gender is very entrapping as by being a particular sex certain things are and aren't expected of you. We decided that this peice would be mainly physical theatre as we could really show how caged this particular subject could make people feel. Jacob, Ella and I formed a cage around Tyler by interlocking our arms around him in an almost triangular shape, while we where a around him he struggled to get out and said statements about this particular subject such as ' I can't do certain things that girls can' or ' I am raised differently depending on my gender' after saying this he then said ' but I refuse to be restricted' at that point the cage slowly began to collapse and as Tyler walks away he say I am free. I liked our peice as it was simple yet got the point of a particular kind of freedom and how it was achieved across using minor physical theatre and speech.
All the different groups showed their pieces and we each got feedback. We then did an exercise focusing on freedom we used a chart of 1 to 10, 1 being completely caged and oppressed and 10 being free. This was a physical theatre exercise and we had to use our bodies to show the change between 1 and 10. To start at 1 I was hunched over and tight by 5 I was completely neutral and at 10 I had my hands in the air and was completely loose. This was very visually interesting as everyone had their own physical view of being oppressed and free and at the end of the exercise we added it to the larger peice we where working on. We also added the improved group work to the peice along with some lines from the play about freedom. Towards the end of our peice we added some audience interaction where we asked them ' when do you feel most free?' And after conversing for a while with the audience stopped to hear Sonia read an extract from the the Play about freedom.
We performed these class pieces to the different classes in the Theatre strand and then had small descusions about each others pieces. I learned a lot about the theatre skill of physical theatre this week and how powerful it is as you can say so much by just using your body, I also learned a lot about using themes as a basis for theatre work, as by picking just one theme out of the many we came up with from the play The Cherry Orchard created a 15 minute peice incorporating physical and performance theatre.
