14th November

This lesson we worked on creating the opening scene to our performance. We started with a modern twist on the greek myth, it is started at a party, and we decided to have a movement piece to start it and get the audience's attention. After creating the start of our movement piece and running out of ideas to include so we decided to try out a greek begining. In this we tried to create a authentic greek party for the king. Two of the guests at the party become intoxicated and start a fight with each other, adding more for the year 7s to watch. Also within it we decided to include a greek dance and an interuption during the dance to add some comedy. This will add entertainment to our piece making it enjoyable for the year 7's, it will also allow me to use some of my skills helping to choreograph and dance it. After trying both ways we decided to stick with the greek beginning as it is different to anything we have done before and we managed to create more for it. 

I have researched some Greek music and looked at videos of Greek dancing to give us inspiration for what to put in the dance. 

Friday 7th November

In each of our groups we decided on what parts of the story we had chosen, Jason and the Argonauts. We chose the journey to the island where the six-armed monsters are. We then created a short piece and put the rest of the class into it. To make it appropriate for the year 7's we tried to add some comedic elements such as slow motion fighting and music to keep them entertained. I also thought of the idea of having crash mats at the front of the stage, covered in scrunched up paper so it looks like rocks, so we can push the 'monsters' off of the front of the stage. This will add excitement and surprise to the performance as people are thrown off the front of the stage. Our part of the story also includes violence and death which appeals to the year 7's we will be performing to. We then included the rest of the class in it, directing them as to what to do. We also made the King very camp and flamboyant to add more comedy to the piece. 

It became quite difficult to create without the whole class as we didn't have enough people to be different characters but we managed to plan around it. I don't think it was the best part of the story to use because of the number of characters, it is also quite a short story and we cannot use a massive range of techniques within it limiting the development of the performance. 

The part I struggled with the most was the slow motion fighting, making it look realistic. I think I need to work on my physicality and making the movements look natural and practise making them flow so it looks like a real fight. A good example of choreographed fighting is at the start of west side story so I am going to watch clips of this and try to learn how they move and get inspiration for what to include.

The first of the other group did the story of the sirens and it was really effective and impressive. The simplicity really worked with the addition of music it was really interesting to watch. I cannot remember what part of the story produced as it wasn't very memorable or entertaining. They needed to develop it further and think about the target audience.