On the Homefront- Week Five

Five weeks down! In just five weeks our talented cast will perform for their audience. That meant that this week it was time to buckle down and begin to shape the initial scenes of the show. Using the characters whom the cast had created for themselves over the past four weeks, the cast fine tuned the narrative which the performance would take and what roles they would all play in the events to come.

We started this week with some ensemble work. Learning to move as a group. Strong teamwork is the basis for successful devising, so we wanted to give the cast a chance to link together as a whole in order to tackle the challenges we gave them as this week's rehearsal kicked off. The aim of the game this week was simple, but required lots of concentration from everyone in order to work. Together the group must start and stop walking. Usually it takes a few practices but once the ball is rolling the cast find that it is easy to synchronise the stopping and starting. Everyone tried hard to focus on the others in the group and were eventually able to make it to the point where they too, stopped and started at the same time.

Once the games were done the cast discussed the finer details of the narrative. As a group they performed a quick speed run of the play, focusing on the bigger events in each scene so that we could map out what happened where and what impact this would have on the larger narrative, as well as each individual character.

Once that was done we moved onto scene one. This involved two different elements of theatre. The first half of the scene involves a physical theatre sequence, while the second introduces dialogue into the play. Using the script, which had been devised for the scene, the cast explored the latter half of the scene. In this scene we establish the different personalities of the characters through dialogue and body language, as well as set into motion events that will have repercussions later on.

The story tells of several teenagers in Exeter during World War II, who oneday, for varying reasons, find themselves in the ruins of St Mary's church. Events unfold and suddenly the group find themselves stranded in the church during an air raid. While they are all trapped in the church, the individuals begin to bond and eventually the ruins become a meeting ground for them to all go to every day.

Once the cast had finished work on the scripted section of the scene it was time to return to the start and look at the initial physical theatre sequence. The choice of this style for the introduction was to incorporate both the sense of a regular day and that of being alive during a time of war, as things go from normal to life-threatening in mere moments.The sequence follows each characters 'journey' through the day and what their characters do when bombs aren't falling. Enough on that, however, we don't want to spoil the show by revealing everything!

Finally, with what time we had left in the rehearsal, the cast improvised 'snippets from St Mary's,' as Jake liked to call it. These snippets involved two or three characters interacting with each other on a normal night in the St Mary's church meeting place. All the stimulus the cast were given was that they had to interact with each other and not leave their designated area of the church. This activity lead to some interesting scenes, however. For instance, a group who were sat atop the broken stairs discussed the stars  and one character's obsession with watching the bombs drop. Another one featured another character revealing that his reasons for not joining the army, while a third involved one of the more abrasive members of the friendship group revealing personal information about himself which he had previously kept hidden. Again, it was incredible to see what the cast created through improvisation and what can be nicely transferred into the established narrative to make it even bigger and better.

Again, we are incredibly impressed with all of the hard effort the cast are putting in. The performance is shaping up to look absolutely brilliant and we can't wait to see it grow even more next week!    

On the Homefront- Week Four

Things were back in full swing with today's rehearsal, following the tragic events of last week which left us low of cast members and made the planned activities much harder. This week was our fourth week on the project and time to start pulling in what has been done over the course of the past four weeks and establish some characters and narrative for the final performance.

We started off this week with Ben's favourite game. After much googling of random objects and scenes, he threw the cast into creating them. Today featured such bizarre shapes as a sofa and a fashion show, the latter of which some members of the cast got quite into.

Once the posing was finished we want on to perform some physical theatre exercises. For this the group walk around the space while listening to calm music. Working together they need all find a similar rhythm and speed to walk at. Once this had been achieved they needed to stop walking at the same time. It is a difficult exercise and one that requires a lot of focus, but it can work and the cast did wonderfully at engaging with each other and working as a team.

 In the next activity the cast were asked to thing about their own ways of moving. With guidance from Ben and Jake, they experimented with moving at different speeds and looking at the transition between those speeds. For instance, running and then stopping abruptly, or walking slowly and then bursting out into a run. Then they were asked to focus on their feet. In the exercise the cast had to pretend they were painting a picture on the floor with their feet and think about how that affected their movement.  Some of the cast worked fantastically at exploring different levels and physicalities to complete their pictures.

After the break the group sat down and discussed the characters that they had shaped over previous weeks. The character whom had featured in our many improvisations all returned as we discussed which characters we would like to feature in the performance. With the framing device of the action being set within a half-destroyed St Anne's church, the cast had a great deal of choice in which characters they felt would best suit a story and provide interactions that an audience would find interesting.

Once the plan was made it was time to launch into some exercises that would help develop these characters physically, while allowing the cast to each explore his or her own self, deciding upon mannerisms and personalities. The success of this endeavour was proved when we sat down afterwards and were able to discuss the characters at length, along with their feelings towards the other characters in the story.

We went through each character's day, from when they got out of bed to them spending a night in an air raid shelter. From this we discussed what kind of lives these characters were leaving and focus in on what might motivate them to do the things they do.

For the final activity of the week we drew the blinds shut and turned on the ballroom lamps. The set up was simple; the cast were their characters and were inside the ruined St Anne's church, a place where they go to feel safe. Everyone was given the stimulus that they had to interact with each other in whatever capacity they felt was right. One person, however, had an additional stimulus. They would bring in a bag of sweets and would have to decide whether or not to share them with the group. During the exercise friendships were formed and enemies made as the sweets were eaten and the air raid siren started to go. Stranded in the church the characters seemed to bond with one another, if only from being trapped in the same situation together. When we discussed the exercise afterwards, every claimed it helped them develop the relationships between their characters. Alas, that was all the time we had this week, however the cast all produced some amazing work and the pieces for the final performance are starting to come together!

On the Homefront Week Three

It gives us no pleasure to announce that this was an unfortunate week. To begin with, the Anthos team would like to acknowledge the horrific events which took place just down the road from the community centre. For those unaware, a fire broke out very early on Friday morning. Despite the best efforts of the emergency services it claimed several buildings, including the Clarence Hotel (the oldest hotel in Britain). The whole team would like to send thanks and support to the individuals who fought the fire and those who now continue to work towards making everything safe again. As a result of these events, most members of our brilliant cast were unable to attend this week's rehearsal.

HOWEVER! There were some cast members who just wouldn't be stopped and so the show carried on. Though we may have been down on numbers this week, it didn't stop us from getting the most out of our rehearsal! This week we also had Mads with us, who co-directed our fabulous production of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' last term.

The original plan for the week quickly discarded, we launched into some new improvisation work. Again, at the forefront of the exercises was the idea of creating different characters who would have lived during the time of the Blitz. With guidance from us, the cast began to explore different avenues and create their own individual characters with their own personality traits and backstories. It was wonderful to watch them work and develop these characters from merely a few words and also to discuss them afterwards. Over the course of the session these characters engaged with each other and a variety of different situations to allow the cast different opportunities to fully explore what they had created and think about what worked well and what didn't.

While it may have been a tough rehearsal, we are very impressed at the professional manner of the cast and, to those who were able to be there, for carrying on as best as we could despite the circumstances. Next week we will be starting to look at the final narrative for the performance and draw together from what the cast has created to begin forming what will be their final product.

On the Homefront- Week Two

TRIP WEEK! 

We were very excited this week to be going on our first ever Anthos outing with our talented AYC members! After playing a quick name game we set off from the community centre and ventured up the road to the RAMM museum. Inside we found the exhibit on World War 2, which featured a colourful range of information about the war and even an actual Anderson shelter! The cast found it interesting to actually glimpse what it would have been like inside one while the air raid siren blared and the bombs fell. We also learned about St Anne's church and how it was bombed during one particularly destructive raid, as well as some of the fashion at the time. 

Once we returned to the community centre we wasted no time in getting stuck into the week's activities. As usual, the week featured Ben's obligatory 'make a shape' game. This week we saw pentagons, a pair of shoes and even an iwatch. Next we moved on to some more improv games. This week the cast (and Jake) were given different stimuli which they had to use as the basis for creating a scene. They were split into two groups; one group was given the word 'freedom' as their stimuli and the other was given 'struggle.' 

Both groups worked hard and produced remarkable scenes that respectfully engaged with the stimuli they had been given. The first group focused on the 'freedom of creativity' and featured two office employees who try to convince their boss that their business ideas are worth his investment, while the second dealt with the 'struggle of addiction' and looked in at a local therapy group as they expressed their addictions and their struggles. 

Finally we dived into the war. Using the ideas and suggestions we came up with last week we mapped out some characters with our cast, who then adopted them for the following task. That task was an extended improvisation in which these characters would go about their daily lives in the war. The characters included:

An evacuee from London.

A Devon local, who wasn't too fond of the evacuees and people who were not local. 

Two brothers, one old enough to join the army and the others much younger and slowly coming to terms with life in war-time Britain. 

A girl who went to work with her mother in a factory. 

With prompts from Jake and Ben, the cast searched through piles of rubble for scrap to sell for food, explored their relationships to one another and took cover in an air raid shelter  as the siren went and the bombs began to fall. In total the improvisation lasted nearly half an hour and afterwards the cast discussed the details about their characters which had emerged during exercise. It was incredible to see how well thought out they all were and how grounded they were in the facts we had discussed around the topic. 

The final exercise of the day was to split the group up. One of the brothers was placed in one group, who had found their way into an air raid shelter, but without the other brother, who had wound up taking shelter in a church with the girl from London. 

This improvisation played on the strengths of what the cast had created the first time, using the relationships they had established to form new stories, scenarios and challenges for those characters. The results were two very heart wrenching scenes the brought new levels and depth to the characters which would blow an audience away if placed on a stage next week. 

The cast undoubtedly produced some incredible work this week and we're very excited to see where they can go from here!