Lesson 3

Soundscape

We started the lesson by creating a vocal soundscape based around New York. I closed my eyes and tried to picture the city which I had only seen in TV shows or films. I pictured the tall skyscrapers, busy traffic and annoyed citizens. I decided to create a sound of a car horn to show the manic chaos and busy traffic in New York. There were many effective sounds such as footsteps or car noises. However, some of the noises weren’t very good, such as some people attempting a New York accent which is very difficult to do properly. It was very effective when the sounds slowly built up, getting louder and louder as the city got more chaotic. As more and more people started to join in on the soundscape, it became increasingly more hectic, showing how busy and full-of-life New York is. I think this works very well as it creates the illusion of New York very effectively and allows the audience to close their eyes and imagine that they are there. Furthermore, it helped me to visualise the city in my head and relate to the character that was there. The soundscape as a whole was very effective in showing the business of the city and how it is very hectic. I think our sounds together worked really well! The only thing that would have improved the exercises was creating more original sounds to contribute as all the sounds were very similar

Physical Theatre sequence

We created a physical theatre piece based around New York. To begin our idea process, we decided to get up from our feet and just experiment with moving around the space in an original and inventive manner. We listened to the LCD Soundsystem song, we found it a lot easier to create movement since we could experiment with the song's range in volume and tension. We decided to push the lead character of the girl around. We would push and catch her in a particular order and repeat this. We did this to an accompanied soundscape from the other half of the class and the song ‘New York I Love you but you're bringing me down.’ I think this is a good start as it relates to the songs by representing how she feels like she is mistreated by society and that nobody cares for her. She feels insignificant and worthless in such a historic and magnificent city. After a while, we decided, as a group, that a better way of doing this piece was to let our character fall from person to person. We decided that they should stumble and try to regain balance before falling into the other person. I found this to be a lot more effective as it went with the lyric 'you're bringing me down'. Moreover, it shows the chaos in the city and the urgency, impatience and selfishness of the citizens passing by as she feels trapped or lost. I think that this is effective. However, this could be improved as it seems unorganised at the moment. However, I’m sure it will become smoother after rehearsing it more. I felt like this exercise had a lot of potential to be aesthetically pleasing. However, we would need to work on the piece to improve it significantly.

Gesture

We each created a repeated gesture to show the feeling of being trapped. This was very effective as it showed a variety of interpretations of what being trapped felt like. There were many effective moves such as banging on a wall or reaching out and grabbing your own hand. Performing the movements as a class looked so professional and artistic. I decided to create a movement in which there were two walls closing in on me and I was attempting to push them away. I tried to imagine how this would feel, the walls would be very heavy and I would be panicking and desperately attempting to escape. I slowly pushed the walls back while my body was tense and shaking and my facial expression showed my fear and desperation. I felt like this was a very effective gesture to use as it portrayed my fear and showed that I was trying to escape. This was effective as it represents the mind of someone who is mentally ill as they are trying to escape particular thoughts or emotions but are permanently trapped within their own minds.

Hiding emotions and insecurities

We got into partners to show the differences in how men and women hide their emotions. At first, we were quite unsure about how we were going to show it but once we thought about it, the ideas came quite organically. We created a short scene around the stimulus of hiding our emotions. My partner was Becky and we explored the techniques of trying to act overly manly or feminine, laughing, changing the subject and sarcasm. This was effective as we could demonstrate how these methods are very common and how we all try to be someone that we’re not. This relates to the theme of mental health as a lot of people who suffer from mental health issues lie about how they really feel and want everyone to think that they’re okay when they’re suffering a lot. I think this piece was very successful in showing how different genders hide their emotions in different ways, however we decided to show it in a more comedic way. We included sarcasm, laughing, appearance. However, some people didn’t take this piece very seriously and wanted to make it very comedic rather than clearly demonstrating how we hide behind a mask. This exercise was base around discovering and portraying how we attempt to hide how we really feel and act strong on the outside. We all find different ways to hide. Everybody goes through a time where they attempt to hide how they truly feel. We discussed this in groups and found out that some common method included trying to act overly manly or feminine, laughing, changing the subject and sarcasm. We all sat on the floor, with people of the same gender as ourselves, and began to discuss how we hide our emotions when we're feeling upset or insecure about something. For girls, make up is a common part in hiding emotions or insecurities about your image because it is like a mask that shows that you are okay although you may be awful underneath. Furthermore, make up often makes girls feel a lot better because if you look good, you start feeling good. We also spoke about how girls often smile, laugh and/or use sarcasm to hide their true feelings. Boys would hide in a very different ways by trying to acting more masculine, we would make jokes about ourselves or appear overly aggressive. This exercise taught me that different people hide in different ways although different genders hide in completely different ways. There are some topics that we don’t like to talk about, therefore we will try and avoid the question or change the subject matter when it is brought up. People may laugh about subjects they are insecure about in order to pretend that it doesn’t bother or affect them.

Song

We listened to the song ‘New York, I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down’ by LCD Soundsytem. This song was quite emotional and upsetting. It was about a man who felt trapped and insignificant within the large city. In my opinion, I think New York confused and overwhelmed the protagonist. A new study found that New York City is the most unhappy major metropolitan area in the U.S. This shocked me as New York is portrayed as such an amazing and lively place in films and the song and my own personal research juxtapose this.

The song and lyrics are here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGQCzDqnSyY