Mark's Lesson and feedback

The lesson before Mark came in to teach us he requred us to bring in tot he next workshop, 200 words on found text, 200 words evaluating the text.
The found text i brought in was found that evening in the evening standard on my home from university...

A chance to star in Sixties-style film noir on streets of London

It is your chance to take part in a real-life film noir, a living drama that unfolds in the backstreets of London.

About a thousand competition winners will be directed, a pair at a time, to an old-fashioned Citroën DS.
Stepping inside, they will find themselves back in the Sixties in the middle of a tale told by actors from theatre company Punchdrunk. In The Night Chauffeur, femmes fatales and secret agents pour out their “life stories” as the titular Frenchman drives through quiet lanes for the 15-minute drama.
Participants may even find themselves out on the streets in encounters with other characters, although guinea pigs at the official launch night easily found their way back to the starting point.
The unusual adventure is the idea of marketing director James Watson, to promote new lager Stella Artois Black. It is open to members of the public who buy the drink at venues across London, who can then submit their details online for a chance to take part.
Bookings are offered on a first come, first served basis.
The show takes place at venues from The Westbourne in Notting Hill, The Dove in Broadway Market and The Ten Bells in Spitalfields between November 14 and 25.
www.stellaartoisblack.com

The Guardian review is on http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2010/nov/09/punchdrunk-stella-artois-corporate-theatre

This text led me to research into punchdrunk as a theatre company.For seven years, Punchdrunk have created theatre in unlikely spaces: wild gardens, disused factories, and at festivals such as the Big Chill. Their approach puts the visual, physical and musical before the text. I discovered they do a lot of site specific and "Happenings" style performances. One of these being The tempest where they found a derelict warehouse in deptford and created a sensory experience for the audience to experience the performance through stenches to spices. The masque of the red death was another performance they put on at the BAC. An Edgar Allan Poe gory story they evolved into a performance.
I then researched into Edgar Allan Poe and found one of his plays i had previously witnessed on The simpsons when Lisa made a small construction of "The tell tale heart"
I read the whole story and enjoyed the description, creepy first hand perspective and suspense it created. I thought this, combined with the most recent Punchdrunk project of the 1930's film noir setting and femme fatale theme was the perfect idea for my groups performance.
I was overwhelmed with excitement ready to engage with my group and the objects i was bringing with me including a morrocon lamp and a giant 30's 40's style lampshade i recovered from the thousands of shmae drais( a yiddish word for bits and bobs that are just laying around not looking pretty)my mother in law left when she moved out of her house.I felt an attraction to the lampshade even though i always hated it when she actually had it up in her house. Not sure why but i took it with me to the lesson. When we got to the lesson we had to get into our groups and show our objects, read our texts to the group.
I didnt feel as though my group were as excited as me and they didnt really 'get' what i wanted to do. I had spoken to them the last lesson about looking up Rajni Shah gift idea but neither of them had any feedback on the instillation that Rajni had Small gifts.

Rajni Shah is a performance artist who experiments with concepts, ideas and relationships between people, culture and identity. Based in Britain but with Indian origin, she focuses on the contrasts of the two cultures east and west and how they can also intertwine. Her work can be interactive, where the audience become involved (Dinner with America) or durational. (Mr. Quiver) She experiments with what it is to be human, using her body as a tool of expression. A reason she removed her hair so as to not be judged or have any excess to add a label to who she is. Often taking on different roles displaying how accustomed one can be when in different environments. Much of her recent work has involved America, the depiction of western culture. Delving into the reasons behind this and what can be extracted from Dinner with America, the outcome should reveal what messages she is trying to convey and what else can be extracted from the performance in question. I think the concept of small gifts where she left beautiful small gifts hanging for people to just take for themselves was to show that like the western world where one is always expecting something in return for giving it was a selfless giving and therefore a true gift. Jewish faith states that the kindest thing you can do for someone is do it for them anonymously making it completely selfless act.

Anyway after we discussed our written texts and found texts, we had to get into small groups and tell each other about our morning. We had to include all the details and once we had heard each others, we had to go to another group as a group and tell the story of our own mornign again or perhaps someone elses morning but tell it as our own.

I enjoyed this and felt it benefited us. When working in groups its important to take on board what our peers tell us and not be too self indulged in our own life. I repeated a combination of my own morning with someone elses and alot of people created a comical scenario once this was repeated numerous times to different groups.

 One guy in the class of his morning where he repetitively listened to one section of a song in the cab on his way to university, and another told me how he got shouted at for throwing a banana skin on the ground by a neighbour who called him from the window above.

The next activity was to break the whole class into two groups and each use the text we had heard and "cut it up" using all the space whilst the othere side of the class watched.

I enjoyed spectating rather than participating this time i liked the way some people in the group interacted with the audience in an intimate way, and some just spoke to one another as they walked around.

My group and I discussed how we could use the idea of gifts and handing out invitations to the class and meeting them at Stratford bus station. There we would talk to the general public giving them the gift of "time".

We spoke about the western world and how people are always rushing, gifts are always seen as material things.

What if we classified gifts as untangiable? Like listening, time, love, friendship? How would people react? How would we get our message across without being too obvious?

I really wanted to imitate the Punchdrunk style of  dress as femme fatale charachters from the 1930's with an air of mystery...as if in a detective story leading a few audience members to another performer and the unexpected, but wasnt sure how my group felt about that. They seemed intrested but uninthusiastic.