Creative Process

Creative Process

The original idea of visual, heritage and culture, ended up in being a visual, comedy performance. Here is the journey which was taken to result in the final performance.

The visual aspect of the performance was something which I knew I wanted to do from the beginning of the module. The original idea was for the class to form different groups/families who weren’t from earth, who had travelled there to find something important, which none of us were quite sure of yet. There was an idea of a huge tree being found in the middle of Winchester high street, which was decorated all over and extremely visually pleasing.

So after that discussion I looked into tree dressing.

Tree dressing is something done within a culture, to remember its heritage. A way of linking one life to the next. An example of this is The Bo-Tree in Chir-Chat, India.

Local women tie pieces of their clothing to the branches of the ancient tree which reputedly witnessed the appearance of the god Krishna to the gopis (cow-girls). ‘It is an act of devotion expressed through one of nature's most enduring emblems to link this life with the next.’ (Common Ground, 2006.)

When people got into groups, all the focus was mainly put on the group you were in, so we drifted away from the tree idea. I still wanted to create something visual though.
We looked at circles, and the way that they have been involved in street performance in many different ways, for many years. On the street, when creating a performance, the audience will always circle around the performers, whether there is a clear line laid out of this or not. Performers used to lay a long piece of string on the ground, forming a circle shape, to indicate to performers where their stage was.
 Circles are also an extremely ritualistic source, and this is shown in landmarks like Stonehenge.

Kira, Ashleigh and I formed a group, luckily all wanting to create something quite visual. The creative process which we then went through to create our final performance, was a great one.

We went from wanting to create a family with overgrown heads and extended limbs, researching into ‘The Pink People’ who are all disfigured in some way:

And also The Egghead Aliens by The Natural Theatre Company, as originally, we had an idea of making huge heads for each of us:

To something old fashioned, looking into the heritage and culture of Winchester Town, to something nature based, looking at the Green Man, a performer dressed in leaves, with a tribe of green people, offering leaves to audience members:

Costume was one of the main criteria which our group had chosen, so it was important to create something great. We wanted to use nature as a stimuli, but realised that this was going to cause many problems due to the costumes being made out of leaves. We made all the costume that we could, like getting the wheelbarrow, buying the tops, seeds and other props, and then waited until the final day to attach the actual leaves that we wanted to use. We did use leaves throughout the two week rehearsals, however they obviously turned brown after a couple of days.

‘Allow aspects of the unconscious to create surreal images.’ (Lee, J. 2011) This was something which John had said to us in class and stuck with us throughout our development. We wanted to use vegetables as instruments.

Slapstick was the form of comedy which Ashleigh and Kira used, as they were able to bounce off each other, character and comedy for me however, were a huge struggle. John and Olu wanted me to be a character quite like myself which was actually harder than I thought it would be. I researched into various comedians, such as:

Little Britain’s Vicky Pollard – The way that she doesn’t stop talking and continues to babble, completely going off the subject she was talking about.

Vicky Pollard's character is also portrayed heaveily through what she wears, her costume.

Jimmy Cricket – A stand up comedian who talks about everyday life, but does so histerically.

Commedia Dell’Arte’s Doctore – The way he gets on with his own business and is actually very wise and extremely friendly.

John helped me a lot in forming my character and explained to me that characterization is not what I needed to create, but persona was what I should use. ‘Characterization is a performer impersonating something. Not being themselves. Persona is when the performer uses what they have.’ (Lee, J. 2011)

Chaplin is a great example of a comedian/actor that uses persona. No matter what he dresses up like, he always is Chaplin.

Chaplin is another performer who's costume also contributes towards his persona.

My character/persona ended up in being a 'woman over the fence' or 'mad auntie' type. Ashleigh's character was actually much more wise than mine, however spoke very little and just added the few odd words of wisdom to whatever I would say. Kira originally was going play a character who ate all the time, but we found that when she spoke, it seemed to be as thought she was mimicing someone with a disability, and for ethical purposes, her character had to be changed.

‘Create something different to the odyssey’ (Taiwo, O. 2011) was something which Olu had said in class which stuck with our group throughout our research and rehearsals.

Using both independent research above, and what John had taught me, I managed to create myself a character which used a lot of my persona, that I was confident enough to take out onto the streets and work with an audience.