Devising 6

Describe the status exercise

We got into pairs and were given a few lines of script to play with. We took turns giving our characters "Sir" and "Smith" different statuses, such as Sir high status and Smith low status, both battling for highest status etc. and we discussed the effects of status again.I thought it was interesting how sometimes both the characters battling for high status could be quite comical, and when Andy asked Izzy and I to try playing the scene with both of our characters trying to get the other to sympathise by playing up our low status, the whole class found it very comical. I think that an audience will often root for the "underdog" in a situation, and sometimes it's interesting to see an actor - or even a person in real life - play up their character's underdog status to get sympathy/empathy. This could be interesting to play with in our devising. 

I like the idea of status fr Xanthe, especially in relation to the other characters in our group, Craig who is charismatic, goofy and lovable and Vera who is kind, loving and wise for example. Xanthe feeling so lost and self destructive would be a huge contrast to such emotionally strong characters, and I think playing with status might be a really good idea to help the audience empathise with her instead of assuming Xanthe's a sarcastic, hard, unlikable character.

Sum up and describe the discussion the class had

As a group we collected together all of the ideas and instant reactions we had to the stimulus material. A lot of key themes which started to appear were those of the danger and torment of the sea, both physical and psychological, the ideas of a group of people trapped together with nowhere else to go and the emotions of escape/pilgrimage/wanderlust that people feel towards the sea. We started piecing the bits together and at first had the idea of a group of people on a boat, trapped, perhaps a Noah's Arc of sorts after a huge natural disaster. However, the discussion soon edged towards interesting places at sea, in particular the Bermuda Triangle. The group liked the idea of a bunch of people stranded on an island in the middle of the triangle. For some it is an escape, for others a cage, and for some it is just an accident. I think this will be so much fun to work with since there is no concept of time in the triangle. People are from different times and different places, they have been there for longer and shorter amounts of time than others and everyone has to adapt to survive.