A week in Iași, Romania!

Let’s get making!

15th November, 2024

This week has been packed with prop making, script writing and origami folding. Now that we have decided on our key theme, the current climate, the devising process has been flying along. We also have a name for our show: ‘Echoes of Here and Now’ – the idea behind this is to demonstrate that we are present and and that we are passionate about what is happening right now.

Along with the help of a ‘Green’ themed Spotify playlist we now have many more tracks to add as backing to the performance and some tracks that have been choreographed. One particularly popular club track, ‘Red Light Green Light’ by Duke Dumont was a lot of fun to work on. The choreography was inspired from a devising task called ‘Carnival’, where individuals gather into small groups numbering themselves, and each in turn doing a movement paired with a sound which is repeated upon their number being shouted out. This task is based on Augusto Boal’s techniques of Interventionist and Invisible Theatre, who was ‘not only a theatre practitioner but a cultural activist [and a] revolutionary thinker’(Blois-Brooke, 2018), it feels only appropriate then to use his work as we explore international performance.

To add another layer to the movement, we decided to incorporate STOP/GO signs and so, that evening I went home and along with the help of a wooden spoon, cardboard and some glue, I made a sign.

The first was a prototype and after receiving some positive feedback and encouragement from the class, I made more for the rest of the cast. I particularly enjoyed this part of the creative process, I think that is because as a child I loved anytime I got to spend creating something artistic, and so in reflection I think the process of making something by hand that was able aid our devising process gave me great satisfaction and a sense of fulfillment. This also reassured me, as previously during the week I had felt as though I wasn’t able to contribute many ideas however here I was able to contribute in a different way that still helped in the development of the show.

I don’t know

At the beginning of the week we were set a task of producing a list of everything we did not know. This task was, to some degree, up to our interpretation, the list could include metaphorical things, or very logical things we did not know. Here are some examples I came up with:

  • I don’t know how a car engine works
  • I don’t know if I will ever be able to forgive myself
  • I don’t know why I dream that I am being suffocated
  • I don’t know how to talk to a police officer
  • I don’t know how to fly an airplane
  • I don’t know how I will make it work after university
  • I don’t know the meaning of life
Here is the final section from the scene built up from the list of ‘I don’t know’ texts, where we take a moment to breathe together and share the moment with the audience. This was from the first performance performed at Cafe Negru in Iasi, Romania.

Each student had a list of roughly 10 ‘I don’t knows’ and we collated them together and edited them to form a script. The first time we experimented with the scene we simply sat in a circle back to back and spoke the lines into the room, this created an authentic and meaningful delivery which was a note we took forward into the finalization of the scene. Through speaking as truthfully as we could and in an open manner it achieved a moment for the performers to be vulnerable, with the intention of creating an intimate moment with the audience. We were able to build a shared understanding that each of these lines was something everyone may well have contemplated at one time or another.