Pure Imagination

In the past week I’ve been doing a lot of research into memory loss and specific case studies. After our talks about people’s stories and what they have achieved, memory seems to have been something that has resonated with the company so we all decided to focus on memory and specifically memory loss. The first thing I did was to explore the science behind memory loss which has been incredibly fascinating. One case study I came across is of a patient famously known as ‘HM’. I found out the following:
“His global amnesia for new material was the result of the loss of both hippocampi, and meant that he could not learn new words, songs or faces after his surgery, forgot who he was talking to as soon as he turned away, didn’t know how old he was or if his parents were alive or dead, and never again clearly remembered an event, such as his birthday party, or who the current president of the United States was” (Ogden, 2012).

Another case study I found talked about which part of the brain were responsible for memory loss and about associations between different neurological conditions: “the hippocampus, which is responsible for forming new memories and for retaining old ones is vulnerable to a wide range of neurological conditions, including not only head injury, but also Alzheimer’s disease, encephalitis, epilepsy” (Rath, 2014).


This brought my attention to the disease encephalitis, it was the only one in the list that I hadn’t heard of before. Before now if anybody had asked me to name diseases associated with memory loss, encephalitis would not be an answer, however it seems to be an incredibly severe disease are there are many famous case studies of people suffering from it.
As well as doing lots of research we also took part in an imagination workshop led by Michael W. this week. The point of the workshop was to come up with a nonsense story as a whole group (it was a very emotional tale of a poor pig who had bad breath and had no friends, but ended up with a wolf best friend). We then split off into two groups and developed it into performance. I worked in a group with Alice D., Naomi, and Rachel. What we created was very different to the other group although we both used a physical style. Another issue this exercise flagged up was that although we both had the same source material, the stories were represented slightly differently. This showed us that we need to be very careful if we are going to use case studies that we don’t change facts or misrepresent anybody.

 

 

Fill In The Blank Theare, 2015.
Fill In The Blank Theatre, 2015.

 

Works Cited

Rath, A. (2014) From One Man’s Damaged Brain, A Treasure Trove Of Research On Memory. [online] Available from: http://www.npr.org/2014/12/28/373657735/from-one-damaged-brain-a-treasure-trove-of-data-on-memory [Accessed March 1 2015].

Ogden, J. (2012) HM, the Man with No Memory. [online] Available from: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/trouble-in-mind/201201/hm-the-man-no-memory [Accessed March 1 2015].

Workshops: Making time to play and use our imaginations!

This past week, I have been leading some creative workshops to get ideas flowing and to get the company comfortable working as an ensemble. Some of the workshops have been focused on the stories we hold as a group. As we are interested in interviewing the public and visualising personal stories, specifically related to memories and regrets, I felt that it was important for us share our own stories first. This would then make it easier to know how sensitive we need to be when dealing with external material.

One exercise I gave our actors was to write a letter they would like to send to someone but for some reason, they can’t. They then paired up and picked one of the letters at random and each pair physicalised the narrative of the letter. I asked the performers to think about the emotion behind the letter; apart from that, I had no direct instructions for them as I felt I needed to give the performers opportunities to have a creative input, ‘by setting tasks you allow your performers to offer much creative input into the devising of choreography without burdening them with the responsibility of creating the whole show.’ (Graham, 2014, p. 15) I then merged some of the sequences together and played around with music which resulted in a short physical piece which myself and Rachel, our choreographer, can carry on developing further.

Rehearsal photos

(Katherine Copley, 2015)

The Frantic Assembly book of devising theatre has been a key tool which has inspired a couple of my workshops. At the beginning of their devising process, Frantic usually divert from the topic of their piece as they feel it can restrain the imaginations of the performers. This is something I wanted to implicate into some of our workshops, a good example of this is when I asked our designers to gather some props together; the performers all chose a prop at random and were asked to create a short improvised piece where they were to use these particular props but not for their original purpose. This exercise has been essential for the development of our show as I am particularly interested in using objects and props to aid us in our storytelling. Additionally, the exercise has allowed the performers to spend time being playful and expanding their imaginations which I feel is essential at the beginning of a devising process as ‘it’s when you’re most playful that you create the best work.’ (Mcdonnell, 2015)

All of the material from the workshops has been recorded on film and has begun to inspire me with more creative ideas resulting in a stronger framework. I cannot wait to see the piece develop further over the next few weeks!

Works Cited

Graham, S. and Hoggett, S. (2014) The Frantic Assembly book of devising theatre. Second edition. Oxon: Routledge.

Mcdonnell, J. (2015) Career advice from The Paper Birds Theatre Company. [interview] Interviewed by Michael Woodhall, 12 February.