week five

This week at the start of the rehearsal we decided to recap everything that we have so far, this way we would be able to keep it fresh in our memories. We then revisited levels of tension again just to remind ourselves what we did ready to add it in with the song I created. The song I have re written is called ‘Therapy’ from the musical tick tick boom. The song was originally wrote for an argument that happens on the phone between two people and their relationship, so I took this and turned it into a singing argument full of harmonies and many opportunities for us to use the levels of tension in it. The song was written and composed by the amazing Jonathan Larson it is full of energy and it can be very comedic, It was difficult to change the lyrics because it is a difficult song in general. I have performed this song before Shannon hasn’t so to begin with we just listened to it a few times before attempting to sing it though. As previously stated it is a very difficult duet but I know me and Shan can nail it. This was our first attempt at singing it through…

As you can see we did struggle but i’m sure with more practice it will be better. This took us a very long time to wrap our heads around and we became very tired and irritated by the song, so we decided to give it a rest and focus on talking about what we wanted to include in the next section of the performance. What Tim explained about originality really implanted in our heads so we started to think about what we can add in to make our performance original we seemed to have all genres of music apart from rap. So we decided to create a rap which we would use as a coping mechanism for our ‘fatty food’ issues. Now we don’t know the first thing about rapping so we started to research people and free style rapping and rap battles,(Research & Methodology rapping) From this we took that the best thing to do is to just use you tube and start freestyle rapping the best we could to see if anything that came out was worth keeping in the final set of lyrics. This was a fun task we really got into it and started moving around the room, we started imitating rappers movement The links below are our free style rapping sessions.

So from a previous performance we watched we had an idea of bringing adverts about food to life on stage. At first we did not really know how to do it for it to come across as funny instead of just acting daft of stage, but then we remembered Zoo Indigo’s performance of ‘Celluloid souls’ where they use live feeds and screens on stage to act out popular movie scenes from films etc… (Key practitioners Zoo indigo) We want to incorporate this method into our performance because we think it is a similar sort of comedy plus there are so many comedic adverts about food. We decided to sit through and look at different food adverts that we can re-make using random things in stage. We chose the following adverts because we feel that we can do a lot with them and they will give us more to explore in to, The adverts we have chosen are:

• Nicole Scherzinger – Muller light advert
• That’s why mum’s go to Iceland advert
• Mr T snickers advert
• Madras Baby- just eat advert
• Lady loves Milk Tray- Cadburys

Our next addition that we would like to add is a physical theatre section. Shannon and I really enjoyed the physical theatre module that we took In second year and we feel that this would be a good way again of exploring the friction between us on stage, but instead of speaking show the frustration about ordering a take away through movement. (Research & Methodology Physical theatre) From the layout of our performance it would seem that our entire ‘performance world’ revolves around us on the sofa. I personally do not have a lot of experience in physical theatre but Shannon does and she started to show examples of what we could possibly achieve while being sat down. This is something We would like to explore and do more research on. Whilst doing more research we came across Steven Berkoff who is an actor and theatre practitioner that works with movement and he created a performance called Decadence that involves a restaurant scene on a sofa we watched the video and got some really got ideas on how we might use movement on the sofa whilst discussing food. (Key practitioners)

After taking a break from ‘Tick Tick food’ we decided that we should get back to it and keep running it through, after a while we started to get the hang of it. The song revolves around an argument between two people which is perfect because we are arguing about what takeaway to have, the lyrics we wrote work really well in terms of that we both get to express our opinion to each other and the audience. We started to connect our levels on tension with the song. I think this allowed us to explore into the anger and frustration with each other more, it made it more comedic and allowed us to also start adding choreography to the song where it needed it which developed from the levels of tension method of working.

Tick tick food lyrics

Shan:  you saying we can’t have burgers?

Bree: are you saying we can’t have something else?

Bree: what are you saying?

Shan: what are you saying?

I’m saying:

I feel bad that you feel bad,

About me wanting burgers,

And you not wanting burgers,

About what I want about what you want,

About you not being able to share my love for burgers….

Bree: If I thought that our friendship

Was only about you wanting burgers, all the time

Then my reaction to your reaction

To my reaction

Really shouldn’t matter… 

Shan: I was afraid that you’d be afraid

If I told you that  I wanted burgers again,

If you don’t have a problem with my problem

Maybe the problem is you have no taste in food …

Bree: Yes, I know that now you know that

I’m not a fan of always eating burgers.

I’m saying no

Your say yes

And that now I know I know that knew

That you knew you had an addiction…

Shan: I want burgers

Bree: I want Chinese

Shan: I want maccies

Bree: I want wokstar

Shan: you rang to say that

Bree: I don’t want burgers again

Shan: is it because I said Chinese bores me….

Both: I’m not mad that you got mad that I got mad when you I want burgers again…

Shan: If I were you and I said wanted burgers I would have had burgers because they are the elitist food…  

Shan: I feel bad that you feel bad

About me feeling bad                

About you feeling bad

Can we have burgers

Can we have burgers

About me not being able to have

Another takeaway…

Bree: I feel badly about you

Feeling badly about me

Feeling badly about you…

Bree: If I thought that our friendship

Was about your addiction to eating burgers

Then my reaction to your reaction

To my reaction really doesn’t matter.

Shan: I thought you

Thought I reacted

Shallowly

When I reacted to you…

Bree: I’m not mad

(shan: Im not mad)

Bree: that you got mad that I got mad (shan: you got mad)

Both: when you say I don’t want burgers again…

Shan: If I were you and I said burgers I would have had burgers because they are the elitist food… 

Bree: If I were you…

But I’m not you…

Not the elitist food…

Shan: now its out in the open

Bree: now it’s off our chest

Both: Now its 9pm and we have dieting to,

Takeaways close soon

So, lets just do the rest ….

Jonathan Larson. (1990) Tick Tick Boom Therapy. New York city.

Reflection

This week I felt that we have achieved quiet a lot in terms of where we think this performance is going, We have so many new things that we would like to explore and try out which makes it even more exciting, I think we have agreed that next week we want a calmer sessions as other module deadlines are becoming stressful, we are starting to feel the pressure. In terms of rehearsals this week I think that for homework we both need to go away and learn our parts of’ Tick tick Food’ then come back and see how it sounds. I think that our other incorporation’s for the performance will place in quiet nicely.

Tasks to complete for next week

• Learn lyrics to ‘Tick Tick Food’
• Create our original rap
• Start looking into warm up techniques