The Amygdala: Evaluation

Our performance was very successful, something I am very proud of given the nature of the performance and it's at times nuanced messages. The audience engaged with each moment of the performance and understood the overall themes within the piece. This taught me a lot about the boundless nature of theatre, as this proved to me that a play does not need to spoon feed it's ideas down the audience's throats, there are plenty of ways to guide the audience members to make their own conclusions about what a visual metaphor may mean, and this provides so much potential for ideas and experiments when it comes to performance art and theatre. The show was emotionally connected, meaning we used some of Artaud's methods effectively; 'Mummy Help Me' was one of the most effective moments in the show, as a few audience members were moved to tears. Clearly it is as possible to provoke an emotional response in others as well through a simple method of physical and verbal contortion.

The one thing we did not anticipate was the mess that some of our stimulus made. We did not think ahead about the fragility of our food props, and much of this became a hazard later on in the show, with some actors slipping on pieces of jaffa cake or fruit. However, this was not a major problem and we worked around it. 

Our costume decision was effective; the decision to wear blacks left us looking professional and together as an ensemble, and the bunny ears contrasted this nicely as it highlighted we were more than willingly to play and be light.

We made some last minute changes, one of the main ones being that the stripper sequence was replaced as it did not fit with the themes, however the sequence it was replaced with, though not as visually interesting, fitted better with the our overall message. Instead of stripping the scientists now walked slowly along the tables, contemplating the questions we were about to ask the audience.

If I were to redo this performance, I would change this preset into something more visually interesting, perhaps i would have the scientists writing some sort of musical equation on the walls of the lab. I would also use less edible stimuli and try and find a way to dispose of them before carrying on with the performance.

In conclusion, this process has expanded my mind both musically and with regards to how theatre can be presented, as there are far more possibilities than I first realised when I joined the school.

The Amygdala: Final Rehearsal

In today's rehearsal we finalised the running order and finished blocking the show. After completing our Misorgi and stretching, we ran through until we had a complete running order. It looked like this:

1. We enter a room lit by fairy lights There is the smell of joss sticks in the room. It sib both childhood and teenage. 
2. There are 25 bunny rabbits kneeling, standing, lying on the floor
3. They are in a special space that is marked out by Jaffa cakes and party rings 
4. The bunnies have a glass of transparent water; in front of the glass is a piece of fruit; a strawberry, a blue berry, an apple.    
5. They sooth the water across their eyes, ears, noses, mouths and their haras.  They are cleaning, cleansing. 
6. "We clean our fingertips so we can touch"
7. "We clean our eyes so we can see"  
8. "We clean our ears so we can hear" 
9. "We clean our nostrils so we can smell"
10. "We clean our mouths so we can taste"
11. "And we clean our hara’s to connect with ourselves"
12. "With you"
13. We eat fruit for the first time. We mannequin challenge (MC) 
14. Some one cleans their teeth. And explains the power of samedhi 
15. We stretch our bodies to clean our bones and muscles
16. And there is music that goes through us and we move
17. As octopus swimming alone
18. As dolphins we swim together 
19. And as moonfish we swim as one 
20. We MC in this
21. What if the music stopped?  
22. A girl appears she is wrapped in a twister mat
23. She plays on her own. 
24. No one else joins in
25. What if childhood dies? 
26. We stand around her breathing 
27. It is the funeral of childhood. 
28. We eat a Jaffa or party ring. 
29. We do the okey kooky 
30. We are aeroplanes
31. We are shot from the sky 
32. We play the number game
33. We play. A bicycle circles the room
34. We play. There is an MC
35. We play the game
36. We play like teenagers on a beach to Good Vibrations. 
37. We are called to sleep by a siren
38. We fall in asleep in a long line of warm cuddles. The last to cuddle is a bunny that moves to the killers when we were young. We all fall asleep. 
39. A screaming siren wakes us
40. We reach for our mothers
41. Mummy can you help me
42. We hold each other. There is intimacy. 
43. Wouldn’t it be nice?
44. We separate and find each other with our fingertips in the dark. In the dark we find each other with our touch 
45. A boy Bunny talks about his family and Carole Kings some kind of wonderful plays. 
46. There is intimacy (there is an MC)
47. We brain hold 
48. We understand the magnificence of the brain 
49. We are not in the play but on a tube. A bunny talks abut the difference between the real world and the theatre world
50. A harmonica plays we move to this
51. A Hendrix tune comes from out of the darkness 
52. Some guitars play we move to this we find fake love for a party moment 
53. What if the music stopped? 
54. We come together as one..alive..a ritual of youth, music and future and now.  
55. We get the audience to play the hokey kokey with us.
56. We sit and talk and eat the Jaffa cakes and party rings
57. The circle is broken but it will last forever. 

We then performed the piece to an audience of red tags. I was nervous about their opinion, as the piece had never been shown to an audience that had not been in some way involved in the process, so I did not know if they would understand. However, their feedback was very positive. They enjoyed the audience involvement, we kept them interested and immersed in the piece. They understood the themes of childhood, music, mental health and the idea we must reconnect with our innocent selves. They loved our commitment, they understood that this was what made the piece enjoyable to watch.

Chris

In Chris' lesson we worked in the science lab to block the opening of our show in a site specific environment. Me and some other actor's played the part of strippers in science coats taking bribes of rulers from fellow actors, this played out as the audience arrived. We then staged our respective pieces around the room. By the end of this rehearsal our show was ready for performance.

The Amygdala: Our Skeleton Running Order and Blocking our Scenes

This lesson we began to form the beginnings of our piece by gluing together various parts of improvisation last week. Stuart took notes on what moments where the most bold and we comprised them into an order. It looked something like this:

1. Fairy lights, party rings, jaffa cakes
2. Octopus movement
3. Dolphin movement
4. Moonfish movement
5. Hokey Cokey
6. Airplanes
7. Piggy backs
8. Number game
9. Eden angelic singing
10. Snuggle train
11. Joe tormenting screaming
12. Mummy Help me exercise
13. Find pair
14. Brain holding
15. Tribal dancing to Jimmy Hendrix

This was the first attempt at created a proper running order for the piece, and although it is not set in stone, it is likely the finished product will resemble this order. The mummy help me exercise was based on an Artaud idea called the Theatre of Cruelty, and involved creating an extreme physical and vocal stimulus to evoke a strong internal emotional response. We knelt down, lifted out heads above our hands as if in chains and screamed "mummy help me". I imagined it as being as if I was a young child who had awoken from a nightmare and calling to a mother that would never come. This evoked a powerful emotional response inside me, and made me cry. I took the lead in this part of the final production.

In Chris' class we worked on blocking our own scenes based on extract from Oliver Sachs' novels. Our piece is on a man with Alzheimer's who can remember memories from his life when listening to certain music, so we created a piece in which a guitar replaces various elements of important life events, such as becoming the baby at a birth or the bride at a wedding.

The Amygdala: The Sacred Space and Beach Boys

We began again with Misorgi and with Octopus, Dolphin, Moonfish. This week we used Brian Eno songs and the Beach Boys' 'Warmth of the Sun' as stimulus.

We then undertook an hour long exercise called 'The Sacred Space', an exercise created by Complicité and their director Simon McBurney, who based the idea off of the Peter Brook idea that the only things needed to create a piece of theatre is a space, an audience and someone in that space. 

To add stimulus to the piece, we were asked to bring in our "objects of joy". I chose my guitar, as i felt it also tied in with the theme of music, but these ranged from jaffa cakes to a bicycle.

We gathered in a circle and took off our shoes to mark the perimeter. It was then agreed that once you stepped into the circle, you were no longer yourself but a neutral actor who's only objective was to follow any stimulus given to them by the circumstances and people around them. Throughout the exercise a number of events occurred that would go on to form the skeleton of our show. 

These included:

• Jake riding his bike, everyone following suit
• Benji, Lloyd, Joe and I sporadically play our guitars in and out of time with each other, orchestrating and narrating the piece
• Daniel making love heart out of party rings, then I present him with a jaffa heart I have bitten into shape
• Michelle protecting herself with the twister mat
• Screaming in sync with each other
• Daniela with fairy lights around  her head
• Jaffa cake vehicles

Although I took part in a number of exercises, I finished the exercise regretting that I hadn't stayed out and watch for longer, as there were many moments that I missed because I was focussed on myself and I could have had a greater understanding of what worked in our group and what didn't.

Chris
In Chris' class we watched a couple of videos on the brain and music, and I discovered that there is a scientific link, as often in the climax of a song the brain releases dopamine and you get a rush of excitement. I also learnt that learning to play an instrument is one of the most effective cognitive exercises around as it challeges your brain to do many different things at once.

We then worked on blocking a piece of physical theatre to The Beach Boys' "Surfin' USA", in order to open our show. This piece was picked because Brian Wilson is an interesting link between the brain and music, as he has suffered long term depression and used music to express and combat this, as well as suffering aural hallucinations after taking too much LSD.

The Amygdala: Practitioners; Peter Brook

We began the lesson with last week's Misorgi exercise in order to cleanse our actor's pallets. 

Three different songs were played: Adagio by Mozart, Violent Noise by XX, Our Prayer by Brian Wilson. 

We started off imitating a lone octopus and experimenting with movements that fed of the music, then we combined as dolphins by joining into small groups of three/four and creating a single synchronised movement, then we formed into a shoal of Moon Fish and moved as one being. Each of the pieces created very different movements, although there was far more diversity between octopi than between moonfish, as synchronised movement is far harder to differentiate between.

We then worked on becoming an ensemble by trying an exercise called trust falls. Half the class had to traverse the room with their eyes shut and the other half had to tap them on the shoulder. If this happened they must fall and the tapper must catch them.

Peter Brook

We then spent the day presenting workshops on various practitioners. Our group had to do a workshop on Peter Brook, a theatre practitioner and writer who has had a massive impact on the way theatre is presented internationally.

Peter Brook Breakdown

The Amygdala: Misorgi and a First Look into Music and the Brain

We began this first session by practicing a body cleansing exercise called 'Misorgi' a Japanese technique used by East Asian actors and pioneered in the west by Yoshi Oida. The exercise focuses on cleaning the 9 holes (although we focus on the first eight...); these consist of:

• The Eyes
• The Nose
• The Ears
• The Mouth
• The Hara (belly button)

The idea is that by taking some clean water and cleaning each of these areas, the body becomes open and cleansed, free of any doubt or evil that has accumulated before the rehearsal, and allows us to be free as actors. It is based on an Indian fairytale of a God that tried to better himself by attempting to adapt himself to live under the sea. The Hara is particularly important in this exercise, as eastern traditions believe the Hara is the location of the soul. It is the reasoning behind "hara kiri", the practice of samurai splitting their gut open after losing their honour in battle. It is also why the belly button piercing is so prominent in eastern cultures as it symbolises the importance of the soul.

After this we looked at Smardhi; attempting to totally focus on one simple task at a time, and committing to this task completely. This is calming yet frustrating, as it eliminates all negative thoughts from the brain yet is very difficult to achieve.

Finally to complete our warm up we attempted Walking into Nothing, a Peter Brook experiment in which we had to walk around the room with our eyes closes in order to enhance our spacial awareness and connect with the other actors in the room.

We then looked at our first practitioner, Brian Eno, who has worked on a lot of interesting musical projects. One in particular interested me, 'Music for Airports', because it was designed to relax those in a stressful environment, something that incorporates both music and the brain.

We then did an experiment on ourselves based on music and different stimulus. Stuart played us four different pieces and we were allowed to write, draw, or move to the music. 

• 'Winter Wind' by Chopin my first instinct was to draw as it is what I felt most comfortable with. I started by swirling my pen around the paper, however, i found that this wasn't satisfying me so I moved to the movement section and begun to let the music move me. I found it felt like I was being swept up and down the room, twirling and moving. It became less controlled as the piece spirals into a more and more hectic melody
• 'Goodbye Irene' by Lead Belly This piece was slightly calmer, I wrote a story for this and it did end up being about sleeping in a forest, which is interesting because I did not know the name of the piece at the time
• 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow' by Judy Garland I was very familiar with this piece, so I found myself preempting what was going to happen, which felt like it slightly ruined the experiment. I ended up slow waltzing with an invisible partner.
• 'It's Not Unusual' by Tom Jones This piece brought everyone together in the movement section as it was so upbeat and lighthearted at it's surface, and I ended up dancing between partners in a swinging, clicking movement.

It was interesting to see that I was most drawn to the movement section; it is obvious which area is most affected when I hear music.