Wednesday 15th Jan - Workshop 2 - Shoes

Wednesday 15th Jan - Workshop 2

‘Shoes’

Pt.1 Brainstorm Stimulus

We brainstormed what we thought the stimulus was trying to convey and what emotions it was presenting. Focused on:

• Image colour pallet
• Emotions in image
• How does it make us feel?
• What’s literally being shown in image
• Metaphorical meaning - analysis of image

We then got put into groups of 4. We started by sharing our ideas and what we brainstormed. As a group, we collectively felt that the image had an every vibe. We felt that it was portraying that the people who these shoes belong to have gone missing either by choice or kidnapped/dead. We felt the photo had an every level of uncertainty to it. We also felt that the image was quite juvenile based on the shoes that were on the ground and had a sense of urbanity. 

Pt.2 Create a Short Scene

After our brainstorm, we were set the task to create a short physical theatre scene (up to 1 minute) based on the stimulus and what we brainstormed. We wanted to keep to the theme of people gone missing. We wanted to make it come across that this wasn’t an accident. The people or ‘teens’, as we interpreted, have chosen to leave and disappear but maybe it’s gone wrong and led to death. We symbolised this through the use of our shoes. We decided to incorporate the shoes fully into our short scene. We each, one by one, take a shoe off and put it down. The first shoe down symbolised the person going missing. When we put the second down it’s meant to show that we are dead and not coming back. To show that we have disappeared, we came up with a short sequence then as more put their shoes down, we all started to join in the sequence like a loop. We had the last person not want to put their shoes down and are pressured into doing it. We had the repeated motif of the sequence to show that they are together and they are missing due to the same reason. We also stood in a line to represent the still image from the stimulus. 

Pt.3 Soundscapes

We put our scene aside for a moment and worked on coming up with a soundscape (sound made completely by us using existing music, mouth sounds etc.). We used the song “Where have all the children gone” by Joseph Kerschbaum. We felt this fit perfectly. We then layered on top of that a variety of sounds that would add to the every vibe we wanted to convey: creepy child laughter, stomping, running, gasps and a scream. 

Pt.4 Develop Short Scene With Naturalism 

We are back to our short scene but developed it by adding some naturalistic dialogue as our performance was very non-naturalistic and leaning towards physical theatre. We also adapted it to make it less predictable. We were standing in a straight line so it was obvious that the next person was going to join in with the sequence. We swapped our order around and came out of the straight line a bit more.