The Scratch

Creation

We spent the majority of this rehearsal creating material for our scratch. We brought music and did our ritual before entering the space that allowed us to focus. We developed the first stage of our show finding out that something we had tried earlier on in last term was no longer working. Previously we had the audience coming in through both the bottom doors at the opening of the stair case to show a contrast between the wide door opening into an actually really small cramped badly lit space. But from the character we discovered last week we realised that on a council estate everything isn't open or welcoming, and just opening the smaller door creates that unwelcoming atmosphere. We found this out by Daniel suggesting we see what it would be like to use the smaller door, and it paid of very well. Eve when she walked through said she felt unwelcome and unsettled and I feel like that was the feelings necessary for the lowest floor.

We began to think of what the audience would see after they got into the space looking up above them, and we thought to carry on this feeling of discomfort they should walk in on something they aren't meant to see. We played around with a lot of ideas and decided on something not necessarily clear but it was to do with a handshake that is disrupted by the audience entering unexpectedly.

We could think about what to do next so instead Tatenda suggested that we should all run up and down the space playing with things, bouncing of the walls, in order to see if anything popped out again. We realised slowly that running up the space and finishing on the last level after being tired is really refreshing, the view of the primary school open sky and high ceiling on the top floor all allow a sense of freedom that we don't get a the bottom. The view its self is extremely effective and we would like to tire out the audience before allowing them to the top floor. We aren't sure yet what to do there but will develop further

We worked again with the doors in the space, a thing we noticed last term is there are 2 sets of doors on each floor expect the bottom and they all lead to the other flight of stairs. When running in the space last term Tatenda noted the doors gave off a trick or treat sorta childish vibe about them, as if you could play with them and their small windows. We will try and incorporate the playing of the doors into our scratch performance while still responding to what the space is saying.

What we saw in our space

We went into our space and closed our eyes to see if we could see a person that represented our space. We then sat down and wrote what this person looked like and how we gained this image from the space around us.

Tobi

Site specific 

The space is the blue block stairs. 

The top of the stairs is very fresh and airy and the bottom of the stairs is very condense and small which makes it feel lower class council estate people. 

Characters seen 

1)A police 

2)A boy wear a grey tracksuit with white top 

3)A group of teenagers 

4)Lower class people with no working statutes 

First stair case

The audience is let in one by one through small side door and they see something shadey and actors runn up and audience follow 

Second stairs case

Hansle and gretal will be playing and running and there will be white powder everywhere , implying a certain drug that's shows kids hyper active vibe.

Daniel

When sitting in the space and observing the atmosphere of the space, it reminded me of a common council flat. The walls are made of bricks which are coated with a thick layer of white paint. This is the wall a rough but smooth affect. The lighting is a low mild yellow colour which merely fills the space. This leaves darkness in some corners of the space. The space itself is tight at the bottom of the stairs. This reminded me of a woman attempting to get her buggy up the stairs and struggling in doing so.

Tatenda

The character of our area 

The bottom stair case

I saw a boy in a full grey cotton track suite with white dirty shoes as the character for the bottom stair case I could see him barely, his face gloomed and only illuminated by the light above him from the circle lights on the first floor. I think this was impacted by the weather outside which was gloomy, so the small window at the top of the first flight of stairs was letting in some dark dreary light. We went on to discuss that we all felt aa similar vibe from the bottom stair case, there is this sort of councile estate-esquness about it when your'e just sitting around.