DEVISED - Coming up with ideas 25/1/17

Today's lesson, we were informed of our next unit: Performing a devised piece to a live audience in a site specific venue. I was quite excited when we were told this because I like to explore drama further than you can when using scripts, and I think the fact we our devising and choosing our performance venue specific to our performance allows us to explore drama and its subsidiaries even further. This lesson, we just had a general class discussion/debate on ideas for our performance which will be based on our given stimulus which is a poem called 'Mind of the Mad'

Mind of the Mad

You're watching, judging, and assuming
You don't understand why I do what I do.
Why I obsess over little things.
So stop trying to
The world is my oyster
But without the beautiful pearl
Just a plain old shell, in a plain old world

It's a shame you'll never know the brilliance
All you're capable to understand is the madness.
Insane, sane
Heart, or brain
Ferocious , tame
Take two breaths and stop breathing all together.
Turn your self to useless energy, forever.

Welcome to mind of the mad.
The queen of the asylum
A dapper old castle in the brain of a girl.

Who is tortured yet pampered in her own little world.

From this poem, we drew many ideas which are as follows:

I really took a liking to the idea of labels and making the audience question 'normality' - so a trying to make the audience believe that 'insanity' is 'normality', being gay is the 'norm' and other controversial topics and the like; but set in a circus, and have the audience taken round to each character and they have their own story to convince the audience and something the audience can question about reality.
We were then put into two groups to develop/come up with an idea, and then to create a proposal for our idea to showcase the root of our idea.
I was in a group with Henri, Tyler, Callum and Owen and we all came to a mutual agreement to develop on the idea of labels and making the 'norm' the opposite to what it is in reality (like an alternate reality). Henri liked the idea of putting the piece in Rochester castle. We discussed the idea of each character having their own scene about their 'alternative' (mine would have been insanity/sanity), and should anyone else be involved in another's scene, they play their character throughout to add a sense of surrealism and try to make all the characters and scenes to link effectively.