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Caught in a web she can’t escape, Missy must make choices that will affect the lives of everyone she is connected to.

A work-in-progress showing of the performative element of my honours thesis. Webbed is a theatre-in-education performance developed for year 8 and 9 secondary school student audiences. It highlight’s the issue of cyber bullying, its consequences, and the power and responsibility that the bystanders have in these situations.

The performance will run for approximately 30-40 minutes. It is free and no booking is required. There will be some additional time for question and answer after the performance. An additional matinee performance will be held at 3pm of the same day – 10th of October.

The performance was collaboratively devised and performed by:
Evan Sanders
Jess Nash
Kacey Hocking
Nick Mawson
Nyssa Rowe

Recount

So after leaving the previous rehearsal I had planned for two rehearsals during this week but then two absences meant I canceled the first rehearsal as I felt that my time could be better spent at home.  So over this week I took the ideas gathered in the previous rehearsal and put together the second act.  Knowing again that I would be missing one of the ensemble I wanted to talk through what we had developed and I had subsequently written, and hit the ensemble with the questions that had since been plaguing my mind about the show.  I also wanted to workshop some design ideas which we did.

It was a very sit down session but I believe it was productive because we managed to discuss the play, the concerns I was having about it and workshop some design ideas.  The ensemble were all very happy with the way that the show had formed.  There were of course suggestions, queries and comments concerning it.  These were noted and have since been addressed.

• Remove the prologue does it really fit? Is it another play? Divided opinion among the ensemble as to keeping it, removing it, or changing it.
• Missy can’t be pinned as heartless, she needs to attempt to help but fail due to lack of strength – she can’t be seen as a bitch.
• it is possible that we are demonising the anonymous cyber bullies, can this actually be avoided?
• cut scene with with victim deleting photo’s in the replay solving the problem.   This is just too easy and it also doesn’t resonate with the intended message.  That of the bystander being the one who can make a difference.
• This moved into characters engaging in two types of behavior and it was decided that this is possible but drawing the focus away from central bystander might be confusing.
• We need to highlight positive coping strategies and inject specific advice into the existing material
• Do we need a definition of bullying in there? This was debated as to if it is necessary as we are showing non-naturalistically showing the bullying highlighting the factors that make it bullying but not the actual events.   There are varied motivations hopefully indicating that bullying is a behavior and not characteristic.  It was still divided as to if we should include a specific definition or not as it could be disengaging for the audience to feel like we’re trying to cram facts down their throats.

We also briefly discussed how the show could end and some suggestions were mounted but I’m still not happy with the ending and I need to do some work to generate something that ties all the ends together.  As far as design that was also expanded and it was interesting to note that something that I had been considering for some time to build a web was suggested by another ensemble member.

Reflection

Talking about design one of the ensemble mentioned not to make things to complicated, which at first I thought I wasn’t trying to do thinking about it since I have realised that trying to create a harness with a keyboard (and possibly mouse) that each actor can wear is really just too difficult.  So at this point in time this idea has been completely scraped.  However each actor will wear a blue Ethernet (network) cable and port hung around there neck.

Engaging in these discussions about the form, content, aims, objectives and intended message of the piece started me thinking about my exegesis and what I will be writing about.  I began starting to think about what processes have been involved in creating relevant and educational theatre for young audiences which raises awareness of cyber bullying and its consequences.  This started me thinking about how we are specifically dealing with and presenting the sensitive issues that are touched upon in the play.It has become apparent that a lot of my thinking during this process has been influenced by literature which suggests that practitioners should be careful when dealing with sensitive issues in drama and theatre.  This is also offset by much literature arguing that theatre has a responsibility to brooch the taboo and ask questions of society.  Do we then when dealing with theatre for young audiences and sensitive issues play it safe or risk the potential consequences and fallout?

I think about the last three TiE/TYA I have seen and they all relate to sensitive issues:

• the apology (Zeal theatre)- bullying and violence
• hoods (Real TV) – poverty and domestic violence
• Australian marriage Act (Arena theatre)- teenage pregnancy and marriage

Are these professional companies better equipped to deal and work on sensitive issues in theatre for young audiences than I am?  Should I have started out on something less problematic in relation to the possible outcomes of devising a show on cyber bullying in which a potential suicide could occur?  I guess the answer to these questions is that I’m devising for the now in an area where I saw concern and a possible issue in need of discussing and asking questions about in society and especially in schools.  These companies may be better equipped but that doesn’t necessitate that certain subject areas should be off limits for amateur or community groups to explore.

The current literature suggests that cyber bullying is a real and growing problem among young people in Australia and world wide.  Research in the area is still very young (does research age or grow?) and the current literature in this area suggests that more research needs to be undertaken to hopefully find strategies in dealing with this issue.  The literature does identify that drama and theatre could be a possible medium for developing awareness among young people:

• what does the literature say about dealing with sensitive issues in drama and theatre?
• what does the literature say about youth theatre and sensitive issues?
• What did I do in the process to ensure that these sensitive issues were handled in a manner as not to promote negative outcomes or consequences?
• What does my process or product say about dealing with sensitive issues in youth theatre?

I think not getting it 100% right for the TIS event has been the reason for my focus on attempting to ensure that the product reflects values that are  socially viable.   Anyway so I’m thinking my exegesis will be on cyber bullying and suicide: sensitive issues in theatre for young audiences.

Recount

So I began the rehearsal with the idea of scripting and blocking the first act, however more absences caused this plan to fall on its arse.  So we started by scripting the first act which is now up on the wiki.  Then we moved onto look at where we could go from here into the second act.  We had basically hit a wall so we spent most of the time throwing ideas around and seeing where they would lead and this was generally hit but what about this what about that.  I took away these ideas from the rehearsal and have been working on the second act in my own time planning what I see as happening so I can take this in for the following rehearsal and we can workshop it to see what work, what doesn’t and how we will fill the void.  I’m hoping to get this up on the wiki soon.

Reflection

Once I had put together the second act I began to heavily wonder if what I was doing was in line with the research, aims and objectives of the piece.  This is a hard question to answer.  It does show that I’m engagin in a process of relfecting on the work and what it is saying to ensure that is in line with my intentions.  This was something that i overlooked during the TIS process.  This process is certainly difficult and the hardest part is placing oneself into another perspective.  If I was neutral to come and look at this piece what would I see.

• Can all of the intended bullying events be clearly defined as bullying?
• Are we victim blaming?
• Are we demonising the bully?
• are we successfully showing the bystander as the central character with the power and responsibility to influence the outcome?
• Is there too much focus on the suicide indicating it might be a viable option for a vulnerable student?
• Or are we just showing the worst possible case scenario which is supported by literature as being a possible outcome of cyber bullying?
• Are we effectively highlighting positive coping strategies?
• Are we saying anything about the media?
• Should we be saying anything about the media?
• Does the audience need to receive a definite definition of what bullying is?
• Are the bully, victim and bystander roles clearly established?
• Does the mixing of these roles highlight that any and all of us can be bullies, therefore showing that bully is not a characteristic but a behavior?
• Who is to blame?
• How do we approach the no blame issue?
• Are we going to offer any strategies for dealing with the issue of cyber bullying?

This line of questioning for myself has lead me to come clarify things in my own mind and actually work towards making the pieces statement clearer.  It’s helped to cut through the some of the side issues and come to the realisation that there was more then one play developing.  This then means that I can re clarify and redirect the focus to something smaller yet with a deeper dig to make the piece overall more manageable.  The material that is moving to the periphery just goes to the library for future use.

This has also meant that i’m starting and needing to re-engage more heavily with some of the bullying litreature.  This re-engagement is an effort to ensure that what we have developed is going to fit with what is socially acceptable and valuable, and what will be engaging for a 14-15 year old audience.

It has also made me think about what Chris Kohn (2008) said during the interview with him about how at Arena they will always ensure that they have work-in-progress viewing with audience of the intended age so as to recieve feedback on waht’s workign, what’s not, if its clear and so forth.  This has been a large factor in deciding that what we will present at the start of october will be a work-in-progress.  Engaging in a series of work-in-progress viewings will give me the oppurtunity to recieve feedback that can be used for the benefit of the piece.  It should hopefully allow me to refine the piece through further workshopping.   Hopefully then I can take it on to other places.

I have been really thinking about the use of digital mediums that I’m using in the process and product.  A number of questions arise in my mind.

• Has the wiki and the blog been a valuable tool for the process?
• Will the wiki and the blog be valuable after the process for the exegesis?
• Are the the social networking sites we are developing for the characters going to be beneficial?
• Will the student audience look at these sites?
• Will they add another level of engagement for the student audience?
• Will this provide an avenue for teachers to work on follow up material?
• Have all of these been valuable as research?

The blog and the wiki seem to have proven themselves as valuable throughout the process so far.  The blog for recount rehearsals and the process and reflecting on thoughts that will hopefully be of use for my exegesis.  The wiki while not as interactive as I would have hoped have still been valuable for me to post my ideas and the others to read and engage with them.  It is a great medium as well being able to post all types of media – text, image, sound, movie, and links to other digital media sites.

I also wonder about how valuable using this technology has been for the ensemble.  We are engaging with all of the technology that could be used to cyber bully another. This is in a way a form of research and I would argue an effective one.  It has really given me a greater perspective for how easy could be to cyber bully another on a variety or different digital mediums.  I could create a blog or wiki which bullied another.  Fake myspace accounts which degrade someone.

In regards to the profiles we created for the characters it will be interesting to see if any students engage with them and to see what develops.  I think it’s really an interesting avenue to explore and it would be great to really have the time to explore this further.  I also wonder if having these is going to be a factor that gets students engaged with the content a little more.

Recount

So we were missing one of the ensemble totally during this rehearsal and another one had to leave for about an hour which seems to be a recurring theme for my life.  I guess this just comes with the territory.  We started the session by hot seating the characters that we cast last week.  I felt people may have wanted more time to think about them but that’s what the ensemble wanted to do so we did it.  My plan had been to plot out and devise the scenes around the narrative structure we had developed during the last rehearsal.

So we started with the hot seating and it went very well and some distinct traits and characteristics about each of the characters developed.  Home work was set to develop a myspace and facebook profile for each of the characters. I’ll try and get those all up on the wiki but we need to get photo’s and other things done for them as well.

We then started working through the narrative structure and eventual constructed what I am currently calling the first act.  This is up on the wiki currently.  The workshop basically consisted of devising the scenes I had planned.  This was difficult not having all present of the ensemble present at any given stage.  We reached a point in which my planning had stopped but the momentum of the rehearsal kept the devising going and we continued to devise a number of scenes in sequence.  It was great to note that the momentum was still present when the rehearsal stopped but disappointing we couldn’t have continued.  Especially since coming into the next rehearsal we had hit a wall.

Reflection

It has become apparent that a part of working with people is that things will ultimately develop and ensure chaos with plans.  This cannot be avoided and I think that there is for certain a huge part of being a student and working with students in a university context.  Trying to juggle everyone commitments is depressing and and exhausting at times.  Someone not able to come one day then another person and then another person.  Then I feel I’m wasting my own time because I can’t achieve what I want to achieve.  Is my time better spent writing a draft and compiling a script and then to bring it in and workshop that with the ensemble.  At this point for this project I feel yes.  I guess this just comes with the territory of devising and especially devising with university students who really don’t have the time when they are already juggling so many things in their life (TIS transistion piece, Mawson et al, 2008).

What is the difference between the type of momentum that grabbed hold of this rehearsal and took it to a place I had no anticipated and the feeling of uncontrollable chaos from being unable to really workshop the ideas with a full ensemble?  Phelan (2004) argues ‘Great art accumulates relevance and meaning as it moves beyond the control of its creators; weak art decides in advance what the piece is about’ (571).  I’m not tryign to put my work under the banner of great art.  I believe what Phelan is saying is that deciding in advance what a piece of art will be and mean is fruitless because it may never actually amount to these aspirations.  This is advice to not restrict the process but let it be free and go where it needs and wants to go.  Ultimately this is because the audience is the one who will decide it’s meaning, relevance and if it is successful.  How do I embrace not having ensemble members present to develop the work and how will this can be a driving force for the creation of the piece?  I guess in a way it can’t but then I guess it becomes an excercise in planning and drafting as much as possible to then workshop this material with the ensemble and then let the process go where it needs and wants to go.

Schirle (2005) argues that working with students when devising will ultimately lead to them bringing themselves to their roles.  Is this true? Has it occurred? Will it occur?  How can I stop it from occuring? I think their is an issue with this line of thinking.  Don’t all actors being themselves or their lives to their role in some way.  Whilst not playing oneself the irony is that you are always yourself and this is somethign that cannot be removed.  For example an  actor must draw on their own experiences viewed, enacted, real or created.  How can an actor attribute the characteristic of a character if they had never encoutnered those charactertistics in themselves or others? How can an actor play sad if you had never been sad nor seen another be sad or play sad.  Her argument is that a devised work shouldn’t be just a piece of self centered self indulgence for the devisors.  They need to create work which will engage an audience.  Product cannot be overlloked just for the sake of process.  She suggest ‘students must develop a rigoruous attitude towards their devised work [which] is to continally pose questions: What is the intent of the devising project? Why make this? Who is it for? Why does it matter?’ (Schirle, 2008: 97).

Before begining the process I have had this type of aims, objectives and understandings for the piece.  This has been due to a lot of other litreature which suggests the same for begining devisors (Oddey, 1994; Pammenter, 1993; Bicat & Baldwin, 2001).  Will the ensemble bring themselves to the performance? Yes but not in the way that is self centered and self focused.  We are creating a performance with intent, aims and objectives, for a specific audience, in a specific setting, and for a specific reason.  However this does not mean that the process need be restrictive to these because it needs the flexibility to be taken where it needs and wants to go.

Recount

We had that many space issues in this session that we missed the first hour and a half at least and I was quite pissed off at the space people for not doing their job.  This reflects some of those rehearsal variables that can altar what was planned and the direction that the rehearsal takes.  Although this meant letting the ensemble go and get lunch where we spoke with another student who put his two bob into the piece and some interesting points were raised.

One thing I did forget to mention in the last post was that we did attempt at the end of the session to formulate a web of of relationships and how the bullying would occur.  Originally my concept for the piece was that there would be a bully, bystander and victim character and basically one major incidence of bullying and several minor.  it was suggested in the first rehearsal by one of the ensemble that we could have several bullying events occur all revolving around the bystander.  The ensemble members had discussed all the incidents occurring not being central to the narrative but I believed they need to be in order to be effective.  This is also sparked conversation about the Australian movie 2:13 about a student who commits suicide.  The story involves five central characters and their lives are all entwined.  We discussed the effectiveness of this form.  This was all laid to rest until the previous rehearsal.

At the end of the rehearsal we developed a web of character relationships that resembled this:

These bully victim relationships were taken from our individual bullies that we created in the second session.  I took this idea and did some reworking over the days until this rehearsal and came in with the following relationship web.  It was still based of the characters were created early on in the process.

I had developed an idea of the bullying sequence of events and I informed the ensemble.  We then spent the rest of the session work shopping the bullying sequence of events.  The following is what we finally established:

1. Young girl bullies pop-girl – texting, facespace
2. Alt guy breaks up with young girl to protect friendship with pop girl after young girl has sent naked pictures of self to alt guy
3. pop girl pissed off at young girl, finds photo’s of nakedness and emails them to all including young girl
4. young girl confrontation with alt guy – he is confused
5. young girl copes by going to dance classes and talking to bystander
6. Alt guy confused turns to pop girl for support – she is guilty
7. pop guy jealous decides to bash alt guy and it is filmed
8. alt guy turns to pop girl for support but she turns back on him feeling trapped he commits suicide

We also established a role for each characters for each ensemble member.

Reflection

This rehearsal had it’s problems but overall it was successful.  I never engaged in a process such as this for the TIS performance.  We never developed a narrative structure.  I think it was essential for this project to develop such a narrative structure.  Prior to begining the process I had my own coneption of what this structure would be.  However once beginning the process and engaging with the ensemble this has to change and adapt as necessary and it has.  This narrative structure has given us a base to work from and develop specific scenes.

It may be complex but this should work towards meeting my primary aim to show cyber bullying as a complex issue with complex consequences.  This will hopefully be achieved through showing the complexity of the many different layers and elvels in the narrative structure.  Second to this it hopefully can show how easily bullying can occur and really asks the question who is to blame? and why?  Hopefully we can steer the answer towards applying a no blame approach for cyber bullying as advocated by Rigby (2007) and is the case and suggested strategy for non cyber bullying currently.

The complexity could work against us in that it may be too complex for the students to follow.  However growing up in a post modern world where we are bombarded with information from multiple sources constantly throughout our lives it seems that the students should not only be able to handle this but should also really be able to engage with the contant and form more easily.  Morrison and Stinson (1995) argue that TiE needs to begin to work with the post modern form because this was what young people deal with on a dialy basis.  So a complex structure such as this working on multiple levels at once should allow us to ask multiple questions of the audience and hopefully allow them to walk away from the piece asking those same questions.

I’m constantly due to my experiences with the TIS piece questioning if we are travelling down the right path to meet my aims and objectives for the piece.  The strategy used by Kaufman (Brown, 2005) definitely needs consideration makign sure that their is a set of guiding principles for a piece that ensure it is on the right track.  I look back at my aims for the piece and I cannot help but think is it developing in the right direction:

Primary aim:

• To develop an awareness of the complex problem of cyber-bullying and its consequences.

Subsidiary aims:

• To explore how the issue of cyber bullying could be dealt with.
• To explore what cyber bullying involves.
• To explore the complexity of the bully, bystander and victim dichotomies.
• To explore how the media is contributing to or helping this issue.

The litrature discussed by many on the subject of TiE and YPT is to at all cost avoid suicide (Cahill, 2006; Cassidy & Watts, 2002; 2000; Mirrione, 1993; Pammenter, 1993; O’Toole, 1975).  We seem to be definitely heading in the direciton of suicide and I’m constantly throwing around in my mind how we can approach this without encouraging the idea that suicide is alright.  It is definitely a consequence and it is proven that cyber-bullying can and has on multiple occasions led to suicide or attempted suicide.  I guess the question that I’m really asking is how do I ensure that our message is in line with our intentions because the wrong message not just in regard to suicide could lead to some places we didn’t intend on going.

My supervisor has been asking me what I’m thinking about design.  I’ve put a very detailed initial design concept up on the wiki.  I thought a brief run down would be in order though.

• computer keys like Esc or letters that can be used to sit and stand on in space
• a blue network cable spiderweb
• A wall for posting on
• costume design cyber punk, school uniforms that make links to current digital media
• motherboards, keyboards, mouses, mobile phones, network cables all attached to costume
• Parody movies
• filmed web based things such as myspace, facebook, MSN, etc
• sounds and music will also be used

I just want to reflect on the idea of the web.  I think it is a good metaphor for our show because it relates to the fact that the action sometimes takes place on the wwweb, also that there is this web narrative, but most off all that the characters feel trapped and that they possible don’t have the power to escape the web.

An image also comes to mind of possibly the last moment in the performance being the character who commits suicide standing on the Esc key as if about to jump or hang and then disconnecting his network cable and black.

Recount

This was the first rehearsal when we actually have had the entire ensemble present which was great. We started quite late at 5 and worked through until approx 7.30. The first part of the session was really a catch up on what we had been doing in the rehearsals for the absent ensemble member and making sure they were up to date on the research.

I then discussed how I saw the first section of the performance resembling. I had developed a rough draft script and score. It followed this sequence:

• Narrator (Current affairs journalist) talks about cyber-bullying epidemic
• Slow music build accompanied by a torture scene with neutral masks, keyboards, phones, etc at same time another sits typing miming words flash (hard, punch, hit, etc) on screens slowly but building pace and this persons internal torrent builds to climax in unison of torture and music.
• Narrator dialogue about how it was better in times without tech
• 1950s family – father smoking pipe reading newspaper, mother mixing in a bowl, kids playing with wooden toys – one of the children bullies the other and father and mother look on like it is normal part of life.
• Narrator connects the 1950s family some sort of movement piece to connect them – costume change (loose jackets or something) – narrator further dialogue
• Narrator depicts the stereotype of the bully and the victim

Explaining verbally with some visual cues I then asked the ensemble to respond. There were some likes about it and some dislikes and these sparked some minor discussions and further ideas.

• The narrator character must be careful as to not trivialise the issue through language and tone
• The idea of the narrator is ideally pictured as a current affairs journalist, since everything they say is insincere it was meant to b e ironically questioning the media’s automatic response to blame young people and technology.
• The word Cyberia spoken would be just plain confusing so it was suggested that we could create a tourism Cyberia video.
• Use 1950s commercials to introduce 1950s scene.
• There needs to be some indication that time is passing when the family is plugged in.
• Design idea of actually having network cables attached to everyone.
• Don’t we want to avoid stereotyping the victim and bully so as to avoid victim blaming and bully demonising? Cahill (2006) and Cassidy & Watts (2000; 2002)
• Could this be done in a way where we highlight how the media (60 minutes) painted the picture of the bully in order to juxtapose ‘our’ bullies and victims against those stereotypes hopefully showing that anyone can be either and that they are behaviours and results of behaviours rather than characteristics.

The next step was to begin walking through what I had scored/scripted and workshop all of our ideas.  We started with the opening torture sequence.  We devleoped this scene into something more of a movement piece.

• movements separated by a certain number of beats – 8, 8, 4, 4, 4, 4, 2, 2, 1, 1
• a sound of bone snapping or neck breaking on each of these beats
• white noise building in volume and intensity as beats get faster
• 12 words – myspace, facebook, mobile phone, MSN – flying on screen on each beat
• The other internal torment building as if beaten on each beat.

The narrators dialogue needs more work but I’m working on currently.  We then worked on a 1950s bullying scene.  Creating the stereotypical scene idealistic 1950s family.

• father mokign pipe reading newspaper
• mother mixing something in bowl looking content
• children playing with wooden toys
• son talks to father about being bullied at school
• father tells son to toughen up its natural
• Son bullies daughter and then repeats back what father told him

We worked on attempting to get the plug in scene to work but never reall decided on anything.  However a good line came out of it – ‘Please refrain from feeding the forum trolls’ – which was great and will be used.  The other discussion were exemplified in the dot points above.  We ran out of time and had to organise times for Septembers rehearsals.

Reflection

The rehearsal was successful because we began work shopping what became or has became the prologue for the piece.  The interesting part about this is that while it was still developing I had a clear sense that’s this is where it would sit in relation to the rest of the performance.  Now after rehearsing more and developing the piece further.  It seems that what was developed needs to be broken up and moved around to better suite what we are trying to say and ask.  Working last semester on the TIS performance this was a constant working process as well.  Developing material, reworking it and then moving it around to best suite us.  I always had an idea though of where it would sit even if that idea would change rehearsal to rehearsal.  I wonder if this self defeating in a way because I’m trying to pidgeon hole everything before we  even had a real chance to explore it?  On the other hand it is necessary to have an overall picture of the piece even if that is shifting constantly.  The important part is not tot become immoveable in regards to the material’s shifting and fluid form and content during the development of the piece.

Last semester working on TIS one of the ensemble said that the only way to develop a piece was to create the content and then work on the form.  I think this fundamentally ignores the force that content has to direct form and visa-versa.   Pammenter (1993) argues that form and content are inexborably linked.  The process at anyone time is focused on devleoping either one of these.  Therefore what occurs in the process should define what develops in the long run.  What occurs can be described by the events but also the people, places, focus, aims, objectives, rehearsal variables, times and anyhting else related to it.

Is this a question of determinism and free will? If the process determines the overall form and content of the piece and the factors of the process determines the what occurs in the process then what are the choices and to what extent are those choices made which will have an affect on the overall created piece? When the ensemble make a decision or a choice to take a certain path with the material how much of this is dictated by the the pieces aims, objectives or guiding principle.  Does the asethetic values of the ensemble dicate the development of material?

Does working on youth theatre mean these choices are even more restricted.  Youth theatre in one way seems to have more restrictions on it then non-youth theatre.  A citizen who attends a performance and finds that it is against their beliefs can leave but generally this is not the case when it comes to youth theatre.  Young people don’t have any other choice but to sit there and watch.  This means that an ensemble creating youth theatre has responsibilities to the audience to promote soceities values.  These responsbilities are a further deterministic factor that directs the development of the work.

I guess the choices come in when the ensemble say we want to create a piece of theatre on this problem and we want to focus it on these specific issues of the problem.  In creating the piece some deterministic factors will direct the development of the piece but there are choices from the very big down to the very small.  It is these choices that will determine if the performance is educational, relevant, aesthetically pleasing and overall successful.

Recount

I began the session making sure the ensemble was going alright with their assessment which has been a little bit of an ongoing problem. Next we discussed the research material that everyone had viewed or read from the previous session. Some points that arose were:

• The 60 minutes video was amazing to show how ineffective or even harmful that the media was for bully demonising, victim blaming, and provoking a situation further.
• The insight video was interesting but railroaded itself a discussion on bullying rather than just cyber bullying.
• This prompted a discussion on if the two are separate, it was the general consensus that they were not and that each played effectively off the other.
• Destroying Avalon – junior fiction – highlighted the attitudes of young people towards the issue, not knowing that it is bullying, students being ‘addicted’ to needing to know what others think about them, not foreseeing the end result or who the bully was.

I wanted to work on and develop a scene on bullying through Chinese whispers on the mobile phone looking at how rumors spread and develop. I explained the way that I saw the scene occurring.

The victim moves from there position as the arrows direct and as they pass each of the ensemble says ‘LOL – something’. This is more showing how easily a rumor can spread but if the language got progressively worse that could also show that the rumor was getting worse.

I then asked what and how they saw the scene working and a number of great ideas came up:

• Austin powers (pennis, boob joke) progressive story… with the jump in on the next word.
• Split focus action and text on the other
• Hit by metaphorical rumors and getting pushed down
• Sharks circling getting more intense
• tunnel ball passing the rumor
• true, false, falser on each point

The ensemble wanted to start working with actually creating some rumors. This seemed like a semi futile task as since we discovered in the previous rehearsal we can’t really use definite examples of bullying so as to avoid copy cat behaviour (Cahill, 2006; Cassidy & Watts, 2000; 2002). I went with this as to just see where it would take us.

We basically played Chinese whispers except out loud and we would have more than one turn. We tried a number of different rumors – sexual, physical and emotional – and each would continue until it reached a point that was extremely inapropriate. The difficulty is that we don’t want to give the audience ideas and this practice highlighted the discovery we made in the previous week.

I decided after enough of this that I wanted to try and workshop some of the above ideas into scenes. We started with the hit by metaphorical rumors.

The idea was that the ensemble would walk around back and forth past the victim saying the rumors and the victim would get hit as if by blows until eventually they were beaten to the ground. The bullies/rumours would move about the space randomly exemplifying the rumours (which we drew from before). After each rumour was said the victim would start off subtly feeling pain which developed into overwhelming pain falling to the ground as if punched, kicked and beaten.

When then repeated this same concept of the metaphorical beating from the rumors spreading except this time as if sharks were circling the victim. This developed and we attempted to build the pace (physical and vocal), volume and intensity (physical and vocal). A nice little moment developed from this work shopping those ideas. One of the ensemble suggested we could start circling in closer and actually push the victim down as we said the rumour but then alongside have things that brought the victim back up and actually pull them back up. This worked but it’s context would have to be in relation to more of a coping strategy and the effects of friends/family enabling that person to be brought back up.

We moved on and then attempted to try the tunnel ball scene.

This scene was played like a game of tunnel ball where the ball is rolled through the tunnel to the end and the last person grabs ball and runs to front and rolls again. I really wanted to steer clear of the actual rumours so we played with some non-naturalism. The first person whispered into the phone of the second person. They would then listen and say some text talk – LOL, OMG, and something relating to the rumour – like depicted in my original scene.  This worked well with the action taking place rapidly and another moving to the front.

Reflection

The rehearsal was successful because we developed a number of scenes which may be used in the final product or adapted in later rehearsals.  It is the beginning of a library of scores.  At the end of the day these scenes may or may not be used but they have some value for the process, product or perhaps both.  This then makes me think about the value in undertaking the Chinese whispers exercise.  I am reflecting now and thinking that it was futile as we had already decided in the previous rehearsal that we should and wanted to avoid enabling copy cat behavior.  Was I aware of this at the time?  More than likely not or I would have said something.  However there must have been value in it for the ensemble or they would not have directed themselves there.  Maybe this was the extra step I in fact needed to come to this realisation and potentially the ensemble.  If this occurs again I think it is best for me to tell them what I have realised and then put it back in their hands to see what they think and let the process move in the direction it needs.

The power of non-naturalism is to be able to overcome this situation of prompting or enabling of copy cat behavior.  If the rumours were watered down to such an acceptable PC level that they become trivial or even farcical in the eyes of the young audience?  By not saying much are we allowing their imaginations to do all the work and write the rumours themselves far worse than what we probably could anyway.  This is the trick of insinuating that a rumour is being spread and let the audience do all the work.  This is what happened in Burnt (Cassidy & Watts, 2000; 2002) when they let the burning down of the school occur off stage and only mention in in subsequent scenes like a Greek tragedy. This will be the same bridge we have to cross once we start working on the suicide aspect of the show and determining if we fact go down that road.

Another thought comes to mind about using words such as slut, whore, or others that schools may consider profane.  Australian Marriage Act (Arena Theatre, 2008) used the swear words on occasion throughout the performance.  This seemed to startle the audience into giggling because they have sworn.  Does this negatively or positively influence the engagement of the audience with the piece? Does it actually promote the use of those words? Could we be promoting students to use those words when bullying others?  How will the school feel about this language being used? There are multiple arguments that could be made either way.  I guess the real conclusion comes down to each and every individual situation.  If the language is being used in a way that isn’t just for the sake of it but which is used to convey a specific point and message then that should be considered acceptable.  Otherwise it probably shouldn’t be in there to begin with.  I think O’Toole talks about this in Theatre in Education I’ll ahve to have another look.

So in response to the process undertaken for the TIS piece I wanted to undertake a gestation period for the ensemble so we could develop aims and objectives.  I also wanted to and have undertaken that gestation period for myself as director facilitator.  In undertaking this I have developed some aims and objectives as well as a plan for the concept, context, process, and product.  After a couple of weeks asking the ensemble what their aims and objectives for the piece was hit with a decidedly undecided opinions.  It was mainly they agreed with mine and didn’t have anything much more to add.

• Was it too soon, did they all need more time to gestate and discover what they want to achieve with this performance?
• Or does by undertaking that process myself and giving them my opinions immediately hinder them being able to create there own, maybe not wanting to go against what I say?
• Or is it that my research and gestation has lead me to these points for a reason and that they all relatively on the ball for this topic and issue?

It is interesting to note that any and all the discussions we have lead us developing our ideas further, sometimes making concessions with what other think or believe and sometimes debate and division occur.  I believe this is fundamental to the process because it is through this that discoveries are made and it is these discoveries that inform the final product.