cyber bullying – rehearsal #3

recount

We began the rehearsal by talking about the assessment that the ensemble has to undertake which seems to be a dilemma in which I cannot do much about. After not making much ground we moved on to discussing the research that people had been doing and I gave out some more research material for the ensemble to follow up on. I had wanted to move on to doing some more practice based stuff rather than just more discussion. We did started on an exercise in which we listed all of the different mediums for cyber-bullying and spoke about which were more theatrically viable than the others. After a short physical vocal warm up I got the ensemble to create some images for me.

The first two were built in a progressions one person starts, next watches and moves in and builds on the image until all are involved. The first was built from myself holding and looking at a mobile phone. The second from me sitting down typing on a key board. We have photo’s of these so I’ll try and get them on here once they are on the wiki.

The next set of images were created by the three ensemble members from the stimulus cyber-bullying. Using the cop-in-the-head technique each ensemble member was tapped in and gave there thoughts. This was then repeated except with the stimulus of coping strategy. We also have photo’s of these and I’ll try and get them up as soon as possible.

I then wanted the ensemble to write their own cyber-bullying text message, website post, and or email. I had planned for this to be used in a sound scape I plan to create. We instead actually sent cyber bullying text messages to each other. We found that:

• some were not very good at it while others were exceptionally good at it
• Is including this type of explicit material going to enlighten the cyber bullies further
• The general consensus was that we need to avoid placing explicit material like this in the piece.

We concluded the session with a discussion concerning the human obsession with recording and capturing everything. The following was discussed:

• we do this to clarify and ensure that it actually happened
• What is the difference between a journalist recording violence on a national and international scale and a child/adolescent filming violence against another child/adolescent?
  • Are they both bystanders or both bullies?
  • Society says one thing and does another, condone the filming of war and terrorism as journalism informing the world but crucify the students filming cyber bullying
  • Can’t change society can only inform the youth of today and the leaders of tomorrow
• my idea was to create a scene in which a child films cyber bullying which grows and develops into something bigger more like a war event as the child turns from student into journalist
  • is this putting the blame on society? and voiding the actions of the bully?
  • Is this trying to solve a problem that can’t be solved rather than just raising awareness?
  • Are the age group going to understand it?

Reflection

Was the rehearsal successful? Yes although more could have been achieved there was still a wealth of discussion and practice that amounted from the rehearsal.

Why?

• The images we created can be used as stimulus for further development or placed straight into the piece
• The discussion on the most theatrical viable types of cyber bullying opening up an area for testing and work shopping these
• The cyber bullying text messaging opened up a dimension that we had been talking about but really gave it a practical base to work and argue from
• The discussion about the media vs cyber bullying was interesting and developed a discussion which still has places to go especially testing it in the space