Chinese Whispers texting – rehearsal #4

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.