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 pitch that I handed to marketing included a description of what the piece was intended to look like. This was a series of vignettes that would cover the issues that a student might face transitioning from secondary to tertiary education. There would be a central metaphor and hopefully a narrative thread that tied it all together. The metaphor I guess looking back now is probably that life is like a relationship because there are always choices, problems, good times and always plenty more fish in the sea. Reflecting now I wonder what the show could have been like if this was the central metaphor and vision that I had approached the ensemble with? The issues and ideas about further study we wanted to cover developed in the research stage through brainstorming and discussion. These became the basis for our series of vignettes. The first rehearsal I conducted a skills and interest audit and what came across was a mixed bag although generally we all had an interest in non-naturalism in some form. We wanted to create something non-naturalistic at least in part. Initially some scenes were headed in a non-naturalistic direction:

• Horse race
• VTAC monster/beast/animal
• Choices (matrix pills)
• Moment of truth (dropped)
• Ready steady crap
• The lecture
• Student services saved your life (dropped)
• Spoon feeding

These all began with ideas or comments made during brainstorming and discussion sessions. We workshopped people’s ideas:

• What happens?
• How do you see it happening?
• What does this convey?
• Is it clear?
• Is there text or objects we can draw on?
• What does it look like?

These were questions for the ensemble to answer not just the ideas originator. Some developed quickly and easily, some slowly and arduous, some have changed beyond recognition, and others have been dropped. The horse race for example came from an idea which got thrown around about year 12 seeming like a race to the finish with the horses wearing blinkers. When the blinkers are taken off there is a realisation a whole world exists out there. I particularly liked this idea. It has developed slowly week by week and almost dropped a few times but eventually it became something that we decided to use because we did like the point it made. We drew on text of the meblourne-cup-call which was edited and reedited time and time again, tried being the horses, the jockeys, the jockeys riding crates, and a transformation of student to horse. It was really just a process of trial and error mixed in with discussion and reflection. As was the case for all the others listed above, some made it and some didn’t but I believe the performance was stronger for this reason (Dijt, 2006).

A lot of other issues or areas we wanted to cover didn’t stem from a non-naturalistic idea as was the case for those listed above. Running dry improvisations tended only to lead to naturalistic scenes and banter. One of the Deakin staff suggested looking at these scenes non-naturalistically; you could have actually seen the light bulbs turn on. This started a process of thinking about what was the core message we were trying to convey with these scenes and then how could they be portrayed non-naturalistically? A prime example was making friends (which has drastically changed since its inception). Further study can be difficult initially with people experiencing feelings of loneliness and isolation but after some effort everything gets easy. The idea then became to portray through the space a sense of isolation and a cold and lonely environment which gradually eased as the new student found there place approaching different groups. The other ideas that were very naturalistic were worked in this same manner and then everything was workshopped in the manner discussed above.

Morrison and Stinson (1995) argue that young audiences need post modern content as well as a post modern structure. This they argue is due to young audiences growing up in a rapidly changing complex and multi-layered post-modern world. Was the performance inherently post-modern? The project was not approached in a deconstructive sense but it did contain elements associated with post-modern form such as pastiche, collage, non-linear narrative and others. I would not call it an example of post-modernism but it contains the elements which Morrison and Stinson (1995) argue are essential for promoting and developing artistic and aesthetic experiences for young audiences. This they argue is a ‘responsibility as educators for widening their cultural experience’ (Morrison & Stinson, 1995: 40). Considering the brief this was not an intention when beginning this project but it has been on my mind regarding my next project for some time. I wonder why then it developed in this way and the age of the ensemble is the first thing that comes to mind, considering we are all young ad have grown up in this post-modern age as well. Nonetheless it could have been beneficial for the audience in widening their culture experience and I hope it was.