A Painting by Paula Rego called The Family - The Stimulus for our Dram

A Painting by Paula Rego called The Family - The Stimulus for our Drama PieceINTRODUCTIONIn this bear witness I will be discussing the work that I have done in thefirst module of performance studies.The aim of this module was to develop expert skills in dance, dramaand music and using the performance process of improvising, rehearsingand performing and then applying these skills to four performancepieces. We carried out several skills workshops to help develop bureau in all 3 thematic argonas to a more even consistency as whatsoevermembers of our group had never done dance, music and some hadnt takenexpressive arts GCSE.In this module I developed skills in all three areas, some completelynew skills (for example in dance) and those skills, which I alreadyknew but developed them to a higher standard of performance. I alsolearnt the processes of constructing a performance piece inperformance studies and skills that are applicable in all threethematic areas. I will elaborate on how I have developed these skillsduring this module in this essay.THE gaming PIECEThe stimulus we were given for our drama piece was a painting by PaulaRego called The Family which contained a lot of ideas forinterpretation, especially work on proxemics, which we had previouslyanalyze in our skills workshops. The Family shows an ambiguousrelationship between men, women and children and the variation in thetraditional status of a father, mother and daughter figures. It isimportant to bear in mind during stages of temporary expedient that feature and plot development are not al tracks the most essential partof a drama piece. More advanced performance skills should be takeninto account, such as tension, proxemics and physicality and thesubtext created as a result of the effective use of these techniques,which our drama piece evolved around. We decided that the most directway of communication was to produce a distinct sexual subtext betweentwo characters, and in our case this was the father and the daughter.Initial brainstorms we had were focused on light, physicality and motility in the picture and we didnt want it to be story - led as wefelt this would be too simplistic and wouldnt allow us to explore ourskills and techniques as performers. In the earlyish stages ofimprovisation, we decided that tension was vital in our scene, so thishad to be created by si... ...med our dance to a structured rhythm sequence to showthe evolving of the evil commanding the pure and good. But as I saidbefore, there seemed to be no real motivation behind our piece. I didfeel thought that although we had no dialogue, it was unnecessary todo so and I think that the studying of Boal and Pinter really helpedwith this. I think that, as a group we realised that plot andcharacter development werent important at that stage. By not havingany characters but just acting the gestus of our role, we portrayedthe mannerisms, which as a result created tension because of the contented of the scene. I do feel that because we didnt have characterssuch, the other skills we had refined were lacking. This is the onepiece that I actually would like to do again as I dont feel wedevised and performed this to the best of our abilities. I think Iwouldve liked to keep the music and dance pieces but adjusted thedrama to include the kind of free energy we had had in the drama piecewhere the piece was loaded with subtext. This I feel was notdramatic and didnt convey the ideas to the audience that we wantedto. I dont believe this piece was as successful as it could havebeen.