#image source: alice on pintrest

[strideofpride]

no one does summer like new yorkers: a gossip girl summer playlist

summer's begun: 1. everybody wants to rule the world - tears for fears “welcome to your life, there’s no turning back”  2. island in the sun - weezer “we'll never feel bad anymore” 3. nine in the afternoon - panic at the disco “‘man, it feels good to feel this way'" 4. alright - supergrass “are we like you? i can't be sure” wishin' they were us: 5. rich girl - gwen stefani “i hope you can all keep up” 6. can’t get enough of myself - santigold “living a, living a fantasy” 7. teenage dream - katy perry “you and i, will be young forever” 8. that’s what i like - bruno mars “all this is here for you” 9. poker face - lady gaga “a little gamblin' is fun when you're with me” uncomfortably numb: 10. gimme more - britney spears “they want more? well, I'll give them more” 11. we r who we r - kesha “i'm so sick of being so serious” 12. sos - rihanna “it's not healthy... for me to feel this way” 13. all night - chance the rapper “now i can't really hear what you gotta say now” 14. ride wit me - nelly “oh, why do i live this way?" 15. super rich kids - frank ocean “super rich kids with nothing but loose ends” the summertime blues: 16. oxford comma - vampire weekend “why would you speak to me that way?” 17. belle - jack johnson “so you'll have to speak to me some other way” 18. golden - harry styles “i don't wanna be alone” 19. be ok - ingrid michaelson “i just want to feel something today" 20. this must be the place (naive melody) - talking heads “home, is where i want to be but i guess i'm already there”

#gossip girl #gg songs #gg playlists #image source: alice on pintrest

[cosmictheatrecompany17-blog]

24/05/2017 - A Practice with Dramaturgy

Alice Setterington

This rehearsal was dedicated to running through the entire piece to a second eye (Bertrand Lescar) for feedback. It was the first time we had used full props and costume.

A list of dramaturgy:

·         Condoms

·         Costume (going out clothes such as skirts, crop tops/dresses

·         Bra

·         Thong limbo line

·         Vodka bottle

·         Pizza

·         Soup (for vomit)

·         Balloons

·         Party poppers,

·         Bum Bags,

·         Make up and brushes

·         Shot glasses

·         Tray (for shots)

·         Pills

·         Fake flowers

·         Badge

·         Micro phone

·         Visor

·         Red coat

Overall, the run through went well. The prop element was better than expected, with the majority being kept inside our bum bags. This was a dramaturgical choice to represent the stereotype of endless things inside women’s bags, but this time unexpected items such as balloons and bras. Dramaturgy is a huge focal point for our company, and every prop has been decided specifically. For example, make up brushes become weapons in one scene, paralleled with Western style music, to create a comical take on fights on nights out. It also conveys the exaggeration of this in the media, and how although fights can take place, women are portrayed as out of control and violent. To contradict this we straight after turn it into a dance fight, to show that often it’s less serious than it seems. Another choice for this scene was to use social media. India during the performance will use Instagram to create a live video on stage- often fights and brawls are filmed making them seem more extreme than they are. Not only the audience, but hundreds of other people, will have the chance to view this, showing how media reaches far. This choice will only work depending on signal in the performance space, so is something we intend to try out. Another challenge with this is how will the audience know to get their phone out or watch it? We are planning on putting the Instagram information on the programme, and also saying during this scene ‘Instagram live it, everyone needs to watch this’. Hopefully this will work successfully.

Most of the dramaturgy is from images seen from night’s out- the Mcdonald’s bags for example come from the image below.

Horwood, M. (2016) Available at: http://www.citethemrightonline.com/media-art/visual-sources/photographs-from-the-internet?SearchResult=Action [Accessed: 15/05/2017]

Instead of using it on our feet, however, we decided to create movement with them on our heads, stemming from India’s character being sick and appearing as though this is being given to her as a sick bag. We perform sexualised movement with these on, further communicating the objectification of women and the joke many say – putting a bag on her head so you don’t have to see how ugly she is when having sex. These serious undertones are not intended to be obvious at first, but rather show a comedic façade, and only leave the audience thinking about it afterwards when leaving.

Costume wise, we wore clothes that we could easily flash different parts of our bodies, and are associated with nights out:

(Pictured- Alice) When doing our movement sections this would allow us to flash legs in this case, and Anouska her breasts in a dress.

Although this first run through went well, there were certainly some aspects that needed working on. Feedback included needing higher energy all the way throughout. It seemed at first as though we were only performing at 40%, and this was still a lot of energy. It therefore became clear that we needed to be so energetic that the piece became ridiculous- from start to end and although the characters develop throughout, it doesn’t affect this aspect. This also highlighted the structure of the piece- where does it go? Time-wise we needed to add more and decided that creating scenes that had more text/voice in it would be best as we had already included a lot of movement. These scenes would be a continuation of the bar crawl that we had created- using audience members to play games with props. Some scenes also needed developing with smoother transitions that made sense rather than appearing to be waiting on stage. To combat this we planned on creating slicker transitions and also discussing the importance of each scene and why it is where it is structure wise.

New Structure:

1.  Bar crawl entrance

2.  Movement 1

3.  Animals

4.  Bar crawl limbo

5.  Movement 2

6.  Bar crawl relay

7.  Bag dance

8. Prayer

9. Make up

10. Bar crawl treasure hunt

11. rap

12. Fight

13. Dance off

14. Speech

15. Balcony

16. Pizza

17. Evolution

18. Exit

Rather than full scenes, the piece acts and several snapshots of images from the media, and has a jumbled structure to represent the distorted memories of a night out. We decided to scrap the scenes of personal stories and involve them in other ways throughout such as Alex’s character really needing the loo and wetting herself, rather than telling the audience this happened once. By doing so, they are still in there and informing our work, but are not explicitly being explained to the audience. This allows the audience to make their own judgements on whether this would actually happen to someone, and act as a reader of an article- us being the physicalized version of Sarah Vine’s Daily Mail article.

The evolution line came from an image that is a play on the well-known image but turned into a version for a night out. We decided to use this to show for a split second each stage in one image.

Pintrest (2017) Available at: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=night+out+evolution+line&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjL5P-13ZLUAhVrAcAKHd-pCzkQ_AUIBigB&biw=1366&bih=638#tbm=isch&q=alcohol+prayer+funny&imgrc=_g7IH_yMdFC_zM: [Date Accessed: 20/05/2017]

Aims for the following rehearsal:

·         Create more bar crawl scenes with text

·         Learn the alcohol prayer

The alcohol prayer was something we found on google and decided would make a good addition for comedic effect, and playing om the notion that the only thing that is important to young adults is alcohol:

dropalinedesigns (2017) Available at: http://www.dropalinedesigns.com/The-Beer-Prayer-Wood-Sign_p_1150.html [Date accessed: 10/05/2017)

We also created a time-lapse video of the run through (uploaded separately).

#theatre #costume #dramaturgy