Thursday Evaluation

Today was the day we were preforming our living gallery pieces, alongside our big performance. as we were rehearsing all day for our main performance we were given half an hour at the end to work on our living galleries. unfortunately my partner and I were unable to print off optical illusions to be put around the room, so we decided that we would focus more on our physical movement and how we connect to portray our message across. when rehearsing we started off facing each other and because the light were off and there was light shining on us we clocked our shadows and we brought in an idea of using our shadows as well as physical movement to connect with the audience. we eventually created a 2 minute motif that we would repeat as our whole piece.

what went well...

I felt that our piece was a success and we were confident with our movements and the message we were giving off, surprisingly the times we were not facing each other we were in time with our movements. there were no mistakes that were made and I felt that my partner and I were completely focussed throughout, even when performing my partner and I felt a connection between us which echoed through the room and made our living gallery more stronger.

Even better if...

It would of been better if there were optical illusions all around so the audience members would have more to look at,I felt like it would  of been more intriguing to watch and the audience would of clasped the idea of what we were showing quicker. I would of also made our physical motif longer but because we didn't have a lot of time to have make it, it was quite short. The voice recording wasn't that loud because we weren't able to get a speaker so we played it through a laptop, but then again it came to our advantage because it was more engrossing because you could hear the sound of the water when we were putting it on our faces and the gentle drips of it when it left our faces.

Audience comments/ reactions
My partner and I were given back a lot of positive comments, commenting on our shadow use and how it pulled them in to want to know more about what we were portraying, there were more comments on physical movement saying how they saw our commitment and saw how focussed we were and they were able to understand our message and there was one comment about our recording saying that the poem we were reading was beautiful and it really connected with what we were doing and emphasised/ strengthened our performance.

Thursday lesson 2

This lesson we were discussing all of our living galleries and then went around the school and had to note down three rooms or spaces we would like to use for them, we took pictures. my partner and i found a small musical theatre practice room that would be a perfect size to use, the next room we found was a peri room that was smaller than the musical theatre practice and the last was the theatre storage room where the audience would watch from outside the door we chose these spaces because we don't feel like we had to use a big room for our living gallery and the smaller the room the more impact will have on the audience. when coming back to the lesson we discussed the name we were going to call our pieces and my partner and i agreed on the name ' Colour blind' its a play on words as we are both communicating to our viewers that they do not appreciate colour while using a phrase that is used to describe people that cannot see certain colours. we went over the props list we would need for this; UV paint, water, two bowls, towel, optical illusions, small lights and a speaker to play the voice recording.


What is colour blindness?
Colour (color) blindness (colour vision deficiency, or CVD) affects approximately 1 in 12 men (8%) and 1 in 200 women in the world. In Britain this means that there are approximately 2.7 million colour blind people (about 4.5% of the entire population), most of whom are male.
There are different causes of colour blindness. For the vast majority of people with deficient colour vision the condition is genetic and has been inherited from their mother, although some people become colour blind as a result of other diseases such as diabetes and multiple sclerosis or they acquire the condition over time due to the aging process, medication etc.

Normal Vision

Tritanopia

Most colour blind people are able to see things as clearly as other people but they unable to fully ‘see’ red, green or blue light. There are different types of colour blindness and there are extremely rare cases where people are unable to see any colour at all.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKSOe5NK_qQ

Thursday lesson 3

Within this lesson we were able to go to our allocated spaces we were given to perform our living gallery, my partner and I came up with the idea that, in the room it will be dark, there will be optical illusions all around the room with lights around it and in the middle will be one of us with uv paint and the other with water in front of us and facing either side of each other, for this we have arranged to do physical movement where we connect with each other and we end up on the opposite side of where we end up putting uv paint/water on us, as this is  going on there will be a repetitive recording of us reading a poem about all the different colours. our living gallery is trying to emphasise on the point that we don't always see everything such as when you see light you would just see white but making up that white light are many different colours. this session was productive and we were very confident with what we were doing.

An optical illusion is an illusion caused by the visual system and characterized by visually perceived images that differ from objective reality. The information gathered by the eye is processed in the brain to give a percept that does not tally with a physical measurement of the stimulus source. There are three main types: literal optical illusions that create images that are different from the objects that make them, physiological illusions that are the effects of excessive stimulation of a specific type, and cognitive illusions, the result of unconscious inferences. Pathological visual illusions arise from a pathological exaggeration in physiological visual perception mechanisms causing the aforementioned types of illusions.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8O8Em_RPNg

Tuesday pefromance evaluation

Today was our show day and for the whole day we were just rehearsing our piece and making sure everyone knew what was going on and the running order of the piece, when running through we were in our costumes that we would be wearing later on that day - bunny ears and in all black. before rehearsing we did an activity just to warm us up and lighten up the mood, we were asked to go into pairs and make up a game that only consisted of two people, after this we tried playing some of the games that were made up and they were very fun. one was to hug each other and try and touch each others elbow while being connected and the other was to have your partner facing opposite to you on the floor and have bunny tails around our feet and we have to try and take them off each others feet.

what went well?
I was proud of the end result of our show, I thought it went very well and everyone put their all in it, we were all bouncing off each other and all of our focus was too a high standard, we were so engaged in the performance that there was not one bit where we lost focus or were lost on what to do. it was very fun and an amazing experience, especially reliving all our childhood memories, when looking at the audience members all I could see were smiles and laughs which strengthened the piece more because that was the reaction we were looking for, everything went to plan and the audience got involved a lot, all I could sense was joy in the atmosphere and that reflected a lot within the piece. we were all fully committed and in the room we performed there was a strong spiritual connection between us all.

Even better if...
I don't feel there were any flaws within our performance, but I feel like if it was longer and we got the audience involved a little bit more then it would of been to a great standard, I feel like we should of put a bit more emotion and feelings into our movements when we heard a specific type of music so it showed that the music was flowing through us and we could feel the rhythm flowing through our bodies. at some points I felt as if the emotion we were trying to portray was by force because that what we rehearsed, so if it was natural then it was of had an organic element to it.

Audience comments/reactions
All of the audiences faces were filled with joy while watching the whole piece but at one point I saw a few tears and that was the part where we were reaching up asking for our mummy's to help us, but besides that we had a good reaction and a lot of involvement, after the show when talking to some of the audience they were thanking us because we made them relive their childhood and that they really enjoyed it, a few said it had really touched them and changed the way they see life, they said that they wouldn't take life as seriously and that even though in society they are considered an adult in their heart they will always be a child and by watching our performance it made it more apparent to them.

Overall, I really enjoyed being part of something special and awakening other people to see that they should just have fun and making people and myself relive their childhood, by seeing other people happy made me happy and made the atmosphere in the room 10x better. I feel like I am a lot closer with the people in my class and have learnt a lot about them individually and as a group.

Tuesday lesson 5

this session was our last session before the day of the show, so this session we were just rehearsing and polishing things up, we started off the piece with doing misorgi and eating fruit while this was being done some people were allocated lines to explain what we were doing and why. next someone was explaining Samadhi and performed it by cleaning their teeth. after going through the opening a few times, our teacher was sure that we were ready, when we came back from our break we were told we were going to perform our whole piece to an audience, even though lines were just distributed we were still confident. this was our first time performing to an audience and I am proud to say that it went well, I felt that because we had an audience we got more into our piece and there was more of a group connection. our audience were very truthful when they gave back our feedback and said they found it very unusual but it was good at the same time and all that was crossing their minds was to join in because they said it looked fun. one said that it brought them back to their childhood when they were younger when we did the hokey cokey, they understood what we were exploring in our piece and found it very fascinating how we portrayed that by doing many different things. the only thing that we got as critisim is that at certain points i.e. when we are doing our tribal dancing we should involve the audience so they could join in on the fun and have a laugh with us  and by not involving them they felt disconnected. later on we spent the rest of the day working on the opening sequence, as a whole I thought the day was very productive and we were able to accomplish a lot and add on things to make our piece better.

Tuesday lesson 4

after partaking in misorgi, and stretching. our first activity as a class was to do the 'Hokey Cokey' at first we were confused with the request but when partaking in it, I felt my childhood flash before my eyes and my emotions became very apparent; I was so happy and the whole class seemed to be having a good time, at no point did anyone not looke interested. from this we did an exercise called 'The Game' this 'game' gave us freedom because it had no rules and was based on working on the spot- improvisation. We all created a big circle and someone would go and play the song that brings them joy and anyone that felt comfortable to go in the middle and start an impro scene. during this task I didn't go into the middle because I didn't feel comfortable to and I felt that it was pressurising and I didn't feel the connection I felt last time in the lesson.

Following from this exercise, we got into pairs and was instructed to hold their hands then close our eyes and walk away from them, then try to find them by using touch, this exercise was intended on working on our touch senses and having to really feel a persons hands to differentiate them from others, most of us were able to find our partner and somehow this made us connect more spiritually because we found each other through touch. we started an unusual exercise where we stayed with the partner we were with but this time we started a game called 'Get of my back' this game consisted of being behind your partner and pushing their back at any time and whenever you push them, your partner would say ''get off my back''. this game for me was annoying because a push was spontaneous and because I didn't know when it was going to happen it made me agitated because it kept on surprising me and also someone was pushing my back, this caused me to put more aggression when we swapped over so that my partner realised how I felt when I was in that position. Stuart explained that some companies do this exercise for hours so we should empathise with the people this happens to. another exercise that we did was called ' mummy help me' where we would be in child's position but our hands would be reaching up, and we would repeatedly say mummy help me, personally I hated this exercise because it caused me pain and it did bring me to tears because it caused my emotions to overwhelm and it made me think of my mum and how much I love her and how much she means to me. when Stuart asked us to stop and I dropped my arms I felt restless and drained and I couldn't catch my breath, Stuart explained that a practioner used this because it is the theatre of cruelty. to end this session we ran through our whole piece with another theatre teacher watching us, after he gave us beneficial, helpful feedback; he said he wanted to join us and it was encapturing  because he felt like a child again and it looked very playful, this feedback made the cast happy because it was our first run through and already we knew that the message we were trying to portray came across clearly.

to end the day we went to the science lad where we will be performing our opening- surfing in the usa, beach boys and blocked the movements we will be doing to the song we then started watching our small group performances that will follow after the physical theatre piece. this rehersal was very productive and we had an idea of what our show was going to look like.

How the brain works

Our brain contains billions of nerve cells arranged in patterns that coordinate thought, emotion, behavior, movement and sensation.

Deep folds and wrinkles in the brain increase the surface area of the grey matter, so more information can be processed. 

Your brain's hemispheres are divided into four lobes.

• The frontal lobes control thinking, planning, organizing, problem solving, short-term memory and movement.
• The parietal lobes interpret sensory information, such as taste, temperature and touch.
• The occipital lobes process images from your eyes and link that information with images stored in memory.
• The temporal lobes process information from your senses of smell, taste and sound. They also play a role in memory storage.

Structures deep within the brain control emotions and memories. Known as the limbic system, these structures come in pairs. Each part of this system is duplicated in the opposite half of the brain. 

• The hypothalamus controls emotions. It also regulates your body's temperature and controls crucial urges — such as eating or sleeping.
• The hippocampus sends memories to be stored in appropriate sections of the cerebrum and then recalls them when necessary.

This term in our Tuesday's experimental lessons we are devising a piece focusing on how music can affect the brain, as of this I went to do research into this and this is what I found:

Happy/sad music affects how we see neutral faces:

We can usually pick if a piece of music is particularly happy or sad, but this isn’t just a subjective idea that comes from how it makes us feel. In fact, our brains actually respond differently to happy and sad music.
Even short pieces of happy or sad music can affect us. One study showed that after hearing a short piece of music, participants were more likely to interpret a neutral expression as happy or sad, to match the tone of the music they heard. This also happened with other facial expressions, but was most notable for those that were close to neutral.
Something else that’s really interesting about how our emotions are affected by music is that there are two kind of emotions related to music: perceived emotions and felt emotions.
This means that sometimes we can understand the emotions of a piece of music without actually feeling them, which explains why some of us find listening to sad music enjoyable, rather than depressing.

Ambient noise can improve creativity

We all like to pump up the tunes when we’re powering through our to-do lists, right? But when it comes to creative work, loud music may not be the best option.
It turns out that a moderate noise level is the sweet spot for creativity. Even more than low noise levels, ambient noise apparently gets our creative juices flowing, and doesn’t put us off the way high levels of noise do.
The way this works is that moderate noise levels increase processing difficulty which promotes abstract processing, leading to higher creativity. In other words, when we struggle (just enough) to process things as we normally would, we resort to more creative approaches.
In high noise levels, however, our creative thinking is impaired because we’re overwhelmed and struggle to process information efficiently.
This is very similar to how temperature and lighting can affect our productivity, where paradoxically a slightly more crowded place can be beneficial.

3. Take this one with a grain of salt, because it’s only been tested on young adults (that I know of), but it’s still really interesting.
In a study of couples who spent time getting to know each other, looking at each other’s top ten favorite songs actually provided fairly reliable predictions as to the listener’s personality traits.
The study used five personality traits for the test: openness to experience, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness and emotional stability.
Interestingly, some traits were more accurately predicted based on the person’s listening habits than others. For instance, openness to experience, extraversion and emotional stability were the easiest to guess correctly. Conscientiousness, on the other hand, wasn’t obvious based on musical taste.

Music training can significantly improve our motor and reasoning skills

We generally assume that learning a musical instrument can be beneficial for kids, but it’s actually useful in more ways than we might expect. One study showed that children who had three years or more musical instrument training performed better than those who didn’t learn an instrument in auditory discrimination abilities and fine motor skills.

They also tested better on vocabulary and nonverbal reasoning skills, which involve understanding and analyzing visual information, such as identifying relationships, similarities and differences between shapes and patterns.