6th November Lesson 1

Soap box 
Our first exercise of the term was called the soap box which was all about freedom of expression and also in relation to the box within Hyde park, to start we walked around the room and at abolishing ourselves with everyone within the room to make us feel comfortable when expressing our views to the class. Wether after thought about our chosen subject sand then spoke it was quite apparent when listening people used very aggressive language with very anecdotal themes, this is probably due to any of us not knowing any physical facts. I felt for me I was very aggressive which is something I could improve on later for our protests in week four.

Moody objects 
This exercise was all about taking on common objects and giving them emotions thus making you ask why that object is in that mood, thus presenting us to the methods of Brecht which is asking why not how within theatre.
The scenarios we were given: happy toilet, sexy calculator, moody motorbike, shy car.
To make a happy toilet we as a group of 3 decided to make the basic toilet features and then relate them to the emotion of happiness; using our faces we showed happiness through big smile.
I felt this was successful as it presented the ideas of happiness and a toilet, when looking at other groups work I found they were successful as they reflected happiness within their frozen moments so it wasn't just presented in their face.
The object that was most difficult to show I felt was a shy car, this is due to the fact of the emotion of being shy is very detailed and to look at someone and do that is challenging as the easiest way to show shyness is to look away from the audience and isolate yourselves as a group we decided to make a basic car shape and then slowly fall or sink down to the floor and soften our body shapes, one group that did this successfully decided to work of each other making their shapes and emotions clear . Item that they used was not interacting with each other and keeping emotions and eye lines to               themselves this therefore shut them off from the group.

From this task alone I have learnt a lot about how Brecht uses everything interns of body's and objects to create emotion to then make the audience ask why the object may be in this situation or why the object has certain feelings and emotions. It also presents to me that Brecht may have used this tool to present items like time of day so for example a tired chair meaning that its either old or early in the morning helping the audience ask why to the situation.