Styles of Acting - Physical Theatre (Including Evaluation)

So this week we have been put into our groups for physical theatre and we straight away searched for a religious/political issue that has had a really big impact on people lives. We all decided that 'je suis charlie' would be a good idea for us to use as it is a rather recent and very tragic issue. Straight away I thought of how the Muslim community have gotten the aftermath effect and seem to be looked down on my members of the British community, and that not everyone that is apart of that religion is a mass terrorist who's to kill everyone. To try and simplify this idea and make it into something physical, I thought of having this ball which represented the entire Muslim community and through out the piece, we go back to the 'representation ball' and show that it's slowly falling apart and that it's getting a worse reputation for the actions of the extremists that were involved in the incident.

As a group we have taken on board the type of movement we will use and we have come up with different techniques that are used within Physical Theatre ( Not moving, Contact Improvisation,  Movement, Gesture, Mime). We use some contact improvisation when showing the the death of those that were in the building at the time of the shooting. We also use the "not moving" technique to show that the extremists have a lot of fighting power and push the rest of us (who are representing the police) away. Towards the end of this, what was a ball is now just one person (me) who is left alone in the middle of the floor, no one to support or defend this representation of the Muslim community. The whole purpose of this is to show people how far prejudgement and stereotyping a religion can go and how it can ruin people's lives.

We are performing the piece to a song called "Once upon a Time:The battle of life and death" by Good Charlotte.
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3gRyrZF0x8

Evaluation

For the small performance on Physical Theatre that myself and the group made together, I genuinely enjoyed it. Personally I would say this as I believe that we worked well as a team and that we really took on the techniques on board for what physical theatre requires. One thing that I thought could have been better is the music choice as it seemed a bit short for our piece however I did like the fact that when the song ends with the heartbeat monitor we all freeze and I think it gave that bit of engagement with the audience as they aren’t sure what’s going to happen next and the heartbeat monitor sound could symbolise the end of the extremist’s life or those who were seriously injured in the terrible incident.