To begin our process we started by discussing certain elements we wish to research into for our future performance. After discussion about potential plays we could produce, we began to think rather about devising our own work by putting together speeches and monologues. However, not only would we be putting these pieces together, but we would try and present them in a completely new way in order to bring something fresh and exciting to our audience.

Initial discussions over we decided it was time to go away and each discover three speeches, song lyrics or monologues and bring them back to the group where we could experiment. It seems before our next meeting though we viewed a piece of theatre by another devising theatre company. After viewing practitioner Michael Pinchbeck’s work The Triology it was clear this devised work had many personal connections. The use of fragmented speech and the collaboration element to the performance were things we too wanted to look in to.

In the video above, Pinchbeck is discussing his piece The End which was written before the rest of the trilogy. It was also inspired by a stage direction alone ‘Exit pursued by a bear’ from William Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale. It just goes to show how a piece can be formed from as little as this, as long as you have an initial idea. Therefore I began by looking into works I felt we could most effectively change in a more obvious way to ease us into the devising process. For instance, the song Give me everything by Pitbull uses lyrics which can be viewed as slightly illiterate such as ‘Me not working hard? Yeah, right, picture that with a kodak’. If we try and look at this line though, could it be presented with a more serious tone, and if so how? Can you in fact change a texts meaning by presenting it in a different way, and how will this change affect an audience’s perception of text they may already be familiar with. When we meet on Friday we will begin by taking all these speeches and start experimenting with changing them to see what happens. Here our devising process begins.