Using Stimuluses to Make a Final Performance

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Using Stimuluses to Make a Final Performance

For our drama portfolio we were given many different stimuli to work

with that all gave us different ideas for our final performance. I

choose two stimuli and used them to develop ideas. My first stimulus I

would like to talk about is a sentence about poppies that was given to

us. We took our stimulus and brainstormed ideas. We looked at

different drama strategies to employ that would help us understand the

text. The sentence, which was about poppies made us concentrate on the

aspect of war. Therefore death was the main idea but not necessarily

due to war but to other reasons. Poppies are red and red symbolises

blood, death, danger, wrong and love. As well as the performance

consisting of pain an idea would be to also portray love. So we were

thinking of a performance with a contrast of love and death. Loss will

convey the blood death and danger so we should use loss as a main

element within the piece. However, we were forgetting what poppies

actually are flowers. This obvious aspect should be included, as a

poppy is obviously a flower and death is an obvious element within

war. They are both stating the obvious and therefore some strategies

should be used to gain ideas from this aspect of poppies. We used hot

seating on someone who is a presenter at a garden show. We selected

some sentences about flowers and thought of using narrating to say

them. At the same we created some still images that were related to

the text to investigate the link between the poppies and the idea of

dying in war. We now had a few initial ideas that could be developed

further and used within our final piece.

My second stimulus was to be put in the position of a mother. I was

told that my son had been missing in action and I receive a letter

from him which is back dated two months ago. We took our stimulus and

started to create ideas again. We took into account the time period

and how life would be different then. We concentrated on the parent’s

and son’s relationship and the parent’s priorities. What would be the

most important thing in their life at that moment in time? There were

many aspects to consider so we decided to use hot seating as our first

strategy. We also had to consider the conditions the son was living in

as it was set in the war. It was important for the audience to

understand the atmosphere not only with the setting but within the

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