Lesson 4- Nirvana

Inspired by the words of Charles Bukowski the poem 'Nirvana' that Tom Waites used as an inspiration for one of his pieces, we created a physical piece that in cooperated the poem too. The piece surrounded the idea of our Nirvana. Mine was being in a swimming pool on my back under the water watching rain hit the surface. To portray this, 3 people when on all fours, I lied on top of their back and they moved me up and down as if I was in water. The piece was successful and was able to access physical and vocal elements, whilst in cooperating work from Tom Waites. Therefore we have decided to use this concept as part of our promenade piece at the beginning. The concept- finding our Nirvana. With experimental, taking on something so broad and personal as someone's Nirvana, means we can experiment with form and structure when presenting it to our audience. As the audience will be walking through the promenade piece, they will be walking through our Nirvana's which flings open hundreds of door regarding the atmosphere and meaning we can create.

Today we dedicated most of our lesson time to finding the place we want to set up our promenade piece. We decided the garden area in the courtyard would be good to create a paradise scene. As a lot of people's heaven involve the outdoors and nature based features, being able to tap into the natural beauty and materials that are already available to us is an opportunity we would be stupid to pass up. We can create a heavenly garden, that the audience can walk through, picking up elements they want to, in the same way you would pick the prettiest flower.

We have also decided that we want to include Trestle masks in our piece. We think this can represent the front people put on to find their happiness, but the true emotion we feel is hidden behind a mask. We want to experiment with the idea of unmasking and masking people, in the same way you mask and unmask your fears and desires. Experimental is the perfect term to add this extra layer and be able to try out different ways of working with the masks to find how they are most effective for both actor and audience.