Seven Devils

Today we developed our mental illness idea where the mentally ill are drawn to Fort Amherst, using this location as our stimulus it was our task to create a short scene/ piece around this.

We used the song 'Seven Devils' by Florence and the Machine, this song has a very creepy and almost scary atmosphere which we felt would work extremely well in the tunnel systems of Fort Amherst as the acoustics of the tunnels should create a very creepy echo. This inspired us to create a more movement based piece around the music and the stimulus of mentally ill patients. Because the song is called seven devils I thought it would be a good idea to have seven patients sat on chairs spread sporadically across the tunnel/ room, these patients would all be sitting perfectly still whilst a doctor brought the audience into this section of the tunnel/ room, the doctor would allocate audience members to the patients and have a bit of dialogue explaining what the audience are not allowed to do and what they have to look out for, one of the main parts of the dialogue states that the patients have been surgically immobilised, hopefully this would mean the audience wouldn't expect us to move but during a dramatic drop in the music every patient jolts their body extremely violently in a different way, for example I was continually reaching out to grab someone whilst twitching me head and legs throughout, this added with all the other patients moving very violently at the same time should horrify the audience.

When we showed this piece to the other group they were all genuinely terrified and they half knew what to expect from occur group which meant if they were scared a real audience would be terrified. After this we then had the idea that the original doctor was the sat down by a patient and told to take their medication, the patient doing this would then tell the audience that they are the doctor and move the audience into the next part of the tunnel system creating confusion as to who the real doctor is. We then thought it would be even better if this continually happened after every scene meaning that the doctor changes each time, hopefully by the end we would then scare the audience by saying we are all the doctors but when in reality we're not and there never has been a doctor there.

I felt this piece went extremely well for just a 50 minute time frame to work on it, we spent around 15 minutes deliberating ideas and talking about what we could do and how it would then link into a story line.

Site Specific

Today, we started working on our next unit, site specific. The first thing we did was brainstorm different locations we could think of in smaller groups. We are restricted to our local area because we want as many people to come watch the piece as possible, where as if its in a remote location or a far away destination people may not be likely to come and watch. 

Next lesson we narrowed it down to a couple of locations where we would like to perform and start to think of some ideas of what we could perform. The whole group liked the idea of Fort Amherst in Chatham, not only for it's atmospheric tunnels, but the fact that it gives us the option to perform inside and outside so light isn't a restriction. It is also a very large space so its almost made for a promenade performance, however a few limitations we may face are how big the tunnels are, it could be very difficult to squeeze a class of 13 and an audience in part of the tunnel systems making the performance rather difficult and possibly dangerous, to combat this we would have to try and make our scenes smaller with less people in them and maybe do a few performances each night for a couple of nights so our audience isn't too big.

Our location is our stimulus for this piece so we began to think of what kind of performance we could create. As finding a scripted piece to fit 13 people into would be near impossible. We came up with the idea that fort Amherst is being used as a mental department where, somehow the mentally ill are being drawn to something within the fort. We thought using a camcorder film would also add to the eeriness of the piece, before bringing the video to life in an interactive performance that involves the audience, breaking the forth wall.

Mental Disorder Research

Bipolar disorder

Bipolar disorder is a mental health problem that mainly affects your mood. If you have bipolar disorder, you are likely to have times where you experience:

Manic or hypomanic episodes (feeling high)

Depressive episodes (feeling low)

Potentially some psychotic symptoms during manic or depressed episodes

Everyone has variations in their mood, but in bipolar disorder these changes can be very distressing and have a big impact on your life. You may feel that your high and low moods are extreme, and that swings in your mood are overwhelming.

Claustrophobia

An extreme or irrational fear of confined places

Body dysmorphic disorder

Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) is an anxiety disorder that causes a person to have a distorted view of how they look and to spend a lot of time worrying about their appearance.

Cotard delusion

Cotard's syndrome and walking corpse syndrome is a rare mental illness, in which an afflicted person holds the delusion that they are dead,

Delirium tremens

Is a rapid onset of confusion usually caused by withdrawal from alcohol. When it occurs, it is often three days into the withdrawal symptoms and lasts for two to three days. People may also see or hear things other people do not. Physical effects may include shaking, shivering, irregular heart rate, and sweating. Occasionally, a very high body temperature or seizures may result in death.

Autophagia

The majority of individuals affected by this disorder will often feel a sense of tension or arousal before committing the act, and then experience pleasure, gratification or relief at the time of committing the act. Once the act has been completed, the individual may or may not feel regret, self-reproach, or guilt.
Autophagia occurs when one is compelled to inflict pain upon oneself by biting and/or devouring portions of one's body. It is sometimes seen with schizophrenia.

Excoriation disorder

Excoriation, is a disorder characterized by the repeated urge to pick at one's own skin, often to the extent that damage is caused.

Exhibitionism

A mental condition characterized by the compulsion to display one's genitals in public.

Fregoli delusion

The Fregoli delusion, or the delusion of doubles, is a rare disorder in which a person holds a delusional belief that different people are in fact a single person who changes appearance or is in disguise

Kleptomania

A recurrent urge to steal, typically without regard for need or profit

Persecutory delusions

Persecutory delusions are a set of delusional conditions in which the affected person believes they are being persecuted. Specifically, they have been defined as containing two central elements: The individual thinks that harm is occurring, or is going to occur.

Panic disorder

Panic disorder is an anxiety disorder characterized by recurring panic attacks, causing a series of intense episodes of extreme anxiety during panic attacks. It may also include significant behavioral changes, and ongoing worries about having other attacks

OCD

Obsessive–compulsive disorder is a mental disorder where people feel the need to check things repeatedly, perform certain routines repeatedly called rituals, or have certain thoughts repeatedly. People are unable to control either the thoughts or the activities. Common activities include hand washing, counting of things, and checking to see if a door is locked. Some may have difficulty throwing things out. These activities occur to such a degree that the person's daily life is negatively affected.

Tardive dyskinesia

Tardive dyskinesia is a difficult-to-treat and often incurable disorder resulting in involuntary, repetitive body movements

Trichotillomania

Trichotillomania is an obsessive compulsive disorder characterized by the compulsive urge to pull out one's hair, leading to hair loss and balding, distress, and social or functional impairment.

Gender Dysphoria

The condition of feeling one's emotional and psychological identity as male or female to be opposite to one's biological sex.

Boanthropy

Boanthropy is a psychological disorder in which a human believes himself or herself to be a cow

Alien hand syndrome

Alien hand syndrome is a rare  disorder that causes hand movement without the person being aware of what is happening or having control over the action. The afflicted person may sometimes reach for objects and manipulate them without wanting to do so, even to the point of having to use the controllable hand to restrain the alien hand.

Writing in Role

Dr Harvey

Today I spoke with William, he is strange young man. He seems to be rather confused as to why he is here; William has lots of plans for the future which is rather admirable however he doesn’t seem to have high priorities for getting better, William did mention getting his head fixed but that was after he was married and had children which gives me a large cause for concern. On the other hand I am glad William knows he needs to seek help to cure his mental issues, this is the first step in getting better. I’m not sure William feels any remorse towards killing three of his peers at school; this is my biggest cause for concern towards William because if I saw some remorse I would feel confident he’s not a threat to any councillors or nurses that would aid him with his recovery, but for now I can only assume he is still capable of killing or harming others around his, this is why I have decided to continue speaking to him through the intercom and behind the glass in the room next door, this is for my own safety and also I feel it helps William opening up to me as he can’t see any of my facial expressions or get annoyed if he sees me write notes. I will continue working with William over the next two weeks in hope of seeing some improvement in behaviour, if I don’t see any improvement I will then pass William onto the mental health specialist department.

Punk Rock

We decided that it would be a good idea for me to play the part of Dr Harvey. This was because I am able to put on loads of different accents, I decided to put on a soft relaxing Irish accent because I thought this would suit the part well and it would be something you would hear in a mental hospital to keep the patients calm. We decided we couldn't have any of us on stage as we were all the students previously and didn't have time to change costume. This meant we had a voice over setup backstage so my voice was amplified with a microphone into the auditorium, this made it sound like it was an intercom set up and we thought it still worked, we had to change the script slightly as some of the lines only worked for the actor to be in the room with William however we changed it well and it worked so well the audience didn't realise that it was me talking, in fact they thought it was a pre-recorded voice.  

Writing in Role

Bennett

Today at school we had this new girl show up who looked like a total slut, I bet her parents have hardly any money, she may as well have told us she was on a scholarship she was that much of a mess. William is such a creep, he wouldn’t leave Lilly alone and whenever someone would come and talk to her or say hello he would get all annoyed and try and get between them, it was so embarrassing I almost felt sorry for Lilly. Chadwick was trying to show off in front of Lilly which was so cringe worthy, all me and Cissy could do was roast him until the only option he had was to leave the room before he started crying, I even force fed him a winegum just to shut him up! Nicky was trying to show off in front of Lilly  as well the twat, he tried to pretend he liked the band she was into which William the creep then ruined but that was funny because it was so awkward and Nick looked like a retard.