Six Points To Remember When Doing Your 3,500 Worded-Essay

1. Research into history of stimulus used
2. Rehearsal techniques
3. Style of theatre used e.g. naturalism, brecht, etc.
4. Mention theatre practitioners e.g. Frantic Assembly, Stanislavski
5. Link research to how you show it in performance
6. What would the SCHP communicate to the audience?

How is the initial material/stimulus being researched and developed at significant stages (e.g. at the beginning) during the process of creating drama?

The initial material being researched in my group thus far is the case of Juanita Maxwell, a 25 year-old young woman who has multiple personality disorder. The subject of mental illness was a topic that struck my group members and I, and therefore we decided to delve deeper into how we can explore the case of Juanita Maxwell using rehearsal techniques, which will then hopefully lead onto sculpting a play that demonstrates how multiple personality disorder can be a troubling illness for those diagnosed with it.

The first rehearsal technique explored was the use of freeze frames, suggested by my group member Derrick. He suggested we told the case of Juanita Maxwell in a series of freezeframes, with the first one outlining Juanita arguing with an elderly woman, the second one showing her dominant personality, Wanda Weston, killing the woman, the third one showing Juanita in her trial and the fourth and final picture showing her in the psychiatric ward. Creating the series of freeze frames allowed us to explore how to tell a story through our physicalities. For instance, when staging the psychiatric ward freeze frame, we showed both Juanita and Wanda, with Juanita having a depressed expression on her face and Wanda screeching in agony. This allows us to explore in depth the character of the two personalities, causing us to think about how they would react in given situations throughout the story and rely on the sole use of our facial expressions to show emotion, rather than using dialogue.

Another rehearsal technique we explored was the physicalisation of objectives, suggested by my group member Gaia. Juanita Maxwell has seven personalities in total, and in this rehearsal technique, we created a new personality: a man who is an alcoholic. I played Wanda in this exercise, Gaia played Juanita and Derrick played 'Ben'; we all repeated the line "you killed her" to each other. This allowed us to explore how the different personalities would say the same lines, given that, in essence, they are all the same person. Similarly to the previous rehearsal technique, it allowed me to think about the characteristics of the other personalities. Through this I found that Juanita is a very trouble duchess character, whilst Wanda is more sadistic and lacks compassion. This is something we decided to explore further in another rehearsal technique: off-text improvisation.

I suggested using off text improvisation to explore Juanita and Maxwell in more detail by staging Juanita in a psychiatric ward having a consultation with a psychiatrist with Wanda beside her. The psychiatrist would ask Juanita a question, and both Wanda and Juanita would answer. I played the psychiatrist, Derrick played Juanita and Gaia played Wanda. This allowed me to put into perspective the difficulty someone with this illness must encounter, the internal battle that must be circulating in their mind having more than one personality trying to tcommunicate. Multiple personality disorder is a topic that I believe should not be portrayed lightly, and doing this rehearsal technique allowed us to explore the vulnerability and fragility of Juanita, and how her own thoughts are continuously suppressed by Wanda's. 

In our second rehearsal, we looked at the "Hi, bye, why" rehearsal technique. By our second rehearsal, I had discovered in detail the seven personalities Juanita Maxwell had: Linda, Jennifer, Tricia, Anne, Ann, Wanda and, of course, Juanita. Using this specific rehearsal technique, we all used the lottery method of allocation to be one of the personalities, and explored how the personalities would interact with one another using those three simple words. Afterwards, we had to guess who played what personality, demonstrating to us the different traits they would possess and how this can be communicated in theatre. 

Moreover, we decided to hot-seat at all of the personalities, starting off with Ann, a middle-aged woman who loved looking after children. Through hot-seating the different personalities, stories from them began to emerge, allowing us to think indepthly about the characters we were potentially including in our stories, giving us more ounces of creativity to add to our pieces.

My group and I began to explore using physical theatre and movement to tell the story of Juanita Maxwell. For instance, we looked up the instrumental of the song 'Black Skinhead' by Kanye West, a song with an edgy, eerie, beat. We explored sharp movements, adding to the abstract-feel we aimed to portray to audience members, and looked at synchronise movement that could be used to show that all of the personalities live through one person: Juanita Maxwell. This allowed us to not focus on text work or dialogue to tell a story, but instead the sole use of our bodies, using it as a form of art to intricately tell a story.

In conclusion, the rehearsals so far have allowed my group and I to explore our initial material through the use of rehearsal techniques such as freeze frames, off text improvisation, hot seating, physicalisation of objectives and physical threatre, looking subtlely at the work of Brecht (usage of freeze frames)  and Stanislavsky (off text improvisation) in our process of creating theatre. The next step I aim to take is to look at multiple personality disorder in African culture, as opinions of this illness vary drastically amongst many cultures, with Western cultures being more accepting of the diagnosis whilst others are less empathetic. I believe doing cultural research on this topic will allow me to take the next step into developing solid and sound work for my devised play, allowing me to add more detail into accurately portraying what it is like to have multiple personality disorder.