For exercises before the stimulus me and my group had done improvisation exercises so that we could get a good feel of how to jump in at any scenario and at any mistake that would happen during the play. This helped me think of ideas even before the stimulus was given to me.
The stimulus that we then received was the song ‘7 years’ by Lukas Graham. The stimulus was given out and we all had to pick either a word or phrase that stood out to us in the whole song, the word that i chose was ‘Lonely’. This word showed how isolated Lukas was at the very beginning of his life and at the middle stages of his life. Another exercise that was done was me having to pick a word to describe the whole song. The word that i chose was ‘past’. I believe that this song was made and aimed at Lukas’s past and how much he had actually changed in the future.
Me and my group first heard the stimulus and thought of two strong scenes that we could do together. The two were either acting out his life while someone else narrates it and the other was having a split screen on the stage and two different type of stories would be happening at the same time. We came to decision of what we wanted to do as a group. For our performance we chose that the setting would be in a retirement home where Lukas Graham is an old grumpy old man that is regretting the mistakes that he made in the past. There will be a male nurse (who will be played by me) and he will be trying to talk to Lukas to get him get things out. Daniel will be playing Lukas and Bruke will be playing multiple characters that are important in Lukas’s life. The elderly version of Lukas (Darnell’s character) was seemed to be an old and grumpy man who really didn’t want to talk to anyone and just stay to himself. The younger version of Lukas was seen to be very stubborn and disobedient and would never listen to his mum at times. While Lukas started to get older we could see that he had started to mature and get more less lonely and help more people out.
The story line of our play was that the nurse who was working in the retirement home would go to visit Lukas and give him his medicine but Lukas is seen to be rude to the nurse as he is a Lonely grumpy man. Lukas will then start to feel that him being isolated in the retirement home would have to change so he then starts to talk with the nurse about his problems and why he is actually so isolated. The elderly Lukas explains his life in ages and in between each age the younger version of Lukas would be showing how his life was with either his mother, friends or fans. At the end of everything Elderly Lukas and younger Lukas would switch places to indicate to the crowd that they are the exact same person living and regretting their life.
We rehearsed this in many different ways. One way is that we recorded our acts and afterwards huddled up and talk about the strengths and weaknesses in the whole play and looked for where we could add things and remove things. To make our performance have two people we split the stage in two.
The character I played in my group was the nurse. This character was seen to be a very shy person who gets lost while in talks with someone. The characters body language is going to show that the person isn’t really confident about talking to Lukas Graham. At the end of the whole play the nurse can be seen as more confident as how she was when she first started talking to the old grumpy Lukas Graham.
The roles that i took on was stage design and lighting:
Stage Design – The stage will be set as two seats (used as black boxes) where lukas graham and the male nurse would be sitting facing each other while there will be seat on the front side of the split screen for younger Lukas and his mother. The seats will be in a arrow head shape so that the audience could get a good viewing of all characters;. Elderly lukas graham would be sitting further away from the nurse to show that he wants to be alone and that he doesn’t want anyone to be next to him in the elderly home.
Lighting – The lighting will be different for each scene. When older lukas is talking to his nurse the lighting will be white and red so that it will look like he is regretting things and when its younger lukas the lighting will be white and blue. Most of the time while the elderly version of Lukas is
Comments on other groups – Lethaniel, Harry & Dillon –
Strengths – The characters in this groups were really developed and you could get a good understanding of who the person is playing and what they are trying to do.
They only focused on one stanser of the whole stimulus and I believe that that is a more easier and better thing to do because you could spend more time on it.
React!