Devised theatre is a kind of improv theatre which gives the actors a small base that they can build up from. There is a specific process that actors must undergo if the want to devise a piece of drama from an image. First you must look at the image and clearly look at the very obvious things about the image. A good example would be an image with a train. In this part of the process you are just going to mention that there is a train in the picture, no potential story or a guess of who is inside. Once you have found and pointed out the very clear and basic parts of the picture, you begin to look at the mood of the picture. If it is at night with on lonely light on in the corner of the image, it could give a feeling of loneliness or sadness. Once you have a mood and potential feelings of the picture, then you can start creating a story.
We were split up in two groups and each group had to create a story from the same image. We had no idea where this image was made and what it was meant to be.
I was with Sasha, Ian and Nicolai. We interpreted that this image was from a prison or something that was holding this girl back. We got the idea of fear, uncertainty and sadness. Together we made up a story of a jew girl back during the second World War. In this story the jew girl was helping her uncle to hide all their jewish identity because the German where going around to find any trace of Jews. The girl and her uncle get discovered by the Germans and as an act of sacrifice, the girl attempts to protect her uncle by getting the blame on her alone. This inevitably lead up to the capture of both the uncle and the girl. The girl gets taken to a German work camp where she will be kept to work for the German army. What happened to her uncle is a complete mystery.
At the work camp the girl meets the commander of the camp and also witnesses a brutal, coldblooded death of one of her fellow workers. This causes here to be traumatized and begins to bring up the fear of death. Later on the girl is back in her cell trying to let time go by when she hears two guards talking. They talk about a poor lonely Jew who they tortured a few days before. This leads her to think that it could have been her uncle that got tortured. She then imagines her uncle being beat up and then electrocuted in an electric chair. The image fades from her mind and she begins the cry because she is uncertain whether her sacrifice was worth anything.
There is a link to the video here.
Main German Man = Brian
Jewish Girl = Sasha
Uncle = Ian
Secondary German Man, Killed Man = Nicolai
Looking back at the video, I really enjoyed seeing how big of a story we had created from a single image. I was obviously proud of my efforts. After having said that, this skit could not have been done with the amazing cooperation of my group members. There is a section in the skit where I am talking really softly which is a minor mistake on my part since I was supposed to be a loud and powerful German commander. But besides that minor detail, I think i did great myself and that my group members did a fantastic job and I like the end result of the skit.
