Saturday, 24 January 2015
The Assignment
Things to ruin
Our next assignment is to create a performance based on the album Things to Ruin by Joe Iconis. I am really looking forward to this creating this performance as I have listened to the album before we were given this task and I already have a good idea of characters and settings for a selection of the songs. For this assignment we are going to come up with ideas and scenes. The whole point of this assignment is to see what works and what doesn’t.
In my vision of this performance the songs all tell an over running story. The album tells the story of the hardship of growing up in modern day society. The album is in a particular order but if you rearrange the songs it tells a story starting at a young child and ending with an adult. The song ‘Albuquerque Anyway’ tells the story of a young child’s best friend moving away. This could be the start of the performance. Then the songs go on telling about stories when the singer was in school gym or when he is trying to figure out what to do with his life.
My favourite song from the album is ‘The War Song’. This song is about a senior in high school who has been an outcast for his entire school life. The character has failed his exams and doesn’t know what to do with his life so he starts to sing about joining the army because he has nothing better to do with his life. I have this idea where the character is giving a speech at his graduation and is talking to all the other teenagers who had bullied him for so long. I see the performance being performed on the ground raised above the auditions using stage blocks. I think the auditions should be sat around desk tables with school chairs. This means that they are actually in the performance in some aspects if the show is based in a high school.
There are going to be a number of issues with creating a performance using only an album. The main problem is that there might not be an overarching story with the songs we decide to use. Also It means that we are going to have to assign a song to everybody and this person has the responsibility of taking charge of his/her own song. This could create conflict as the lead of a song might have an idea they are really set on doing but the rest of the cast might not think this is a good idea and it might not fit in with anyone else’s idea for their song.
However the possibilities for this performance are nearly endless. Because the only stimulus we have is this album we can do whatever we want with it. It also means that everyone has a song and is in charge of something. As I stated earlier this could create conflict but if everyone works as a team and makes sure everyone is involved then we are going to be able to create an amazing performance. The songs also tell the stories of completely different characters. One song tells the story of a boyfriend and girlfriend as how the girl has fallen asleep on the boys arm whilst they were watching a movie and another song tells the story of a teenager waiting to be picked for a dodge ball game in school gym class.