Over the past three weeks, we have been asked to show back our work, adding five minutes each time we shared our ideas with the rest of the class. Most of our ideas were inspired by Physical Theatre especially work by PUSH Physical Theatre. We also looked at John Bohannon, a biologist and science journalist. He delivered a talk called ‘modest proposal’ with help from a physical theatre company, Black Label Movement, to help explain his points in a more engaging way for the audience. This exciting explanation of science inspired us to explore and explain light through our bodies.

Keeping with a similar style, we then looked at performances of  ‘STOMP’. This performance is essentially movement and percussion merging together to create physical theatre. We felt that this worked well with our ideas behind the science of sound. From the beginning of our devising process, we knew we wanted to use projection to show the waves of either light or sound. In the end, we mashed these two ideas together and decided to create a soundscape and play with rhythms whilst projecting interactive sound waves on the wall. These would change to show the difference between high and low frequency sounds.

For the third week, we devised a short piece which was to be performed in the shop window. This was to capture the attention of the general public who will be passing the shop. This was based on the idea of capturing light. Again, the piece was physical and set to music.

As well as adding material every week, the reason we were showing back work was to get feedback. During these sessions our peers and tutor explained to us what they thought worked well and what they felt could be improved. Comments we got were usually based on committing to the performance and changing some of our movements which were not as clear. This feedback really helped us with the development of the piece. As these performances are intended to include the audience, it has been helpful to have an audience to rehearse with.

Our performance seems to be taking a different direction to what we had originally thought. Although the site is still an abandoned shop in Grantham, we are now adding an element of science to the performance rather than relating it to retail. This is because the final performance is going to be part of a festival held in Grantham called ‘Gravity Fields’. The festival is inspired by the work of Isaac Newton and includes ‘a dynamic and creative programme of science, arts and heritage events’ (Gravity Fields Festival, 2014). As the performance is being commissioned, we were sent a brief from the festival organisers. This included four different themes that each group would have to adopt; Gravity, alchemy, and two groups focused on light. I had decided that I wanted my final piece to involve the science behind sound and so it made sense to link this with the theme of light. Part of me saw the festival as a positive as it meant our piece had a starting point that we could develop. On the other hand I felt that this could have restricted us and our ideas that we already had due to the specific audience and nature of the festival.

Groups were formed based on interest in the different topics and once in a group, we knew we had to research Isaac Newton and his theories in great detail. After hours of thorough research, I found out that he discovered light is not a single colour, but a combination of all the colours on the light spectrum. He backed up this theory by shining a white light into a prism; the light which came out the other end was multi-coloured. This experiment had been completed before, making people believe that prisms were responsible for the colour change. Newton extended this experiment by using another prism which the multi-coloured light shone into. This time the light which exited the prism was white as the colours had refracted together, proving that the prism did not colour the light. ‘…Newton refracted sunlight with a prism into a colour spectrum – each coloured ray with a specific refrangibility, or angle of refraction. With a second prism, he demonstrated that each refracted ray of the colour spectrum is dispersed to the same degree as with the first prism.’ (Marcum, 2009, 458) Newton also went on to discover that light is made up of particles rather than just being a wave.

When being told the location of our site specific performance, nothing jumped out at me straight away. It wasn’t until I took time to think of the words ‘retail therapy’ that thoughts started to arise.

Words such as cure, heal and treatment are associated with therapy. What does shopping actually ‘cure’ people of? How happy does shopping really make us and how long can this treatment heal us from reality?

These are questions I may consider when thinking about my practical work. For me, this is the most exciting part of the module as I the have no idea what direction the performance will take.