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GCSE Drama

could anyone have a look at my devising log and tell me how to improve?
Section 1: Response to a stimulus
The stimuli we were given was the Bible, The Gritterman by Orlando Weeks, Refuges from the Ravens: Wordsworth Rewritten by Homeless Britain, Silent Night (7 o’clock news) by Phoebe Bridges and Fiona Apple and some newspaper articles. Initially, my group was interested by the song, poems and articles as they’re all linked to current affairs.
One idea we had using the newspapers as a stimulus was to have someone reading the news and seeing it play out around them, to show an idea of the truth versus what the media presents to you. However, we decided against this idea because we didn't know what we could do to make it interesting and last longer. Another idea we had was because of the poems. On one of the sheets of poems, there was a picture of a face that looked half closed. This image made us think about mental health and how different people are affected differently by mental health. Our idea was to have a piece set in a psychiatric ward and we’d go into their stories and show how their mental health issues affected the patients, but also the people around them.
Another member of my group’s idea was to have our piece about addiction and how it impacts people differently. It's set in an NA meeting and we would have flashbacks about their lives before addiction and how being an addict changed that. We decided to keep using the picture from the book of poems, as we felt it still showed a sort of duality, which inspired us to use our scenes to show the character’s life before and during addiction. In order to learn more about specific types of addiction, we each researched a different type. I researched alcohol addiction as I have people close to me that are going through this, so I already knew some things about this. I strengthened my knowledge by watching videos of people’s real-life experiences, not just of the addict, but also the people around them. I found this really helpful as it helped me understand different perspectives of people involved in addiction.
We set up the NA meeting on stage left and have all the flashbacks on stage right to create a clear difference between present and past. The set for the NA meeting is 4 blocks in a semicircle, and made sure that we could easily change the set on the flashback-side so we could easily portray different stories. We later decided this was wasting a lot of space on the stage as we barely used the NA meeting area and it also meant we were walking between the two spaces a lot, which wasted time and was tedious for the audience. Instead we put our “flashback area”, which consisted of 3 blocks, a table and props from all our scenes scattered around, at the front of the stage, and when we were in the NA meeting we sat in the front row of the audience. This created much smoother transitions between scenes.
The main character I played was someone addicted to alcohol. To begin with, my character is very hard-working and tries hard at her job. To show this, as soon as I entered the scene I began working. We also created a soundscape to show how routine my character's life was. One technique I wanted to use was a chair duet, as I feel this is a very good way to show the relationship between two characters. I want to incorporate this into Jess’s scene, where I play her sister, to show how they comfort each other after finding out their dad is sick.
Our main aim as a group was to show the audience not only how addiction affects every addict differently and that anyone could become an addict, but also how the addiction can affect the people around them too. My personal aim was to show how easy it is for an addict to fall back into old habits.
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Section 2: Development and collaboration
First, we started working on Jess’s scene. Jess’s character gets addicted to her dad’s prescribed painkillers after he gets diagnosed with cancer and her mum and sister leave due to financial difficulties. In her scene we used different abstract techniques such as puppeting, to bring the characters over from the NA meeting. However, this looked messy as it involved Jess walking back and forth a lot, so we refined it to be a simple click to summon each of the characters. We also used chair duets, to clearly show her sister trying to comfort Jess after the news.
Next, we started working on Cairenn’s scene. Cairenn’s character gets addicted to drugs when her parents are getting a divorce. We use freeze frames while she is on a phone call to her parents to show how the people she takes drugs with, and the drugs she takes, are constant parts of her life. In this scene, we circle around Cairenn, saying things that she would’ve heard her parents saying. To make this less cliché, we included moments of touch and response to show how her parents manipulated how she copes with their divorce.
Then we did my scene. My character gets addicted to alcohol after being sober for 2 years. We used a repetitive sound scape to successfully show how mundane her life was. Also, we incorporated a freeze frame to portray how nothing mattered to the character once she started drinking.
Our initial set was a table, two smaller blocks and one large block set out in a dinner table-like formation. We developed the set by creating a different variation of those items, it became a bed, park bench and dinner table throughout our piece, and leaving the props we would be using around the space. This made the scene more interesting and felt less repetitive and static, which massively improved our piece. Initially, we had our stage set up so the NA meeting, consisting of four chairs which we’d go back to between scenes, occupied one side of the stage, whilst the set where we did all the actual stories would be on the other. This would create a split stage. However, this meant there was a lot of walking back and forth, and we were barely in the NA meeting space, so it was a huge waste of our stage. We had the idea to have us sit in the audience between scenes instead, and to bring the main set to the centre of the stage. This was a massive improvement and helped the flow of our piece.
As we would be playing multiple characters, as a group we needed to look at multi rolling and developing several characters. To do this, we did hotseating. This developed our characters by giving them a purpose and a backstory, even if they were not the focus of the scene. Once we had created our characters, and decided what they would be addicted to, we then had to do additional research on specific drugs or addictions. My main character was addicted to alcohol. In order to research this, I watched videos online of addicts sharing their story. One of my other characters was addicted to drugs and encouraged another character to take drugs with them. For this, I researched what the most common “gateway” drugs were, and what.

One of our most influential sections of our piece was towards the end, during Jess’s scene. She talks about how her dads death had caused lots of pressure on her, eventually leading up to her taking drugs. Initially, it was just Jess standing there talking to the audience, but to make it more impactful and less naturalistic, we decided to include me, Zuriel and Cairenn walking around Jess and the set, while dropping pieces of paper and pill packets onto the table, which Jess tried to organise as she talked. This better reflected how frantic Jess’s character was feeling at the time.
Section 3: Analysis and evaluation
Overall my performance went as well as it could’ve done. It was the best run we’d done. We managed to use abstract techniques to portray our message of how addiction impacts not only the addicts, but the people around them well, to the audience.
As an individual, I definitely developed my physical theatre skills since the beginning of the devising process, as the chair duet I did with Jess went from an awkward piece of movement, to a powerful depiction of two sisters comforting each other while grieving, which is some feedback I received. However, I need to improve how I show differences between characters I play without relying on costume changes, which is some more feedback I received. I could do this by changing my physicality, such as my gait or posture, or tone of voice to show the difference between Jess’s sister and a police officer in Zuriel’s scene, for example.
As one of my contributions to the group, I introduced the idea of going into peoples’ stories, which became the basis of our piece. Also, I came up with the idea that each scene should have a physical theatre technique to show how each addict copes differently. For Jess's scene we had a chair duet, followed by a monologue for the rest of the scene to show how her character no longer trusts anyone and would rather cope by herself. For Cairenn’s scene, we used touch and response to show that how her character copes was manipulated by her parents. For my scene, we used a soundscape to show how my character uses work to try and distract myself and stay sober. For Zuriel’s scene we used mime to show how nothing affected her character after taking drugs.
Throughout the piece I developed my role of Jess's sister. We decided we wanted to make her mature as we wanted a kind of mother figure for Jess as she began to isolate herself when her dad got sick. I did this by using my physical theatre to have an obvious change in posture when comforting Jess. For example, at the beginning of the scene, our dad is still ok, and you can see this in the way I present myself. I used my facial expressions to show a cheerful essence; there was nothing to worry about. After we receive the news of our dad’s diagnosis, I maintain a worried expression when interacting with Jess, as I am now no longer just her sister to joke around with, I’m now responsible for looking after her and her mental health. At the end of the scene, our mum and I leave Jess and our dad behind as we no longer have an income due to our dad’s illness. I show that I’m reluctant to leave Jess by slowing down when the mum comes and takes me and changing my gait by dragging my feet and looking at Jess as I go.
If I were to do the performance again, I would have improved how I acted drunk during my monologue, by slurring some words and darting my eyes round a lot.