Hannah Page.

In the first five weeks of crafting Porto I feel that we have used two main devising strategies. The first being just moving through body impulses to create meanings. This process, being somewhat difficult as the basic instinct is just to move for the sake of moving to make it ‘look pretty’ helps to create movements when working as an individual or in small groups. When working as an ensemble this sense of devising through play could become sloppy and overcrowded.

The second devising strategy is the ‘clap and move’ strategy, used when moving as one in the ensemble. This method gives people a chance to add their own input in a quick and efficient way. This method however is maybe the least effective in creating meaning for individual characters as a movement that one character suggests in the ensemble might have no meaning to another.

For me the first strategy has helped my character to grow and change more than the ensemble work strategy. This is because I am able to move as I want, as my character would and have no limitations in finding my character.

At the beginning of Porto my character was a shy, detached person who was aware of everyone around her and just wanted to be left alone and not move unless she had to.

This character had to change slightly when we started working as an ensemble. I found that my body wanted to move in ways that would not suit my character and found when working in our small groups that my character was not doing anything, just sitting on a chair, and for me this wasn’t the direction I wanted to go.

For a few weeks I was uncertain of my character, and went into the devising process as a blank character and seeing where the sessions led me. It wasn’t until recently that I found my character. We were doing a group play session and I had and impulse to go up to someone and shake their hand. I repeated this movement with other characters until I found a character much like myself. I was then able to move through their body impulses and define my character once again as someone who is looking for that one person, and along the way wants to be liked by everyone, yet has been hurt in the past so us very uneasy and uncertain of those around her.

My character uses the repetition of a hand shake to show how eager she is to make friends. She stays away from many of the other characters in the ensemble and is very wary of the audience. She won’t make eye contact with the audience or certain other members of the ensemble. And those characters who she does feel comfortable with she sticks herself too, feeling accepted. Although she feels acceptance with these characters though she is also still wary. For example, she makes friends with Dan, Rich and Lizzie, and they end up in a line all hugging each other. I end up at the front of the line, this is uncomfortable for my character and this is apparent by the fact that she is shifty on her chair and won’t touch Lizzie. She doesn’t move though because she wants to be accepted.