Task 3- Emilia Breadon

1) During the process of Porto we have been using the RSVP model as a structure of understanding to the piece, with the ‘R’ section this being our Research/Resource; our main task was to research our individual characters, trying to connect with the characters emotions as well as our physical movements to grasp the full understanding of how our characters personalities are, learning new things about our characters as the process continues.
‘List Pisk, in her very personal book, has said that ‘... the shape of your body is the outer boundary of inner contents.’ In order to achieve this, the actor’s character must be well defined both in thought and physicality. Otherwise he will rely on generalities and simply not be credible.’(Dennis 2004:24)
Since we moved onto the ‘S’ (score) section adding music to several pieces, I feel that it really enables you to connect with the ‘scene’ and develop an emotional attachment to the piece and it music as music can influence your feeling and emotions. However disconnecting your character from the music can be difficult and staying focused on your character and your characters feelings. When you can disconnect from the music and the influenced feelings it creates such an atmosphere, especially in the ensemble moments where we are all together but still keeping our own characters. So the music connects us however because we do movements to it in character it creates this ambience.
2) Now that we are at the score stage of Porto there is a narrative occurring not so much as a whole but more so in individual groups and with our individual characters. The journey that we have all been on so far with our characters is a story itself and could also be seen as a structure as we have all learnt the boundaries and difficulties some have with other interactions yet we always return to the liminality.
'The liminal state is characterised by ambiguity, openness, and indeterminacy. One's sense of identity dissolves to some extent, bringing about disorientation' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liminality]
Now that most of us have made a connection and are starting to play with these connections allowing them to develop we are creating small stories. As an ensemble we have created a beginning and this allows us to see how the narrative of Porto is going to emerge. Porto is still being developed and so I think there will not really be a proper narrative for Porto until we have finished the devising process and perform the piece in chronological order.
3)my characters development from the ‘R’ stage to ‘S’ has come a long way because my character at first was such a shy character that she felt she did not want to acknowledged by anyone and that she felt it was not right for her to move and express her feelings in a physical manner, as time has gone and we have developed more ‘scenes’ my character now can interact with others if she feels and does have the confidence to use physical movements, an example of this is the piece I do with Dan we developed this through ‘play’ and then keeping the parts we felt right for our characters, in one part my character is pushed away by Dan but because she wants the interaction and sense of security from him, I felt the urge to run and jump on him to see how his character would react, which at the beginning stages of devising Porto my character would never had the confidence. I would not say that my character has changed but simply developed because there are still times when she is very timid and does not want to be as big and open characters like some around her.
Bibliography:
Dennis A.(2004)The Articulate Body.Great Britain:Biddles Ltd
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liminality 01/04/09