Throughout the unit, we have completed a research project regarding a specific physical

theatre company and experienced the process of devising a group performance after being given a
brief education on how devising a piece works. The entire process of devising the piece through
experimentation and inventing artistic intentions related to the statement of inquiry and inquiry
questions have been documented in a process portfolio, where substantial planning has been
conducted through much creativity, transferring knowledge we have obtained from lessons and
several tasks throughout the year. For my group’s devised piece, we intended to explore and convey
mainly the concept of how memory serves an important role in forming one’s identity. Though there
are many opinions on what our intention and what concepts we explored in our performance, they all
lie in similar territories. Through the use of multiple techniques we have learned during the physical
theatre company research task implemented, as well as multiple other techniques we have studied or
used in previous years of drama, we can determine that we have effectively communicated the
message we were trying to convey and have overall achieved our artistic intention.

The research conducted at the beginning of the unit on specific theatre companies have been
utilized during our devising process and also for our devised piece. Specifically, we have implemented
several techniques used by Theatre Grottesco, the company I did my research on. For example, the
theatre writes their plays as a collective and members may spend a year or more discussing ideas
before actually getting on their feet and shaping the performance/begin physical rehearsals. This is
exactly what we did - for quite a few lessons, we kind of just sat and discussed multiple ideas and
actually began physical rehearsals later than everyone else. Of course, we did not have a year to
think and brainstorm ideas so we had to begin rehearsals as soon as possible. I actually thought that
sitting and outlining the performance before getting on our feet and beginning physical rehearsals has
been extremely effective as we were able to develop a creative piece, incorporating multiple topics
being discussed in the real world while relating it to identity and the statement of inquiry “Our lives are
expressed through stories” through the use of multiple physical theatrical elements

Regarding our artistic intention, our performance was meant to be quite dark and convey
some very deep emotions regarding life in general, as well as the capabilities of memories and
experiences in shaping one’s identity through the use of a clone (me) being “inserted” memories and
(me) trying to fight off these forced memories after getting a sense of confusion on whether if the
memories are his or not. “I”, or the clone ultimately gives in and succumbs to the influence of the deep
memories as each memory represented an important stage in life and a key emotion experienced by
many people. Hence, the main concepts we explored in the performance included “How memory
shapes one’s identity” and “How important memory is in shaping one’s identity”. We believe we have
effectively communicated this intention, and effectively explored the concept of identity in relation to
the statement of inquiry through the first of all, the use of multi-media. The use of spotlight served a
crucial role in setting the atmosphere of the performance as the light was dimly shunned, but the most
key multimedia technique we utilized was voice-overs and/or sound effects. The very beginning of the
performance started off with a voice over saying “Subject 88, do you remember who you are?”,
questioning the sole clone on stage right before he is about to be shown memories and many
emotions in different stages of life. Before each “memory segment”, a voice-over was played, stating
the memory number, the context of the memory (childhood/teenagehood/adulthood) and the emotions
conveyed in the memory (joy/understanding/sorrow/anger) with the intention of consolidating the
scene. Also, the voice-overs had a distorted sound effect, establishing the setting of the performance
as kind of futuristic and giving off a robotic dystopian feel and overall gave a bit more knowledge and
understanding to the audience. Apart from the use of multimedia, simply raw creativity helped us with
creating a well-developed piece. The portrayal of a lifetime of a person through showing chronological
memories of childhood, teenagehood, and adulthood while conveying key human emotions of
happiness/joy, understanding/love/sadness/sorrow, and anger respectively has effectively built-up the
performance leading up to the final scene where the clone succumbs to the memories and “accepts”
the memories into his system (they may not be his own memory, but possibly copied versions from
other people).

Talking about the performance itself, there are multiple changing factors including body
movements, dialogue and facial expressions that could change the way the audience interprets the
performance, unlike the use of lighting, sound effects and the overall storyline that will not be subject
to change during the performance. First, the use of movements has been important in helping us
convey the context of the performance and the concepts being explored in it. The portrayal of each
key emotion through the use of movements have been done very well and contrary to modern
physical theatre where explosive, exaggerated or quite strange movement used in physical dramatic
pieces, our devised piece utilized very small movements that conveyed important information to the
audience. For the first memory portraying happiness, there were lots of movement and joy shown on
the face of the characters. For the second memory, there was minimal movement which shows
general depression, sadness, and sorrow while for the third memory, the portrayal of anger has been
somewhat effectively shown through the constant pacing around the stage. Meanwhile, the use of
“swiping” the memories away, signifying the deletion of the memory has been done effectively through
a simple “swiping” hand gesture - the simpler emotions or memories including childhood happiness
and teenage love were easy to “swipe away” but the adult anger memory was too powerful to be
swiped away as the “boss” has a higher status compared to the clone. Furthermore, the use of
spoken text has also served a crucial role in; one, communicating the context and storyline of the
piece; two, establishing the setting of each of the scene and three, allowing us to achieve our artistic
intention and allow the audience the gain understanding of what is happening and have their own
opinions and perspectives of what we are trying to address. One improvement would be made to the
effect of “framing” the entire performance with the same setting of the first and last scene. The
questioning in the first scene and actually answering the question in the final scene has been utilized
cleverly, though the question asked at the beginning of the performance could have been re-asked
after seeing the mental breakdown of the clone, allowing the audience to understand and establish
the connection between the question and answer. One particular part of the performance I would like
to address is how we had all the characters stay on the stage, as if it was a build-up of all the
memories the clone have seen and hence leading up to the final scene. This “effect” is useful as
unlike other performances, blackouts and scene/setting changes were not required and that apart
from the emotions and stories that the clone is being “feeded with”, the people within the memories
are still onstage themselves and somewhere “trapped” the clone’s mind. The ending scene where the
characters moved in a uniformed way to surround the clone

Personally, I tried my best to generate very realistic interactions, suitable expressions/ spoken
words, and realistic reactions for different scenes in hopes of clearly communicating the thoughts
going through my head and how my understanding of life (and the experiences of the person the
memories belongs/belonged to) have grown and developed through being shown different stages of
life. As I acted as the clone, I serve a very important role overall in setting the scene in every section
of the performance and perform realistic dialogue and vocal performance suiting the context of each
scene. During the devising process of the project, I have learned much regarding the complicated
process of actually creating an interesting and unique piece, the importance of the starting point as
well as the importance of different inspirational ideas and the many possibilities of how the
performance, its concepts being explored and the artistic intention as a whole could have been
developed and performed. My group initially started off rough due to a lack of communication and lack
of creative ideas to form our piece, but after completely changing the idea, overall structure and
storyline of the story through a different starting point, we were able to develop the very interesting
piece with never-before explored concepts regarding identity and how lives are expressed through
stories. Although we were rather slow and behind all the other groups in terms of the number of
scenes that have already been devised and rehearsed multiple times, the implementation of Theatre
Grottesco’s way of developing and devising a piece (as I have mentioned before) has been extremely
effective in allowing us to really express our creativity through developing a clear storyline with clearly
planned scenes and the purpose of each scene and character.

Regarding the statement of inquiry “Our lives are expressed through stories”, the memories
being portrayed were stories of possibly another person is being told to the clone where these
memory scenes showed the emotional connection the clone established with each memory fragment
and how they affected the clone’s way of thinking. While most people’s performances were stories
themselves, our performance was more like stories being told within a story, while also letting the
audience “see” the stories (memory scenes) through the clone’s perspective. Regarding the inquiry
questions “How can we tell stories through performance”, “Why do people tell stories” and “Does our
identity determine our own story”, our performance has addressed all of the above. Our artistic
intention directly relates to the inquiry questions and the statement of inquiry, where we wanted to
communicate the concept of which memories/experiences (shown in the form of replayed stories in
the performance) shapes one’s identity and that people tell stories to share their experiences and
connect with people, and allow other people to connect with the emotions of the stories and ultimately
gain a connection with the person expressing his/her own stories.

Apart from the investigations in physical theatre companies, the method of devising a piece,
actually experiencing the devising process and sharing the result with an audience, we also talked
about our own artistic identities. Personally, I enjoy directing and doing verbal/vocal performance work
and enjoy creatively incorporating multimedia into my pieces. The starting point and the overall
structure/storyline of the piece were thought by me, while my groupmates also engaged in the
creative process of devising the piece and deciding the purpose of the multimedia being used and it’s
effectiveness. I thought that I greatly contributed to the piece as it turned out as what I intended it to
turn out - an extremely thoughtful, creative and well-developed piece with multiple scenes leading up
to the final outcome. One thing about the artistic intention though. From my research on Theatre
Grottesco, I found out that although they had some kind of intention, goal or thought about the
concepts they want to communicate to the audience and how they were going to do this, they do not
actually care about whether if the audience actually interpreted the performance the way they wanted
the audience to. initially thought that the message, storyline and overall idea of our performance
would be quite difficult to interpret but because of its relation to what we are currently studying in
English (novel Never Let Me Go - clones, the importance of memories, identities, existential crisis) but
most people kind of understand what was going on. Nevertheless, some of the interesting
interpretations of our performance include the myths/concepts of what happens when you die where
you are shown flashbacks of the important memories of your life, the concept of how both good and
bad memories stick with you forever (can’t get rid of them), a futuristic method of obtaining memories
while addressing the moral and ethical implications of the method, the concept of what happens right
before entering the afterlife/death of a person (possibly after lethal injections of some sort - which
could have been shown more effectively through a starting voice-over saying something like “Hey,
we’re just about to do the injection okay? Just stay calm and don’t move….” as the person trails off
into the dream where he maybe reexperiences his memories).

Overall, this has been a very enjoyable unit. From investigating new physical theatre
techniques we probably have never seen or heard of before, to devising a completely original piece
with creative ideas while attempting to incorporate certain physical theatre elements while also
relating the piece to the theme of identity and the statement of inquiry. Although the devising process
got off the a rough start, I was able to show my drama artistic identity and think of interesting concepts
to create a very well-developed piece and direct the piece based on what I want the piece to look like,
while actively listening to suggestions and additional ideas from groupmates. Instead of just following
a script and making minor tweaks by incorporating theatrical elements we have learnt throughout the
unit, we went through a very engaging process allowing us to expand our minset and think deep about
creating our own story and show some concept relating to identity.