Eshaan Varyani
Rehearsal Log 1- Physical Theatre
Today we planned our Physical Theatre Scene. As a group we had picked a song during our research
and we had decided to go ahead with the edited instrumentals of the song. Firstly we had a problem
with being unsure of where our physical theatre scene would fit in, we then eventually decided it
would be the ending because our main intention for this scene was to inspire people to stand up to
racism, we also thought this was convenient because initially we had planned for the death of
Kamara’s character to be at the end but due to one of our other actor’s monologue scene having to
take place after the death because that is what she reflects on during it.
We began with the idea that we were going to create a protest of creating images of iconic moments
from BLM protest, I Then had an I idea that we could perhaps represent the iconic moment when
the statues of historical figures who were responsible for racism were removed. We thought this
would be effective in conveying our meaning as it would portray recent incidents of people standing
up to racism. However, we were unable to take this idea forward with it being difficult to portray.
Someone else in my group then suggested that we could represent inspirational black historical
figures who stood up to racism for example Rosa Parks where we would use this these images at the
beginning of the scene to build up to the protest as it would depict racism in the past how people
stood up to it. I then suggested that we should have five historical figures linking to the five boxes on
stage and the fact that we have five actors in our group.
Therefore, we came up with five historical figures: Rosa Parks. Martin Luther King Jr, Marry Seacole,
Nelson Mandela and George Floyd. Firstly, we tried creating an image with Rosa Parks being forced
to give up her bus seat for a white lady by bringing one of the boxes on the outside in to the middle
and having one of actors sitting on it to represent Rosa Parks while the others tried to represent
passengers and the bus driver. After trying it out we had an issue with the image looking awkward
with it being difficult to represent a bus with our stage being In the round and bringing the box over
would also take too much time while the music was running. We then decided to move on to
representing Martin Luther King Jr by having me stand on a box and making gesture to represent
Martin Luther King’s famous speech , I then suggested we could use a placard which would ‘I have a
dream’ which would be effective in fitting the Brechtian style of the scene to get our message across
but we decided not to use as we were unsure of where we place when they are not in use due to our
stage being in the round.
After receiving feedback from our teacher, He suggested we should set aside or take out the idea of
creating images of historical figures with it being challenging and instead focus more on representing
racial attacks and standing up to them from physical movements.
We then Created a new beginning of our scene where we all being at our boxes and walk with
purpose to different directing and change after every five steps until we are in position where we
show me and someone else in our group being stop searched. We then decided to us getting racially
abused. We this would look effective for an ending as it would create a hard-hitting emotional
impact on the audience.
Eshaan Varyani
