Reflection on Work thus far: Cagebirds by David Campton

When I  first received Cagebirds by David Campton, I thought that it made no sense! The characters were not coherent, the plot seemed to be going nowhere, and I had no idea what we were supposed to do with it at all, especially how we were supposed to 'physicalise' the piece. When the whole class was split into two, I was very unsure how group work with 10 people in a group, especially since some of the people I was working with were people who I don't usually work with at all. 

When we first got together everything seemed so chaotic. The whole group was divided and we had no idea how we would put movements to it all. We began by going through the lines of which made no sense to us, especially the first ones. We did not know then that the lines weren't supposed to be connected at all, that they were supposed to be disjointed and not make any sense. We divided up the characters, and we all tried to decide who we wanted to be. I decided on The Gloom, a depressed, somewhat subdued character, who seems to be quite a hypochondriac of whom I now play as quite snarky, but also quite afraid of the world. Juliette and Nina decided they wanted to be Mistress and Wild One, respectively. 

We decide on a theme of 'orphanage', in the end. We had multiple discussions about the theme and where the story would go. Orphanage was the most popular theme, and within orphanage we are taking inspiration from 'Annie', making Mistress similar to Ms Hannigan, and Gloom, Guzzle, Gazer, Sloth, Stranger, Twitting, and Thump orphans. Wild One is also an orphan, but a new orphan that Mistress introduces. The metaphor of 'Cage' in the script is the Orphanage, and the dictatorship of Mistress. We decided that the plot would go from the Mistress being in total control, and Wild One 

As we began to develop what the piece was going to be and look like, there was some noticeable divide between the Orphans (Gloom, Gazer, Guzzler, Gossip, Sloth etc) and Wild One and Mistress. As we realised that we had next to no physical movement in our piece, we began to freak out a little. Luckily, at the time, we began to learn a lot about Meyerhold and Stanislavsky, two very prominent actors and directors who coexisted and had opposing views about acting. Meyerhold had a more fantastical approach to acting, and trained his actors to have exaggerated movements, and perform in quite a mechanical, larger-than-life way. Stanislavsky on the other hand, wanted realism from his actors, and he wanted art to imitate life and vice versa. As a class, we did a couple of training techniques that Meyerhold used to train his actors, 'The Slap' and 'The Shake'. The introduction and learning of these techniques gave us all an idea of what was wanted in our pieces. 

As we realised this, we began to put in some more choreographed movement into it. For example, we reorganized the beginning of the script so that we all had designated seating places so it looked a bit neater and less unorganized. We also decided to put a beat to what we were doing at this part:

'Guzzle: Tea-cakes. Tea-cakes. Tea-cakes. Cream buns and puff-paste. Tea. Tea. Tea.

Gloom: Warm, Warmer. Warmest. Wrap up. Avoid draughts. Keep warm. Warmer. Warmest.

Gazer: Beautiful for ever. Health and beauty. Home and beauty. Sleep. Beauty. Sleep.

Gossip: No. No. Not a word. Listen to this. Did you ever? No,

Thump: Stop. Stop.. Stop. Down with it. Out with it. Away with it. Stop. Stop. Stop.

Twitting: Not again. Oh, not again. This is too much. Much to much. Not again.

Sloth: Dream, wake, think of moving, dream, dream always dreaming, rarely moving. Wake.

Stranger: Tell me. Tell me everything. Tell me everything you think I need to know. I’ll hear; watch; here'


The beat stops after Sloth's line, instantly. This beat which is done all together makes it look like a neater piece, and more 'together' without destroying the point of the disjointed lines. Another change we have made is that we are going to be doing individual, timed looks throughout Wild One's initial meeting with the other orphans.

In terms of props, each of us will have a signifying prop. Gazer will have a mirror, Gossip a magazine, and so forth. It helps us to characterize, and helps us be more realistic for the audience. Gloom will have a notebook which will be drawn in, and then given to Gossip throughout her monologue. 

To prepare for the Performance, which actually, at this stage looks like it will be tomorrow, we have been practicing at every chance possible. This afternoon we are practicing from 3:30 until 5:30 to prepare for the performance and to make sure we are all on the same page. We are finished physicalising the piece, and we need to run through it at this stage, and make sure we all know our lines