As we tried to develop our first idea we ran into a numerous amount of problems. Looking back on it,
a lot of our difficulties stemmed from that fact that we had so many ideas and pockets of the overall theme of mistreatment within the nhs/private hospitals that we wanted to include, it got very messy very quickly and we were unable to hone into a specific point. The issue of face-down restraint was always a main theme but we also wanted to talk about how medical drugs are juts handed out to patients often without an explanation of what they will do or the side effects, as well as what is in these drugs or any kind of offer of an alternative route to getting well. As much as this was something that we all felt strongly about, we realized after getting nowhere with our protest that to include this second layer of the issue is just complicated and confusing for both us when devising and anyone who would watch what we had produced.
What we ended up with after developing our idea for about a week was a piece that looked a lot about tackling the issues of drugs. This was a direct comment to when we all showcased our work after about a week to the rest of the class, nearly everyone had no idea what our protest was about or the point we were trying to make, with anyone who did think they understood thinking it was about drugs. What we were trying to convey in that failed attempt was that medical stuff are often instructed to force some sort of pill or drug into a patient to calm them down if they started having a uncontrollable or potential 'threatening' outburst in a mental hospital. We attempted to show this by restraining Frances onto a table, with four doctors at each corner, and then tossing her about as we struggled with two of us then proceeding to force feed her a pill from which she slumped over Kieron's shoulder and is carried away in a fireman's lift. However, even I knew while we were debuting our piece that it just turned into really unclear chaos that was all over the place and not thought provoking at all. I found it hard to keep a straight face and to actually take what we were doing seriously, as a performer I found I didn't connect with the work at all and therefore the piece had no emotional effect on me meaning it had no emotional impact on the audience either.
After that, we decided that a lot of the ideas in that piece were going to be put to one side for now, and we would draw from our original idea of the restraining happening to people who are just acting normally.
What we ended up with after developing our idea for about a week was a piece that looked a lot about tackling the issues of drugs. This was a direct comment to when we all showcased our work after about a week to the rest of the class, nearly everyone had no idea what our protest was about or the point we were trying to make, with anyone who did think they understood thinking it was about drugs. What we were trying to convey in that failed attempt was that medical stuff are often instructed to force some sort of pill or drug into a patient to calm them down if they started having a uncontrollable or potential 'threatening' outburst in a mental hospital. We attempted to show this by restraining Frances onto a table, with four doctors at each corner, and then tossing her about as we struggled with two of us then proceeding to force feed her a pill from which she slumped over Kieron's shoulder and is carried away in a fireman's lift. However, even I knew while we were debuting our piece that it just turned into really unclear chaos that was all over the place and not thought provoking at all. I found it hard to keep a straight face and to actually take what we were doing seriously, as a performer I found I didn't connect with the work at all and therefore the piece had no emotional effect on me meaning it had no emotional impact on the audience either.
After that, we decided that a lot of the ideas in that piece were going to be put to one side for now, and we would draw from our original idea of the restraining happening to people who are just acting normally.
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