The Underworld and Olympus (Shanay Neusum-James)

We have decided to include the theme of heaven and hell to show class in our piece. This is to exaggerate the different social classes, for example, the richer people will be residents in Heaven (known in Greek Mythology as Elysian Fields) and the poorer classes will reside in Hell (known in Greek Mythology as The Underworld).

Here I have done some research on the two very different places:

Elysian Fields/Olympus:

For the purposes of our piece we will be calling Olympus Heaven just because it is a catchier name that the audience will be more familiar with. The real Greek Heaven was called the Elysian Fields), in Greek mythology, the final resting places of the souls of the heroic and the virtuous. The souls that dwelled there had an easy afterlife and had no labours. Normal people who lived righteous and virtuous lives could also gain entrance such as Socrates who proved his worth sufficiently through philosophy. This goes with the theme of having the richer people at the higher class areas of the site in Olympus because rich people are viewed as being more heroic even if they haven’t really achieved anything. The Elysian Fields were thought to of been ruled over by the God Cronus.

The Underworld:

The Greek underworld, in mythology, is another world where souls go after death, and is the original Greek idea of afterlife. At the moment of death the soul is separated from the corpse, taking on the shape of the former person, and is transported to the entrance of the Underworld. The Underworld itself is described as being either at the outer bounds of the ocean or beneath the depths or ends of the earth. It is considered the dark counterpart to the brightness of Mount Olympus, and is the kingdom of the dead that corresponds to the kingdom of the gods. Hades the ruler of The Underworld is a realm invisible to the living, made solely for the dead. This goes with the idea that poor people in our piece are having to sell their souls in order to find a place to live in hell (the Underworld).

The audience in our performance will be potential property buyers who will be unknowingly on the journey to the underworld to buy or be given a house there due to the lack of houses elsewhere. This journey has a name in Greek Mythology which is called the Journey on the River Styx or the Descent to The Underworld.

In Greek mythology, Styx is a deity and a river that forms the boundary between Earth and The Underworld (the domain often called Hades, which also is the name of its ruler).

Devising (Shanay Neusum-James)

I'm playing the role of Adicia who was the spirit/demi god of injustice. The character being a demigod goes with the theme of Gods and Goddesses and Hades being the ruler of the Underworld trying to sell his own properties in hell. She is often portrayed as an ugly barbarian woman. This matches up to the characteristics many higher class people are thought to wrongly accuse lower class women of having.  I chose this character because poor people often are treated in a very unjust way. 

The rest of the characters who are labelled as rich have much more pleasant deity’s as they are rich and so are more valued by society.

I contributed to the devising processes by first researching my character and making sure that her characteristics matched up with the lower class character I previously had had in mind. We then played a hot seating game so that I could improvise some more characteristics that my character might have such as her relationship with her family and how she feels about being a resident of the underworld.

I offered the idea of having the character sitting in their own sections of the slope and having the audience travel down the slope whilst stopping at every character and interacting with every character. I also offered the idea of having a mayor-like character showing the audience around the town.

We developed work as a group by firstly brainstorming ideas and writing every idea down on a piece of paper whether the idea was good or bad in order to have a selection of ideas to choose from. We then began to improvise ideas in order to get our piece on its idea by using our idea as a stimulus. This helped us to form and develop our characters in more detail. We made decisions in relation to the site by simply sitting in our space and looking around at its architectural qualities and all of the things that it had to offer. We began to name all of the things that we could see in our site and then mention what we noticed about the things we could see. This was useful in allowing us to determine what features were going to be useful to our performance in order for us to really make great use of our space.

I made decisions about the image, sound, physical performance, character, narrative and costume by simply again brainstorming all ideas and eliminating the ones I did not feel would be effective. By having the idea that our piece would be based on Greek Gods and Goddesses and Heaven and Hell, because these themes are so specific, this made it very easy to decide what the characters should be like and how the physical performance should be carried out. Any ideas that were formed as a group would have to be investigated, explored and researched by an individual meaning that everything we do in our piece has meaning and a logic behind it. (although most of it is metaphorical)

Questions Arising From The Site: (Shanay Neusum-James)

We have decided to use our site because its nature suggests at a particular theme that we are trying to explore and portray which is the theme of class. Our site is the smoking area and the slope next to it. The slope shows a difference in levels which can be used to show the different levels in class. At the different heights of the slopes we aim to place characters. At the top of the slope, the characters will be of a higher class, well-spoken and not very pleasant; in order to play on the stereotype of upper class people being snobbish and cold. The lower down the slope the lower the class of the character. The characters down the bottom of the slope will be kind, honest and hard-working people.

The text that the site suggests isn’t so much written text but brings to mind the Greek Gods and Goddesses of Olympus and the Underworld. This idea was formed when we realised we wanted to create a metaphorical twist on the idea of showing a tour of a town in which there is a difference in class of people.           

 We instead wanted to have the Mayor who is touring the ton as a character similar to that of Hades the ruler of the Underworld in which the poorer class people live because the only way that they could afford a house was to sell their soul to the devil. This makes a comment on how hard it is for people in the lower class to own or buy properties at the moment. The characters that we have come up with all have names that once belonged to Goddess’ and Demi-gods with characteristics that complement the stereotypes/personality of the character. For example, the character Aeirgia was the personification of laziness. Most people have the view that the lower class are lazy and that’s why they are poor. The audience will be treated as potential buyers of properties.

The site is a slope so it offers a way of the audience to make their way through the site and down the slope via a trolley or pram because it shows the type of things that you would see in a town or city which is where our site specific performance is set.

The site allows the spectator to wind down the twisting slope. They will be able to stand at the top of the slope, walk down it and stand at the bottom of the slope. They can also stand by the smoking area in which there will also be a chance to spectate the piece.

The action will take a place in all areas on the site: the top of the slope, along the slope, the bottom of the slope and the smoking area.

The tidiness of the top of the slope has been used as the higher class area because higher class areas are thought to be clean. In addition, the fact that the slope is highest at the top due to the taller height of the wall at this point in the site, this part was chosen to be the higher class area. The large amount of litter at the top of the slope has been used as the lower class area because lower class areas are thought to be heavily littered and dirty. Also, the fact that the slope is lowest at the bottom due to the smaller height of the wall at this point in the site, this part was chosen to be the lower class area. The lower section of the slope is also meant to be the lower class area because it is closest to the smoking area which has a lot of cigarette butts and a smoky smell that is strongest in this area. This works in our favour because it increases the feeling for the audience that they are walking into a lower class area. There is also a tall white post at the top of the high class area that is going to be used as a billboard in which we will place ‘FOR SALE’ signs. In the higher class area (the top of the slope) there is a green area (a section where there is a lot of plants).There is no such area in the lower class area, in fact there is a section of mud instead. This works to show the contrast between the class

The lower class area is dimly lit due to it being further down than the top of the slope giving it a more negative and/or an uncomfortable feeling. This is the opposite with the higher class area which is taller and so the daylight reaches this spot very well. This works in our favour because it gives the higher class area a brighter and happier feel signifying the positive energy and happiness a person would feel in Olympus.

All in all, we think that our performance reveals to the audience the common stereotypes that come with different social classes. For example, people living in higher class areas have perfect lifestyles and that people from lower class areas are low-life’s and are lazy. We think that, the audience will hopefully see that it is unfair and unjust to label people with these stereotypes. The piece also makes a comment on how hard lower class people have to work in order to get what they want. In this case they have to sell their souls. Although this is only a metaphor and an exaggeration it’s still very true that the lower class often don’t deserve to be treated as though they don’t try hard enough.

We have often had to try to overcome the difficulties of our site such as the busyness of the site when we were trying to rehearse. Often, we would need to use the space in order to rehearse however because there were people using the ramp it made it difficult to rehearse with them there. This meant that we would politely have to ask them to leave so that we could use the space. Another difficulty we had to overcome was that when we would want to rehearse after school because our site is so dimly lit, we found it difficult to see each other meaning we had to change our rehearsal times to before and during school times where there was more daylight. Because we were also rehearsing outside in the middle of winter, it was very cold and so rehearsing outside meant that we had to overcome the cold by going inside and rehearsing in a dram room instead or waiting to rehearse when it is slightly warmer. We also had to overcome rain in this way, by not rehearsing when it is raining or rehearsing inside instead.

The audience sees what they will see because they should be immersed in the conversation between the characters because they are able to stand right next to them so they should be able to see the action unfolding beside them. They will be able to go right up to the characters and touch props. They

One characters physical action’s during the piece emulates certain behaviours at this site. This character will be played by Izzy who will be pretending to smoke and she will be standing in or at least very close to the smoking area meaning she is emulating behaviours commonly seen at this site. Also the characters and actors will be walking up and down the slope which is an activity commonly done on the slope too.

The action of the piece is informed by the architectural particulars and special possibilities of the site because the characters ‘living’ at the higher area of the town (slope) act as if they are better and more higher up than the people in the lower class by treating them poorly and speaking down to them.

The site allows us to demonstrate class metaphorically and physically, explore social status and involve humour and shock factor to engage the audience through our metaphorical themes that have been inspired by the architectural qualities of the site.

The performance allows changing points of attention because of interaction between characters and the mayor-type character touring the properties inside the ‘town’ we had created in our site. It also allows for multiple focuses because characters further down the slope will be doing things such as carrying out tasks and interacting with each other whilst characters at the top of the slope will be talking to the audience. The performance allows for a close proximity between performers and audience members in order to fully immerse them in our piece. Often the characters will be offering the audience props and talking directly to the audience and so will need to be in close proximity to the audience in order to do so.