Asleep On My Arm

Wednesday 28th January

This is the song that I had the lead on, and had a variety of ideas for choreography and staging. Firstly I thought that everyone could be sitting in the same position as me, with a girl on my arm sitting on a chair. They would proceed to act out the lyrics that I sang. After finalizing on this idea, we decided that I would remain in the chair the entire time, and everyone else would do movements to exaggerate the lyrics, to make sure the piece was exciting and invigorating.

This was the first part of the song that we choreographed. This is towards the end of the song, and therefore the movement needs to be bigger than before, as the song crescendos into the final moments.

Here is the final version of 'Asleep on my Arm' from Wednesday's lesson. We kept the movement subtle to contrast other songs such as 'Helen' and 'I Was Born This Morning', but managed to keep the piece exciting, as I merely sit there and make slight movements to go with the lyrics. The other performers keep the song interesting with their actions behind me, which is what I wanted originally.

Tuesday 24th February
I have drafted an idea of the scene that will take place before the song itself. I feel that the scene should have the same layout as the song that follows it, with the cast on seats around the back, and the 2 chairs at the front that represent the 'bed' to have myself and Amanda on. The scene so far is with just myself and Amanda lit up, and progressively the characters in the background are lit up to quote something as if they are my mind speaking out about the scene. For example, as Amanda 'get's comfortable' and hugs on to my arm, an actor in the background would say a relating line, be it a nervous squirm or worried outburst that represents my thoughts. My facial expressions will be representative of that line, and once all actors in the background have been lit up, the song begins. This scene indicates to the audience who the actors in the background are, as previously we discussed how for each song it is difficult to show when we are our designated characters and when we are different ones or neutral cast members. In this scene and song, the cast should be neutral, apart from myself and Amanda, allowing a development in characterisation for myself, as it is my focus song, and for Amanda, so that she can use this narrative in her own focus song perhaps.

Exploring different ways in which this song could be used to create a performance

If money was not a limitation of the production, I looked into different ways we could create a performance from the song ‘Asleep on My Arm’(AOMA) form Joe Iconis’ album ‘Things to Ruin’. My initial thoughts are that we can make the entire album site-specific, in that we could perform the production in a school, with the current piece that we are going through the workshop process for being based in a school setting.   However I wanted to explore other avenues of performance, and what I could do with the source material being one song from the production and not the entire production itself.

For example, as stated previously, we could set the songs in the actual setting that they are in for our production, so ‘I Was Born This Morning’ would actually be set in a form room. Therefore AOMA could be set literally in a bed, with the supplementing characters in side rooms with beds occupying each room. It sounds like it would therefore be based in a corridor in a hotel, with each door being open for the audience to observe from the confines of the corridor. The audience would traverse down the hallway, looking at each room whilst each performer shows their input to the performance. Similar to our actual performance, Amanda and I would be in one of the rooms, with each of the other cast members in the other rooms, doing similar movements to what we do in our current production.

Amanda had the idea of a doll house being built on stage, a giant doll house with each room belonging to a specific performer with their chosen song. For example, AOMA will be set in one of the bedrooms of the ‘house’.  When it came to that narrative of AOMA, following the chronological structure of our current production, the bedroom would light up, and it would be a similar performance to how our piece does at the moment, with Amanda stuck to my elbow as I explain to the audience my predicament. With the doll house, whilst I would be performing, with my room lit up, the others would be frozen like dolls in a child’s doll house. The idea sprung from a show from the National Theatre, as well as an advertisement on television, but I feel that it would be a highly successful performance overall, with an abstract but engaging idea of revising the current state of the production.

Another way of constructing a performance around AOMA would be devising an entire one act play around the character and the narrative of the song. It would be called ‘Asleep on My Arm’ with the turning point of the narrative being based on the song and the lyrics from ‘Things to Ruin’. The narrative of the song allows for a lot of expansion, such as the whole ‘working for her father’ narrative, which could be expanded to fill some time as an actual play. This play could then be set wherever the director would like to, be it the stage or somewhere else. The play would be shorter due to the limitations of the source material only being one song. With a few of the other songs, perhaps an entire two-act production could be created. The play wouldn’t be a musical, as I would like to see a clear difference from our current musical production and the devised play itself.

A physical theatre piece could also be created around the song. The song could be played through some speakers, and a movement piece could be devised from it, again based on the narrative of the lyrics and the rhythm of the song. The music flows quite well, with a repetitive piano charming the vocals, and therefore a physical movement piece could adapt the song to be a more visual piece to one we already have. The narrative allows for a story to be told, which lends itself well to physical theatre, as it can be abstract but still tell that narrative.

Another abstract idea would have been to set the song in a giant bed, similar to the props in the film ‘James and the Giant Peach’, and the cast would have control of the duvet, with my character and Amanda on my elbow like the original narrative. It would be a movement piece, with Amanda and I not really moving too much, with the focus on the bed and its movement. It would be an interesting dance-based piece, following the duvet and its narrative depiction of the song.