1. Section of coming out scene Mind map of initial ideas
How ideas have been researched, created and developed in response to the chosen stimulus.
Our chosen stimulus was Who Am I? We decided to choose this as we thought it developed the best theme for an original piece of drama. Our chosen theme was religion, which we linked back to Who Am I?, through ideas of religious identity. We then developed this further to our final idea of religion and control. I did some research into the Orthodox Church within Russia and the changes it faced once it was banned under the USSR. I found out that many people still decided to practice the religion, but this time underground. This then led to many people’s ideals and beliefs relating to religion becoming more extreme than they were before.
Section of coming out scene
Word Count: 292
One major change in our rehearsal process was changing our stimulus. We had originally intended to use the 1984 quotation, from which we developed the idea of voyeurism. We created a plot where a family were being watched by a security camera operator within their house, and how this character grows attached to the family. However, practically we weren’t coming up with a cohesive storyline, causing us to not progress. We felt as if theme was too restricting and unimaginative, meaning we decided against it, in favour of religion instead. This theme wasn’t limiting and allowed us come up with a more focused plot.
Mind map of initial ideas
To create our piece, we mind-mapped our initial ideas and then discussed them to decide on our final idea. We improvised a scene surrounding the rise of the USSR and how religion was banned within that process. We also blocked a coming out scene, which one of our group members had scripted. This linked how religion controls social ideals, for instance how a family would react to their child coming out as gay.

2. Section of our communism script
How ideas from the chosen practitioner/genre have been incorporated in the piece to communicate meaning.
In our piece, we decided to use the practitioner Brecht. We thought this would allow us to convey our message clearly. This is because Brecht often focused on making the audience think not feel. He often protested a strong political message, therefore we decided to demonstrate the changes in religion within the Russian Revolution, and how the rise of Communism created more extremism within the Orthodox Church. We did this by becoming a caricature of different institutions within Russia. This created Spass which was very common of Brecht. We also used placards (e.g. the feelings the Dad felt within the coming out scene) and representational costume (e.g. a crown for the monarchy).
Section of our communism script
Word Count: 298
Brecht also used comedy at often inappropriate times, in order to make the audience feel awkward and perhaps reconsider what they were thinking at the time. We firstly did this by adding humour into the trenches scene, before interrupting it with a shelling sound effect to remind the audience of the horrors of war. Our use of caricature in the Communism scene also added slight humour to a serious subject, allowing the audience to engage with our plot better. Finally, in the coming out scene, Sam says “Because I’m gay!” This is a very serious moment, which conveys a strong emotion. However, to juxtapose this we also decided to make the Dad character hold placards of his feelings when Sam explains that she is gay to her Mother. This created distance by use of the Verfremdungseffekt, which allowed the audience not to lose themselves in the narrative. The emotion of the scene is distanced by the Dad coldly showing his emotions through placards. This could make the audience feel awkward because of the emotion portrayed by the character of Sam at this point.
Dad’s Placards

3. How ideas have been developed, amended and refined during the development of the devised piece.
One important change we faced during our rehearsal was the structure of our piece. In order for our message ‘Whether the good of Religion outweighs the detrimental effects’ to be portrayed evidently, we decided to add a new beginning and ending scene late into the rehearsal process. We decided to create a game show setting in which each major world religion was a contestant. To open our piece, we then met each of these contestants. This helped give clarity to what the piece was about towards the audience. By ‘meeting’ the religions, we showed the audience that this is what the piece is centred around. We also used slight humour in our introductions of each religion. This helped the audience to engage with our piece straight away, but also to give them the idea that we going to challenge the traditional views of religion within our piece. To end our piece, we used a circular structure and came back to the game show. The host asked the religions one question ‘Which Religion had caused the most destruction?’. In the three previous scenes, we had shown the detrimental effects religion can have on war, state and family, so we, as contestants, challenged the host to show the good of religion. We showed this visually through a presentation. This allowed the audience to explore our message after they’d watched our piece, and decide whether the good of religion outweighs the bad.
Word Count: 271
From our audience feedback, the weakest scene highlighted was the Communism Scene. Therefore, to strengthen it, we developed our use of vocal tone and facial expression to be more stylistic. This allowed us to show our use of spass more clearly and add more characterisation. This allowed the audience to understand the scene better.
Audience Feedback