Aubrey Mann

Day 1 (Monday):

• We started off in group speaking about where our strengths lie and getting a better understanding of each other.

• We then spent some time individually going through all of the transcripts and choosing our top 3. At the end of that time we shared with the group to see if we had overlaps. 

• I then led the group in an exercise where I had everyone write down words, ideas, or phrases that came to mind when thinking of Ireland and Dublin either from before the course started or what they have been while experiencing this place. After that we placed the sticky notes on a page and categorized them together focusing on central themes. The next section of the exercise I played some Irish Folk music while I asked them to think about the people they have encountered in this place and what their thoughts and views of Ireland and Dublin. We then did the same process of categorizing them. After both sections were completed we spent some time discussing what we noticed about either of both of the sections we did and we worked together to come up with 5 central themes or ideas we noticed from our pages. 

• After returning from lunch we engaged in several activities led by other members of the group. As well as a warmup led by Wro

• One was a character building activity led by Ari where we built a brief character description and passed that on to the person to our right. We then tried several improv scenes to explore relationships around those characters.

• After that activity Ari gave two groups a notecard with two ideas from our wall that we had made earlier and we made scenes from those ideas. One was a movement piece centered around rain and pub culture not being the same thing as drinking culture. The other scene was centered around the idea of greetings and connectedness in the city. We used the rain scene as a jumping board for our opening of our performance.

• We then moved to an activity that I led that each group was given two transcripts each we were exploring for a total of four. We then worked in groups to find a way to combine the two together to create something to show. Joey and Wro created two contrasting poems and Ari, Allison and myself created one using a story about almost getting mugged and the fun of learning a language as a child. We used Wro's poem for our poem and tableau scene.

Day Two (Tuesday):

• This the day we created the most work. Our homework we gave each other was to come in to the space today ready to lead an activity and explore an idea. 

• Allison led us in a beautiful warm-up where we gave appreciation to one another as peers, artists and facilitators and acknowledged that we are here together as equals. 

• Joey started us off by leading us in a script writing exercise where we went around the circle giving a line or movement line to two character 'One' and 'Two'. We created a simple scene and then had two people read and act out that scene. We then discussed the activity after as a group. This scene later became our 'Gay Umbrella' scene.

• Wro led a scene where we looked at the interview prompts and went in individually finding quotes for each one and created a movement piece with them.

• Following Wro's activity I split the other four into two groups that I would float between to assist as a third person for their scene. I wrote out all our requirements for the project as well as combining two questions for each group. They were then randomly drawn and the pairs had to create something using the requirements they had. This is where the Guinness scene came to fruition. 

• After lunch Ari led an activity where we looked through interview transcripts and chose 3 that stood out to us. We then shared them and worked as a group and built a song that later turned into our 'Staunchly Irish' song. That activity led us to including verbatim readings of transcripts and building the song into 3 different versions that were later performed in different times of our performance. 

• We spent the rest of this day looking at all of the pieces we created and looking at what the structure of our performance could look like.

• We ended the day with a stumble through of a potential version of the show.

Day Three (Wednesday)

• This day we started with a focus on what the opening scene would look like. We focused on what the audience engagement would be when creating the sounds of a rain storm. 

• After we worked out the beginning of the performance we did a stumble through of what we had finalized. 

• When we came back together after a break we looked at our three monologues connected to our song and ran those with blocking. 

• We devised a tableau using a poem that was spoken during the performance and worked on transitions into and out of that scene. 

• End of the day we focused on the ending scene and how we would wrap up the audience engagement of leaving the bar. 

Day Four (Thursday):

• This day was our dress rehearsal where we focused on finishing the pompoms we planned to hand out during a scene and worked on polishing the whole show.