Process

The process of our piece was a long and stressful one, because we were representing a real person and a serious case of some quite horrific murders, we didnt want it to look cheap and as if we had just picked it to be scary. We were all very passionate about looking into the thoughts of Rose and what would make her do such horrific things. It took me personally a long time to fully research Rose, not only because i wanted to stop watching real footage and interveiws but because it was such a famous case, there was so many! After watching nearly every single video, interveiw and news report and reading every article and book on serial killers mind, i felt as if i had a good understanding (?) on the killings and Rose as a person, she had herself had a very traumatic childhood, with lots of verbal/physical and sexual abuse. As did Fred, so people say that they were perfect for one another? We would spend all of our spare time up in the space, really focusing on little things, i have attached some pictures previously on the blog. There was a lot of scratch marks across the walls, where the technicians have probably dragged trolleys through the corridor, we interpreted these and the victims finger nail marks as they were too dragged through corridors. There was also splats of red paint all over one certain area of the corridor, as you can probably guess, we interpreted this as the victims blood. It was very emotional throughout the process, as to get into the space and the thoughts of the victims and Rose, we had to really connect with the situations, and every little thing in the space. We kept having to remind one another that this really happened to many young girls. The space was very invasive and claustrophic, which is probably how the victims were feeling up to their death. This is also how Rose most probably felt throughout her life with the regret and guilt building on her. I think we worked really well as a group and really did do all we could to portray what we needed too.

Evaluation

Throughout out time working our piece, we really tried to connect with our space as much as we could. we all researched Rose and Fred west and watched various different documentaries and programmes about the killers. We looked into Roses childhood deeply, and all of the victims stories. We used numerous different materials for our performance. We used 25 blue luminous glow sticks and stuck them to the curved white walls to create a sense of a sterile enviroment, not only physically to make it look like a mental instutution, or a hospital, but to make it quite emotionless and empty, as we imagined Rose Wests mind to be. We printed off key words that related to serial killers and researched how West's childhood impacted on her adulthood. We also printed off articles of the killings and pictures of the victims to stick on the walls. I think that this had a huge impact because it isnt just a perfomance any more. These people were real and suffered horrifically in the hands of a middle aged woman and her husband. At the end of the corridor was a room, the floor was a hard grey cement, and going off what we knew about the killings, the Wests buried their eldest daughter heather under the garden patio. To represent this as well as we could, we used me as one of the victims, with just my legs out of the door. I was bare legged/foot with bruises all over my legs. The audience would see my legs on the floor and straight ahead was an ipad with a video of a feutus in the womb. We wanted to use the contrast of not only did rose hurt her own child, whom she carried in her womb, but also using it as if Rose was the feutus and what she had become. We wanted the challenge the theory that killers were born killers, but it was the audiences decision after the piece. Throughout rehersal process we all worked really hard on various different sections. Some weeks we would spend the lesson rehersing our physical peices that we wanted to perform during the peice and other times we would spendo the whole lesson researching the victims and killings in depth so we had a full insight in to Rose Wests mind. I think that overall our peice went really well and to plan. Because of another group, we didnt have as much time setting up as we needed, but taking that into consideration, i think it went really well. I think that the audience really liked the lighting choices. We wanted our peice not to come across as a scene but more abstract. We didnt want any characterisation other than the victim in the end room. We wanted to represent the mind, and i think we did this well by using physical theatre to show the nerves and different parts of the mind. Our piece was called 'Welcome to West', because of how much publicity all of the West killings got, we knew that our audience would have a rough idea of what it was all about. We really hope the audience went away with a slightly clearer veiw on the killings and who Rose West was.

The site in progress

How our space makes us feel

We went to explore the space, and we felt exactly the same that we did the first time that we found the space. It made us feel claustrophobic, scared and a little on edge. We explore lighting, by turning off the lights and downloading apps such as strobe lighting, coloured lights etc and came to the conclusion that we would most definitely use strobe lighting and something like glow sticks to exaggerate how dark it really can be in there, to use advantage of the feelings that the space alone can make you feel, let alone by using lighting to connect with peoples emotion now. We also went through in our heads what the most accessible way to direct the audience throughout the space. Although the space is only one curved corridor, there are two entrances/exits and also different rooms off the corridor. Knowing that we wont be able to use these rooms is a shame but i think we can still include the exterior as an impact, such as the doors themselves or the little windows that you can see into the rooms. Here is a small video of the space to give you an idea of really how claustrophobic it can be. Isabella had a really good idea about playing games in the space, such as hide and seek, tag etc. Because of all of the curves within the corridor, it was very easy to hide, when i started walking down the corridor, i felt as if i didn't want to go too fast as you didn't know what to expect around the next corner. i thought that this was really helpful, and knew as a first time audience we could use this feeling to make them feel the same.
 We definitely want to stick with the idea of the mind, we want to make our piece as abstract as we can, by using multi-media and also images around the space, not only to make the face feel more invasive but also so we can show what our piece is about in more detail. We want to focus on one specific case of Rose West ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGZDoJrnnUE ) . We want to explore her mind, and what went on in her mind throughout her life, was she a born killer? What made her do all the horrific things that she did etc? We want to not only explore the anatomy of a mind. the nerves, what makes you think what you think etc. But we also want to look at the more disturbing side of Rose West and her victims ect.