Risk Assessment and Site Appraisal

Ideal Audience Members: Those willing enough to engage fully in the piece, interacting with the activities we have set up. An older demographic is preferable as they may be more moved by the nostalgic elements and see the effects of growing older from a more real perspective.

The audience will be required to write their childhood memories on post its provided, then we will collect them. They may also wish to have a closer look at the sculpture we are creating.

The Fire exit is through our piece, however our piece does not obstruct the way so we can easily move out the way if need be. This is the only health and safety instruction deemed necessary.

Title	The Amygdala Site Specific Duet - “Svala”	Reference/ Version	The Amygdala
Department	Theatre	Date of Assessment	14/2/17
Location	Corridor outside Dance studio - Theatre block	Next Assessment Due	24/2/17
Assessor Name	Jack Hughes	Job Title	Theatre Teacher

Hazard	Injury	Who at Risk	Existing Control Measures	Risk Score			Further Control Measures Needed	Action
				Severity	Likelihood	Risk Rating (S x L)		By Whom	Due Date
Slippy Floor	Potential fall leading to head injury	Performers moving around quickly	Performers should work in bare foot as less slippery, and take care with movements	2	2	4	None
Props: Tape Stool	Suffocation risk as the tape will be applied to performer’s face and hair Chance that the stool could be knocked over and land on a performer, including risk from pointy legs	Single performers who self applies tape Performers moving around quickly and on the floor	Special care taken by the performer to not block all of their airways Performers will still clear of the stool while on the floor, rising up when in close proximity	4 2	1 1	4 2	None None
Hot Water Pipes	Potential minor burns depending on temperature at time of performance	Performers moving near the pipes	Special care taken to avoid pipes if they appear to be hot before the performance.	3	3	9	None regarded necessary other than special awareness of risk
Lifts	If a performer is dropped there is the opportunity for neck injury amongst others	All performers	Rehearsal of lift in a safe environment beforehand, rehearsal in the space with supervision	3	2	6	None

Severity			Likelihood			Risk
Severity = Level of potential harm			Likelihood = Chance of harm			Severity x Likelihood = Risk
1	No action, delay only		1	Very Unlikely		1 - 6	Acceptable
2	Minor injury - 1st aid only, minor damage		2	Unlikely		8 – 10	Tolerable if strictly monitored, but try to improve
3	Injury, illness – time off work, damage		3	Fairly Likely
4	Major injury, disabling illness, major damage		4	Likely		12 - 25	Unacceptable, further controls are mandatory
5	Fatality		5	Very Likely - Imminent
		Severity
		1 Delay Only	2 Minor Injury	3 Injury or Illness	4 Major Injury	5 Fatality
Likelihood	1 Very Unlikely	1	2	3	4	5
	2 Unlikely	2	4	6	8	10
	3 Fairly Likely	3	6	9	12	15
	4 Likely	4	8	12	16	20
	5 Very Likely	5	10	15	20	25

Performance Evaluation

PERFORMANCE EVALUATION

Our blurb:

SVALA (SWALLOW) 

By Benji Lord and Jimmy Chambers

"This piece is a look at the effects of aging on the brain, an insight of the slow and heartbreaking disintegration from childhood and the joy it brings to the hostile world of a mind affected by dementia. In this piece, we look at the world of play and childhood, exploring what it's like to grow up and lose the innocence of infantile experiences. We want people to feel nostalgic, and remember a simpler time, away from the mountains of stress, paperwork and tax returns." 

WHAT WENT WELL?
Overall, my piece went well. We managed to have our piece run for the entire length time of the living gallery. We had a lot of audience participation which is what we had hoped. Our physical sequences went well and I feel like we had the right amount of improvised behaviour and work for it to really engage a viewer. There were times when I would playing with toys and Jimmy would be sticking post it notes to the floor. In general, the piece really worked and it flowed really well together. The end product of all our post it's linked together, working their way up to the web looked amazing and I was extremely proud that it worked as well as it did. I think it did really well to connect with the audience and even though Jimmy and I didn't really talk during, we both also connected with them.

EVEN BETTER IF?
There were some improvements we could have made. One thing that we were worried about was if the audience were going to partake in the piece so to solve that we could have done the piece with a test audience, however we didn't have time or resources to get an audience together and try it. We didn't get as many post it notes as we wanted, however we did get enough to get a brief outline of where our piece was going. It's a shame we didn't have a bit more time and I think the issue could have also been resolved had we been in a different location. Being right near an entrance meant that the groups that came in felt like they had to walk around together so we had a massive influx of people right at the beginning and then it quickly died down and not many people saw the rest which was disappointing. This might not have been avoidable however.

Our entire piece was based on audience member's reactions so here are some pictures of the notes we had written:

Some that really resonated with me:

"Bike rides"

"Eating sweets"

"Watching video cassettes"

"Summer 1989 in Cornwall with Dad" - This one is my favourite. I love the honesty and rawness of it. 

 "Playing with my sisters in the park"

"Making showjumps out of brooms + bricks + jumping them in the garden"

"Caravan on Ballantore beach"

 "Food"

These photos really show just how well the audience connected and interacted with our piece. I couldn't have been more pleased with how it went.

Working on this piece has helped me develop differently as an actor. I've realised the importance of playing and having fun, and how that can help with exploring something as complex as the brain. To think that taking a piece of art from the Tate and creating something that we did happened so quickly is mind blowing and I am really proud of what I helped create. It was a new experience and I hope to do something like this in the future. In my experience of acting I've never done anything like this so being able to create an installment instead of a play was really insightful and eye opening. The main thing I hope is that the viewers took something away from this piece, whether that be remembering a happy time or just having that thought cross their mind .

Site Specific Living Gallery 3

Different Creative Techniques we tried:

For our first idea, we wanted our performance to have strictly no speaking or verbal communication. However, when it game closer to the performance and our rehearsals became much more developed, we decided it would be best not to limit ourselves, and that we had no reason to neither talk nor not talk, so that rule was revoked and we just decided to let whatever happens happen. We also decided that it would be best if the majority of our piece were improvised. We decided this, as we believed that when a child plays, they don’t plan out what they are going to play, or while they’re playing. So again, why limit ourselves to set blocking when we can truthfully play like children.  The music we wanted to use changed quite a lot, mostly because the entire feel of our piece changed during the development. At first we wanted a minimalistic piano piece with a train station soundscape in the background. We thought that it was the wrong pace for our playful physical decisions. For our final piece we decided on doing a repeated playlist consisting of these songs:


FKJ - Tokyo Improv

Mura Masa - Firefly

FKJ & Tom Misch - Losing My Way

We thought these were lighter, more playful songs to go better with our piece.

Materials we used:

• Multi-coloured tape 
• Post-it notes
• Assortment of toys
• Pens
• Large sketch paper
• Phone torch lights
• Written messages on walls and floor, 

Here is an interview with Marwan, the curator of the map art and some quotes I find interesting:
http://www.berlinartlink.com/2016/12/25/beirut-shifting-power-an-interview-with-marwan-rechmaoui/

"‘Beirut Caoutchouc’ is a highly critical work that is concerned with issues about urban planning in terms of distribution, volume and accessibility"

"Inspiration is usually the beginning of a creative process that ends up somewhere way beyond the initial idea."

"In times of crisis like these today, when economy and identity feel threatened, people tend to worry more, and that can lead in many cases to conservatism and extremism."

The map of Beirut that we used is a really relevant piece, because of the political situation right now with ISIS and the huge divide of the city, this keeps our piece relevant.

We did some more development of our piece and decided that we would have a helipad made out of tape, symbolising the 'launch' of childhood. We would get people to write their favourite childhood memories on a post-it note and we would stick on the floor. We would connect the post-it's to the helipad and each other, and eventually the tape would creep up the wall to the spider web that we had created. We decided it would be much more efficient to create the web before the performance. We wanted some audience participation and we wanted the audience to feel nostalgic and think back to a time when they used to be playful and infantile and free. Every now and again we would input our physical sequence of the 'spider' running along the wall. We will also have toys laid out and play with them during the piece. We want to convey a message that makes the audience feel nostalgic and happy about their times as a child.