The themes that are presented in A Number revolve around the morality of genetic engineering and “designer babies”. I believe Caryl Churchill had a clear vision of how she wanted A Number to impact audiences, as the fast paced dialogue between Salter and each of his sons and the dramatic differences in personality from son to son prevents the audience from becoming immersed in the action and the characters. This leads to them jumping from scene to scene picking up only on key plot points: predominantly what Salter agreed to and how this has impacted the lived of B1 and B2 in particular. this brings up the question of Salter's ethical integrity and whether or not he was right to do what he did. Churchill, however, does not allow this question to be answered as she first leads the audience to sympathise with Salter's decision by portraying him as desperate to recreate his son that he claimed had dies; but then steering their sympathies to B2 as he was in fact cloned in order for Salter to "try again", as he was very neglectful towards B1 and their relationship appears irreparable.

The Paper Birds workshop consisted of us creating short, movement based scenes constructed off our stimulus.

Our warm up was comprised of a series of activities that revolved around synchronised movement. We did a mirroring exercise whereby we started in pairs doing small movements, and progressed into moving around the room where we then grouped with other pairs until the whole room was working like an ensemble.  

Our first task was to create a sequence of movements based on themes we took from our stimulus and what we thought was happening in the photo (what they are doing in the sea, what they are thinking/ feeling).

Next we created caricatures of old people, finding stereotypical phrases we thought would be associated with the elderly and put movement to them. We developed this by doing the movements themselves but removed of any character whilst reading facts about loneliness, and then repeating with our over exaggerated characters.

Then we composed a version of a chair duet (for want of a better term), whereby one of us were in the chair (in a group of three) and the other two had to try and get them out of it; however, whilst there was no resistance, the person in the chair would return instantly. We tried this at different speeds.

Finally we watched a direct address devising technique in process. A group began at the back of the room and would say lines from various different texts they were given, interrupting each other and pushing in front of one another. Should we decide upon epic theatre for our devised piece, I feel this would be a good technique to experiment with to make direct address and educating the audience more dynamic.

Here are the roles we have decided on:

Myself- Jasmine, Sam

Charlie- Chloe, Alexis

Zoë- Silas, Hannah

Abi- Ella, Paloma and Rachel (we have combined their lines under the name Paloma)

We have cut the character David.

We have composed a chair duet to the song 'Mr Sandman', as inspired by an image from a DV8 performance.

We began this process by splitting in half and devising a chair duet each that only required the movement of our arms. This meant that when we came together we could act as if we were casually watching TV ad were in a normal scenario, whilst our arms moved robotically. We particularly liked the juxtaposition of the movements and our postures.

We laid out our chair duet whereby Zoë and myself did our chair duet, we all did a series of repetitive movements in unison, and we finished with Charlie and Abi' chair duet.

We also discussed our own opinions on human cloning and 'designer babies'. My beliefs on the matter are that 'designer babies' are ethical to the extent whereby we can eradicate life threatening illnesses. However, I don't agree with human cloning as it is unnecessary. Whilst I find it incredible that such a progression has been made in science that such a thing would become a possibility in the near future, as it is not serving any purpose in improving lives, it is best to avoid such an area of moral uncertainty.