May 2016

May 25, 2016Christopher ODonoghue No Comments

Final Blog Submission – Chris O’Donoghue

Discussing Roles

The first step to be taken when creating a theatre company was for our members to decide what role each of us would be best suited to. We began by exploring our strengths and the areas of theatre that we were most interested in. We established that some members of our company were more interested in a production role, rather than a performing one. This allowed us to establish a hierarchy based on the various non-performing roles, with responsibilities such as Producer, Director and Stage Manager being assigned in order to facilitate an efficient operation within the company. We ascertained that six out of our ten members were primarily interested in the acting side of the company, with another three members of the production team willing to play minor parts as needed. This immediately gave us a clear idea of what size cast we would be working with, which informed our devising process because we knew how many characters we would be able to work with.

My Role in the Company

An important aspect of the company that not all of us were familiar with was the technical roles required when devising a performance. These included lighting, sound, hair and make-up, script writing, props, costume and health and safety. To ensure that every member of the company was sharing the workload evenly, we divided these roles amongst our members. I was responsible for designing a lighting plan for our performance, as well as writing parts of the script. As my main role in the company was performing, being a part of the writing team helped me to understand my character and bring that knowledge to the script. I have had writing experience in the past, and it was rewarding to be able to apply this experience to a theatre company. Our script was written by a group of our members, so that it could be reviewed and adjusted as it was written, as we could offer feedback to each other throughout the process.

Lighting

This performance was the first time that I had done lighting for a theatre company, and it presented an interesting challenge that would give me a skill that I could bring to any future performances that I might be a part of. To prepare for our own performance I looked at other performances and what lighting they had used to create their atmosphere. Our performance was going to be mostly naturalistic, with only some fourth wall breaking projections providing a break from the realistic setting, so the lighting I used was toned down and understated, consisting mainly of naturalistic gel lighting. In our production meeting with the LPAC Production Team, I discussed the lighting I wanted with the LPAC’s Stage Manager, Darren Page. After describing the type of colours I hoped to use in the piece, he gave me the ID numbers of the gels that matched what I wanted. After writing these down on the lighting cue sheet to give to our own Stage Manager, they were all prepared for the technical rehearsal. To facilitate the locations of the play, we divided the stage into four lighting zones. The entire downstage area was divided into thirds, vertically. Each of these zones was labelled A, B and C, with the upstage being taken up with a large rostrum, which represented a consistent are of the play, the staff room. To differentiate these zones, the lighting sheet made reference to which zone on the stage was lit at any one time. On the day of the technical rehearsal we found that we had to alter how we set out the props and furniture on the stage, sometimes swapping entire scenes from one side of the stage to the other. Because we had already planned out the lighting zones beforehand, this did not present much of an obstacle, as we simply had to change which zone was illuminated during the scene. The final colours used were a warm, light yellow used during the scenes at the school and at the character’s homes, a pale spotlight used in a scene where, in a rare break from our naturalistic style, one character describes the events of the night before to another character, with the downstage area being illuminated as the story being told is acted out. During one scene a party takes place in the staff room the stage was lit up in red, green and yellow to represent disco lights, which was achieved using an LED projector. By ensuring that the lighting was set up on the technical rehearsal, it was prepared for the show day.

13161955_10206380439925620_4082419509319842269_o — Begg, Z. 2016

Creating Our Performance Concept

During our early devising process, we discussed what our target audience would be, and what issues we wished to address within that group. We decided that we would market to an audience that we could empathise with, and so we focussed on the 16-25 age range: those leaving high school, attending higher education, or leaving higher education. Having only left high school in the last few years, and leaving university soon ourselves, we decided that we would be able appeal to the common issues that our target demographic felt. We surveyed people within our target demographic, asking what they would be interested in seeing on stage. The responses we got were concerned about “leaving high school, being isolated, and stressing about exams” (Towell, 2016) Therefore, we decided on the core themes of our piece, divided into two distinct yet intermingling story lines. The first storyline explored the theme of leaving university and finding oneself in a less than ideal situation: a job that the main character never wanted to be in. As a company, we felt that the experience of trying to find contentment in a life that took an unexpected turn would be a feeling that many graduates would associate with, especially in the current competitive job market in which many people are unable to find work in a field of their interest. To punctuate that struggle to adapt, we interwove that narrative with a story that had already been taking place for a long time before the main character’s arrival: an affair between the head teacher of the school and a teacher, with discovery by his wife an ever-present concern. From a narrative standpoint, inserting the main character into this story in progress allowed him to represent the audience: he could ask questions and explore events that neither he nor the audience would have any fore-knowledge of. This allowed us the freedom to be more open with the audience about the events of the story.

Creating my Character

Once we had decided what themes we wanted to explore and what setting we wanted to represent, we were able to being creating our characters and applying them to the world of the piece. When we drafted my character, we decided that we wanted him to be the head master of the school that had begun an affair with a teacher in his employ. Over the course of devising, we evolved this template into an older, out of touch yet well-meaning man who had gotten carried away with the interest of a younger woman. The most important part of writing the character was finding a way to make him sympathetic despite the affair. We did this by showing his intense guilt over the affair, as well as explicitly displaying his mistress’s manipulative nature, telling the audience that he is being taken advantage of. When playing the character, I played up the traits of a man that meant well but was not able to accurately read the people around him. I played him as larger than life, with a fondness for buzzwords and hackneyed slogans as a form of motivation, and who desperately tried to appear young and cool to the central character, with no awareness of the bemusement with which other characters regarded him with.

Finding Our Performance Style

During the devising process, we explored ways in which we could add a unique selling point to our performance. We wanted to incorporate multiple forms of media in our piece, specifically a form of media that would be identifiable with the present day. Market research showed us that the prevailing relevance of social media in the twenty-first century left us with a relatable medium that would be familiar to our audience. Our research led us to conclude that the three most influential forms of social media to sixteen to twenty five year olds were Facebook, Snapchat and Twitter. We decided early on that we wanted to incorporate snapchat into our performance, as we could translate it onto the stage using pre-prepared snapchat pictures projected onto a screen at the back of the stage. This was done by adding photos to our own snapchat accounts and then downloading them onto a computer. The images and videos we accumulated were put into one video package that could be played onto the screen at the push of a button. This was done at the start of the play to inform the audience of the setting, time period and the tone of the piece, as well as establishing the basic story elements such as the main character, his reluctance to become a teacher, and the relationship he has with other characters in the piece. Later in the performance we featured a montage of tweets from the social media platform, Twitter, which showed various students’ reactions (both positive and negative) to receiving their GCSE results. This section also linked in to the theme of the play, as the secondary storyline focussed on the concerns of a Year 11 student passing her final GCSE exams, and the montage was played before her results were revealed, which built anticipation for the reveal.

Final Performance

As mentioned earlier, the stage lighting had all been set up by the time of the show, which meant that my responsibilities on the day was mainly focussed on setting up the stage and practicing quick changes to ensure that we could get props and furniture on and off stage. When we had set up the stage, we went through a cue-to-cue rehearsal to check that the lighting was correct, and then we practiced the scene changes. The only member of our company that was not on stage in some capacity was our Stage Manager, who was in the lighting booth directing the sound and lighting cues, which meant that we had nine people that could be used to move items about during the performance. In the case of some of my scenes this involved bringing my props on with me, such as a chair, before sitting down in it. I also came on stage during black outs to help move scenery around if I was not in the following scene. We had set up the exits and entrances in such a way that each side had three ways to get in and out, so there would be some scenes where we would be bringing on large items from one entrance as someone from the previous scene would take scenery out via another exit. Once we had practiced the scene changes, we had a full dress rehearsal to put every aspect of the performance together and ensure that it ran smoothly. We encountered no major obstacles, and over the course of the next few hours we worked on scenes that we thought needed tweaking slightly, or went over lines to keep them fresh in our heads. The performance began at 7:30, and we were in position by at 7:15 to be ready when the doors opened. The performance went as smoothly as I could have hoped for, as the only things that went wrong were a few paraphrased lines that didn’t affect the flow of the performance to any great degree. Once we had finished the show and mad your bows, we went backstage to clear the dressing room and give the audience time to filter out of the theatre. When they had gone, we cleared the stage and assisted the LPAC technical team in collapsing the seating of the theatre, so that the front seating pit could be lowered into the basement. This in and of itself was an interesting and enlightening experience, as I had never seen a theatre closed down in that way, and was a relaxing, informative way to wind down the night. If we had done further runs of the shows I would have worked on making sure that our cues were just a bit quicker on the pickup, and I would have kept experimenting with my character and seeing how I could push the boundaries of my understanding of the role.

Final Thoughts

Being a part of a theatre company was one of the most rewarding experiences of my career as an actor. Before I did it, I had only ever acted on stage, and I had no real idea about the technical and production aspect of putting on a play. Having been on that side of the spectrum has been hugely informative, and has given me skills that I will take with me going into the future. The applause at the end of our show was made better by knowing how much effort that we had all put into creating the company. The whole process taught me things about the industry and myself that I look forward to using for the rest of my career.

Towell, H. (2016) Interview about personal theatre preferences. [Interview] Interviewed by Lauren Towell. 12 February.

Begg, Z. (2016) Ungraded flyer photo. 8 May. Available from https://www.instagram.com/p/BFKQLZrIbAb/?taken-by=railcardtheatre

May 25, 2016Charlie Watts No Comments

The role of Producer: Final Blog Post – Charlie Watts

Introduction to Producing our Theatre Company/ Initial Ideas

At the start of this Theatre Company module, we started as 10 individuals with no common cause, however during this process we fount that by working closely together and creating a strong bond through communication, teamwork and hard work we have produced that common cause of creating theatre our target audience of 16-24 year old’s can relate to. This blog will be spilt into six sections detailing my roles within the company which details my individual progress and contribution throughout this process and also highlights my groups progress that evolved us into an actual theatre company that are viewed as professional.

During our initial meetings at the start of this module, our group had the idea of creating a new theatre company that tackles issues surrounding young people aged 16-24. We decided to call our theatre company Railcard Theatre, as Railcard’s are offered to 16-24 year old’s. We thought by including the name of Railcard, the idea of creating theatre for 16-24 year old’s would be extremely clear to the public. To try and find an idea that focused on this theme, we decided to conduct market research. ‘Some research is “basic,” useful primarily to other researchers. Some is “applied,” relevant to everyday life. Both are essential. And most artists do some of both, creating experimental work that pushes the form as well as work that is more’ (Simonet, 2014). As evidenced in the quote, research can be basic or applied with both helping the researchers find what they are looking for. This is what we tried to find when conducting our market research, as I feel we conducted Applied research as we were asking friends and family members in that age range about what theatre they like to see and what type of show would they like to see at the theatre which tackles issues for 16 to 24 years old’s. The answers we were given, were mostly the same as most people we asked wanted to see theatre that they could relate to and was accessible for them. They feel high end theatre in the west end was not relevant or accessible to them and if there was a local play that they could relate to, they would go and see the show. After discussing this feedback, we felt that we should base our show around a Post graduate who has got his first teaching job in a secondary school, as we feel our target audience could relate to the experience of the fear of stepping into the unknown after education and including tension by not knowing if our main character would love or hate his new job.

After deciding on our concept, the time had come to set roles for our theatre company. During a workshop with our tutor Mark, we had all our roles in place, as demonstrated in the picture above and included on the main page. When choosing the role of producer, at first I was nervous as I have not produced a theatre show before, however at the same time I was excited as being producer gave me the chance to do something new within Drama and give me a new challenge. ‘The job involves being “responsible for making arrangements for every aspect of the production in order to prepare it for presentation to the public on stage, subsequently managing it during the course of its production run and finally making all necessary closure arrangements” (Baggley, 2008). As evidenced in the quote, a producer’s role is making show a good show is produced within budget and on time, this is the main factor I was excited about, as for once in Drama I was responsible for more than my own acting part, I liked the pressure and organisation of that role, it taught me the benefits of being organised and reliable, which I felt I was during this module.

One of the first jobs I had to do as producer was helping to write our Mission Statement and Manifesto. When writing those, we studied examples from other theatre companies and used the ACE guidelines to help us create two pieces of writing that summed our theatre company up perfectly to potential sponsors and our audience. I believe that in both our mission statements and manifesto they include detailed information like the one Frantic Assembly did. For example they included ‘Frantic Assembly creates thrilling, energetic and unforgettable theatre. The company attracts new and young audiences with work that reflects contemporary culture’ (Frantic Assembly, 2016). This showed us that our Manifesto could not be vague, I feel our overall mission statement and Manifesto, covered our themes of our theatre company in depth.

After developing our mission statement and manifesto, the main point I had to work on as producer was organising and delivering our marketing pitch for Julie Ellerby, the head of marketing for Lincoln Performing Arts Centre, the venue that was hosting our show.

In the picture above, I and Zach my co-producer and Chloe who at the time was director, was working on notes for our pitch and sorting out our initial budget for the pitch to give to Julie. Included below is the document which had my notes for the pitch I was delivering to Julie, my job mainly during the pitch was to give in depth explanations about our budget, especially the prices of our marketing. At the time, we had a plan of spending £82 in total for 10 posters, 1000 flyers and 40 programmes. We thought that would heighten our exposure to the general public that would improve our ticket sales, this number changed during time which is included later in this blog, however Julie was very impressed with our pitch overall, especially our budget, as she said we were one of the most in depth groups in terms of budget and organising our marketing. At this time of the process, we were impressed with our progress after the pitch, we were now looking forward to developing our idea for our show more in the next month.

Notes for Pitch

Works Cited

Simonet, A. (2014) Making Your Life As An Artist. Manitoba: Artists U.

Baggley, L. (2008) What’s the producer’s role? It’s one of the most mysterious jobs in theatre – so let’s find the truth behind the cigar-chewing, money grabbing cliches. (online) The Guardian. Available from https://www.theguardian.com/stage/theatreblog/2008/apr/04/whatstheproducersrole (Accessed 25 April 2016).

Frantic Assembly (2016) What is Frantic Assembly. (online) Frantic Assembly. Available from http://www.franticassembly.co.uk/what-is-frantic/ (Accessed 16 May 2016).

Developing our Idea/Funding

The next step in creating our show was developing our idea of basing our show around a new teacher going into his first teaching job in a dubious secondary school where secrets were surrounding him. To develop this idea further, fellow crew members were devising the script to bring the characters and storyline to life. During these sessions, I felt like I needed to be there being producer to overlook the development of the script and make sure our script was consistent to our themes included in the mission statement of our theatre company. Overall when the script was devised, I was happy that the occurring themes of fear, love and tension which was relatable to our target audience was present in our script. ‘You should only produce something that you have a real passion for and that you would personally want to buy a ticket for and go and see.”’ (Frizell, 2012). As this quote states, producers should only produce work that they would go see, on the basis of the script we created, I feel like our show was strong and I was fully committed in producing this show to the best of my abilities.

After the script was done and the characters was starting to take shape and be three dimensional, we needed a title for our play. At first I had a suggestion of Hey Teacher!, however other group members decided that the title was too strongly based on our main character who is a teacher. To create intrigue to our play we decided to negotiate and create the name of Ungraded, as we thought that name wouldn’t give the main theme of our play away too much, and create the intrigue to the audience in order for them to hopefully buy tickets. ‘Your brand – logos, name and so on – are how you convey that vision, and that matters. It should enable not just audiences but venues, funders, potential partners and others to understand what you’re about.’ (Caines, 2013). This quote helped my understanding, as we needed to create a strong brand and identity for Railcard that would fully encompass our theatre company and match our vision of creating theatre young people could relate to. We needed a logo that would be striking and understandable to the audience. By using my contacts as producer, Iona Carter who is a third year media student with experience in graphic design created our logo. We felt this image, (included below), was a very good representation of our brand and show, that we felt comfortable with advertising in our marketing.

As the show was developing, the next step that I concentrated on as producer was the budget and funding. At the start of the process our theatre company was given a £200 grant from the University of Lincoln. I thought this would be enough money to cover all of our expenses, as we had a lot of props and all of costume in kind, therefore we didn’t need to spend a lot on costume or props. However when developing the show, we decided that we needed to fund raise more funds just make sure we had all of our expenses covered. To fund raise money, we decided to use a internet page called Indiegogo, this allowed us to use our social media sites Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to advertise our fundraising page https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/railcard-theatre#/. To give our contributors something back for donating money, we included perks like if you donated £1 we gave you a personal message of thank you, £5 would be a thank you snap and £10 would be a silly snap of all the cast and crew. This worked as we were able to raise a total of £90, this gave us enough money to cover all of our expenses.

If we were a professional theatre company, we would apply for an Arts Council Grant. ‘Grants for the Arts is our open access funding programme for individuals, art organisations and other people who use the arts in their work.’ (Arts Council England, 2016). As stated companies who use the arts in their work can apply for a grant for their production, we were using this as inspiration for our own fundraising, by looking at companies who have been successful in their application and how that money has been useful for their production. Companies like Gob Squad have been successful and this money has helped them to explore technology in their performance, which has been Favorited by their audiences. We understood that funding from Arts Council England is very important for theatre companies, unfortunately time ran out to complete a mock application, however I feel that our funding helped our development of Ungraded.

In our budget that is included in the blog, in total we spent £192 on expenses, which was broken down into 4 sections Props costing £85, Flyers costing £28, Poster costing £24 and Programmes costing £55. This meant we didn’t need to use our fundraising money as all of our expenses were covered by the university grant. However it was nice for us to have that extra money so we didn’t need to worry about overspending.

Budget Sheet

Theatre Company Budget

Works Cited

Frizell, N (2012) What does a theatre producer actually do? (online) Ideas Tap. Available from http://www.ideastap.com/IdeasMag/the-knowledge/what-does-a-theatre-producer-actually-do (accessed 9 March 2016).

Caines, M (2013) 15 tips on setting up a theatre company From funding to fringe festivals, a panel of theatre pros who have been there and done it share their expert insights (online) The Guardian. Available from https://www.theguardian.com/culture-professionals-network/culture-professionals-blog/2013/aug/28/expert-tips-setting-up-theatre-company (accessed 16 March 2016).

Arts Council England (2016) Grants for the Arts (online) Arts Council England. Available from http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/funding/grants-arts (accessed 12 March 2016).

Marketing

During the process, I fount myself taking on other roles, for example half way through April, I was now the assistant marketer. This was to help Chris Petit as he was the main character John Smith in our show and head of marketing, we felt this was too much work for him. My first role as assistant marketer was organising the printing and distribution of the flyers. In the earlier months we budgeted £14.99 for 1000 A5 flyers from an online company called Vista Print. However I felt that these flyers wouldn’t be good enough quality, I decided to go to a local printers in Lincoln called Chameleon print. When I went there I had the design of our flyers (included below) to give to the printers, I felt that given our time frame we wouldn’t hand out 1000 flyers and it would be a waste of money.

I had the idea of quality over quantity, so I ordered 100 A6 flyers on landscape, that gave us the idea to the public that they were form cards to fit in with our school theme. Once I collected them from the printers, the quality was very good as they were on gloss paper and thick card, to give the idea to the public that we are a professional theatre company. ‘the go to market strategy represents the generic direction to be followed in order to accomplish a specific business objective’ (Brand Uniq, 2016). As evidenced in the quote marketing strategy is important for growth and for us ticket sales. To fit in with our marketing strategy, I had the idea of distributing the flyers in shops and spaces in the town centre where our target market 16-24 year old’s hang out in and go in, during their free time and academic time. For example I distributed flyers in HMV, Subway, the University Library and the media building. These are all places our target market have been witnessed going into, I thought that would be a success for our company.

This is the same for poster distribution, as we had 10 A3 posters and 10 A4 posters, we thought having 10 of each size would increase our distribution. This idea worked as when I and Chris handed pout posters in shops in town, we had enough of each to fit with different spaces that the shops gave us. Finally to keep our marketing strategy strong, I distributed a poster in Access to Media college, an educational facility which markets to our demographic. To maximise ticket sales, I used my contacts again, namely my friend Sebastian Edgington-Cole who presents a radio show on Monday lunchtimes on Siren FM. He let me and Chris go on his show to talk about Ungraded, as Siren FM is a community radio show and our show was tailored for the local community, by giving the youth in the community something to do on a Tuesday Night. This interview worked well, as we were both organised and direct to the important points of our show, which would help generate more ticket sales.

Siren FM Interview

Flyers Posters

Works Cited

Brand Uniq (2016) Why Marketing Strategy Is Important For Any Business. (online) Brand Uniq. Available from http://branduniq.com/2012/why-marketing-strategy-is-important-for-any-business/ (Accessed 21 April 2016).

Sound

Another role I was given half way through the process was sound. I was nervous at first to take this role on, as I haven’t done sound for a show before. However given our realistic setting, the sound wasn’t as complicated as I thought. For example the house music was 15 minutes long, I decided on four songs that captured our school setting perfectly as they all had school references in them. The four songs were High School Never Ends – Bowling For Soup, Another Brick in the Wall- Pink Floyd, Don’t Stand So Close To Me- The Police and What I Go To School For? – Busted. On show day these songs worked well as I think they gave the audience an instant sense of the show’s school setting.

Before show day, in my sound cues included in the blog, there were soundscapes for the scenes which as set outside the school, during parents evening and in a bar. However during tech day they were too loud and poor quality for the actors to project their voice over them so Emily the stage Manager and I decided to cut them. We only had one SFX included in the show which was repeated twice, that was the school bell SFX, this was good quality and managed to signal characters entrance and exits in two scenes. The music we had on in the background during our main scene which was the main scene was Don’t Cha -Pussycat Dolls, this gave a sense that this scene was set at a party, as Don’t Cha is a song people can associate with parties. Finally on show day we had an idea to include music during scene changes, these were snippets of the songs we used for house music and also the three songs we didn’t use in the party scene, Don’t You Want Me – The Human League, Never Gonna Give You Up – Rick Astley and Girlfriend – Avril Lavigne. This gave the audience a form of sensory enjoyment during the blackouts, ultimately I think I did a good job of sound, my choices of sound reflected Ungraded well.

Sound Cues

Ungraded Sound Script Ungraded Sound Cue Sheets 1 (1)

Conclusion

To conclude, I feel that my role of producer/sound/assistant marketer did challenge me during this module, however after seeing the show on Tuesday 24th May, I feel comfortable to say that I feel I produced this show to the best of my abilities. We didn’t go over budget at all, everything we needed to do was done in a timely and respectful manner, I feel like our group worked well together and we created a three dimensional show that delved into different scenarios and themes in a school setting, which the audience seemed to enjoy after listening to feedback. I will conclude with a snapshot and a quote of me explaining my journey through this process which was posted on our Facebook Page and used as a marketing tool.

May 25, 2016Emma Rewse No Comments

Railcard Theatre: The Experience- Final Blog Submission

For me, this process of Theatre Company is a chance to really get stuck into what I wanted to do if I became part of my own theatre company. To explore the best way to do those roles whilst still being able to have the safety net of the LPAC and Mark Brewer if I need the help. Even before we discussed in our company which roles that we wanted, I had an idea that I wanted to act and be in charge of designing costumes as they are the roles that I enjoy the most and know the most about as I have done both of them multiple times before.

Costume designing

Although the role of sorting out costumes can often be overlooked or thought of as not important as things such as lighting, props or set. However the costumes can add a lot to a piece. It can show time period, setting and the type of character you are. “Costumes are clothes worn by actors and actresses, which assist them to assume different forms of characters aside their true self” (gustianamettasari, 2011) .As well as this it helps add to characterisation, helping to show the changes that they go through during the play. For example Lily at the start of the play, is shy, nervous and so hides away in big hoodies, however at the end of the play she is more confident which is shown through her clothes that are brighter and do not hide her as much.

I started thinking about costumes the day that we got solid characters, the first and most important thing to do is find out what the character is like in order to give them the correct costume. In order to do so, I read through the script looking at each character in turn, watching what they are like in rehearsals and after gathering my initial ideas, talking to the particular actor to get their opinion to make sure that we had the same idea of what the character should be and that most importantly they would be comfortable in what I wanted to put them in. My character Katie is a motherly character who is a stereotypical over the top girlfriend, so I decided that she would dress very girly, floaty tops, bright colours and cute dresses as she likes to look sweet and pretty for her boyfriend and to her that means dressing as cute and girly as possible. As her go to costume I kept her in a beaded floaty top and jeans, adding a big jumper over the top during the scene at home to make her look comfortable and cosy. In the party scene as it was an end of year party I put myself in a summery dress and kimono, which is clearly what Katie feels most comfortable as it reflects her personality perfectly. Similarly to Katie, Bec’s character, Lacie, also likes to look good for the men in her life. However she uses her body to get what she wants so I put her in tight skirts, high heels and chiffon shirts to show off her figure. The outfit for the party scene was in my opinion especially important as it was a pivotal point in the play for Lacie, she finally got what she wanted, Steven and Jackie breaking up. I wanted her in something that really showed how confident she was as a character as even though I wanted to go overboard with her costume, as she worked in a school I still had to maintain that she was professional and appropriate. However in the party scene I felt it could much more relaxed, resulting in her being in a tight, provocative dress which showed the true extent of her character. This immediately shows the difference between Katie and Lacie without them needing to speak.

The characters of Jackie, Sarah and Steven, came with the issue of making twenty-one year olds into forty year olds. Even though a lot of the age needs to come through the characterisation, the costumes like with any other character needs to be appropriate. Jackie in many ways is like an older version of Katie, so I wanted the costume to reflect that. My original ideas for Jackie were jeans, floaty shirts and floral patterns, however due to what the actor playing her owned, the character ended up in a cardigan, plain top and jeans. Although I still believe that it worked well for her, as she looked comfortable in her marriage and a very relaxed person which is what the character is like. I wanted Sarah to look like a stereotypical music teacher, a bit unusual and alternative but still responsible and of the older generation. About three weeks before the performance, the director decided that it would be best to switch who was playing Sarah, which made me have to rethink the costume slightly because obviously with the new actor she brought a different way of playing the character meaning that the costume had to change in order to reflect that. As the character evolved into the nervous, emotional person that it ended up as, I decided that the best choice was to have her look rumpled, trying to look professional but not always succeeding.

The men were easier to costume as most teachers wear simple suits, so for Steven I put and kept him in a suit for the piece. I wanted Steven to be in a full very neat suit to show that he was not only older than John but also was much higher up in the chain of command. Even at the party he was still in a full suit to show that he was all about business and trying to up keep his good reputation. The only time that he did not have his suit all neat and perfect was in the last scene as his marriage has just broken up so he himself is not happy or in the mood for trying to look perfect and professional. Even though it is just a subtle costume change, added with the acting it showed the dramatic change in character perfectly. With John I wanted to show that he was still an unsure, young teacher desperately trying to hide this fact by dressing professionally for the first time in his life. I kept his outfit’s simple, shirt, a variety of ties, smart trousers and shoes. The only time that his costume changed was for the party scene where I was able to have him dress as a normal twenty something year old in jeans, t-shirt and trainers. I feel that John’s classic no fuss style really suited his character and added to the sort of person that he is as it is my impression that he likes the simpler things in life.

Although I have done costumes many times for various different productions, this was the first time that I had to manage costumes for a big show on my own. I was in charge of making sure that everyone had their costumes when they needed them, sorting out budget if I needed to buy anything and checking through who had costume changes, when they had them and if they needed any help with them. In many ways I had a simple job with the characters in this play as it was modern day and the sort of clothes that people would already have, if it had been a period play then it would have been more of a challenge. Overall I was happy with the way that the characters looked and felt that they reflected and added to them.

The final bows to illustrate the final costumes.

Jackie and Lacie’s normal costumes

Katie and Johns normal costumes

Acting

From even before we started, I knew that I wanted to be acting in the piece, as for me, it is my favourite role in the theatre. I love being able to get stuck into the character I have been given and bring it to life. I especially loved being able to add to the devising process so that we could all have our ideas heard.

The first task for us as a company was to decide what sort of company we wanted to be. Who our target audience would be, what our manifesto should be and what sort of style of theatre we wanted to produce. In the first discussions we all talked about why we got into theatre, what we enjoyed seeing/doing and what we hoped to gain from this experience. We all agreed that we wanted to inspire young people with our theatre because we feel that it is important that young people get interested in theatre to lead the next generation so that theatre does not die. We all said that theatre and doing drama was a way to be comfortable and feel safe when we did not always fit in elsewhere. As a result of this we decided that the best market audience would be 16-25 as it’s a large spectrum of people who are in wildly different places in their lives so we could have a wide range of topics to do. This gave us the idea for our company name, Railcard Theatre, because of the ages on the young person’s railcard. It also relates to where our company is based as in Lincoln trains run through the centre of campus and town and so are a big part of Lincoln life.

Our end logo and name

After deciding who we were, we had to decide what we wanted to produce. Which proved a slight issue, early on it was decided that it would work best with what sort of actors we are and the target audience we chose. However what the content of our play would be was tricky as we found it hard to decide on what would be best so that it could be relatable, funny and hopefully inspire. After many discussions, we ended up with the idea of a school with a new teacher, meaning that we could get the younger viewers with the GCSE student characters and the older ones with the main character, a recent graduate going into their first job.

To start off the process with had simple improvisations, given to us by the director for various scenarios, like the first class for the new teacher, staff room discussions and students in the hallways. Originally it was decided that the main teacher was going to be a female, though after a possible uniform argument turning into a bigger issue it was decided by our director that the teacher would be male. By the end of February we all had solid characters meaning that we could start on the script and bringing our characters to life. I was given the part of Katie, John’s over the top, smothering girlfriend who always seemed to be around school for whatever reason. This was a really fun character to play, as in some ways we were the same person but in many other ways we were completely different.

Katie’s whole life revolves around John, he is the reason that she gets up in the morning and all she wants to do is make him happy and take care of him. Even though on page the character of Katie should be a smaller side character, I was determined to make her just as big, funny and in depth as any others. However to make sure that Katie was a well-rounded, relatable and realistic character I needed to put time into getting to know what she was really like. “Real people are moulded by a lifetime of experience, so in order to make a character truly believable, the actor has to think about that person’s life outside the confines of the play” (Abbot, 86). I went straight into using some of the techniques taught in advanced acting, like for example the questions in John Abbot’s The Acting Book in order to find out for myself what sort of person Katie really is. It is important to know who your character is outside of the play in order to make them believable. As well as this I looked for inspiration for my character, my main one being Stacy from Gavin and Stacy, as often her world revolves around Gavin and she is very upbeat happy and caring which was the sort of character I wanted to create. most people know a girl like Katie, who is very over the top, silly and loving but to make Katie funny, I wanted to push the boundaries of realism, so that she is so upbeat that she is almost unrealistic but not quite.

Like any production and any character, through knowing my character and rehearsing, the characteristics just came out naturally. She ended put being very girly at the start, almost bouncing around the stage with excitement for her boyfriend starting his first job. By the end when the secret of the affair came out through she changed subtly in being less friendly and bouncy around Steven because most import character trait of Katie is that she is fiercely loyal to her friends so in hurting Jackie and breaking up their marriage, Katie felt that Lacie and Steven deserved her being nice to them. It becomes apparent at the end of the play that Katie is more than just John’s girlfriend. She is loyal, caring and proud of what her friends can accomplish.

Overall I was not only very happy with my character but of the play as a whole. I feel that it was not only relatable but funny to watch. I am very proud of what we managed to create as a company.

References

Abbot, J (2012) The Acting Book. London: Nick Hern Books.

gustianamettasari (2011) Stage costumes and make up [Blog] 1 May. Available from: https://chickyarick.wordpress.com/2011/05/01/stage-costumes-and-makeup/ [Accessed 20 May 2016]

May 25, 2016Zach Begg No Comments

The Finger In All The Pies – Final Blog Submission

Railcard Theatre believes that theatre can be important in the development of today’s youth.
In an era of an ever changing, consistently growing presence of digital media, at Railcard Theatre we believe that these can be combined to create a beautiful hybrid of performance.
A performance that utilises the audience’s fascination with social media. We aim to combine modern media with naturalistic theatre in order to reach our audience.
The combination of the two styles builds a platform that makes theatre appealing to those who might not typically attend.
Railcard Theatre aims to portray relatable issues to today’s youth in a way that is both new and familiar.
We incorporate familiar digital social platforms into original writing to construct a narrative that is both interesting and forward thinking.
Our aim is to bring more young people into the fold of Theatre with a vision to inspire them to contribute to the future of the ancient industry.
Young people are the future, they are the key to ours and Theatre’s life expectancy.
Railcard Theatre believes theatre can move people to breed change, inform people of political stances and shape a generation as much as the film and television industry.
We aim to make theatre accessible regardless of social class or background. We use social media as a key feature of our performances due to everyone’s exposure to it in the 21st Century.
We believe that in order for theatre to shape a generation, it must evolve, to adapt to today’s audiences whilst maintaining the conventions that has shaped it for generations.

As we begin the module that will lead us to our last performance of university, I have been asked to fulfill the roles of Co-Producer and Assistant Director in order to assist both the Producer and Director with the many tasks and responsibilities they have. The role of Co-Producer is something entirely new to me and it will no doubt take some getting used to – I personally prefer to be on the stage rather than part of the production team but I feel like this may be something that I could potentially excel at; only time will tell I expect.

Assistant Director is, on the other hand, a position I am much more familiar with. I have never myself been an AD but I am aware of the general roles and duties they must perform in order to aid the Director. I predict that the importance of my role as AD will increase as we come closer to the end of the process and have a script to work from. The roles of Railcard Theatre are as follows:

Zach Begg – Co-Producer/Director/Head Writer/Performer
Rebecca Bierton – Health and Safety Officer/Performer
Emily Cooksey – Stage Manager/Writer
Chloe Harrison – Assistant Director/Assistant Stage Manager/Editor
Chris O’Donoghue – Lighting Designer/Writer/Performer
Chris Petit – Marketing Director/Writer/Performer
Emma Rewse – Costume Designer/Performer
Lauren Towell – Set Designer/Writer/Performer
Charlie Watts – Co-Producer/Sound Designer/Performer
Laura Welberry – Hair and Make-Up Artist/Performer

After a long and painstaking process, we finally landed on an idea that we are all excited for. The general premise is to follow a university graduate (John Smith) through his transition into teacher training. I feel this has great potential as it could be relatable to our entire target audience (16-25 year olds) due to the range of characters we can represent within the piece. In the creation of this idea our most important focus is making the piece accessible to the lower range of our target audience without giving them the wrong impression of what’s to come. Setting our piece in a school allows us to use characters of their age in order to make the piece relatable to them.

What comes next is the writing of the script, and luckily Railcard Theatre contains several people who recently wrote a script for another module in our course: Emily Cooksey, Chris Petit, Chris O’Donoghue, Lauren Towell and myself. Naturally, these are the people that have formed the writing team with the addition of Chloe Harrison as script editor due to her authority as Director and input from my fellow Co-Producer, Charlie Watts. The first draft of the script should hopefully be finished in a short amount of time, I have allocated people to write scenes in preparation for a writer’s meeting on Wednesday 9^th March (2016) in order to ensure that the scenes piece together seamlessly. The writing allocations are as follows:

Scene One – Chris O’Donoghue
Scene Two – Lauren Towell
Scene Three – Chris O’Donoghue
Scene Four – Zach Begg
Scene Five – Lauren Towell
Scene Six – Chris Petit
Scene Seven – Emily Cooksey
Scene Eight – Zach Begg and Emily Cooksey
Scene Nine – Chris Petit

As a co-producer, one of my most important responsibilities is to source funding for our play. However before I can do this, I needed to figure out how much funding we would actually require in order to produce the show. Therefore Charlie and I drew up both an actual budget and a real life budget, pictured below.

Real Life

Actual

Since we began to put the script onstage the process has, for the most part, ran smoothly. However, due to issues raised by herself and other members of the company which I shall not divulge, the production team (Charlie Watts, Chloe Harrison, Emily Cooksey and Myself) decided that the best possible response in the name of the future of Railcard Theatre would be for me to take over as the Director of the show and for Chloe to take my original role as Assistant Director as well as undertake an additional role of Assistant Stage Manager.

I have never directed anything on this scale and the prospect of doing so excites me. It feels very natural that I should direct due to my large involvement in the conception of our original idea and the writing of the script. Directing is actually rather new to me, the last and only time I was director was for British Theatre since 1956 in Year 2 of University and, in the interest of remaining candid, I will be the first to admit that it was not exactly best piece of direction. I however intend to learn from my mistakes there and take this role more seriously than I did in the past, hopefully this will put me on track to creating something worthy of being the last show of the Class of 2013/2014.

When it was decided that the main character of our play would be Chris Petit despite his title as Marketing Director – an understandably large role in the production of our show. Because of this we decided that it would be best for Charlie and myself, alongside Chris, to form a marketing team in order to not overload Chris with work so early on in the process. We began to formulate strategies to market the play and after I drafted the initial budgets (both real-life and actual) we decided that we could use both posters and fliers in order to advertise the show. We also decided that we should maintain a strong social media presence as we intend to reference Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook and Tumblr within our show.

We brainstormed ideas for poster and flier design and decided that the general design of the two items need to be similar, therefore making the decision to use the same photograph of the main character on both, but change the orientation of it between fliers and posters (Flier: Landscape, Poster: Portrait). The composition of the image consisted of the back of Chris Petit’s head, staring up at a blackboard/whiteboard. I felt that this image, whilst simple, is incredibly effective at connoting our intentions for the play. The use of a whiteboard/blackboard clearly symbolises the setting of our play and Chris’ positioning within the poster is also incredibly illustrative of his character going into the play. The fact that you can see his back suggests that he is moving forward with his life, also creating comradery with the potential audience member as they are both looking at the same thing: A blackboard/whiteboard with the title of the Play (Ungraded) at the top. Another interesting point to note about Chris’s positioning in this is that he is looking up at the board, suggesting that something to do with school is daunting for him.

Thanks to Iona Carter, a Media student at the University of Lincoln, the composition of these marketing materials was a simple process. Without her photography, the posters and fliers would be of a much lower quality than the final versions of the posters and fliers, shown below.

Flier

Poster

Nah.

And so, just like that it’s over. After what has been possibly the most exciting, rewarding and stressful 4 months of my life, Ungraded has had it’s opening (and closing) night and it appeared to go down well with our audience, there were laughs in the right place (and some wrong places) and reflective silence in the correct places. It truly feels like I watched my baby on stage and I am so proud of all of my Cast and Crew, they have made this experience enjoyable overall and the show tonight went so smoothly.

I felt like I did the best that I could in my all of my roles. I did make mistakes, ones that I will readily admit to, but I also did a lot of things right. In terms of my direction, I would have loved to be able to spend more time on the play, as even on the show there were still moments that I know I could have gotten more out of, but overall I feel that we at Railcard Theatre achieved our goals, outlined in our mission statement:

Railcard theatre is a new theatre company that specialise in creating entertaining, escapist theatre that tackles relatable and inspiring issues through performance. Our aim is to challenge the stigma around theatre by making it an accessible experience for young people to learn within and enjoy. We are looking to use real-life stories and experiences as a basis to write our own original content that will aim to help unite and inspire young people. We believe that theatre has the power to provide a creative outlet for young people who need guidance, unity and above all entertainment. Relatable stories are at the heart of our practice and we hope to inspire and entertain you with our performance.

Throughout this module I have learnt several things, the most important thing probably being not to undertake too many roles. But in all seriousness, I have learnt that working in theatre, whether it be as a performer, director, producer or stage manager (3/4 ain’t bad), all of the stress of creating a performance from scratch is a means to an end. Whether you hate everybody you are working with or if you love everybody you work with, in the end nothing tastes sweeter than the applause from an audience that genuinely enjoyed your performance.

Out of all the roles I took in this process, the hardest one by far has been Director. In this role I have experienced great stresses and moments of sheer joy. But the hardest part of this role is letting go. On show day, I complained endlessly about wanting to be sat in the audience like the other directors on the module, but I see now that this would have been a much more daunting experience. Being backstage while it happened made me feel more involved in the whole performance and I can imagine that, had I been sat in the audience, I would have felt detached and helpless should anything major had gone wrong. Thankfully, nothing major went wrong, lines were fluffed, set was in the wrong place backstage and props were misplaced mid show but it wasn’t noticeable, at least I didn’t notice.

From your Co-Producer, Director, Head Writer and the infamously short fused Mr. Hamilton,
Good night!

Word Count: 2013

May 25, 2016Laura Welberry No Comments

Final Blog Submission – Laura Welberry

Becoming Railcard Theatre

Name: Railcard Theatre

Target Audience: 16 – 25

Based: Lincoln

When brainstorming ideas of who we were going to be as a theatre company, it soon became apparent that we all had an interest in abolishing a stigma attached to theatre. That stigma being that theatre is an out dated form of entertainment with there being, from our observations, a lack of people in our age bracket attending the theatre that are not drama students.

We wanted our name to reflect who we are as a company and not just our first show, leaving us the creative room to be able to create a range of performances, but still stay true to our manifesto.
The name Railcard Theatre derived from both our location and target audience. Being a Lincoln based theatre company, a prominent (and sometimes problematic) part of Lincoln is its train barriers and as we decided our primary target audience is young adults, Railcard seemed fitting. A popular type of railcard is the 16-25 railcard; therefore, it is a great reflection on the age range we are aiming our performances at.

The role assignment process come pretty easy to us as we have all had previous experience doing certain roles or had an idea what we wanted to have a go at. I took on the role of hair and make-up artist as I enjoy creating the visual look of a character as much as I enjoy creating and performing the character. I’ve also had previous experience on working in this role for Henry V at Lincoln Performing Arts Centre, and also in various photo shoots so I am confident in my ability to carry out this role.

Developing our idea

We each did research into our target audience, interviewing people, outside of the drama course, that fit into our 16-25 category, asking if they go to the theatre? If yes, then what type of shows do they see? If not, then why? And what type of show would make them want to go to theatre? The research came back to show that people would mainly enjoy a show that was light hearted, but also contain some form of drama as long as it wasn’t to serious.

Also, as we, as a theatre company, fit into the centre of our target audience, being 20-22 we had a discussion on the things that we were all going through that could aid us in discovering a theme for our piece. Something we all related to and realised varies ages in our target audience also relate to is the fear of what am I going to do with my life now?

As we are in our final year of university we all have the fear of deciding what to do with our lives, we realised that this is a recurring theme throughout education, i.e. picking GCSEs, picking A-levels or what to study at college, what to study at university, what to do after university, it all feels very defining. Through our discussion, we come to the realisation that we all have had the same experience, at some point, of being asked what we want to do? To which we replied with I don’t know, then being told well you could always be a teacher. We decided to use this as a bases for our performance, the fear of the unknown transfers well into the students and teachers, especially a new teacher, but can also be mirrored into other jobs or aspects of life. We knew that we wanted our performance to be relatable for our target audience, so this fear of the unknown is one we felt that everyone within our target audience has experienced, or is experiencing. When discussing working as a teacher we came to the conclusion that a cliché said about teaching is a very rewarding job, so it was a perfect example for us to show that yes not knowing what you want to do is scary, but does not mean things will not won’t work out for the better, the perfect example of serendipity.

Rehearsal Process

Our first response to devising our own performance was improvising scenes. We were given school themed scenarios, by our director, in which we were to create a character and just see where it took us. This idea failed as we all seemed to go for a very similar character and the scenes did not really inspire. We tried a few variation of improvising different scenes, changing the way we did them, but ultimately we found that they were not going anywhere and we needed more background on characters to create anything that we could potentially use for our performance.

As a group we decided that it would be best to create a writing team to form a script around the characters that have been created, and the brainstormed plot that we wanted. Once the script writing was done, we meet up and has a group read through. This brought back positivity into our group and we began to feel like we were on the right tracks to creating our own piece of theatre.

When scenes started to be put on their feet, after the blocking stage, Zach, our director, began providing us with feedback. We able to work on his notes for the next rehearsal, as they were very clear and precise, therefore I felt the rehearsal process was smooth and very relaxed making it a great environment to work in.

Character Development

Originally I had two characters within the performance, Lily, the student, and Sarah, the teacher. From the initial idea that each cast member would portray a student and a teacher, I knew that I wanted my main role to be the student role, as I felt a student is better suited to my acting age range. As the process of devising went underway the ideas for the show altered and the focused shifted from the students to the teachers, my student character remaining, as I requested that this be my main role. I happily continued being Sarah as well, but throughout the rehearsal process I struggled to portray her to standard that I was happy with. I began to feel like my portrayal wasn’t as natural as it was with Lily, this combined with very quick costume, hair and make-up changes I would have to make, Sarah was no longer a character I could continue to portray. After learning that Chloe would be ok with taking on Sarah, I decided that I would pass that role on to her (to which I am very proud of her doing in such a short period of time). I am glad to of been working in a theatre company that I was comfortable and confident in to make these kinds of choices, and understood when some roles do not suite every actor.

When working on Lily, the first thing I noticed when reading the script was that she was very much the similar to me when I was at school. I was quite shy and not much confidence in myself, I related to Lily’s arc on a personal level so I was able to use this as a way to bring some realism to my performance. ‘Once you’ve found a trigger into the role, your creative journey is so much easier’ (Merlin, 2010, pg.114), so for me my trigger was I could easily sympathise with Lily, which helped me in developing her as person and not just words on a page. I began to develop my character by uniting my script, scene nine being the best example of this, as this scene you can really begin to see her relation with Mr. Smith grow and also her personal growth as well. Uniting really helped me define her thought process and her struggle of opening up to someone about her home life, then her change in confidence when talking about fashion but also not knowing how to react when someone finally encourages her and believes that she does actually have potential.

Understanding the objectives and obstacles for each scene help me in giving my character purpose. Knowing exactly what was stopping my character in achieving what she wanted and helped me push her purposes and give me more life to the delivery of my lines. This helped a lot with scene seven, the parents evening scene, it became clear that although it may have seemed in scene three that it’s Lily’s confidence stopping her from achieving her grades it is also her parents, who cause the lack in confidence. Understanding that her parents are the root of her obstacle, help me pin point the moment in scene nine, that Lily begins to overcome her obstacle and her change in relationship with Mr. Smith.

Once I had worked out Lily’s journey, I could start working on the physicalization of her. As, to begin with, she is a nervous, timid character, I had a think back to what I do situations where I feel uncomfortable. Things I noticed about myself is that I will close my shoulders in, playing with my hands in front of myself and don’t tend to move around a lot. I tried to incorporate these action during scenes where Lily is at her most nervous and venerable. During rehearsals I tried various options, such as talking with my hand while I spoke and keeping them as still as I could, to see which felt more natural. I found that talking with my hands felt more natural when Lily is trying to explain herself, due to lack of confidence in herself, but keeping them still in front of her when she is being spoken too as I felt more guarded this way.

The point where I felt a change in Lily was on John’s line ‘Well you should show them to him. I’m sure he would be impressed.’ (Begg et al, 2016) Although her confidence starts coming through when she is talking about her designs, this is the point when someone has encouraged her for the first time. After this point I began changing my body language to be more open, and more carefree movements.

The final performance

Last night, 24^th May 2016, was the first performance of Ungraded and I could not be happier with the response we got. The sense of achievement was much greater than any other performance I have done because this show is ours. I’ve worked with a mixture of people, some I have worked with before and others I have not worked with or even really spoken to before, which has made this experience something special.

Throughout the day, we all teamed together to help everyone’s individual jobs easier, where we could, to avoid over stressing. We organised all set changes, and costume changes and proved that we could get through the performance with a full run-through rehearsal. That actual performance went better than anyone of us could have hoped for, with the cast knowing their characters so well and confident with their knowledge that in-character improvisations could be made.

Obviously most actors suffer from nervous before a performance, but I believe most of mine came from not wanting ruin all of the hard work we have but into creating this show. Thankfully the show went better than it has ever done before, and I feel all of the worrying was for nothing, even though the nervous really helped me get into character. Throughout the play Lily slowly gains more confidence, and throughout the performance I felt I gained more confidence on stage, so I tried to use that growth and project it into Lily’s.

The Process of making a theatre company

The overall experience of making a theatre company has been one of the most valuable experiences I have had. We learnt how to combat any conflict we had quickly and carry on working on what we needed to do. Our sense of success coming from the hours of work we have put in and dedication to the importance of attendance to every rehearsal. We aimed to create a theatre company that meets the aims of the Arts Council, in hopes that continuing and touring could become a possibility for us. One in which we both share is ‘We want everyone to enjoy the theatre.’ (Arts Council England, 2016)

Works Cited

Arts Council England. (2016) Supporting Theatre. [Online] Artscouncil.org.uk. Available at: http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/supporting-arts-and-culture/supporting-theatre [Accessed 25 May 2016].

Begg, Z. Cooksey, E. O’Donoghue, C. Petit, C, Towell, L. (2016) Ungraded. [Performance] Zach Begg (dir.) Lincoln: Lincoln Performing Arts Centre, 24 May.

Merlin, B. (2010) Acting: The basics. Oxon: Routledge.