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.
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
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