Over the first few weeks as the company formed we discussed what roles each other would like to take on, what previous experience we have had and what our individual strengths are. After our discussion I was given the role of marketing within the company based on my previous experience. This was a role I was happy to accept as it is an area I have a personal interest in and it gives me the opportunity to learn and develop skills I have not had previous experience in.
Once we had decided on roles we discussed ideas for our performance, we decided that we would like to utilise a verbatim aspect of theatre. We knew that we wanted to target the 16-25 age bracket so each member of the company went and did some market research and found out that the people of that age range would be interested in seeing. Most of our feedback suggested that we follow a route that would not be too serious, it was the lighter hearted plays which appealed to that age group more.
We discussed idea’s for what we would like our show to be about. One of the ideas we discussed was this idea of fear. We were all coming to the end of our degree and we were all fearful of what we were going to do post university. One of the other company members mentioned that they wanted to go into teaching. This is something that provided us a solid base to work off. The idea of using a school was nice because when a student begins at a new school it is the fear of the unknown, as is starting at a new job so having this mirror between student and teacher beginning at a new school would be a nice way to show how no matter what age you are there is always a fear of a new place and shows that when you start somewhere you must find your place of the hierarchy established within that environment.
We were then able to start building on our performance and begin the devising process through improvisation. We started writing the script delegating scenes to certain people to write, we then all re-joined and adjusted scenes to give the characters continuity, we took the best of what each person has written and include that in each character. I was placed in charge of writing the final scene and the parents evening scene. For writing the final scene I wanted to incorporate some references to culture in the real world. We throughout the play wanted to utilise, text messaging, Twitter, and Snapchat. All these things are services used by real life people so to add another dimension I wanted to make reference to pop culture hero’s, I made reference to this in the form of Rocky Balboa. I did this comparing Lily to that character, the underdog, who works hard and practices overcoming the odds and coming out the winner. This follows one of the “seven basic story plots” and places Lily’s story in the “overcoming the monster” category, the monster being her exams or the mental block she has on them.
While writing the parents evening scene I was inspired by events which happened to me at school. During a parents evening I had the teacher had some not nice things to say about me which she wouldn’t tell me but told my parents, this lead to my father having a confrontation with the teacher. I felt something like this could be used in the story, with John playing the role of my teacher at school (slightly altered to make him naïve rather than outspoken) and having Mr Hamilton Playing the role of my father (slightly altered to make him seem more aggressive toward the teacher, as opposed to defensive of his child).
I began my rehearsal process by going through my script and fining the units for each of the scenes. Finding my units allowed for me to find my characters intentions throughout the scenes. An example of this would be during scene 9. This scene involves my character John checking up on his student Lily, the scene begins with John just trying to find out where Lily stands on her preparation for her exams but as the scene progresses John’s intention switch from trying to find out how prepared Lily is, and the intentions begin to be John trying to bring out Lily’s confidence in herself. As the scene develops his intention changes again, now John is trying to find out what Lily wants to do with her Life. When I found this intention it allowed me to invest in Johns emotions. When Lily begins to get excited about her clothing designs John begins to invest in her excitement and get excited for her. The whole scene shows the Student-teacher relationship John has with Lily shift because John has become more of a mentor to Lily and she now has begun to open up to him in a way which she has not to other teachers. This enhanced relationship then begins to develop how the characters react around each other, the two characters relationship grown to the point the next time the audience see them the relationship is at its strongest point. A point where Lily is the student John is the most nervous about because of the amount of time he has invested in her. When John does see Lily in the scene 11, after his lessons with her are finished and she has taken her exams he’s excited and scared to see how she did. Because the two have spent a lot of time together preparing Lily for her exam when the to do see each other the John initial intention is to find out her exam results and when he has found out she’s past Johns intention becomes to congratulate her and find out her future plans, through this the amount of time John and Lily have spent together has become apparent with inside jokes being shared and the two are having banter with each other. This attitude towards each other shows the growth or each character as individuals, for Lily she has become more confident in herself where as John has become a better teacher, guiding Lily to a passing grade.
Another technique to help me find my character was finding his posture. At the beginning of the play John is a nervous individual, scared of being in a new environment. This nervousness of being a new teacher starting school mirrors being a student starting at a new school. Because of this fear John begins by being inward, often keeping himself to himself, trying not to show much emotion towards his girlfriend often shooing her away, this is so she doesn’t embarrass him, this mirrors how Students starting school don’t enjoy having their mum accompany them because she may embarrass them (this is certainly my reaction when I was at school, I would want my Mum to leave me do my own thing and not come too close to the school with me, so I couldn’t be embarrassed by her). As the play developed John begins become more confident in his environment and when he had established himself in the school hierarchy he stop being so closed off and begins to embrace the people around him. If John was to be like an animal I would compare him to a house cat. When in a new environment he is timid however after spending time in said new environment he begins to embrace those around him he stops being shy and starts to be himself.
Ungraded was performed on the 24/05/16. The final show in my opinion went well, I feel like having the audience in front of me gave me a lot more energy within my performance. I was able to channel the energy to assist me in my performance. To begin the show I felt nervous (as most actors do) that nervousness was something I had not felt through the rehearsal process, this time though having those nerves did not worry me. As the show opened the character John was supposed to be nervous about starting at a new school, I was then able to use the nerves about going on stage to perform to help portray the nerves of John as he goes for his first day of a new job. Having the audience in the auditorium helped me as an actor because the emotions conjured up were feeling I had not been able to continually bring up in the rehearsal room.
As the show developed the company’s vision for marketing became much clearer. Once our posters and flyers had been approved we took the designs to the printing company to get them printed in high quality. Once printed the next task was to find areas where each of these tools could be placed so we could spread word to general public about our show. To get the name of our show out to people in our target audience we as a company felt it would be worthwhile to get in contact with local schools. An email was sent out to several schools to try generate interest. We advised that the show should be viewed by students preparing to take their G.C.S.E exams because one of the shows driving points is the preparation process of taking these exams.
The next stage of the marketing process what to generate “sneak peaks” into what it is like being in the company. To do this I created images where we focus in on one member of the company at a time. To do this I faded the image to black and white then bought the colour back on the person who was speaking about their personal journey in creating the show. These images were unique because not only did they show rehearsal images it allowed the company member to speak more personally in a brief paragraph. By doing this mid-way through the rehearsal process the quotes being used allowed for us to show how being a part of the company has developed the person in focus.
With the posters and images in place the next step was to create a trailer. This was done in a slightly different way to how a normal trailer is made. Instead of creating a trailer which was a one minute clip of the show or one minute clip which gave a feel to the show, we created some mini clips introducing characters, without giving away names, we introduced relationships and we introduced parts of the story. By doing this we were able to incorporate parts of the play referenced in the script. This also allowed the audience an insight into the day to day life of certain characters and allowing the audience to see what sort of school is being shown in the play.
I also went through the process of creating programmes for the show. When designing these I felt it was necessary to create something which represented school life. The way I did this was by creating the front and back cover, the front cover was an edited version of the poster (supplied by Zach) and the back cover mirrored the chalk board idea and the fonts used on the front, were incorporated onto the back to allow the poster to maintain its continuity. The inside pages were designed to represent the inside of a school book, I hand wrote the inside and drew the doodles. The doodles were a combination of my doodles while I was at school and doodles drawn to incorporate characters mentioned in the show.
Throughout this process I have been able to develop new skills, before I started this I had little prior knowledge of Adobe Photoshop and by designing the poster/ programme and creating the quoted company images I have developed a skill which could become useful in the future. I have also become familiar with movie making software and I feel like learning these skills had made me appreciate how complex these tasks can be. I have also developed an appreciation for how a show is created and how much work goes into the process and I have been allowed to take on roles which I have never had the opportunity to do while working on shows before.
References
Avildsen, J. (1976) Rocky. [Film] Chartoff Winkler Productions
Begg, Z. Cooksey, E. O’Donoghue, C. Petit, C, Towell, L. (2016) Ungraded. [Performance] Zach Begg (dir.) Lincoln: Lincoln Performing Arts Centre, 24 May.
Booker, C. (2009) The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories. London: Bloomsbury.