May 2016 – Page 2

May 25, 2016Lauren Alice Towell No Comments

Final Blog Submission Lauren Towell

Creating a Performance

Railcard Theatre was born on the ideals of creating relatable theatre for younger people. We want to help make theatre accessible and ‘cool’ for 16-25 year olds. It was our choice in target audience that gave us our name, Railcard Theatre, inspired by the railcard that 16-25 year olds can apply for. The first thing we did as a group was decide who would perform and who would take a larger backstage role in the company. I choose to focus on a role as a performer, while also helping with props and set backstage.

The first step in creating our performance was exploration. We knew that we wanted to create a piece that would be relatable to our entire audience and so wanted to explore what aspects of that time of life would impact our audience directly. As university students ourselves we briefly considered creating a piece that would reflect the feeling of leaving university and being let out into the big wide world, which could also be relatable to students leaving GCSE years and A-Levels. However we thought that maybe focusing on leaving university would be too focused and alienate the rest of our target audience, and that trying to involve all three educational levels would be trying to fit in too much. A second idea we had was to explore losing someone at a young age. This performance would centre on a group of university students who had lost a friend, and would show the audience their different reactions depending on their relationship to the deceased. That idea was eventually scrapped and replaced with what would eventually become Ungraded.

Before Ungraded became a concept we first conducted some individual research. Because our last two ideas didn’t feel quite right we thought it would be best to chat to some of our target audience and see what they wanted to see on stage. I interviewed my younger sister, Helena Towell, who is 15 and only just on the edge of our target audience. During this interview she communicated to me that young people feel “like older generations are being prejudice towards them for their age. [They are] being told they are young and don’t understand” (Towell, 2016). Often the younger generation are stereotyped as being stuck to their phones, always staring at a screen, and having no respect. As such I wanted to make sure this issue was addressed in our performance. Another specific issue she flagged up was her impending exams, that she didn’t know what she wanted to do in the future, with her A-Level subjects and eventually getting a job, and that she felt like she had to live up to society’s expectations regarding exam results and social situations.

Once we had conducted all our interviews we came back together as a group to report our findings. Generally we found that the issue of not knowing what to do in the future, of going into a new environment (such as a new job, new school situation), and the feeling of not fitting in. From this research we decided to focus on a new teacher, freshly graduated, entering into a new job at a school. Once we had a basic idea of what the show would focus on we turned to what style the show would take. From the interview with my sister I had found out that young people liked theatre that was “comedy with a hint of drama or serious with funny moments, and subtle references to pop culture” (Towell, 2016). This was the angle we decided to go with our show, we wanted to make our audience laugh but also make them feel for our characters. To help them relate we included social media apps that our audience would use on a daily basis, such as Snapchat and Twitter.

Production Roles

During initial discussions of production roles I took on the role of props, however set would later be added to my responsibilities and I would help with writing and marketing. My first responsibility, once we had the bare bones of our script, was to design our set. This was one of the most important roles I took on as the set “provides a background for the play. It establishes a sense of time and place” (Bailey, 2010). I did this scene by scene, creating rough drafts of what it would look like and what set pieces were needed. Early on in the process it was decided that our staff room would remain onstage throughout the performance, as it was our largest set and was used the most often. The staff room was on a collection of rostrums which were slightly raised. Originally it was planned that they would stay in the middle of the stage, with the left and right of the rostrums free. However once we were allowed onto the stage during our tech rehearsal it was changed so the rostrums would cover the entire back of the stage, to allow more room for our set pieces. The staff room required two sofas and a kitchen counter. The latter of which proved to be difficult to find, as we had originally hoped to split the cost of one with a fellow theatre company however the counter they were planning on buying did not fit our requirements. In the end we bought an old computer desk from a local charity and dressed it up to look like a kitchen counter. This included installing a curtain over the gap in the desk where the keyboard would usually go so it would have a 50s kitchen feel to it, and added props like a kettle, mugs, and tins that hold coffee, sugar, and tea bags.

Our production consisted of three extra sets, originally four. Our second most used was a classroom, for which we had a desk and desk chair which remained on stage throughout the show, and desks and chairs for students that would be brought on and off depending on when they were needed. This set would have originally doubled up as the headmaster’s office, with a whiteboard depicting which room the scene was taking place in through notices. However later in the process the scenes which required the use of a headmaster’s office were moved to the staff room, removing the need for that set. The last two were only required for one scene each. Firstly we had one set with portrayed two different rooms. This was for a scene which had the two couples in the play having conversations in their homes which overlapped, as such we needed to be clear they were in their own living rooms. To do this we had one couple on the left side of the stage and the other on the right. On the right side of the stage we had two arm chairs and a TV remote and on the right we had a sofa and coffee table, with a beer and some nail polish placed on the table. Through the staging we wanted to show the difference in age of the couples, with the couple on the right being older and the couple on the left younger. The set for this scene was not stationary as with the other two, the set pieces were moved during a blackout either side of the scene. This was the same as our last set, a bar table and two bar stools for a scene set in a bar. It was only a simple set, with wine glasses and shot glasses used as props during the scene to help convey the setting, but worked within the context of the show.

As part of both my props and set duties I created a document where I could keep track of what items were coming on from each side of the stage which I could refer back to. As props master I was in charge of “hand props, set props (including furniture), practical effects, and set dressing” (Hart, 2013). For props most items were provided by members of our company, with only a few items having to be outsourced. As our show was more naturalistic we only required props that would be necessary for everyday life, such as mugs, bags, and mobile phones. To help the cast keep track of their props, as well as keep everything organised in the right place, I created two props tables on either side of the stage. Props would be placed on the tables that corresponded to which side of the stage they would be originally brought on, and each table had a list of which props should be on the table that the cast could use to crosscheck.

Aside from my main role as the prop and set designer I also helped to write the script and market the show. For writing the script we split the job between five members of the company which each wrote one or two scenes. I personally wrote scene 2, which was a staffroom scene which introduced some key characters, and scene 5, which was an argument scene between two characters that is interrupted by another character. For marketing I had a very minimal role helping run the company Instagram account.

Getting to Know Jacqueline Hughes

In the final performance, named Ungraded, I played the part of Jacqueline Hughes, the wife of Steven Hughes who is the head teacher of the school. The character was an interesting one to play and certainly not one I had played before. Originally she was intended to have somewhat of an ego and sense of self-importance, believing herself to be the headmaster of the school, in a sense, through association. However during the creative process her character evolved into somewhat of a motherly role. She comes across as overbearing but well-meaning, which helps the audience to feel for her when she ultimately gets betrayed by her husband. This essence of her is shown strongly in the script, with lines such as “I like John, that girlfriend of his sure is a barrel of fun” (Begg et al, 2016) and “I just wanted to put a smile on that handsome face of yours” (Begg et al 2016) revealing the friendly and thoughtful aspect of the character. I thoroughly enjoyed getting stuck into her personal journey, which saw her go from a stay at home mother with a kind heart to a woman scorned. The latter of which was challenging, as her final scene on stage demanded a rollercoaster of emotions, from happy, to shocked and upset, to angry. Though it was challenging and, at time, exhausting it was a role I gladly sunk my teeth into and I enjoyed every second of getting to know exactly who Jackie was and what made her tick.

Show Day

On show day my responsibilities were making sure the set was dressed correctly and looked as we had planned, as well as making sure all props were where they were supposed to be at the start of the show and collected at the end. Though we had a slight hiccup with one of our set pieces, which at been stored at a member of our company’s house and was too big to be moved in the car, the majority of my responsibilities ran to plan. Aside from that one item of set everything we needed we present on the day and the whole group pulled together to move things from storage to where it needed to be on stage. Once the set was dressed my attention turned to props. I gathered together everything brought in by the company, and items such as food and drink that had been bought on the day, and made sure they were on the correct props tables and everyone knew where their props where. One thing I would have done better in this aspect was the clean up afterwards, making sure that everyone knew who needed to take home what regarding props and where things needed to be put back. Overall I was extremely happy with how the props and set looked!

The actual performance itself I felt ran smoothly and was performed brilliantly from all involved! From the moment I heard the first laugh from the audience I knew we had resonated with them, and that was only cemented in our penultimate scene where I, as Jackie, slapped Steven and was greeted with shocked gasps from our audience. Feedback from both our peers and tutors in the audience confirmed that we have successfully conveyed the message we had hoped, and that the characters being portrayed on stage were relatable and represented people from everyday life.

Works Cited

Bailey, D. (2010) Scenery and Set Design. New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc.

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

Crowe, P. (2016) Ungraded. Available from https://www.flickr.com/photos/61839232@N02/sets/72157666303824684/with/26614522814/ [Accessed 25th May 2015].

Hart, E. (2013) The Prop Building Guidebook: For Theatre, Film, and TV. Oxon: Focal Press.

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

Towell, L. (2016a) Original Set Design. [image].

Towell, L. (2016b) Final Set. [image].

Towell, L. (2016b) Set List. [image].

Towell, L. (2016c) Props List. [image].

May 25, 2016Rebecca Elizabeth Bierton No Comments

Final Blog Submission

Research and Development

Our company name derived from our aims in terms of target audience. We wanted to play to an age that we knew the most about, this would make it easier for us in terms of devising. The immediate direction was to go with those aged between eighteen and twenty one as this is primarily the age for students attending University. However, we felt that limiting ourselves to adults only left little room for creativity. Upon reflection, we decided to go with those aged between sixteen and twenty one. This gave us a wider bracket to work within and opened up doors to different themes. Along with this age range, we needed a company name that reflected our choices. Being a company based within Lincoln, we vocally discussed all the ideas that typically relate to Lincoln.
One common theme was that of the train barriers, as these seem to cause many citizens complications. We took this idea of the train line and quickly linked that with the idea of the railcard. Students aged sixteen to twenty one are usually issued with a student railcard, and as this tied in with our location and target audience, our company name was born.

Here is our company logo

Deciding upon the concept for our show proved a difficult task as we all had very different ideas on the direction in which our performance should go. One way to solve this problem was to see what our target audience wanted from us. We each conducted a short survey and gathered answers from people within our target audience. A common theme was comedy, naturally this was the direction in which our group chose to go. As individual members we had already expressed our interest in comedy and light-hearted themes in comparison to dark themes, so this was a clear direction for us. Another theme that became apparent from our survey was that our audience wanted to be presented with relatable issues. One common theme that most sixteen to twenty one year olds have is that of education. Mostly the fear of moving on from education or leaving education. Upon conducting further research we discovered that a good majority of graduates aim to go on to teaching. It seemed natural to take this step forward and work with a comedy script about teaching, combining our survey answers together.
We wanted our story to focus around a main character that would be our primary post graduate teacher. After brainstorming some ideas about where this storyline could take us, we developed characters and a basic plot structure which we then improvised scenes around. After a couple of improvisation sessions, it became clear that this was not aiding our creative process. We scrapped these sessions in aid of writing a full script and coming back to the rehearsal process with a scripted piece. Within this comedic script, we also needed an element of drama to contrast with the themes. We chose to look closely at a forbidden relationship between the Headmaster and another teacher, although this provides an element of seriousness within our piece, it also helped to add further comedic lines when the other teachers discuss this relationship. This only furthered our comedic exploration. One comedic scene within our piece is when our protagonist character has to lead a parents evening. We asked teachers we knew for any horror stories about parents evening that they could share with us. To our surprise, there were loads, the primary theme being that of argumentative parents. This gave inspiration of a comedic scene between our main teacher and a set of parents. These teachers that we spoke to also gave us some tips on how to deal with argumentative parents, which we later turned into comedic lines within our piece.

Our company poster

Engagement

Our initial response to our rehearsal process was to improvise scenes. Our director set up a premise and we were asked to create our own characters and run with it. This caused problems as everyone opted for a similar kind of character, which limited our progression within the scene.
Upon re-grouping our directing team decided to delegate specific characters for us to play around with. This meant we all had a different personality or character trait and the improvisation ran relatively smoothly.

Initial rehearsal process, improvising characters

After this scene, we re-grouped again and the directing team swapped our characters about. This was done tactically to see what kind of roles each actor would fit. Our directing team noted down the outcomes for each different character played by each different actor and noted this back to us when we re-grouped to discuss our experiment.
We eventually settled on a group of characters that we wanted within our piece and our directing team identified who would play each role. This meant that we were delegated our characters ready for our next rehearsal.
Our next rehearsal consisted of a similar theme, we tried to improvise but this time as our characters. We already had the basis of a scene and so we followed this idea carefully, ensuring we didn’t stray too far away from the intention. This idea failed and we re-grouped to discuss what was going wrong. We decided we didn’t have enough background knowledge of our characters and so ideas were crossing and getting confusing. Our directing team asked us to write down a short paragraph about each of our characters to try and give ourselves some names and basis in terms of intention and motive,
We each took turns to discuss our characters with the group and think of ways to connect our characters backstories. We created an interesting web of characters that connected well and so we went back into improvisation. Even after this character work our improvisation was heading nowhere and we collectively decided that we needed a script to work with.

Our next rehearsal was a small meet up to talk about and clarify plot points. As we had a script writing team, it was important that our script writers had the same understanding of the characters and where they were heading. This meeting also co-incised with a meeting about our production title and the re-draft of our logo. Our photographer Iona came to take some company shots and we managed to organise who was writing which bit of script.

The company collectively script writing

Coming back to our rehearsal with a full script meant that we were able to section off and work on individual scenes. We grouped our rehearsal schedule into scene aims and worked hard upon these scenes in the time we had. Firstly we discussed exits and entrances for each scene as this is vital in terms of staging and set design. Once this was decided and noted by our production team, we set to work blocking through our first scene. Initially this drew up problems with lines and some edits had to be made to the script. It was good that we caught this early as it meant we could quickly fix this issue. Once we had blocked through our first scene, we moved on to blocking through the second scene. This scene contains props such as tables, chairs, sofas and edible food. We noted down as we worked through the scene what props would be needed so that we had a definitive list. We left this first scripted rehearsal feeling positive about what was to come with our piece.

First read through of the company script

In our next rehearsal we re-capped and polished scenes one and two ready for our feedback session in the upcoming week. We had decided to only show scenes one, two and four as these contained the majority of actors and our feedback could contain information for all characters. Scene four proved difficult to rehearse as it is a split stage performance. We struggled to work without our actors being off script as this scene contained much more movement and gesture than the previous two. We blocked through it roughly and moved on to scene three. We all acted as critics and advised in terms of blocking and movement throughout this rehearsal, this meant our scene had a well rounded view and we worked collaboratively as a group.

Working with script on scene 8

Feedback week came around and we viewed and gave feedback to Full Frontal as they performed some scenes from their work. Unfortunately we could not feedback this week as one member of our group was unable to attend due to illness but it was good to get some insight into what the other company were doing. It was then we decided that we needed to work on our advertising and social media presence. We already had twitter, facebook and instragram set up for people to follow and view. But we decided we needed to push this further and really give ourselves a presence online.

Follow our Instragram buy clicking on the icon

Follow our twitter feed by clicking on the icon

Follow our facebook page by clicking on the icon

From this point onwards we decided to start working intensively on our performance. This meant rehearsing as much as possible with as much set and props as we could use. We tried to get off script relatively quickly, and organised a script rehearsal purely to secure or lines. This was extremely beneficial as it meant we could run lines together as a group. From this point onwards we rehearsed most days, working hard to polish our performance and overcome any issues.

My Character Development

During our initial stages of development, I specified to my cast that I would be interested in taking a primary performance role and a small technical role only. From this stage onwards I began actively contributing to group improvisation to determine which kind of characters would take a crucial role within our piece. As we progressed, it became clear that our group contained a variety of very different personalities and that we could use this to our advantage. I began displaying a very dominant role within the improvisations and so our directorial team decided that it would be best for me to play a dominate female role.
As we wanted our characters to be relatable, we began to think of teacher stereotypes and invented the character of Lacie Bell. Lacie Bell was to be a fairly new, young teacher who uses her dominate behaviour and sex appeal to manipulate her colleagues and boss to get ahead in her job. Once this character was confirmed, our directorial team decided that it would be best for me to portray her on stage.
At first I thought that playing Lacie Bell would be almost easy, as she had a clear incentive. However portraying this on stage proved quite a challenge.
As weeks progressed I tried different angles to Lacie to try and emphasis the manipulation of her character. During early development, I tried to play Lacie as more of a vocally angry character. I wanted her to be manipulative by the use of her voice, almost like she got her own way by being vocally louder and more forceful than the other characters around her. During rehearsal this did not portray that well on stage and I decided to explore a different way of portraying her character.
I decided to tackle Lacie’s character by being more physically dominate on stage. Giving her physicality that was almost smug and gave a the sense that she thought she was better than the other characters around her. This included giving her a very unimpressed facial expression, as if the other characters were unimportant in her life. I gave her a very dismissive attitude towards all characters other than Steven, the headmaster of the school. This was because Steven was the only way in which Lacie could get ahead in her career. She needed him to help her get ahead and so she was overly nice to his character at all times. This worked in part and I decided to keep most elements of this for my performance.
Thirdly my directorial team asked me to be more sexy within the scenes where I worked directly with Steven. This proved to be the more of a task as I found being directly intimate with someone on stage to be difficult. This could be perhaps because I am usually quite shy of my body and being asked to use this as my primary form of manipulation was very unusual for me. Me and our director worked hard to try and bring this side out of me and to close the gap that I seemed to be unintentionally putting between me and Steven.
Eventually I overcame by inhibitions and was able to be intimate on stage, however this needed to be pushed further and so our directorial team organised rehearsals in which it was just me and Chris to really work in depth on our scenes. This use of body, combined with strong vocals and overall physicality was accurately able to portray the character that our writing team had created and I hopefully took this to stage with me.

Displaying my uninterested, smug persona on stage

Being intimate on stage

My Backstage Role

I took on the backstage role of being Health and Safety advocate for our group. This role includes assessing potential risks, ways to avoid them and ways to overcome the risk should it occur. The health and safety law applies to theatre as much as it applies to other businesses. You cannot put performers and audience in a position of danger from your artistic choices.
‘The Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 and related legislation places duties on employers, employees, the self-employed and those in control of premises.’ (HSE, 2015)
To do this role I had to produce a risk assessment for our location, any use of props and set and any personal risks that our actors may incur. This included looking at the rostrum we are using, and making sure it was visible. Taking the allergies of our cast into consideration when using edible food and most importantly the use of electronic cigarettes as these can be dangerous.

Arts Council Policy

As we have set up our company to run as a touring company, we had to take into consideration the Arts Council and how they would affect our performance. Arts Council England (ACE) measure the strength and value of a theatre company through key factors such as vision and artistic policy. ACE claim that a successful company should ensure that ‘every aspect of [their] activity contributes to achieving [their] artistic aspirations’ (2016). Through this guidance we looked at how we should write our mission statement and how our performance should stay true to our aims.

Our Mission Statement is as follows:

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.

Within our performance, we made sure to stay true to our manifesto by combining modern social platforms with the use of snapchats, texting and a twitter feed. We felt this added a new exciting element to our performance that would connect with our target audience on a relatable level. We set our performance within a school and had stereotypical style of characters as we felt that this was directly relatable to our target audience of between 16 and 25.

Arts Council England (2013) Great Art and Culture for Everyone: 10 Year Strategic Framework. Manchester: Arts Council England.

Arts Council England (2016) Self-Evaluation Framework: Artistic Policy/ Statement. [online] England: Arts Council England. Available from http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160204101926/http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/selfevaluation/framework/artistic-aspirations-and-programme/artistic-policystatement/ [Accessed 20 May 2016].

May 25, 2016Chloe Harrison No Comments

Final Blog Submission

And So It Begins…

“Devised work may begin and end without a written text. It may be inspired by a written text and contain pieces of the original text in the work. It comes from dreams, obsessions, rants, photographs, smells – well, you get the picture. It comes from everywhere and anywhere that creates inspiration. Simply put, devised theatre begins with an idea and then the creators start to investigate the best form to bring that idea to performance.” (Carr, 8)

As a collaborative piece of devised performance this means that my roles of Assistant Director, Assistant Stage Manager are very fluid. This allows me to have more creative input and work closely not only with the performers but also with the technical production aim of the show as well helping to translate our creative ideas on to the stage. I work as not only a second-eye for the director, running extra rehearsals, initial blocking and line-learning workshops for the cast but I also am on hand to organise rehearsals, take notes of blocking, oversee lighting, sound and video cue sheets, help with the stage managers script and organise set coming on and off stage in order to help create the directors overall vision.

When it came to deciding how we wanted to create the show we decided to take advice from Goat Island as our “work is developed collaboratively” (Goat Island, 2000). This meant that the major decisions about plot and subject matter would have to be agreed on as a group. We wanted everyone in the the theatre company to be passionate about the subject to create the best performance we could. The main focal point of our ideas was around political issues as our audience are just able to vote in elections and our political climate is always changing. Politics also effects our everyday.

The other main focal point was looking at real life stories, potentially using verbatim to tell the stories. Diving into issues such as homelessness, illness, leaving university, death of a loved one, issues which are very present in today’s climate. However, it was also at this stage that we decided we wanted to do more of a comedy than a drama. We want to provide escapism and a light-hearted show that our audience can walk away from feeling reassured.

The video featured below is one example of a real- life story we looked at potentially using. LaLa is an elderly gentleman in America who has devoted his life to maintaining his wife’s memory. He created a a garden of umbrella’s and a room of photo’s. His enthusiasm inspired a band called Mutemath to make their music video about him, along with the music video they also created a few back-story videos to tell the world about LaLa and Louise. Below is the official music video, however there is more content on LaLa available on Mutemath’s YouTube page.

(Mutemath, 2016)

Audience, Gatecrash and Technology

In order to narrow down an idea and find out more about our target audience we decided to go and ask a few people in our target audience as to what they want to see in a theatre show.

From the beginning of the process it has been clear that we have wanted to produce theatre which is relatable to a target audience of 16-25. We want to create theatre which can be a form of escapism but also relevant at tackling issues that our age target audience will face at some point over the next few years. We arranged to have a chat with Toby Ealdon of Zest Theatre in order to explore how they approached relevant issues, where they get ideas from and how they engage their audience. As Zest have a similar target audience we wanted to see how to achieve engaging our audience successfully without becoming too similar to Zest as a company. In particular, looking at their 2016 Gatecrash tour:

(zesttheatre, 2015)

Gatecrash explores relevant issues for Zest Theatre target audience in an interactive way. In particular, the audience where headphones and tune in to certain areas of the stage in order to hear what is happening. This kept the audience engaged and encouraged us as a company to explore ways of incorporating relevant media such as Snapchat, Facebook and Twitter into our show.

During a production meeting, we were discussing the option of having live media such as a Twitter or Snapchat that the audience could send content into. However, due to the nature and unreliability of technology we decided that this currently would not be a viable option as there would be too many technical risks. However, after more practice and a few experiments with technology we may be able to incorporate a live stream into the performance. We may also be able to adapt the show to incorporate social media into the decisions of the show. This would make the show unpredictable and provide a challenge for the cast, however, with rehearsal it may work.

After managing to have a brief talk with Toby Ealdon, he told me that Zest mainly decide their content by either being commissioned or a member of the company having a creative idea that they want to tackle. In terms of an issue he recommended not getting caught up in ‘issues’ unless the company want to be school and Theatre in Education focussed. He suggested just to make art. Zest are currently developing a show on World War 1 and the moment, it’s topical but has no particular issue which needs tackling. He also recommended that we have a local instead of a national focus purely for funding purposes and then explore further afield.

After exploring further into Arts Council funding and taking on Toby’s advice, including our usage of technology and social media to engage our audience we could apply to get Arts Council England Funding from the Creative Media and Digital activity, and GFTA, due to our involvement with social media. We could increase our chances at getting a grant if we further developed our use of digital art as the Arts Council “wish to support new forms of creativity; emerging arts practice and artforms which embrace digital technologies and push the boundaries of traditional artforms.” (Arts Council England, 2016) However, we could also apply to other grants such as the Public Engagement grant.

Final Ideas and Last Minute Characters

After we finalised an idea of a coming of age tale of a Newly Qualified Teacher’s first job we decided to have major plot points throughout the show and try to improvise around them. This however, did not work to the advantages of our cast and so we therefore decided to write a full script instead of improvising the show. This meant that we could guide the plot throughout and rehearse allowing the actors to ad-lib where they feel would be necessary for their characters.

Having a full and casted script we began the rehearsal process. Myself and the Director sat down to discuss the overall vision and how the set and scenes should be blocked and set out. I started by initially blocking the first two scenes roughly, originally allowing the actors to improvise the text themselves and showing their portrayal’s of the characters. Creating almost stock character’s which can be identifiable in any work place helps to make it relatable to the audience. From John Smith’s new staff member, unsure of what to do and where he fits in, in an established hierarchy, to an experienced and overbearing manager to the clingy girlfriend who lives her life through her boyfriend, making it almost similar to Commedia Del’Arte.

My role as an actor was originally only as an extra, however due to a last minute casting change a week before the show I challenged with learning a role in a week and having a bigger part in the show. This included learning lines, character analysis, units and objectives, blocking and working with costume in order to create her on stage.

I was cast as Sarah Chandler in Ungraded towards the end of the rehearsal process. This meant that I have had to get understand her very quickly. In order to fully portray a character, you must “strive towards ‘being’ your character not ‘playing’ your character” in order to create a believable and realistic character (Cannon, 2012, 66). This has meant that I have had to imagine the Sarah’s back story and create a character profile.

Shortened Character Profile:

Sarah Chandler

36-years-old

Music teacher

Single

However, she is very fragile and after a traumatic teaching experience 5 years ago she has been very nervous. She is always either crying or just pulling herself together, she never has a happy medium except when she is drinking alcohol. When she is drinking she becomes more confident and forgets about the experience of her past. This makes her less nervous and very carefree. She gets upset with herself because she believes that she is not making a difference to the children. She doesn’t believe she is helping or inspiring them in any way. Unfortunately, this makes her an easy target for the students and pushes her close to leaving the school.

After putting together, a full character profile I broke my script into units and objectives in order to portray what my character is thinking on stage. Portraying different aspects of my character from her constant nervousness and yet she is trying to reassure John, to pulling herself together when her boss is around. Yet, she also had this extra side of her when she drinks that helps her to let go and ignore her paranoia.

Count Down

In the day coming up to the performance, we have been rehearsing and rehearsing different aspects of the show in which we have felt needed work. I have been running through my blocking with the director and going over lines. During scenes that I have not been performing in we have been tweeking certain scenes, increasing energy and practising with the technical aspects of the show. During the Technical Rehearsal we had a few issues with where all the lighting and sound was going, however, once we went through the script, myself and the stage manager managed to sort the cue script out and have a show. We also found out that a few of our video were not entirely visible on stage. However, thankfully we managed to have time to re-record them in a lighter way. If we were to create another show, we now would record the video in a lighter environment. I would make sure all the technical aspects of the show were completely ready before the technical rehearsal on the development of the next show.

Final Statement

The day of the performance went well with a get in and various rehearsals and dress runs. We organised cast bringing set on and off stage, doing various runs of scene changes and making them as swift as we can. By adding music over the top of the scene changes we also managed to make the scene changes more engaging for the audience as we are entertaining at least one sense rather than having the audience sat in the dark and in silence.

The performance went far better than I could have imagined. We got great feedback from the audience and it technically went without a hitch. Whilst running around backstage everyone had a high energy and cast really showed how much they had got to know their characters. Parts of the performance includes a little bit of improvisation on the casts part, therefore it was imperitive that we knew our character inside and out. This really showed when the performance came.

Hopefully we will get to perform it again and yet we would continue to develop it. Maybe including live social media as a way to create an audience interaction or developing more humour into some of the more serious aspects of the show. It was a pleasure working with Railcard and I can’t wait until our next show.

Works Cited:

Arts Council England (2016) Creative media and digital activity, and Grants for the Arts. [online] England: A.C.E. Available from http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/information-sheets?search_api_views_fulltext=&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&page=1 [Accessed 3 March 2016]

Cannon, D. (2012) In-depth acting. London: Oberon Books.

Carr, T.W. (2015) Devised Theatre. Southern Theatre, 56(2)6-15

Goat Island (2000) Letter to a Young Practitioner. [online] Chicago: Goat Island. Available from http://www.goatislandperformance.org/writing_L2YP.htm [Accessed 27 January 2016]

Mutemath (2016) MUTEMATH- Monument Official Music Video [online video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6i6TBT4kfg [Accessed 4 February 2016]

Zesttheatre (2015) Gatecrash- 2016 Tour [online video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-mnpE_WjrA [Accessed 3 March 2016]

May 25, 2016Zach Begg No Comments

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.

May 25, 2016Emily Cooksey No Comments

Final Blog Post

Initial concept:

The first week of this process has been very experimental, as a company we began by discussing what we wanted to achieve and the style of work we wanted to create. We explored issues that company members were passionate about or affected by, In order to find our common ground. We have decided that we want to create theatre that is accessible and relatable for young adults (16-25 years old), which is both entertaining and inspiring. Our current concept is that of a young postgraduate starting out in a career in teaching, during the play he/she will encounter struggling/difficult GCSE students and learn to balance their work and personal life. We have decided to write our own script as a number of people in our company have script writing experience.

Division of roles:

This week Zach Begg joined our group and we began to discuss the roles which needed to be undertaken by members of the company. We evaluated our strengths and weaknesses and with consideration of peoples past experience, decided the roles would be divided as follows:

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

Having worked as an Assistant Stage Manager for a promenade performance in the past, it was decided I was most suited to the role. Due to the significant workload the falls onto the stage managers shoulders, I will not be taking on a performance role alongside my backstage role.

First Week as Stage Manager:

Now that our roles have been allocated I feel we are able to make more progress as a company. As Stage Manager I scheduled our first production team meeting for earlier in this week. This gave us the opportunity to begin considering our rehearsal schedule and important deadlines, such as the production of marketing materials and our script. We have decided to aim to have some rough designs for potential logos by Thursday next week and have also distributed Code of Conduct contracts to be signed by every member of the company. In regards to our rehearsal schedule, unfortunately we have not been able to produce a full schedule as most of the company members have not yet been informed of their tech/assessment days for other modules. We have also finalised the script writing team, which will be led by Zach, in preparation to begin writing next week.

Script Writing:

After some deliberation, we have now completed a scene breakdown that the entire company is happy with and have been allocated individual scenes to write for the 9^th of March, after which we will edit the script as a team to ensure character voices are consistent and scenes flow correctly from one to the next.

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

The method we have chosen to write the script should yield efficient results as we will hopefully be able to produce a full script in a week, however, we are anticipating further work on the script will be required. We hope to have a finalised script by the 23^rd of March.

Progress as Stage Manager:

Over the last few weeks my role as stage manager has become far more important. With the completion of the script we have been able to begin blocking scenes, which has meant I am able to begin to develop our staging, set, lighting and sound. After our production meeting in our Friday lesson (11th March) with Darren, we now know we are able to use the set design proposed by Lauren and are on the right track with PRS forms for music. The Stage Managers handbook is beginning to take shape and I have set up our Indiegogo funding page, which has allowed us to be a little more ambitious when sourcing set and props. We have already established that a great deal of our set and props can be sourced ‘In Kind’.

I have also been maintaining a sense of calm in rehearsals in order to support the producers and directors, as well as reinforcing high standards of care for our rehearsal spaces. In each rehearsal I have ensured we have had sufficient breaks and have mediated the few minor disagreements we have encountered. I believe it is important for a Stage Manager to uphold the professional values set forth in the code of conduct, in order for the company to perform at its best and gain the respect of other organisations and the public.

“An SM must not get pulled in to drama or hysteria. While everyone around may be losing their heads, an SM must maintain enough distance to remain calm and objective, ready to steer the ship through turbulent waters, and keep the show and the company afloat. As soon as an SM shows anything less than confidence and control, directors become nervous, producers fearful and performers insecure.”

Arts Council:

Due to our status as a touring theatre company, we have had to take into consideration the Arts Council policy and how this might affect both our work and funding. Arts Council England (ACE) evaluate the professionalism, value and potential success of a theatre company, claiming that a successful company should ensure that “every aspect of [their] activity contributes to achieving [their] artistic aspirations” (Arts Council England, 2016). This pushed us to revisit our mission statement and guarantee that our work is in fact progressing with this in mind.

Mission Statement:

Our 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.

It has been comforting and reassuring to see that the performance we are creating is very much in keeping with our mission statement. Our inclusion of various forms of social media and communication within the piece, although currently proving a little difficult, is fitting and engaging and the content of the piece as a whole is relevant to our target audience and in keeping with the mission statement. Having worked to ensure that our piece is not heading in the direction of education, but rather entertainment, I personally feel we are progressing with arts council policy in mind.

Arts Council England (2016) Self-Evaluation Framework: Artistic Policy/ Statement. [Online] England: Arts Council England. Available from: http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160204101926/http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/selfevaluation/framework/artistic-aspirations-and-programme/artistic-policystatement/ [Accessed 22^nd March 2016].

Final Production meeting:

Having just had our second and final production meeting with Darren and Alex, in which I handed over the technical rider for Ungraded, we have finalized the requirements for set, props, sound and lighting. We have solved the minor issue of the projection screen, which we had to ensure was not going to get in the way of the performers and vice versa. We have decided to use front projection onto a screen which will be high enough to accommodate for our tallest performer and the additional rostrum platform. I has however, become apparent that the cue sheets for lighting and sound are not currently correct and will need changing before our tech day. Furthermore the videos such as the snapchats and the texts still need to be filmed and a cue sheet for them is also required before the tech day. This has been a particularly stressful day as Stage Manager, however I have maintained a calm and positive attitude, whilst simultaneously reinforcing the fact that all the necessary work will have to be completed before tech day, so that I am able to approve everything and complete a full cue script prior to tech day.

Tech Day:

Tech day, although incredibly stressful, has gone rather well. Unfortunately we were not able to use more than one rostrum today, when we require six. This has added some slight worry in my mind, as I will not be able to ensure the staging all work correctly together until show day. However, the tasks I set the production team after our last production meeting had been completed, other than the sound cue sheet which still needs working on. Despite not having used Q-lab before, everything went according to plan and once the tech was programmed I got to grips with running the show fairly quickly. Unfortunately after having done a run through with the tech, it became apparent that a fair few changes needed to be made. Although all the changes were fairly minor, other than the rerecording of the texting videos, it was mildly disheartening to leave the tech day knowing that we would need to make more changes on show day.

Show Day:

The show went off without a hitch and although it was an incredibly long day, I am over the moon. I had scheduled the day with the minor tech changes in mind and we followed the schedule for the most part.

We arrived at 9AM and the stage was set up fairly quickly. Unfortunately my fears about not having yet used the rostrum to create the full platform were not misplaced. We quickly realised that 6 rostrum did not yield the dimensions we had expected and we required another two rostrum to accommodate all the set. This caused us to begin our cue to cue somewhat later than planned, however the company were incredibly efficient and by the end of the cue to cue we were back on track in terms of our schedule. We then did a final run through with full tech, set, props and costume and upon feedback we decided to add in some extra sound and shorten the snapchat video. I decided to fix these last minute changes during the lunch break I scheduled for the company, so as not to eat into time I had allocated to rehearsals and feedback for the director, Zach.

As 7:30 drew nearer I began to feel a little unsettled as I had never had the responsibility of calling a show before and was a little unsure of how it would work in regards to the Lincoln Performing Arts Centre’s communication system. The tech crew were incredibly reassuring and when the time came I found that both calling and running the show were very straightforward and I was confident in my ability as a stage manager. Despite my earlier worries I maintained my composure and ensured that the rest of the company were calm and felt that everything was under control. Other than a minor issue in one of the scene changes (during which someone forgot to take a chair off stage, which then had to be carried off just as the lights came up on the scene) the show ran flawlessly.

When it came to the get out after the show, it was a little hectic. However, the company pulled together and with some delegation from myself, we were able to not only leave the theatre as we had found it, with everything clean, tidy and organised, but also help the tech crew with some extra tasks to speed up their night too. Having sent the rest of the company to wait outside, I got the all clear from Darren and thanked the tech crew before leaving. All in all, the day was a firm success in my opinion and I could not be more proud of what we achieved as a company.