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.
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).
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.
