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, 24th 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.