Our performance is now just over two weeks away and so we have been blocking the last few smaller scenes this week and we pretty much have a full show (woohoo!). One of the last scenes we have put together has been inspired by Frantic Assembly’s Chair Duets and adds a new element to our already very eclectic performance style.
The scene we have made combines three recordings of verbatim with three separate movement sequences. We took the essence of Frantic Assembly’s Chair Duets: the nature of the action/reaction and the “firm and deliberate” (Graham and Hoggett, 2009, 141) movement are the main two similarities between our work and theirs. However, once we had got to grips with the rules of the chair duets we decided to break quite a lot of them to adapt the style to our own performance. Firstly, one of the sequences does not use chairs at all and another only uses one. Although this breaks the fundamental rule of chair duets (which are supposed to be performed with two chairs facing outwards), we found that we could perform a wider variety of moves. Secondly, we are using the duets to tell the stories being recalled in the verbatim whereas traditional chair duets should not have a story behind them. We have also slowed our movements down in places which contrasts with Frantic Assembly’s routines that are “played at quite a mesmerising speed” (Graham and Hoggett, 2009, 141).
Our chair duet
Despite these differences, the influence of the chair duet is pretty clear in all three sequences and has been a helpful springboard in developing our ideas. Our duets communicate the same messages of “touches, embraces, flirtations, rejections” (Graham and Hoggett, 2009, 141) as original duets do and all of these actions and emotions play an important part in the three verbatim stories that we have collected. The chair duet has become for us a way to capture the ups and downs of first dates and relationships in a very simple but physical and visually interesting way.
Works cited:
Frantic Assembly (2009) Frantic Assembly Book of Devising Theatre – Chair Duets. [online] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC-dkYZOUVo [Accessed 11 May 2014].
Graham, S. and Hoggett, S. (2009) The Frantic Assembly Book of Devising Theatre. London: Taylor & Francis Ltd.
What constitutes a brand? Well, first you need a strong visual identity: logo, fonts, colors, a catchy tagline – but that is not enough. A successful brand engages on an emotional level – it is all about the customers’ experiences with your company (Goldbogen, 2011, 42).
Official NAS Logo
Once we had our logo finalised, we needed to get thinking about our essential marketing tools – poster and flyer designs. As it was the early stages of the process, and the piece is devised, the performance was changing and evolving daily. Theatre in general is recognised as something that is difficult to brand and market: “Difficult brands have two primary characteristics: constrained availability and uncertain outcomes (Harrison and Hartley, 2007) … Uncertain outcomes relates to the risk involved in attending a performance without prior knowledge of how it will be received” (Preece and Johnson, 2011, 19). As we have no credit to the piece, such as reviews or Arts Council funding, it is even more essential that we got the marketing the best it can be to attract an audience. After a group discussion, we decided on a marketing strategy involving post-it notes. We liked the idea of hand-written type, alongside the layering and jumble of the notes. It connected very well to the fragmented and post-structuralist form of theatre that inspired us in the beginning of the process. We planned to write questions on each post-it and stick them around campus and in town. We would ask questions similar to that of our interviews to collect verbatim material, such as “how long should you wait before you say ‘I love you’?” Beneath the question would be a link to our twitter page, in the hope that people would tweet us their answers, with the hash-tag ‘threewords’.
This scheme was in the pipeline, but we felt it was too early to begin as we didn’t have posters and flyers in place. Inspired by the post-it note idea, we decided to create an image of a heart using them. This would make our branding consistent, and the post-it note would be recognisable in relation to No Added Sugar. We particularly liked the contrast of the heart, something traditionally associated with love, made up of something quite ordinary.
Post-It Note Heart
We forwarded the images to our graphic designer. We were regrettably vague with our guidelines as we still had not come to a decision as a group on exactly what we wanted, but felt we needed a draft of something to work with.
1st Draft NAS Flyer1st Draft NAS Flyer
At around the same time, Craig Morrow (the artistic director of Lincoln Performing Arts Centre) needed copy and an image to put in the assessment brochure. We used the image below as it was consistent with the initial poster and flyer designs. Th hand written title added to the ‘home-made’ vibe that we particularly wanted to pride ourselves on, and the blurred writing at the edges was just a little ambiguous and provoking.
Image for Assessment Brochure
Though the current flyer and poster draft were connected to the company through the colour palette and supported our marketing scheme, there was something quite uninspiring about the post-it’s for the poster and flyer. The grey on the face of the flyer made it feel quite pessimistic and cold. It just was not the tone we wanted to create. Additionally, the post-it note heart could have looked brilliant if we had very large posters so the detail could be seen, but was not nearly as striking in A4 or A3 size unfortunately.
As rehearsals continued we stumbled upon another image. It was suggestive of the theme of love, and the way we planned to deal with it on stage, but still rouses curiosity to find out more. We hoped it would entice an audience far more effectively.
New Image
Two inanimate, gender neutral objects, intimately hugging. We all felt there was really something beautiful about that. It also connotes what we are doing with romantic relationships, stripping away the hollywood romance, and leaving the bare bones of what we all experience in reality.
We forwarded this image, with a much clearer brief to the graphic designer, and they hastily began work. We then needed to change the image we had sent to Craig Morrow so it would be consistent with the posters and flyers. We had just missed the deadline, but I went directly to his office to see if it was too late to change the image. I was told that as long as I sent it by the following day it would be absolutely fine. Unfortunately, despite sending it in time, there was some miscommunication in their department and the new image was not used. By the time we had noticed the assessment brochure had gone to print. As had our posters and flyers. We were then in a position with our essential marketing tool having the mannequin image, and the publicity within the venue having something quite different.
With the advice of Diane Dubois, we soon settled upon trying to interweave the two themes. We have begun pushing the post-it note marketing scheme, posting them in and around campus and regularly tweeting about them to create interest. We are continuing to use both images, such as the homepage of this blog site, so that both the mannequins and post-its become recognisable to our company. Web-based marketing, such as social media and websites, are becoming more widely celebrated as an integral marketing tool.
Web-based tools will be seen as complementary to traditional methods. In time, they will replace some of the traditional methods and become more central to organizations’ efforts to engage their audience members between performances and to cultivate and enhance relationships between audience members and the organization itself (Preece and Johnson, 2011, 30).
Online we can more effectively, and instantly, collaborate the two strands and become a consistent presence to our potential audience.
We have certainly learnt a lot from this issue. More urgency and attention should have been paid on how we connect with our audience, and what with, not just making material to perform. Perhaps we should have continued with the original poster and flyer design, but we were willing to take a risk and use an image that we felt really represented the company we had become and the performance our audience will see.
Final Draft NAS Poster DesignFinal Draft NAS Flyer Design
Works Cited
Goldbogen, T. (2011) Re-Imagining a Brand. TYA Today, 25 (2) 42-44.
Preece, S. B. and Johnson, J. W. (2011) Web Strategies and the Performing Arts: A Solution to Difficult Brands. International Journal of Arts Management, 14 (1) 19-33.
Audiences are always collaborators. Without somebody watching, theatre can be no more than a faraway tree falling unheard. (Gardner, 2009)
Work In Progress events are also known as Scratch events, they are something which is becoming more popular to do throughout the development process when creating a performance. This is due to being able to present your work at any stage to an audience which is willing to critique your work and as an audience member ‘we are engaged critically, even creatively; asked to reflect on what we felt worked, what didn’t and what’s missing.‘(Gardner, 2009). This is important throughout the development phase as it gives you a feel of what will work with a larger audience and what possibly needs to be changed or maybe gotten rid of altogether due to it not working or creating the right effect.
It is even the case that theatres are starting to hold Scratch night events in which performers, comedians and dance artists can go along and perform their work to an audience who will then provide feedback afterwards in order to help the production to develop to its best potential.
As a company we felt that we would benefit from holding our own Work-In-Progress event so we carefully selected a group of 8 people to come and watch our performance, whilst it was still raw and a few scenes had only just been developed and some still under construction so that we could get an idea of what was working for the audience and what was missing. We chose the audience and limited the amount of people we invited so that we could get the best possible feedback we could. Even though there was a lot of positive feedback, it was really the negative criticism that we were interested in so we could go ahead and work head to work from the feedback to make the show even better. I believe that with all of the feedback we have been given that the work in progress benefited our company a lot, although we do have a person who has the final say, this is a little hard to do when you have created the work, watched it develop and then know what might need to change. Putting a production in front of an audience, changes it. So it was a positive for us to get really good feedback as well as things to be changed.
Looking at it from the stage managers point of view, things were not perfect, people changed movements and things changed, whether this was down to nerves or just a lack of knowing what they are doing I do not know. But it is now time to make sure everyone is confident in their actions and can show this through their movements. We need to work hard on making sure the transitions are right for the show, as I believe this could make it or break it as it could interrupt the flow of the performance if people are not confident enough when changing scenes around. I know this might seem like a minor thing but it is going to get sorted for the performance. The little details also count. I feel like I need to figure out exactly where the music and sound effects are going to go as this has not yet been clarified but shall be done in the next rehearsal.
Overall I feel proud of the company after the viewing and know that together we will continue to work hard and work together to tighten up the scenes and make all our hard work pay off. We have THREE WEEKS until our performance, that in itself is exciting.
Works Cited:
Gardner, L (2009) Keeping Work-In-Progress theatre up to scratch. Available from: http://www.theguardian.com/stage/theatreblog/2009/sep/15/work-in-progress-theatre-scratch [Accessed 6th May 2014]
We decided early on in our process that we wanted to be open to and explore as many different performance disciplines as possible. Having been influenced by Filter and a lot of innovative productions that some of us saw in Edinburgh last year, we really loved the idea of creating a mash up of performance styles, rather than strictly sticking to one. In doing so, we hope to provide the audience with a kaleidoscopical way to watch and experience such normal stories. Part of this was to capture the vast scope of feelings and experiences attached to love, but we also did want to celebrate different ways of performing, different ways of telling stories.
One of the performance styles we considered and admired when seeing other shows was puppetry, particularly in more adult orientated shows where it can be quite beautiful and haunting. As such, we have incorporated it in two very different ways, into two of our scenes. The Fantasist (shown in the video above) used puppetry to explore bi-polar disorder, using very different styles of puppets (as you can see) to give life to the different aspects of the disorder. While our puppetry is not being used to create a character for something inhuman, one of their puppets in particular is of a similar style to two puppets we are using in one of our final scenes.
Without giving away too much about the narrative of the scene, we are using specially adjusted jackets to symbolise two characters. We are doing it in a way that is very similar to the way they create the large man (shown dancing with the woman in the video) in The Fantasist. However, our puppets will simply be jackets (no head/ hat etc), as we found that there is something more beautiful about the fact that the jackets could be anyone. Their story very personal (being somewhat based on a true story) but also universal, and the depersonalised jacket-puppets certainly seem to add to that.
What is helpful and interesting about watching this video, as one of the puppeteers, is seeing how detailed and life like the large man’s movements are, despite the fact that he is an unrealistic looking man. Tom has been working with Abbi and I to block the scene but, having now brought the puppet home to play with and get used to myself, I can see that the real work is in the detail. It is in creating a character for these puppets in the little ways that they move, and in making them breathe. An example being in how I have made it so that my puppet’s hand shakes: a small signification of his age and health.
A few helpful pointers or quotes I have found on puppetry from an article by Cariad Astles:
1: “The puppeteers [] need to be
able to focus energy and attention clearly in the direction required” (Astles 2010) – This is something we have discussed in rehearsals; our focus and eye line needs to be on our puppet, so that the audiences attention is focused where ours is – on the puppets. We discovered that if we look at each other, or look ahead to where the puppet is headed, or out into the audience, we could move the focus to ourselves, meaning that the magic of the puppets and their characters would be lost.
2: “The intention here is not for the puppeteer to pretend not to breath; but to make the audience believe that as s/he breathes, so does the puppet or object” (Astles 2010) – Both Tom, Martyn (who came in to help one rehearsal) and myself have had some puppetry experience before and have learnt, through this, that the key is not to deliberately make the puppet breath, but to allow the puppet to move with our own breaths, meaning it looks natural and also retains that key relationship between the puppeteer and the puppet.
One 3rd interesting quote I have found is this: “Stephen Mottram (2007), likens the puppet to a musical instrument: in order to play it, you need to practise exercises daily in order to train your fingers and your body” (Astles 2010) – This isn’t something we have discussed (as clearly we don’t have the time that trained puppeteers would do to build this up), but I am discovering (now that I have the puppet at home with me) that playing with it and getting used to the feel of it as much as possible, even watching carefully in the mirror, is incredibly important and will make a huge difference to how effective it looks on the night.
References:
Astles, C (2010) ‘Puppetry training for contemporary live
theatre’, Theatre, Dance and Performance Training, 1(1), March: pp. 22-35
RTENewsNow (2013), The Fantasist – a play about bipolar – RTÉ’s Morning Edition, Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHH5wB3PBhk [Accessed 5 May 2014]
The time is nearing to our second work in progress… Tomorrow in fact!
Do I feel ready? Yes…no… I really don’t know.
I think this is a great time in our process to show it to a selected audience due to the fact that we have been working so long on making it ‘right’ that I am not too sure if we know what right is anymore… We know how we want the scene to feel and the way we want the audience to connect in their own way but we have been spending hours that we no longer know if it is achieving what we want it to achieve. I believe showing it to an audience allows us to get some fresh eyes onto our material.
I feel that because it is a devised piece rather than scripted it is difficult to know if something truly works with an audience until we show it to one. We didn’t want to wait until the performance date it self so now is a good time as it leaves us with just under a month to develop and improve on the feedback we will be given.
As a company we know what still need the greatest improvements but hopefully this work in progress will pick up on aspects that we our selves had not thought of yet. It could be the slightest thing that is not right but this could change the whole feel of the scene. We are lucky enough for this to be our second work in progress so we can see how far our piece has come. We have come so far but know we still have so far left to go.
I feel so far this has been a journey that none of us expected, it has been fun, creative yet challenging. We are bonding more as a company that it is starting to feel like one, we have come so far from when we first formed. We are more comfortable around each other and parts of ourselves are starting to come out, showing hidden talents along the way.
We really are nine different people coming together to create one unique show.
