Development – Page 3 – No Added Sugar

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Lauren Elizabeth Walker / April 30, 2014June 2, 2014 / Development, Initial Ideas, Love

No Added Sugar (2014)

The original idea for the wedding scene was to create a section in the performance that showed how couples who are planning to get married can be forced into big extravagant weddings by friends and family. Some couples set out to get married in a small venue with just their nearest and dearest there, but quite often it seems the people closest to them get involved and persuade them otherwise. The initial aim of the scene was to remind the audience, that even though fancy weddings can be beautiful, underneath all that what really matters is that two people love each other enough to promise themselves to one another for the rest of their lives. Firstly we talked about how planning all the different things that need to be organised in a wedding can be like a military mission. This led to many different ideas for a scene. We wanted to create a live wedding plan on stage for the audience to see, we hoped we could write it in a way where the audience could see a couple be cajoled into this wedding by us. The idea that followed was that we wanted a main ‘military type’ who would be in charge of giving out different jobs to each actor on stage, one of our first ideas was to place the live feed onto a map which would show the seating plan and be ready for the audience to see. With this idea in mind, I began to write the scene… we made a list of the most important factors of a wedding this included…

The Date.

The Venue.

The catering.

The dress.

The Music.

The Idea finally progressed into a scene that required audience participation. We thought there was no better way to show the audience how a wedding can manipulated then using two audience members who had never met before and planning their wedding! When writing the scene, I at first wrote it in a military style, having each actor with a different role within the wedding an example of this is….

“This is Sam… Wires, communications. She can write invitations like you’ve never seen. Calligraphy that’ll make you weep openly. She’ll be in charge of fonts and napkin folding.”

Throughout the process of devising our show, one of our main influences has been ‘Filter Theatre’. From the start we always aimed for our piece to have a relaxed atmosphere which gave the feel of organised chaos. Filters work also has this feel… “Although diminishing the audience, the timing of the event was actually crucial to the success of Filter’s performance; the informal atmosphere aimed for was enthusiastically embraced by an audience who had mostly just arrived from the pub. The production represented, in many ways, the RSC’s ‘‘night off’’, with a party feel amongst many sections of the auditorium” (Kirwan, 2009). Although lots of our performance showed similarities with Filter Theatre, I feel the main scene which we took real inspiration from them would have to be the wedding scene. In their rendition of ‘Twelfth Night’ Filter Theatre used lots of different audience participation the first time they use it in the show is when “Viola engaged with the audience directly at the start, making them complicit in her plan by borrowing a hoodie and baseball cap from a boy in the stalls, before completing her disguise by sticking a pair of socks into her pants” (Kirwan, 2009). This act proved extremely amusing, an effect we hope can be achieved in our scene. The scene that we took the most inspiration from was the party scene, which used audience participation to create an ‘spontaneous party’ this was all set around the song “What is love?” it began with an onstage whisper of the song, and built up until it was being repeated and sang louder and louder the onstage actors then began to involve the audience as ‘Sir Andrew’ who “wore a Velcro cap with sticky balls attached to it”(Kirwan, 2009). He asked the audience to throw the balls onto the stage, sometimes missing it but congratulating them when they had succeeded. The party then began to build up when the band joined in and the stage manager emerged with pizza boxes which were given out to audience members. When watching this scene I remember feeling as if I was apart of the action from start to end. This style is what we wish to create with the wedding scene, and I feel having two audience members on stage will help to achieve this.

Works Cited

Kirwan, P (2009), ‘Review of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (directed by Sean Holmes for Filter Theatre) at the Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, November 2008′, Shakespeare (1745-0918), 5, 1, pp. 114-117.

Kirwan, p (2013) Twelth Night at the curve theatre. [online] Exeunt. Available from: http://exeuntmagazine.com/reviews/twelfth-night-4/ [Accessed 30 April 2014]

No Added Sugar (2014)

Let’s do that love song, from that film.

Gabrielle Ruth Evans / April 24, 2014June 2, 2014 / Development, Music

Everything we learn, everywhere we turn, every love film we watch, each love song we listen to, in some way has influenced what we think about love and relationships. Some of our main musical influences for Three Words have come from the famous love films and songs we as a group have watched over the years. From Richard Curtis’ 2003 film Love Actually to Davis Lean’s 1945 Brief Encounter each film has influenced the way we view love. As a company, we want to put our own spin on he musical numbers we do also from my perspective the real challenge has come from translating famous songs and putting them into the piece. Some of which I have found difficult to learn I have decided to change a little.

Brief Encounter

The famous film, that comes with famous music. At the beginning of this process I did not think to myself at all, that I would be attempting to play Rachmaninov’s famous Piano Concerto No 2. However, I am. His concerto is the soundtrack to Brief Encounter. So when it was decided that we were going to reproduce the film live on stage, this only accounted for one thing in my mind, we would have to have live music in there too. Not going to lie I had a little panic to myself as my piano ability is not to the standard of Rachmaninov’s writing let alone, but I saw it out as a challenge.

The first encounter I had with the music was trying to find the correct piano music. Every other music score for this performance has been easy to get hold of, apart from this one. It took me many attempts to source the right one, I even had a go at producing the score myself, to which I got only 8 bars in and realised it was in a totally different key. Lucky though, I found the piano solo music in a book called Classical Heartbreakers (2011). Even then, it was difficult; the score originally written for two pianos and strings was all collated into one piano piece. At this point, I took it upon my self to simplify the left hand to simple notes. I did this by looking at the cord and taking the primary note as the main leading notes. To this, I then inputted it into Sibelius , a music writing software to make sure it sounded correct. From then, I had only taken a snippet of the music from him, I interjected two more songs into the scene. The first one is taken from Love Actually, called The Glasgow Love Theme. Composed by Craig Armstrong the music is subtle, soft and sounds so full of hope. The last song I combined with these two I found difficult to find. It was stated in the Work-In- Progress that I should try and find a contemporary pop song. I tried everything from Kylie Minogue to Robbie Williams, finally settling down with Adele’s Someone Like You. Which is a powerful yet beautiful song about heartbreak. Something similar to the heartbreak Laura faces when Alec leaves and she has to return to her husband.

I took apart the music and framed it around the dialogue. I wanted to mix it up , from classical, film, and contemporise pop songs. I just hope it works well within the piece.

All you need is Love

There are many different portrayals of this song from the original Beatles to the famous wedding scene in Love Actually :

Through discussion, ideas and possibilities, we wanted to do something spectacular to end the piece, so I got in contact with the university orchestra and the cathedral choir to see if they would like to join us in our performance, unfortunately they were unavailable at the time of our performance. Therefore, we had to think of something else to do with the song. There has been so many covers of the song, it is hard to find something new to do with it, but we decided to go back to basics. Back to the same way we started the show, and simply make it about us.

We have changed the structure of the piece around, so that are starts with a solo verse and then enters the song. This will give it a nice pick up from the last scene. Instruments wise, we also wanted to use all of the instruments so we have Becky playing the famous opening line, and then the guitar and piano riffs coming in and out of the song. From the pianos perspective I didn’t want to over power the song, therefore I am going to keep to just playing chords and riffs in the chorus.

The end song is not like what you see in the movies, it is something more hopeful, it is simply 9 very different people singing about one universal topic of love.

Works Cited:

Classical Heartbreakers for Solo Piano (2006) London: Wise Publications.

TheBeatlesVEVOHQ (2011) All You Need Is Love-HQ [online video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-pFAFsTFTI [Accessed 23 April 2014].

Tengizpoteri (2008) All you need is Love [online video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9siyJtoWRAU [Accessed 24 April 2014].

The role of the producer

Rebecca Sowter / April 19, 2014June 2, 2014 / Development

My role:

I have really enjoyed fulfilling the role of the producer for No Added Sugar, especially during the last few weeks where our show has started to come together properly. Although I have taken on many jobs as producer (including budgeting, scheduling and setting deadlines), it has recently occurred to me that I don’t really know what the ‘official’ definition of a producer is…

My naivety about my actual job role seems ridiculous, however it seems I am not alone in my confusion about what a theatre producer actually does. It has been described as “one of the most mysterious jobs in the theatre”(Baggaley, 2008)- it is a role that is not firmly assigned definite tasks. Even James Seabright, a successful producer, writes in his book that “the producer’s role can appear confusing and indefinable” (Seabright, 2010, 5). Using his book, I have been piecing together all of the main components of the job and have checked my own progress against it. I feel reassured as it seems that I have indeed been doing the job properly- below is a list of the tasks I have been doing as producer and why they are essential for the smooth running of our theatre company.

The budget:

Seabright writes that a producer “makes sure a show is delivered on time and in budget” (Seabright, 2010, 5) and I have been responsible for No Added Sugar’s finance from the start of the project. My previous post goes into more detail about this aspect of my job role and it is something that I have enjoyed being in charge of. However, more recently I have felt the negative repercussions that come with being in control of the purse strings. As we spend more money and the budget becomes tighter, it has become vital for me to say no to certain costs. One example of this came out of today’s rehearsal as I had to decline the request to use a Polaroid camera on stage as the cost of the film was more than we expected and was not justifiable. Seabright also goes on to say that the producer “typically defines what is ‘on time’ and ‘in budget’” (Seabright, 2010, 5)- although we phycially had the money to spend on the film it would have been irresponsible to use it when we are still unaware about the full cost of our printing materials.

The rehearsal schedule:

I have been in charge of devising a schedule that firstly, suits everyone’s availability and secondly, provides the company with enough time to rehearse. The administrative side of the company is something that Seabright assigns to the producer which he describes as “oiling the wheels of a production for smooth running” (Seabright, 2010, 8).Myself and our wonderful stage manager Shellie have made this task as painless as possible through our system that involves me creating the actual schedule and then Shellie booking the rehearsal space. We list any known absences on the schedule and created them at least a month in advance to ensure that the majority of the company can be present.

The follow up:

Every week or so I post in our company’s Facebook group with a list of the tasks that need doing for the following week. As we are devising which can be a slow process, it is important that we set goals and deadlines that keep us on track. Here is an example of these kind of reminders presented to you in post-it form, just because I can!

Going forward:

I am now a lot more comfortable with my role knowing that every producer is different, and am confident in what I am doing. We are now just over a month away from the performance which means I must ensure that our deadlines are stuck to in order to have a completed and polished show by the 27^th May. It is in these final weeks where my job becomes more important as we still have a lot of work to do. Despite all of this however, I am very excited and positive about our performance and am pleased with the progress we have made, especially that made in the last week.

Works cited

Baggaley, L. (2008) What’s the producer’s role? [online] London: the Guardian. Available from: http://www.theguardian.com/stage/theatreblog/2008/apr/04/whatstheproducersrole [Accessed 19 April 2014].

Seabright, J. (2010) So you want to be a theatre producer? London: Nich Hern Books.

Sir Toby’s Party, a Touring Company’s Nightmare

Tom Briggs / April 15, 2014June 2, 2014 / Development, Initial Ideas, performance

There is often a scene in Shakespeare, a crowd scene, a feast or a ball that that can be beautifully realised with the budget of National Theatre but for small scale touring companies these scenes can be nightmares, how is it possible for a touring company with a small cast to create Shakespeare’s great crowd scenes.

Act 2 Scene 3 of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is one such headache, a party that must get suitably out of hand in order to justify Malvolio’s statement that Sir Toby and Sir Andrew “Make a alehouse of my lady’s house” (Twelfth Night, II.iii.88-9). There are two obvious solutions the first is simply to make Malvolio seem even more unreasonable by having him interrupt a particularly sedate party.

Filter Theatre found another far more interesting way however, with just a small cast they looked beyond the proscenium arch for their party. The scene starts slowly with much shushing and tip toeing and very quickly gets out of hand as games begin on stage, the audience members hurling fuzzy balls at the cast and later at each other, pizza brought into the stalls and distributed, tequila slammers are given out on stage. The audience are not just watching the party, they are as Michael Billington observed “participants in feast of misrule” (Billington, 2008).

Above is a picture of some of their party preparations for each show, tequila and shot belt included.

All of this brings the audience into the chaos so that when Malvolio does eventually interrupt it is particularly unwelcome and fosters antipathy in the audience and characters alike. So that when the wayward knights do get their revenge on Malvolio, a hilarious but disturbing twist on the yellow stockings, the audience need not feel any sympathy for him.

Filter realised that the audience need not be passive in theatre and used them to give the show life. There is of course a long history of audience participation in performance but here it was used to give an old over-performed text some life. In a way we found ourselves in a similar position love as a concept is the oldest story, it comes with all sorts of clichés attached and it occurred to us that the audience was a resource for keeping the work new and unpredictable just as it has been for so many others. One scene around the subject of marriage planning was getting nowhere until we stopped acting all the parts and turned it over onto some guinea pigs.

The other lesson from the chaos of Filter theatre was that the theatre can make the audience live something rather than just watch it. Theatre can evoke sensations; it can make a scene look how it feels for the characters. This is a principle we have applied with our scene about keeping secrets in relationships. We could have written a naturalistic dialogue of a wife finding out about her husband’s affair, a scene that would have a fairly slow start a climax and some kind of resolution. This felt like a betrayal of the kind of work we wanted to do, to create something that vibrant and new, we instead focused simply on the climax so that’s we started with lots of revelations being spouted as quickly as we could building to a cacophony of voices all competing with each other to confess and with each lie a physical action, the girl who loves musicals way too much dances a tango from Rent, while they are scattered with rubbish by messy people and the make-up addict liberally applies lipstick to our stage manager. The stage picture is as chaotic and manic as the ensuing argument might feel in real life

These two lessons from Filter have helped us a little to navigate our way through what could easily been dull, clichéd scenes. Giving us the tools to make theatre we hope will be a celebration of the human obsession with romance and not merely another replica of stories that have been told for thousands of years.

Works Cited
Billington, M. (2008) Twelfth Night Review. [online] London: Guardian. Available from http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2008/sep/03/theatre1 [Accessed 11 April 2014].
Shakespeare, W. (2010) Twelfth Night. London: Macmillan.
FilterTheatre (2013) First Day Rehearsing. [twitter] 27 August. Available from https://twitter.com/filtertheatre/status/372366949054828545/photo/1 [Accessed 14 April 2014]

Song Writing: The reasons to love me and reasons to stay away.

Samantha Mckenzie / April 15, 2014June 2, 2014 / Development, Love, Music, performance

Towards the beginning of our rehearsal process, when we were collecting writing material, we set ourselves the challenge of writing a list each. The list was to be split into two sections, one being reasons why someone should love you and one being why someone should stay away. We shared these lists with each other in a rehearsal and all picked the lines and sections which we wanted to make into a script. After some deliberation, we then decided that the lists could be made into a song. As I have had some experience song writing before, I nominated myself to be the writer and I compiled the lists together and wrote a melody.

I was inspired by the kind of songs that feature in stand up comedy and I wanted to portray the same clever style. I looked particularly at the work of Tim Minchin.

Once the song was finished I worked with the musical directors Gabby and Jozey to put together the accompaniment and then it was decided that Jozey will play her ukulele in the performance and Lauren will sing the song the song with me. We have allocated the sections of the song in terms of which lines refer more to which singer.

The song:

Reasons to love me song

Work Cited:

Tim Minchin (2010) You grew on me [online video] Available from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frNpdG4F9mw [Accessed 10 April 2014].