Reflection – Page 2 – No Added Sugar

Our Brief Encounter with the LPAC Stage…

Phoebe Wall-Palmer / June 1, 2014June 2, 2014 / performance, Reflection

“If you died, you’d forget me. And I want to be remembered” (Brief Encounter, 1945)

No Added Sugar has had its 60 minutes on stage. Overwhelmed by positive feedback, we have all hit the post-show blues very hard. We immediately knew that this cannot be the end for us, we cannot be forgotten. There is still obvious ways to develop the scenes – we can cut and change certain bits to make a good show something brilliant. Nothing is ever perfect, which only gives us the urge to keep trying to make ‘Three Words’ better and better

There is one particular scene that I want to reflect on. I have mentioned it, rather ambiguously, in a previous post ‘Gestes de la Romance’. The plan entailed a grand romantic gesture for a member of the audience. It began with a simple gift of chocolates and flowers to an audience member, and ended with me singing Aerosmith’s ‘I don’t Want to Miss a Thing’ under a moving spotlight towards him. It seemed to go very well and was gracefully taken by our audience member. Wanting our first performance to go as best as it could, we selected the person that would receive the gesture previous to the show, and made the necessary steps to make it happen. Therefore my biggest intrigue for when we perform ‘Three Words’ again is how this scene would go when a person is randomly selected. In addition, do we need to make the romantic gesture different, bigger and better each time? It is the type of aspect that would be talked about after a performance, and may not be surprising enough for new audiences if we repeat it. The energy received from the audience really depended on the shock and embarrassment factor. This is all food for thought and I look forward to developing this further.

For now, in the words of Michael Pinchbeck, we have “[Ended] the show with a dot dot dot, not a full stop” (2010)

BassClef707 (2007) Brief Encounter (final scene). [online video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hubyFqSUaGA [Accessed 1 June 2014].

Pinchbeck, M. (2010) What is The End? [online] Nottingham: Making The End. Available from: http://makingtheend.wordpress.com/page/6/ [Accessed 1 June 2014].

Nine Lucky People

Abigail Dawson / June 1, 2014June 2, 2014 / Love, Reflection, Technical

14315762344_ca48138cec_b — (Taken by Linford Butler: 27/45/14)

Taking our caption ‘Two Lucky People’ from one of our scenes, we found that there were not two, but in fact nine lucky people in our company. Every single member, including myself, could not feel any more fortunate to be able to create and perform Three Words. Throughout our devising process we were never alone; we worked closely as a team and collaborated with our ideas. From a Production Manager’s point of view I certainly could not have technically done this show without my Stage Manager (Shellie Barrowcliffe), she was my rock throughout this production. While regularly meeting up for production meetings, together we created the lighting for Three Words and made sure any technical requirements were secured for rehearsals and finally for our show. I trust that together we made a fantastic team and I hope to work closely with her again at some point in our careers.

For our actual performance day, 27^th May 2014, we arranged for the whole cast and crew to enter the Lincoln Performing Arts Centre theatre at 9am. Normally we would not call the cast till around 12pm, but even though our technical rehearsal went smoothly we realised that figuring out sound levels would take longer than we expected. Therefore we had to make sure all the cast were available from the beginning of our Get In so that our LPAC technician Martin could start checking all of the microphone levels for actors and musicians for every scene in show. The entire cast was very patient throughout our Get In, they listened carefully whether it was to speak into a microphone, stand in a certain light, or set up the stage with props. They were all completely focused and did not wander off, consequently it created a calm atmosphere for us all to work in efficiently. Our cue-to-cue was mainly for my SM and any other technicians operating the show to double check the lighting and sound was prepared for each cue in the prompt book. From this, we went onto our dress rehearsal. We made sure every cast member was aware that it must be as high energy as our final performance that evening, and fortunately they were all incredibly professional and we left our dress fun feeling like we had a show ready, professional standard, to show our audience. It left us all pleased and in high spirits for the final performance.

For our Get Out, my fantastic SM had prepared a detailed schedule for each person to follow, in order for us to clear everything away and leave the premises in good time. Again, each cast and crew member were completely focused in the tasks they had been given and followed them carefully. And considering how many cables we had lying around the stage with all the microphones and lights, we were able to tidy everything away and put them back in their original places if they belonged to the LPAC. Below are links to both the Performance day and Get Out schedules that my SM prepared:

Three Words Performance Day Schedule

Three Words Get Out Plan

My final words for this performance are excitement, hope and potential. I believe No Added Sugar, and Three Words itself has a future. The feedback we have received from this production has been incredible and I could not be prouder to call myself a member of this team. I start to feel emotional at looking through any photos from past rehearsals, or even the ones from the actual performance, I have had the time of my life doing Three Words. I seriously hope this production, and company, live on. The future is bright, and we have potentially already been offered an opportunity to perform Three Words once more. Who knows, you may even find us at Edinbrough Fringe Festival next year. Keep your eyes peeled!

Works Cited

Abigail Dawson (2013) Reflection of our Final Degree Performance [Online Video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mint9L2x7M0 [Accessed 1 June 2014]

The end of an era: Looking back on show night.

Samantha Mckenzie / May 30, 2014June 2, 2014 / Marketing, performance, Reflection

On Tuesday 27th May at 7:30pm we took to the stage to perform our debut show as a theatre company; Three Words. The journey has been a long but exciting one filled with laughter and lessons, the whole process has taught me an awful lot about the hard work and energy needed to succeed as a theatre company.

When show night arrived, we were all prepared and desperate to get on that stage. We were greeted by a high energy audience which was just what we had hoped and in that moment I knew they were going to love what we were about to deliver.

Although I was primarily a performer in the show, as my secondary role within the company is the marketing manager, I reflected on the show and process from a marketing point of view. Everything I had organised and created in terms of promoting the show was leading up to this day and most of all ticket sales and audience feedback.

Due to this, I have collected information of our total ticket sales, audience feedback and our total number of social media followers.

Tickets sold:

163

Audience feedback (taken from twitter):

‘Three Words was a perfect blend of heartache, humour & organised chaos! Really innovative and relatable, congrats to all!’

‘The performance was absolutely brilliant tonight! I cried and I laughed… just… amazing!’

‘Nice one @noaddedsugarTC, I wasn’t sure what to expect but it was hilarious and emotional.’

Social media followers:

Facebook: 269

Twitter: 398

Instagram: 49

I was extremely happy with all of our totals and the feedback we have received. The show was everything we wanted it to be and we hope to continue to succeed with this show and company in the future.

So watch this space!!

Work Cited:

McKenzie, S. (2014)

The music of love.

Jozey Wade / May 24, 2014June 2, 2014 / Development, Music, performance, Reflection

For Filter Theatre, “combining music and drama was always the intention” (Dorrington 2014), and as you may have seen from previous, early blogs, this is also true for No Added Sugar. One of the things that made us want to work together was our mutual interest in live music and how it can really enhance a piece of theatre, or a story. Our chief musical director Gabby will be commenting on this in more detail in her next blog.

Of course, our plans and idea have changed throughout the course of our creative and rehearsal process. Our concept lends itself to the idea of love songs, so we originally suggested using snippets of songs (as said in a previous blog). What has changed is that, we have been a little more brave than I expected with how far we have gone with music. I am by no means a particularly skillful guitarist, in fact, I have only been teaching myself for less that a year. However, Gabby and I have worked closely together, each bringing our our bits of experience and skill to the table, and in doing so I have learnt a great deal. Gabby has, of course, been the true master and taken charge of the truly technical things like finding and transposing sheet music, working our what harmonies should be and more; but I have helped translate to the singers and work out guitar and ukulele parts.

Musically, our process hasn’t only been about utilising what skills we have, but about pushing ourselves and learning new things all together. In fact, while we said in the first place that we wouldn’t be capable of writing our own songs or music, our show does now in fact include one completely original song (lyrics written by Sam, and music put together by Gabby and I), a well known tune which I wrote new lyrics to and then quite a lot of back ground music/ transition music, which Gabby, Tom and I have composed ourselves. I certainly think that to keep moving forward and be successful and innovative with a theatre company, you should not just use what you have but learn and gain, and I have certainly gained a great deal and will be able to take away new skills from my experience creating ‘Three Words’, especially musically.

While part of our influence here was Filter, where we have differed from them is that we do use more singing. Most of the cast sing in some way during the show, and we also sing together, so there have been difficult harmonies to teach and work on. We have mostly worked on these outside of studio rehearsal time, having evening sessions in my bedroom. Of course, we never intended to make a musical and that isn’t what we have done. What we have created is a piece of theatre utilising a mixture of diciplines, including music, puppetry, acting, some stylised movement, and multi-media. Music is just one part of it, but an integral part.

Reference:

Dorrington, J (2014) ‘Review: Filter’s Twelfth Night’, The Boar, 28 February. Available at: http://theboar.org/2014/02/28/review-filters-twelfth-night/#.U4B9H_ldV-4 [Accessed 24 May 2014]

Verbatim and the Morality of Using the Words of Others

Tom Briggs / May 7, 2014June 2, 2014 / Reflection, Verbatim and Interviews

Verbatim theatre along with documentary theatre has become increasingly popular over the last twenty years. The central concept of verbatim is that you put the real words of real people on stage as near as possible to how they were spoken. Some of the first works of verbatim theatre to gain notoriety include Richard Norton-Taylor’s The Colour of Justice which used the court records to recreate key moments in the Stephen Lawrence murder trial. The Colour of Justice has since become very influential and many agree played some part in the inquiry and the Macpherson report that followed. The playwright Robin Soans has said that a certain amount of expectations have built up around Verbatim theatre and that an audience “will expect the play to be political” (Soans in Hammond and Stewart, 2010, 19) in the last few years however many have challenged this preconception and shown that verbatim can be more about the people than the politics.

Alecky Blythe wrote The Girlfriend Experience about the way prostitution works in modern Britain and while it was partly political it was made far more remarkable by the people and their real lives being displayed as they never have been before. Her next play was to eradicate politics almost completely London Road was about a community recovering from finding a murderer in their midst. Breaking the mould once more London Road is the first verbatim musical and this seems to indicate that Verbatim has lost it’s sacred status and that it is open more to poetic licence and experimentation.

In the above clip a range of verbatim writers talk about the balance to be struck between representing the interviewee and creating good theatre. Alecky Blythe expresses how she finds herself taking bigger leaps in poetic licence as her career has gone on. London Road as a play is the closest to Three Words of any verbatim play I’ve read because it concerns itself only with the people, what they do, and how they feel. It is verbatim used to bring new voices and perspectives into the theatre, it puts the humanity of its characters on display to the audience.

This too is what we wanted, people will always be at the centre of Three Words and we needed to inject a healthy dose of reality to ensure we were not making exactly the kind romance that Hollywood seems to incapable of escaping. That was when we made our decision to find as many interviewees and use their stories as the backbone of the show. We use verbatim in several places, much of it recorded, here is one piece that made it without any editing into the show.

In other places we have had to do as Alecky Blythe has done and edit, merge or downright invent stories for the purposes of making the show easy to follow. ‘The 2p Train’ was a based on a story from within the company and one from outside, we spoke to the outside party and presented them with our script for their confirmation. This type of merging is mentioned in the above video by the director Nadia Fall and it is commonly used in order to simplify the amount of characters the audience has to follow. As we only really had two characters throughout the show a lot of merging took place but always with the express consent of those we spoke to.

The clip above shows that Verbatim has lost some of the puritanical attention to detail that companies like Blythe’s Recorded Delivery developed in favour of something a little more theatrical. It has past the point of being simply political in the way that it was for writers like David Hare and Robin Soans. Verbatim is developing into more than a set of rules into another tool for storytellers to use. It brings people into the theatre that would never normally cross the threshold let alone step on stage and celebrates their stories. Verbatim is really the only way to truly represent people and that’s what Three Words is all about.

Works Cited

Blythe, A (2011) London Road. London: Nick Hern Books.

Blythe, A (2008) The Girlfriend Experience. London: Nick Hern Books.

Hammond, W & Steward, D. (eds.) (2010) Verbatim Verbatim. London: Oberon Books.

National Theatre (2014) The ethics of verbatim theatre. [online video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39JSv-n W5U [accessed 4 May 2014].

Norten-Taylor, R. (1999) The Colour of Justice. London: Oberon Books.