Jozey Wade – No Added Sugar

Performing Love.

Jozey Wade / June 2, 2014June 2, 2014 / Love, Music, performance, Reflection

So, we did it. ‘Three Words’ made it to the stage… and it’s honestly taken me almost an entire week to come down from the incredible high that evening gave me, and truly take in how it went.

As Gabby said in her blog, the response from the audience was truly astounding. I had spent so much time meticulously over analysing tiny flaws and mistakes in recent weeks, wanting the show to be the best it could be, that I think I had forgotten to truly take in and appreciate what we did have and how an audience might take it. However, as the show opened that night and the audience began laughing in the very first song, I finally started to realise – oh, we have something here. We have a very decent show. And performing it was really like no other experience I had had before.

Again, leading up until the performance I was thinking and worrying constantly about the musical side of my performance, especially playing instruments, as it’s not something I had a great deal of experience with before this show, and, as such, I wasn’t overly confident. However, being out there, I honestly was having so much fun, I almost completely let go of my nerves, for the first time in any performance I’ve done.

Being on the stage for 100% of the show was a huge part of what made this such a different experience for me, performance wise. Being fully immersed in the show throughout, there was no time to come off stage, come out of character and let the nerves take over again about the next scene. In my head, it all just flowed. And it really added to the feeling of team work and camaraderie between the company. We were all on stage, together, supporting each other, working together, throughout the show, and that really added to just how enjoyable and engaging performing it was. Of course, it being the debut performance, there were hitches; technical glitches and a few little performance mistakes. But nothing massive, and I do think we covered any mistakes from the audience well. Of course, those mistakes and glitches are also things we can learn from for any future performances… as quite a few people have mentioned in their blogs, we certainly don’t want this to be the end for No Added Sugar, or ‘Three Words’ itself, and it doesn’t look like it will be. Watch this space!

I always love the shows I am part of, but I have honestly never loved every minute of a performance as much as I loved being part of ‘Three Words’ that night. Furthermore, I am not exaggerating when I say that the process of creating this show has been the most inspiring, rewarding, professional and educational devising process I have ever taken part in. I have pushed myself out of my comfort zone, including performing as myself (something I have previously been reluctant about) as opposed to a character, trying out new performance disciplines (like different kinds of puppetry) and going from being able to play about three chords on guitar very slowly to playing a full song or two in front of an audience. I could not be more glad of every decision we made that pushed me. Even if, by some awfully unfortunate circumstances, No Added Sugar does have to end here, I am taking away so much from this process and from this performance; so many memories, connections with wise, talented people, lessons in performing, lessons in music, and lessons in life… and love.

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]

Our latest teaser trailer!

Jozey Wade / May 24, 2014 / Love, Marketing

Check it out:

Put together by our marketing team and director… with a little help from me.

Performing Puppets.

Jozey Wade / May 5, 2014June 2, 2014 / Development, performance

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]

Thoughts about music.

Jozey Wade / February 23, 2014June 2, 2014 / Development, Initial Ideas, Love, Music

One of the things we have agreed upon as a group from the start is that we intend to use live music in our piece.
We have been greatly inspired by companies like Filter Theatre who utilise music and live sound to enhance their work brilliantly. As well as work by companies that Tom, Phoebe and I saw at the Edinburgh Fringe last year, such as the Flanagan Collective with their charming folk musical, ‘Beulah’, and HitchHook Theatre’s ‘This was the World and I was King’ which used original songs to underpin the story of three children and their parents during World War One; “the inclusion of music [was] seamless” and it “complemented each scene wonderfully” (Adam 2013).

Photo: http://hookhitch.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/web19.jpg

Production still from HitchHook Theatre’s ‘This Was the World and I was King’.

Music can be such a part of romance and love, it’s hard not to involve it in our thoughts on the subject. While in a relationship, couples tend to have a song that somehow speaks for and “belongs to” their relationship, recent dump-ees have a song or two that they sit and cry to, newly weds have their wedding dance number and romantic meals or gestures are often accompanied by romantic background music (Barry White perhaps). On top of that, music itself is, more often than not, inspired by love – especially popular music. Song lyrics are often about romances gone wrong or romances gone right, or romance in one way or the other.

So, we felt that complimenting and under toning our piece with music throughout would really provide a kind of romantic atmosphere (where appropriate). In using popular loves songs from throughout time too, it would give the audience references to relate to and even laugh at. The aim is to have a sense of humour, not to be too cheesy. Just honest.

So, starting to make a list of famous love songs (this list will be edited and added to as we go):

Unchained Melody – The Righteous Brothers
I Will Always Love You – Whitney Houston
True – Spandau Ballet
The Power Of Love – Hewey Lewis and the News
The Heart Will Go On – Celine Dion
I Wanna Know What Love Is – Foreigner
The Shoop Shoop Song – Cher
What’s Love Got To Do With It – Tina Turner
I Wanna Dance With Somebody – Whitney Houston
Crazy Little Thing Called Love – Queen
Somebody to Love – Queen
The Rock Show – Blink 182
I Would Do Anything For Love – Meat Loaf
What Makes You Beautiful – One Direction
Always – Bon Jovi
All You Need is Love – The Beatles

I’ll stop here for now, but we will continue this! I clearly need help thinking of more modern “hip” love songs (because I may as well be 50 years old as far as music is concerned). Gabby and I have also made a list of the instruments and capabilities we have, and also things that people could possibly pick up or learn in the time we have.
Here is our list of instruments and possible players so far:

Ukuele – Jozey (and Lauren wants to learn?)
Guitar – Jozey (very basic but could learn more) and Tom
Piano – Gabby (experienced) and Jozey (very VERY basic but could learn more)
Horn/ Sax – Gabby (experienced)
Glockenspiel – (Becky is learning)
Tambourine – (Any of us could learn)
Vocals – Lauren, Jozey, Phoebe, Sam, Shellie and Abbi

Reference:

Adam, N (2013) ‘This Was the World and I Was King’, Broadway Baby, 22 August. Available online: http://www.broadwaybaby.com/shows/this-was-the-world-and-i-was-king/31504 [Accessed 23 February 2014]