“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].
For traditional theatre, particularly naturalism, the costume and properties allow the actors to embody their character: “Costume is one of the key transformative elements that help create the magic of theatre” (The Guardian, 2013). The scene may entail an intense conversation between two characters. One character’s responses are punctuated with sips from a wine glass – any director worth their salt would ensure that the wine glass is in hand early on in the rehearsal to ensure property handling is natural and not distracting for the actor. And as for the costume, Gary Oldman insists,
“Costume is so important for an actor. It absolutely helps to get into character; it’s the closest thing to you, it touches you. Some actors like to go into make-up and then put their clothes on, but I like to dress first; that’s my routine” (The Daily Telegraph, 2012).
Neither of these elements of theatre have been neglected in ‘Three Words’, however, the choice of costume is purposefully understated, and the props are not absolutely essential to the performance, but they add those little details to each scene.
Costume was discussed early in the process. Initially, the word ‘neutral’ was thrown around because so many of the scenes we were devising did not involve ‘acting’. We are trying to include and show a whole range of people. Therefore, we needed the costume not to distract or detract from what we are trying to translate to the audience. In terms of contemporary theatre, we are really performers, not actors.
Being is existence itself. “Doing” is the activity of all that exists, from quarks to sentient beings to supergalactic strings. “Showing doing” is performing: pointing to, underlining, and displaying doing. “Explaining ‘showing doing’” is performance studies (Schechner, 2002).
As Schechner describes, there are many forms in theatre. There are moments in the performance needs “Doing”, and this is contrasted to moments where we are “Showing doing” as a matter of steering away from representing. We are just the medium in which these stories can be relayed to an audience.
Later in the process we discussed costume again. We never steer away from showing our personalities in our Three Words, and therefore it no longer made sense to have a totally neutral costume. For this reason we came to the decision of wearing something that we would wear on an occasion, such as a romantic date. Of course, for practicality, it needed to be something that we could move freely in and that made us feel comfortable. Scott Graham, the artistic director of Frantic Assembly, describes the design of their costume as remaining naturalistic in their work, and does not have the same presence as it might in other companies (2013). This is the basic premise of how I advised the company to select their costume. Frantic Assembly is a physical theatre company, and therefore the main importance is that it does not restrict movement. For ‘Three Words’, the main note I gave was that they should chose something that they would not fiddle with or have to fix throughout the performance, as we are all constantly on stage. But also remained naturalistic to our world of theatre. I suppose the ambiguous smart/casual is the best way of describing it!
The importance (and number) of props have accumulated throughout the rehearsal process. We have a lot of items that are real things of sentimental value from our own relationships, or things we have borrowed from other people’s relationships, that are attached to a washing line at the back of the stage. It acts as a time-line of a relationship. It is also to highlight the human tendency to be sentimental with the little things in relationships that are totally personal and unique. It’s not just about jewellery and flowers, but hand written letters and koala shaped purses.
There are other properties that essentially add detail to the scenes, for example, I made a tiny veil and bow tie for our artist’s mannequins in ‘The Wedding Scene’.
The Happy Couple!
It is these elements that we thought were really important to make the effort to do and make, as it shows attention to detail and ties into the tone of the piece – where some things are just a little silly! In addition, the majority of these details I hand-made to show they had come from personally from us. Again, it shows care and effort. Although in some productions, shiny machine made properties make the production appear highly professional, for us it was all about showing humanity and being approachable. For example, two sheets are hung from the washing line at the beginning off the show, saying ‘Three Words’. This was hand painted with intentionally patchy green paint. This echoes the potato-print style font of our posters and flyers, but also because its not perfectly painted, or professionally printed, it really underscores the personal nature of the piece.
The Sheets!
We are also careful to ensure that the majority of the properties we use are used again in another scene. For example, we have transformed two ordinary men’s jackets into puppets by carefully making holes down the seam of the elbows and shoulders, so that our puppeteers can use their arms through the sleeves and bring the jacket ‘to life’, using an upside-down coat hanger for structure. I then stitched shoulder pads to build up the structure and create a more human silhouette.
Preparations…Adding the shoulder pads…
These are used to enact the story of two men in love. We use the same jackets when re-enacting the final scene of Brief Encounter (1945). This is one of the few occasions where costume was necessary to show we are not ourselves. The two men’s jackets in this section also evoke the possibility that Brief Encounter was actually about a homosexual relationship. Again, these are things that can be read into as little or as much as the audience wishes.
Before…After!
Properties and costume really are the finishing touches to what will hopefully be a successful and entertaining show. They create these details that we feel confident in adding to the performance without hindering our slickness (or organised chaos!). It adds hand-made sentiment to a stage laden with cables and microphones.
Works Cited
Graham, S. (2013) Frantic Assembly Forum: Costume Design. [online] London: Frantic Assembly. Available from: http://www.franticassembly.co.uk/forum/topic/55/ [Accessed 24 May 2014]
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.
Below are the full sound recordings of the interviews I conducted. I asked a few questions about love and relationships. Beneath the sound recordings are some moments I have highlighted, and quotations that stood out to us as material for the piece.
Interview with a single man in his mid-twenties:
What kind of tough conversations have you had in your relationships?
“Making things official… without officially talking about them…”
Any landmark moments?
“…The size of the moment, the grandeur of it is on the situation, or the circumstance of how the two came together.”
What do you think of love?
“Love is lovely isn’t it?” “What is the borderline moment between when you really care, and really like someone… When does that become love?”
Do you believe in ‘love at first sight’?
“No no no, I know there is no such thing as ‘love at forst sight’, that is lust, that is simply love. It’s there, in the name, ‘sight’. Because when you see someone, it’s there, like boom, “you are fit mate”. Like, then they could open their mouth and it’d be like, the most hideous voice. Yeah, it would be the worst thing in the world.”
How long should you know someone before you say ‘I love you’?
“Because when you say ‘I love you’, it suddenly means something. I can only compare it to… when people throw around the term ‘best friend’… As soon as you put the label of ‘bets friend’ on someone, that suddenly makes them the one, they’re accountable and that is scary because you depend on someone, much like… well, it’s scary cos they could let you down… I think that’s why saying ‘I love you’ would be terrifying, because as soon as you’ve said it, you can’t take that back, and because… because it’s a display of emotion, and how you feel summed up in like three little words… You wanna run away from it, like if you don’t say it, you don’t put it on someone, they can’t let you down, and then like, its easier to accept someone’s faults when you haven’t put that on someone, put them in that position, on that pedestal. You know, “you’re the one I love, don’t fuck it up!” and “you’re my best friend, don’t fuck it up!” Same thing, isn’t it.”
Do you have any ground rules in your relationships?
“Just… be honest.”
Interview with a young couple:
What kind of tough conversations have you had in your relationships?
Girlfriend: I actually can’t remember any tough conversations.
Boyfriend: It’s probably like… what shall we have for dinner innit?
Girlfriend: Ha, yeah… ‘We should probably keep this secret for a bit because we’re flat mates.’ Oh and he asked me if Jennifer Anniston could go on his [bucket] list.
Any landmark moments?
Me: So you’re first anniversary, was that really special?
Silence… Laughter.
Me: It’s a voice recording, shaking you’re head isn’t useful!
Girlfriend: Well I think the first time he said ‘I love you’ was nice.
What do you think of love?
Boyfriend: It’s just, alright, innit.
Girlfriend: I’d say it was more than alright! I think he’s being a bit, harsh on Love there. I mean, I’d say it’s pretty sweet… pretty sweet… (Laughter).
How long should you wait before you say ‘I love you’?
Girlfriend: If you feel like you do, then why not just say it?
Boyfriend: I said it first… I’m a good boy.
Girlfriend: And it was really nice, cos it was really… of the cuff.
