As the process began for Theatre Company, we outlined our ethos in which we wanted to achieve as a theatre company. James Crawford and Josh Pearson had the idea of us using other peoples unwanted items, such as their rubbish to create all of our set, props, and costume. This led to us forming our company as Rubbish Theatre. Our ethos gave a very clear idea of who we were as a theatre company and how we were going to run professionally.
OUR ETHOS
Rubbish Theatre aims to create visually stimulating material through the upcycling of unwanted rubbish and items therefore giving it a new lease of life. Rubbish will continue to be multidisciplinary and innovative by upcycling previous material – Cinderella? We have a basketball carriage. What about Shakespeare’s Richard III with the rapture? Rubbish believes in the abolishment of boundaries. Our willingness to work with anything could be a disaster but we’re crazy enough to try it anyway.
Solid Seven:
Punctuality and organisation
Respect and support the team
PPP – proactivity, professionalism, and passion
Enjoy it
Give every idea equal opportunity
Democracy and cooperation
Leave your shit at the door
IDEAS
As we had our ethos set, we now knew that we wanted our performance to be immersive for the audience, using their unwanted items to create a visually stunning performance. Knowing this, we were able to build on our thoughts for our performance. We were interested in pain and pleasure, a circus theme, theatre of cruelty, with a tribal essence. The playwright Samuel Beckett, and his theme of black comedy in his plays influenced us on what we wanted to create.
RESEARCH
After discussions on our interests for ideas for the performance our Director – Jacob Kay, set us a task. This was to do some research into madness. Everyone found many different ideas about madness and what it is. I found myself researching the seven sins, and what each of them means.
Pride is excessive belief in one’s own abilities, that interferes with the individual’s recognition of the grace of God. It has been called the sin from which all others arise. Pride is also known as Vanity.
Envy is the desire for others’ traits, status, abilities, or situation.
Gluttony is an inordinate desire to consume more than that which one requires.
Lust is an inordinate craving for the pleasures of the body.
Anger is manifested in the individual who spurns love and opts instead for fury. It is also known as Wrath.
Greed is the desire for material wealth or gain, ignoring the realm of the spiritual. It is also called Avarice or Covetousness.
Sloth is the avoidance of physical or spiritual work.
(Square Space, undated).
After collating our ideas together as an ensemble we decided that we would focus on different elements and signs of madness, which would form the basis for our performance. As we had already established that as a company we wanted to steer away from naturalism and realism, we thought that the best structure for our performance would be episodic, as this would allow us to use an eclectic mix of styles and themes within our show, in which the devising process allows for. As we couldn’t collectively define madness, we chose to focus on some of the signs of madness that our research showed us. These are: denial, sleeplessness, memories, sadism, and obsession – all of which we wanted to use as a basis for our scenes within our episodic structure.
Devising, as a collaborative process of performance-making, potentially enables the production of a different kind of performance structure that in some senses reflects its collaborative creative process – typically compartmented or fragmented, with multiple layers and narratives
(Heddon and Milling, 2006, 221).
Works Cited
Heddon, D., and Milling, J. (2006) Devising Performance a critical history. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Square Space (undated) Seven Deadly Sins. Available from http://www.deadlysins.com [accessed 11 February 2017].