Month: March 2017

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The Logic of our Play

As the dramaturge for our play, If An Orchid Was All You Had, I worked along side our director Jacob Kay to map out, create, and justify the logic of the world of our play. This was a complicated task as our play ultimately consists of three worlds. The real world in which our audience lives in, the world in which our central character The Man lives in, and the internal world which is imagined inside The Man’s head. Initially this idea of separate worlds was confusing, especially when the worlds start to collide. Myself and Jacob had a meeting to carefully create rules we as a cast and crew needed to follow and consider while crafting our performance.

The World of the Audience: This is the world we all live in, the world in which we woke up and brushed our teeth. The world in which we went to work, and the world in which we chose to go to the theatre. This is real life, however real life and the fictional world of The Man intertwine during the installation when the audience get to walk around the set. It’s an opportunity for the audience to feel a part of The Man’s world and see what he sees.

The World of The Man: This is The Man’s reality, where he spends his time day to day. When he is tending to his orchid he is in his real world, and The Bike represents his menial daily tasks he has to complete.

The World of the Mind of The Man: This is the world which complicates the production slightly. This is the internal world of The Man where The Creatures reside. The Creatures are extensions of The Man’s inner-psyche. Their world is powered when The Man is on The Bike which is connected to The Tree. The Creatures can only enter from The Tree because of this connection it has to The Man. The Creatures demonstrate The Man’s madness.

As the play goes on, The World of The Man and The World of the Mind of The Man start to seep into each other. Slowly The Creatures are able to start entering his regular world, showing that he no longer can escape his madness, it is consuming him. However, The Man does not see The Creatures, it is their disruptive presence which is detrimentally effecting The Man.

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Creating The Man’s world out of rubbish.

The bike has gone through many different design aspects but has always had the central symbolic representation of a man’s every day, cyclic motions of life.

The focus the bike has within the show means it must have an impact and be more interesting than just a bike. This is where rubbish, creativity and a mad world to aid you, can produce the desired effect. Taking an abandoned trolley, attaching it to the bike and adding an old drawer on top with unwanted piping, guttering and tubing coming out the top, you can suddenly have The Man’s organ, a machine where he can playout the cycles of his life.

initial bike

(Initial design for the Organ Bike in If an Orchid Was All You Had. Crawford, 2017)

Bike organ

(Finished Organ bike for If an Orchid Was All You Had. Image taken by Pearson, J. on Monday 22nd May 2017.

Rubbish Theatre, 2017)

 The machine-like aesthetic was key in my design, to match the industrial wires going to the tree and to be suggestive of the highly mechanised world we live in; there is a continuous crossover of nature and machine. To further the mechanics of the organ-bike I have fitted a smoke machine inside, which can be controlled during the show by The Man when he is on the bike. The smoke will bellow out of the pipes and will help to represent the stress and strain The Man goes through, while also providing a more absorbing experience for the audience as the smoke flows between all worlds.

In terms of our show, If an Orchid Was All You Had, the bike represents The Man’s life away from his orchid. The separation from the orchid (or perhaps the exhausting repetition of his life) bleeds the madness (creatures) out of him. The bike therefore gives a practical and symbolic platform to separate The Man from his orchid, but also gives a semiotic platform to create a mad world where an audience has insight into The Man’s past, present and future.

 

References:

Rubbish Theatre. (2017) If an Orchid Was All You Had. [Performance] Jacob Kay (dir.) Lincoln: Lincoln Performing Arts Centre, 22nd May.

Crawford, J. (2017) If an Orchid Was All You Had.

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The Interludes

Throughout the performance there are five short interludes where I get off the bike and care for an orchid. Once this happens the audience are effectively taken to the ‘real world’. As a company, we wanted to have one character who the audience could form a relationship with, whilst the others are simply an ensemble with ‘no identity’. This required me to understand my character inside and out. Konstantin Stanislavski believed “every action on stage must have an inner justification, be logical, coherent and real” (Stanislavski, 1963, p.8). It was the aim of the director from the outset to create a character who was precise in every movement. This influence was mainly drawn from Clov in Samuel Beckett’s Endgame (1957). Throguhout Endgame, Clov is meticulous and precise with all of his actions whilst caring for Hamm, which lets them ‘maintain an interdependent relationship’ (Silva da Bastos & Frias Matos, 2016, p.121) Together, the director and I wanted to achieve this relationship between my character and the orchid. Therefore, we decided to create interludes around the watering of the plant. Each interlude was consistent in content and accurate in movement e.g. how much water was applied and how the cloth was sprayed. This eventually formed a strong relationship between the man and his plant, as the interludes became almost a ritual.

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The above photo shows myself and the choreographer in discussion regarding the precise movements needed in the interlude scene. Even-though we aimed for consistency throughout the short scenes, it was important we developed on the narrative. Therefore, we decided to create a slight change to each with the appearance of a faceless woman and the intergration of the creatures (ensemble). By integrating the woman and ensemble, the audience soon began to realise the two worlds collapsing onto one another and the mental deterioration of the man.

 

Works Cited: 

 

Bastos da Silva, J & Frias Matos. (2016) A Time to Reason and Compare: International Modernism Revisited One Hundred Years After, London: Cambridge Scholars

Stanislavski, K. (1963) An Actors Handbook. New York: Routledge.

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The Bike

My performance will revolve heavily around one of our key pieces of set, the bike. The bike is used within our performance to take the audience into the main protagonist’s mind. This is achieved once I get on the bike and begin to peddle. As a company, we are hoping for a two-hour performance in which the set becomes an installation piece, where the audience may walk around an observe the main protagonists mind being created. Once this is achieved, the performance will begin immediately after. In the overall performance, I will be required to pedal for around forty minutes. Due to the heat of the lights and the short bursts of pace throughout, exhaustion will begin to takeover my body. Frantic Assembly, a renowned physical theatre company created a performance called Klub where they looked at the concept of exhaustion in their last scene. The company summarised it as a “physical sequence that played with both the notion and the practice of exhaustion. This came from observations and experiences in clubs where the levels of physical energy and endurance- all in the name of a good time- seemed both inspirational and extreme” (Graham and Hoggett, 2012, p.75). This links back to the bike, where individuals gain pleasure from the activity, yet some people take it to the extreme on how fast or how far they pedal. Throughout the performance the speed on the bike will vary due to the action on stage. In a part of high tension, the pedal will become a short sharp burst of pace. Therefore, because of the length of time I shall be biking it is imperative to control my diet and become fitter physically.

Above is a video of myself in the gym preparing for my performance role. I have created a ten-week high intensity programme which will help me to complete the challenge which lies ahead. Nancy Bishop believes “Being physically fit is important. It’s part of keeping the instrument tuned. Acting is physical” (Bishop, 2015, p.55). Therefore, it is crucial to stick to my ten-week plan to ensure I achieve a high focused performance in which I am capable to provide maximum energy on the bike. If this is achieved, due to the intimacy of the space the audience will be immersed into the world of the play and more importantly my mind.

 

Works Cited: 

 

Bishop, N. (2015) Auditioning for Film and Television: Secrets from a Casting Director. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing.

Graham, S. And Hoggett, S. (2015) The Frantic Assembly Book of Devising Theatre. London: Routledge.

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Reforming our mad world out of rubbish.

As the rehearsals have progressed, so too has the understanding and themes of our performance:

A man who rides a bike, who lives in a mad world and tends to a charming flower.

The introduction of the flower has helped me to make clear scenographic ideas, ideas which will be transformed into a dazzling, mad set that holds the meaning to our show, If an Orchid Was All You Had. Here is my initial set design, where all mistakes have been gone over with a pen (Further designs of each piece can be found in the technical documents section of this blog):

 Initial design

(Initial set design from 19th February. Crawford, 2017)

Nature has become a key theme within my set design, which reflects the central character of The Man and his obsession with an orchid. Nature also has the clearest cycle of life, therefore creating a large central tree as part of the set seemed only natural. A tree where The Man’s madness comes to life and his life, as he knows it, comes to an end. A tree formed out of our everyday, cycles of life.

 

Components of the tree:

Garden/Base – Half a wallpapering table, some extra bits of scrap wood, floral carpet (for the grass)

Flowers in garden – Bottle tops, ring pulls off drinks cans and unwanted sticks of glue

Trunk – 10 columns of food and drinks cans

Canopy/Top – Other half of the wallpapering table, some extra bits of scrap wood

Branches – Drinks bottles, cupboard tubing and the bought materials of tape and string

Fruits – Tops of food cans (they look just like apples)

Tree

(Finished Organ bike for If an Orchid Was All You Had. Image taken by Pearson, J. on Monday 22nd May 2017.

Rubbish Theatre, 2017)

The tree is central as it is the physical connection to The Man’s inner psyche and madness. The trees roots are damaged, industrial wire that provide the explicit connection to The Man when he’s on the bike. This results in the creatures also having an explicit connection to The Man, as they only enter and exit the stage from the tree. This also aids in sight lines in the audience as we are performing in a thrust format. Robert Klingelhoefer points out that, ‘Designing for the thrust stage, the designer must be very aware of the range of sightlines and create a variety of positions that will allow the director to place the actor at different angles to the audience’ (Klingelhoefer, 2009, 122).

The interconnection between the set and the creatures on stage means there has to be a connection with the materials and aesthetics used in the costumes. Working closely with Aiden Clark, our costume designer, it became clear that this crossover of set and costume is a very important part of creating a coherent atmosphere and world for the audience to be absorbed in.

A design choice of using the same materials for the tree’s canopy and the creature’s costumes was finalised, creating the desired meaning and effect that the creatures are a product of the tree and the tree is an extension of The Man, therefore giving the creatures a material entrapment to The Man on the bike.

 

References:

Klingelhowfer, R. (2017) The Craft and Art of Scenic Design: Strategies, Concepts, and Resources. Oxon: Routledge.

Rubbish Theatre. (2017) If an Orchid Was All You Had. [Performance] Jacob Kay (dir.) Lincoln: Lincoln Performing Arts Centre, 22nd May.