Month: April 2017

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Influences

IMPACT

As the the weeks progressed, so did our process. The theatre company Frantic Assembly inspired us as a theatre company for our rehearsals and developing our work. Frantic Assembly’s Scott Graham and Steven Hoggett use many rehearsal techniques when creating a performance. As a Theatre Company Rubbish Theatre have been inspired by some of these when creating our performance If An Orchid Was All You Had (2017). The use of video camera in rehearsal was one of the techniques that inspired us. This allowed us to record all the material we were making, and enabled us to see what worked, and what didn’t. Graham and Hoggett state: “by filming […] sessions on the video camera we provided ourselves with a wealth of information that used constantly throughout the entire rehearsal period” (Graham and Hoggett, 2009, 39). Our process is documented through the use of video camera, while enlightening us to the areas that need working on.

In the early stages of rehearsals we used another of Frantic Assembly’s rehearsal techniques by using music. Music enabled us to build a bond as a theatre company, which was paramount as we work very closely as an ensemble throughout the performance. The use of music also allowed us to merge our ideas together, as the music would make each of us have a different feeling, in which we could carry into our performance and into our characterisation of The Creatures. For me as a performer this was very helpful in developing my movement as a Creature, and being able to use this to get into character.

  

DEVELOPMENT

A group coming together for the first may find introductory practical work an instrumental way of getting to know each other, using games, concentration, and trust exercises to develop a sense of discipline, fun, and spontaneity at the same time

(Oddey, 1996, 171).

 

As our performance is really starting to take shape, we are learning about each other as performers. As earlier on in the process we were interested in the idea of circuses, we have tried many exercises to start to develop our characters. One of the techniques we tried was embodying an animal, and moving around the room like this. We then further developed this idea by all of us becoming circus monkeys, and passing the video camera around between us. “The process of setting up improvisations in the creative development does not draw on Stanislavskian ideas of character and motivation, but centres on formal tasks and interactions between performers” (Heddon and Milling, 2006, 168).

In a previous blog post you can see my make-up ideas, which involve a handprint on the face. We have now developed this, and have chosen to integrate this within the piece and use this as a ritual at the beginning of the performance. The Woman places a single handprint on our faces to symbolise us committing to the madness of The Man’s inner psyche.

 

CHARACTERISATION

SCENE BY SCENE

AWAKENING PART ONE 

  • Regimented
  • Creepy

This scene was choreographed by Kerrie, and as The Creatures in this scene we are regimented in the beginning, this is an indicator into The Man’s life, as we had decided as an ensemble that he may have previously been in the Army.

AWAKENING PART TWO 

  • Happy
  • Over dramatic
  • Big smiles

My characterisation for this scene was influenced by Forced Entertainments First Night (2001), as in their performance they use creepy smiling faces throughout, even when talking about issues that are not happy subjects.

First Night (2001)

First Night (2001)                                                                                                                                                                           (Real Time, 2004)

 

Devised performance [is] an opportunity for the actors to create new rituals

(Heddon and Milling, 2006, 48).

In our performance we have many motifs/rituals, which follow through to different scenes. One of these being our smiling faces, in which we use throughout the performance. This scene was also influenced by a Saturday Night Live Sketch called Great Day.

 

Attached is the video of the sketch, in which you can see that everything is going wrong for the man, yet he still has a massive smile on his face and ignores the problems that arise, which is what we do within this scene.

MEMORY

  • Sneaky
  • Eclectic

For some of this scene I take on the role of The Man, yet still as a Creature. For this scene I was able to reflect on my own experience of speaking to a councillor to portray speaking to a therapist. This scene is rather difficult as a performer, as I was playing The Man but I was a Creature, messing with The Man’s memory.

 SADISM

  • Cheesy
  • Crazy

For this scene I have taken inspiration from watching videos of ring girls at boxing matches. I am someone who is trying to boost the audience, while holding up signs saying: LAUGH NOW, APPLAUSE and AWW. With this I still play with dark comedy throughout the scene.

Works Cited:

Graham, S., and Hoggett, S. (2009) The Frantic Assembly Book of Devising Theatre. Abington, Oxon: Routledge.

Heddon, D., and Milling, J. (2006) Devising Performance a critical history. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. 

Oddey, A. (1996) Devising Theatre a Practical and Theoretical Handbook. London: Routledge.

Real Time (2004) First Night [image]. Available from http://www.realtimearts.net/article/issue59/7335 [accessed 27 April 2017].

Saturday Night Live (2013) SNL Digital Short: Great Day – Saturday Night Live. Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNgZJrdTCug [accessed 12 May 2017].

 

 

 

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Directing Silence (mostly…)

In his book ‘The Empty Space’ (1968), Peter Brook explains “A man walks across [an] empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged” (Brook, 1996, 9). It has always been apparent that ‘Orchid’ would be a heavily physical piece. Indeed, the very first material we began to explore were the Interlude scenes, which involve the Cyclist’s ritual with the orchid and the mysterious Woman watching over him. This is why I believe that Brook’s words have relevance here. The Interludes, considered by the company as the thread that runs throughout ‘Orchid’, must engage the audience without the use of words. They must show instead of tell, using space and proxemics to their advantage. With the four Interlude scenes and the final dance we have in their current form, the choreographer Kerrie and I worked very closely to achieve the vision we all wanted. We began by deciding to work on these scenes separately, with only her, Jacob (who plays the Cyclist) and myself present (in fact, we have only just begun bringing the rest of the company to these rehearsals). We felt workshopping these scenes with just the three of us allowed us to be more focused on them, and also allowed the main rehearsals to be entirely for work that included the whole company. In the earlier smaller rehearsals, I began being surprised at how passive my role was. I felt as though I should be doing more but, at that point, there was not much more I could do. As Katie Mitchell puts it, “it [is] best to rely on people who [are] trained in these specialised fields to lead the work directly” (Mitchell, 2009, 96). As I quickly began to realise, my role early on was to make sure that I was very clear in communicating to Kerrie what I needed from the movement, so she could adapt and develop her own ideas in the rehearsals, and to avoid the rest of the company being “pulled in two different directions” (Mitchell, 2009, 96). It made sense to me in these earlier rehearsals to make notes on the other aspects of the scene e.g how I saw the lights and sound to be, were the proxemics/sight lines looking correct etc. When the specific movements were decided upon and rehearsed to a degree, then we began looking deeper into the performances of Jacob and Kerrie. Of course, I had always used words like manipulation and envy to describe the Woman’s movements, but here was when we began implementing them rigorously.

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Although a contradiction with the title of this post, music was extremely useful to not only the show itself, but to our process. Focusing before a rehearsal or workshop is integral to the success of it. I found using one track at the beginning of most rehearsals very effective in focusing the company, as it eventually became routine to get into the space, lie down with eyes closed, and listen to the song in its entirety before beginning. This is the song I used below:c06aa3_0b7c0a9115c640409bd1788b651e4608~mv2_d_1359_1812_s_2

Works Cited
Bianca S (2012) Enter Shikari – Constellations [online video]
Brook, P. (1996) The Empty Space. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Mitchell, K. (2009) The Director’s Craft: A Handbook for the Theatre. London: Routledge.

 

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A Choreography Process

Daly describes movement as: ‘There is nothing so powerful and extraordinary but at the same time so mundane and overlooked as movement.’ (Daly, 1988, 41). This influences the choreography process for a choreographer due to the freedom and expression that comes with movement naturally. So once meaning is put to the movement can create something beautifully visual and meaningful within a performance.

Throughout the process of choreography includes:

  • Design and Visual Ideas
  • Clear communication of Movement
  • Angles and Audience views

Throughout my process of choreographer i have been abiding by these three points. The work of a choreographer starts with the design and ideas from the director. Then I must work and design ideas yet keeping in mind the space we have, the costumes that will be worn and possible obstructions to look out for. Company members have expressed to me that they are not “movement based” which is why i must take the time to break down my ideas and express them clearly so they understand. ‘Choreographers in community theatre must often work with non-dancers, or dancers with limited experience, as well as those who have had considerable training.  This can mean extra rehearsal time, which must be planned for.’ (American Association of Community Theatre, 2017).

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Photo Credit: Kerrie Crockford

The use of communication when it comes to choreographing movement is key. The performer must understand what I am asking of them. As Carbone, Montesi and Schürmann express: ‘The key aspect of choreography languages is that process interactions are treated linearly, i.e., they are executed exactly once.’ (Carbone et al, 2017). I follow this in the way that I explain how I want something executed and get the performer to carry it out. Of course I will demonstrate as well, but to get them to jump into the movement helps to make them more comfortable with carrying it out and performing it. I work specifically close with one of the performers as they are involved in 5 interlude scenes that include precise movement. This precise movement means that it has to look exactly the same each time. As pictured, I am working with one of the performers on the 5th interlude scene. I am going through the movement with him step by step to show him how he is to move, perform and react to the other performers. To fix any changes and mistakes I must explain clearly what needs to be done about it. My way of working includes video recordings so the performer can refer back to what they are being asked of. In the recording below shows an exercise I carried out with Jacob. Within this exercise I had him mirror movement which would hopefully later on in the process would become part of the shows choreography.

 

References

American Association of Community Theatre (2017) The Choreographers Job. Available from https://www.aact.org/theatre-people [accessed 11 April 2017]

Carbone, M., Montesi, F., Schürmann, C. (2017) Choreographies, logically. Distributed Computing. 1-17.

Daly, A. (1988) Movement Analysis. TDR: The Drama Review. 32 (4) 40-52.

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Role

We have now started to immerse ourselves into our roles that each of us has taken on within the theatre company, learning about them and putting them into practice. My primary role in Rubbish Theatre is a performer, with my secondary role being the hair and make-up stylist.

 

PERFORMER

 Acting is the art of performing in theatre, especially using the actor’s voice and body

(Allain and Harvie, 2006, 127).

 

As Rubbish Theatre we are very focused on each of us working equally together to make a collaborative performance. “Company structure, roles or responsibilities within the group, and the use of a variety of processes all contribute to the making of the devised product” (Oddey, 1996, 73). Our performance relies heavily on ensemble work, as a theatre company we wanted to ensure each of us is a performer in our debut show If An Orchid Was All You Had. We have two protagonists that form the through-line to our piece. We have chosen not to name them, and we refer to them as ‘The Man’ and ‘The Woman’. The rest of the ensemble we have named ‘The Creatures’. The Man is on a bike throughout the performance, to represent the cyclic motion of life. He gets off of the bike five times to form the interludes to our piece. This allows for the audience to build a relationship with The Man. It is the interludes where you see The Man’s obsession and relationship with the orchid, while each of the scenes are extensions of his inner psyche represented by The Creatures on stage.

 

As performers, we have developed our characterisation of The Creatures, which was done by using different rehearsal techniques to inspire us. We were influenced by Jacques Lecoq’s methods of training “Lecoq has influenced many artists specializing [sic] in comic and physically exaggerated styles of performance” (Allain and Harvie, 2006, 50). This was to help us develop as performers, and believe our roles as The Creatures. “”great deceivers” are so entrancing as performers that they convince themselves of the truth of what they perform” (Schechner, 2013, 215).

 

HAIR AND MAKE-UP

 

As the hair and make-up stylist for the theatre company, I wanted to ensure that my ideas matched the aesthetic of the set and costume. The costume designer, Aiden Clark has been working very closely with the set designer James Crawford enabling us all to collaborate with our ideas on the visual that we want to achieve. The costume and set focuses on our dystopian world, in which I wanted to carry through into the hair and make-up. Below are a number of the ideas I have:

 

The Hand Print

The Hand Print

 

Each of The Creatures would have an individual hand print on their face – this would represent:

  • We are all the same
  • We are in The Man’s mind
  • We are controlled

James has chosen to have aluminous colours within the set, and glow in the dark paint, with this I want the make-up to be reflective of that and will choose a colour that also can be seen aluminous.

woman

The Woman

I also want The Woman’s make-up to be aluminous, but it needs to be separate from The Creatures. My ideas are:

  • Two opposing colours – this is to represent pain and pleasure
  • Mask like
  • Beautiful and powerful

 

Works Cited

Allain, P., and Harvie, J. (2006) The Routledge Companion to Theatre and Performance. Abington, Oxon: Routledge.

Oddey, A. (1996) Devising Theatre a Practical and Theoretical Handbook. London: Routledge.

Schechner, R. (2013) Performance Studies: An Introduction, 3rd edition. Abington, Oxon: Routledge.

 

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Initial Costume Ideas

I worked as Aiden’s assistant on the creation of the costumes for Rubbish Theatre’s debut performance. Our original themes we were working around were the circus and a dystopian world, so we both created some quick designs based upon our initial reaction to these themes. My design focused on the ability to quickly change a costume to create something new, starting with a dystopian world base, and it being transformed into a circus-esque, elaborate costume.

costumesdesigns

As visible in the above photo of one of my early designs, the base is a slightly dirty, ripped outfit made with burlap or hessian as per Aiden’s final material decision. Our set is so versatile and adjustable so I thought that our costume should be on par with that. Ruffled collars and sleeves which can be added on and taken off with ease are a pivotal element of my vision, with inspiration from traditional clown costumes.

clown1 (alyssa sonley-cooper)

clown2 (New Line Cinema, 2017)

Clowns are interesting to me because of their extreme contrast between bringing joy and evoking fear. To some people clowns bring back memories of childhood parties and fun, and to many others clowns are terrifying. Their true identity is concealed in thick make-up and elaborate costumes which is scary as they could be anyone (or anything) underneath the outfit.

I also recently visited a more modern circus in which I took inspiration from a trapeze artist who had lights underneath his costume which were not visible until they were turned on and shone through his trousers. I love the idea of something being there the whole time, yet not being able to see it until the artists wants it to be seen. The notion of hidden messages waiting to be revealed links again to our set in which UV and glow in the dark paint is a feature we are working on incorporating into the set. We have looked at a scene from the film Orphan in which paintings seemingly innocent are revealed to be quite horrific when looked at in a different light, from a different perspective.

(Caitlyn Keefer, 2015)

 

Works Cited

alyssa sonley-cooper Whiteface Clown Designs [image]. Available from https://uk.pinterest.com/alyssasonleycoo/whiteface-clown-designs/ [accessed 28 May 2017].

New Line Cinema (2017) Pennywise [image]. Available from http://www.mlive.com/movies/index.ssf/2017/03/it_is_back_is_bill_skarsgard_a.html [accessed 28 May 2017].

Caitlyn Keefer (2015) Orphan | ‘Esther’s Paintings’ Scene . Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0mSLDeHce0 [accessed 28 May 2017].