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:

 

 

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.

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, 3^rd edition. Abington, Oxon: Routledge.