March 2015

March 30, 2015Alice Dale No Comments

Finding a face…

Marketing for the arts and commercial marketing are two very different ideas. In the commercial sense, the marketing ‘dictates the nature of the product or service through conforming it to the requirements of the customer’ (Hill et al, 2003, 2). This is the main area in which it differs from arts marketing. Marketing for the arts does not dictate what the product should be but instead it takes influence and attempts to represent the work that the artist is creating. Instead of tailoring the work to what is being demanded in the market, it ‘needs to start with the product and find customers for it’ (Hill et al, 2003, 3) and I have done this for our company by finding out that our audience are highly engaged students based at the University of Lincoln.

It is important that the marketing materials for the company are coherent with the ideas that the creative team have for the performance. Whilst creating the image for the play, I had discussions with the company’s creative team so that I understood the direction that the play would be moving in. We decided that there were a few key elements that would definitely be integrated within the show. These included…

The importance of live music.

The use of projection.

Memory loss.

Science.

Michael Cahill as the main character.

A Colour scheme of red, blue, grey, white and black.

As we are still developing the final show, it is quite difficult to create an image that matches the artist’s intentions for the piece. Therefore, I used these characteristic as a design brief when creating the image.

My main idea was to use a double exposure effect on a photograph. I wanted the image to be of Michael who is playing ‘The Man’ in the performance. I took a lot of inspiration from the pictures below…

57ed8d3f15c1f4099cdff41178a0ce99 — Albi, A., 2013

f9f71bbde90dcd5988de24981fd04a04 — Tu, G., 2012.

As our show is about memories and I wanted to show the complexity of what goes on inside our heads. The layering of the images helps to show this and it is also a really beautiful effect.

I had never tried to create this effect on photoshop before so I knew it was going to take me a few tries before I managed to get the right image.

Within our piece, another important element is music so I decided that one of the layers in the photo would be sheet music.

I liked the effect that it created but i didn’t like the colour scheme of the image. I also thought there needed to be more than one thing layered in the double exposure as it put too much focus on the sheet music and suggests our piece is mainly about music when it is only an element of it.

I preferred this image but the background needed to be a colour and there needed to be another image layered.

I then changed the image that was layered over the top and added the font. I really liked the image but once again, I wanted to add another layer over the top and wanted to try this with the sheet music I used previously. After some feedback on the image I also decided that the text was not bold enough and possibly needed to be further down on the image.

This is the final image with all of the information on it aswell. I like this image as I believe it portrays our performance well. I like the image of the light layered over the sheet music as we are using both music and projection within the piece and this hints at it. The font is bolder and the layering of the white font over the main image makes it stand out and look bold.

Work Cited-

Albi, A. (2013) Nature Boy. [electronic print] Available from https://www.flickr.com/photos/alessioalbi/9617537966/in/photostream/ [Accessed on 20 of April 2015].

Amamak Photograpy (2011) Sunshine On My Mind. [electronic print] Available from https://www.flickr.com/photos/artzyviv/6390297865/in/photostream [Accessed on 20 of April 2015].

Susan, H., O’Sullivan, C. and O’Sullivan, T. (2003) Creative Arts Marketing. 2nd edition. Oxford: Butterworth and Heinemann.

Tu, G. (2012) Wanderlust [electronic print] Available from: https://www.flickr.com/photos/gretatu/7432964390/in/photostream [Accessed on 20 of April 2015].

All images not cited were either taken or created by myself.

March 24, 2015Hannah Kate Thorpe No Comments

Production Meeting #1

Our company had their preliminary production meeting and some very exciting ideas have been discussed! Meeting with the head technician lighting sound and set design were all narrowed down so that they could be finalised. The meeting allowed us to give the Head Technician an idea of what I want our set to look like and to give him an idea of materials that may have to be sourced and whether the venue could accommodate my vision. This is a brief outline that I presented for our initial ideas.

SET DESIGN: FILL IN THE BLANK THEATRE.

The desired set design for our show will combine emotive elements whilst also representing the scientific side of the story. The stage will be quite sparse in the centre and any set will be upstage centre and downstage left and right, framing our stage space.

Our theme and narrative is about memories and memory loss, I envision clear Perspex or clear plastic boxes/thick or wide clear frames that will hold a variety of objects. These boxes/ frames and objects will be lit individually by small battery powered LEDs. Through the action and narrative of the performance these lights will be gradually be turned off, representing our protagonists loss of memory.

To represent the scientific side the boxes of ‘memories’ will be connected by either red rope or cables. These cables represent the synapses and connections the brain makes when remembering. For health and safety these will only be on the stage floor downstage where the actors are less likely to walk. In rehearsal they will be marked so they become accustomed to their place. There is a possibility that they’re maybe boxes/frames hanging from the lighting rig that will also hold, these will be plot by the lighting rig and programmed into QLab. Our lighting designer has discussed that he may want the rig lowered therefore they will not high off the stage but still hanging with enough space above to accommodate the physical theatre scenes and lifts. See diagram for rough idea.

This brief came alongside a rough diagram I drew up to give an idea of placement of the set and a rough diagram of the boxes. See below;

sketch first GP

(Thorpe, 2015)

The idea for this was that the boxes would litter the stage frame the small projection screen upstage and the same with the piano. Here we are in the early stages of creative development therefore I recognise that the positioning of the boxes will most likely change depending on the blocking of each scene.

In beginning my research into different set designers I came across American designer John Conkiln. Conklin is known for using art to influence his designs, through this is not how I developed my ideas, the reasons for creating such a set, incorporating the science and emotional side of our performance echos Conklin’s belief on how set sho uld be represented on stage, he creates his set for a deeper psychological insight into the world of the play, this then “allows him to connect to the work that is present, you are connecting lives and feeling, it’s not just decor” (Aronson, 1990, 18) The idea of the set representing a couple’s memories , then incorporating the lights to dim as each memory fades matches Conklin’s ideal of what set design should be. It is part of our production not just there to fill in the

Works Cited:

Aronson, A. P (1990) American Set Design. New York; Theatre Communications

March 24, 2015Naomi French No Comments

Music for the performance

I have recently been researching into the music I want to use in the performance now we have found our concept. Through the music and the voice overs, the audience should be immersed within the experience of the performance; ‘the shape of sound is round and I am in the middle’ (Brown, 2010, 141). I have specifically chosen tracks that accomplish just that, encompassing the audience to accompany the scene. Below, I have linked my current Spotify playlist that either has tracks being used in the actual performance or songs that I have been inspired by. In the playlist, there are a range of different genres of music from drum and bass for the faster, upbeat tempo physical theatre sequences, classical, instrumental, minimalist beats, and acoustic music. Each track has been chosen for a specific reason because ‘music is an exceptionally emotionally rich and engaging sensory stimulus’ (Agustus et al, 2015, 232). Therefore, I have chosen quite a number of instrumental piano songs as the piano is such a emotional, thought provoking and gentle yet dramatic instrument. One of the pieces I am aim to use in the final ending song is Call to the Dance by Michael Jones. With the melody in a major key, the piece uses only the higher end of the octave notes which evokes memories happy, playful times, due to its fun, almost magical feel to it, truly capturing the name of the piece.

Throughout our piece, we have chosen to incorporate a lot of physical theatre sequences to portray the story of the relationship. During one of the scenes, we have taken inspiration from Frantic Assembly’s ‘Chair Duets’; ‘a very physical scene of touches, embraces, flirtations and rejections’ (Graham and Hoggett, 2009, 141). After this scene progressed and changed in rehearsals, I tried out what it would be like to have the movement sequence in silence the contrast the scene that preceded it; a heavily fast up-beat drum and bass. It was indeed very effective, subtle and understated which is what this scene showed. An important point that Kendrick and Roesner raise in Theatre Noise is ‘how loudly the absence of sound can ‘speak’ (Kendrick and Roesner, 2011, xix). It forces the audience to focus on what is happening on stage through the stillness and sometimes this can be more effective than having music for the sake of it.

-Naomi.

Works Cited

Agustus, J. L Mahoney, C. J Downey, L. E Omar, R. Cohen, M. Warren, J. D White, M. J Mancini, L. Scott, S. K (2015) Functional MRI of music emotion in frontotemporal dementia. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. 1337 (1) 232-240.

Brown, R. (2010) Sound: A reader in theatre practice. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.

Graham, S. and Hoggett, S. (2009) The Frantic Assembly book of devising theatre. London: Routledge.

Kendrick, L. and Roesner, D. (2011) Theatre Noise: The Sound of Performance. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars publishing.

March 22, 2015Michael Cahill No Comments

Grotowski

This week in rehearsals I worked on a scene where I had to physically portray The Man’s love for music through the use of the body alone. Naomi, our sound designer, played the piano as I slowly navigated towards her, with my hands leading the rest of my body away from the doctor’s chair. I researched Grotowski’s techniques and the following video really inspired my movements for this scene which showed how vivid music was in my character’s life, despite his memory loss:

In this video, the highly-trained actor Ryszard Cieslak physicalizes a bird, adopting animalistic traits in his bodily movements. Whilst I was not emulating the same idea as this actor in my own scene, I used this approach to the movement of my whole body to show the effect that music has on The Man’s life. In doing so, my hand led the pathway of my choreography as I wrote music notes with my hands in the air, creating an interesting visual picture. Thomas Richards spoke about Grotowki’s method saying that, ‘we cannot set feeling; we can only set physical action’ (Richards, 67, 1995). By this idea, we aimed to physically portray emotion and feeling through the movement of the body. We became fascinated in rehearsal with finding ways to physically express emotions without the aid of long pieces of dialogue. In many ways, our whole piece now consists of two forms of communication: the dialogue of text and the dialogue of movement. By fusing the two together, we have started to create an interesting piece of theatre which amalgamates different styles to portray a narrative to the audience.

Works Cited:

Contemporary Arts Media artfilms (2009) Training at Grtowski’s “Laboratorium” in Wrozlaw in 1972 Screener. [online video] Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRyLLTvs00c [Accessed 18 March 2015].

Richards, T. (1995) At Work with Grotowski on Physical Actions. London: Routledge.

March 19, 2015Katherine Alice Copley No Comments

Let’s get physical!

In the past two weeks our devising process has really hit its stride! We started off by creating a movement piece that was developed in a workshop led by Michael W. This consisted of writing a letter to somebody to tell them something that we couldn’t say, we then put them all together and split off into pairs (I was working with Alice S.). We took one letter between us that neither of us had written and were giving the task of performing the letter. Working with a Frantic Assembly fanatic we quickly decided that we would create a short duet based on ‘tiny hugs’ to represent a mother, daughter relationship that we took from the emotions expressed in the letter. As Alice S. was not going to be in the performance, she then stepped out and helped me to adapt the sequence to perform on my own. It was great for me to have support doing this as I feel very challenged doing physical theatre work. Something I read when doing a different piece of work was very resonant in this moment:

“We are surprisingly unfamiliar with our bodies and many actors are inhibited about using them. Yet the body is the actor’s primary instrument. To be brave and open requires a sentient and responsive body free from the limitations imposed by self-consciousness or fear” (Callery, 2001, p.22).

For me, physical work is daunting anyway, but I was very quickly in a situation where I felt isolated on the stage and this made me feel very awkward in the space. However, this worked in favour of the piece because it highlighted the loneliness of the character. Michael W. pointed out that it looked like it was the tale of one woman remembering different moments of her life. We proceeded to add moments of interaction with other cast members, so they would break away from their pairs and have a moment of interaction. The sequence evolved further by having half of the pairs and me leaving the stage to allow for some of the cast to read some of the letters.

I have also spent time developing a text about encephalitis. A lot of the text came from an online source so my next step is to contact them and get permission to use the text in performance. I also used the source and researched further into the parts of the brain that are affected and what those parts do, so for example the fact that some of the affected parts of the brain are responsible for speech and movement so I tried to incorporate this into the text. Below is a voice recording of the doctor’s speech, first draft.

Work Cited

Callery, D. (2001) Through the Body: A Practical Guide to Physical Theatre. Kent: Nick Hern Books.