April 2015

April 30, 2015Verity Ficken No Comments

Managing the Minutes

As producer of Fill In The Blank Theatre one key task I do, is taking minutes during every meeting or rehearsal. This simple yet very important task enables us as a company to keep track of any ideas or suggestions regarding the company, the performance, the set, sound or lighting. With any theatre company, (especially that which consists of a large number in our case ten members) remembering every idea or contribution to the devising process is difficult and therefore often a potentially exciting idea can be missed or forgotten.

Freadman and Reade note that “in the case of all companies, efficient and effective marketing and organisation, as well as your originality and talent, are the keys to longevity” (Fredman and Reade, 1996, p.267). The point they raise re-enforces the importance of keeping minutes and rehearsal notes. It is vital to find the balance between creativity and organisation. By keeping minutes it means I can find this balance by noting everyone’s creative contributions which thus allows us as a company to remain organised.

Seabright notes that “one key purpose of these [production] meetings is to keep the director updated on how the production side of things is going, which can otherwise take a back seat in their priorities when rehearsals are in full swing” (Seabright, 2010, p.272). This is also where the task of taking minutes comes into play. As Seabright notes often the production side of the process can take a ‘back seat’ during the devising process as most of the Directors focus is on the rehearsals and creating the content itself. By myself and often the stage manager taking notes and minutes in rehearsals it enables us to be able to give the in-house technical team at the venue a better idea of our performance from the offset.

Arranging production meetings with the in-house technical team is important as it means we can establish early on our vision and if it is achievable. By taking notes it means I can then feedback to the Director as Seabright notes informing them on how things are going and what the technical team suggest if problems arise.

It is clear that taking minutes and notes throughout the devising process is important for keeping the company on track and as Seabright notes fulfilling “one really important part of a producer’s role is maintaining a view of the ‘big picture’ at all times in the production process” (Seabright, 2010, p.12).

Works Cited:

Freadman, R. and Reade, I. (1996) Essential Guide to Making Theatre. London: Hodder and Stoughton.

Seabright, J. (2010) So You Want to be a Theatre Producer? London: Nick Hern Books.

April 30, 2015Katherine Alice Copley No Comments

Dancing and dialogue!

We’re all starting to feel very excited here at Fill In The Blank Theatre. We’ve nearly got a full show and we’re currently developing the new bits. We’re in the process of creating a props scene with Alice D. as the wife and all of the other cast jumping in and out of the scene manipulating the props. At the minute we only have about a minute and a half of this scene so our goal for the next two weeks is to extend that scene as well as re-structuring the second props scene with all of the wives telling different stories and remembering different moments the couple has shared. In this scene we’ve been playing with different ways to have all of the wives on stage without it looking to messy, the strength in this scene is in the simplicity of the moment and so we want to avoid over complicating it.

It was also learned in the past two weeks that in a scene to signify the wife leaving Rachel will perform a dance solo. I think this is a great idea because so far Rachel hasn’t really had the chance to show off her strengths on stage so I feel that as long as all of the character’s intentions are clear having a dance solo is great! So really we’ve just been polishing bits that we already have set in these past two weeks, we also added an ‘argument’ scene onto the end of the ribbon sequence with Michael now speaking over the dialogue. My concern for this scene is that the audience may not understand the ribbon sequence because at the minute we don’t have a transition into the scene, this is because we’re not yet sure where in the piece it would work best so we can’t completely plan the transition. The good news is that our director is fantastic so I’m sure he’s got a plan!

Our tech is in two weeks so the main priority is to make sure we have a fully coherent running order and a finished piece so that Alice S, Naomi and Michael C. can get all of their lighting, sound and projection cues in order before the tech. I know Alice is planning to have all of the sound already programmed to save time in the tech so that there is more time to focus and programme all the lights.

Here is the updated version of my doctor text, there are two here and it just shows you the progression of the text in the last two weeks!

The longer file is the final version of the text: during the pauses at the start the various wives stand up an leave the stage.

The second file is the second draft. You can see how it has changed a lot from the original draft.

April 28, 2015Naomi French No Comments

Teaching music

As part of the piece, I want to incorporate Michael playing piano on stage as well, to bring a sense of realism to the story, the fact that the man in the play can still remember to play piano, even though he suffers from severe Amnesia. The reason this particular piece of music was chosen is because of its simplistic, yet haunting and captivating melody. One of the outstanding things about Encephalitis is although the memory is severely impaired, and yet their memory of music and how to play the piano are intact, ‘the brain’s music system appears to operate with functional independence from the language system’ (Levitin, 2006, 127). It is indeed a daunting prospect at the thought of learning a song on piano, for someone who had never played piano before. The piece of music I have chosen is John Tavener’s The Lamb:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2V9lE_FxK8

The reason for this was because Tavener is a well-known classical composer, so I want to bring some variety of musical genre into the show. Although it was a relatively simplistic melody, by the end of the hour, we managed to add in chords on the left hand as well as playing the melody on the right. Michael has never played piano before and he picked it all up in the hour which was incredible!

11194841_10205928719312483_2005157173_o — Teaching Michael the piano

We started off first with the basics, learning the melody on the right hand. We did it note by note, slowly adding on a new note every time with Michael copying me 2 octaves below, continuing this method until he had picked it up. The main challenge was holding on the different notes for different counts, so introduced the pedal which sustains the note for longer. We then went on to learn just the left hand melody and split it into three sections. For an aid for Michael I placed small blank stickers on the piano with either the first or second chord he was meant to play. The two chords were G major and D major so the G major chord had #1 written on, and the D major chord had #2 on it. This made it much easier for Michael to differentiate between the notes. I have made a decision that it is best to leave out the slightly discordant harmonies from the beginning of the original song, as it is going to be played over some happy emotive text spoken by one of the cast members playing the wife.

-Naomi

Works Cited

Levitin, J. D (2006) This is your brain on music. London: Penguin Books Ltd.

Tavener, J. (1996) The Lamb. [online] Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2V9lE_FxK8 [Accessed 28^th April 2015]

April 23, 2015Verity Ficken No Comments

Becoming a Producer? What it is, My role and Our Company

In a theatre company, “the producer’s role can appear confusing and indefinable. The briefest of definitions would be that the producer is responsible for delivering a good show, on time and in budget” (Seabright, 2010, p.5) Seabright’s definition of a producer’s role in a theatre company is similar to that of mine, as producer of Fill In The Blank Theatre.

Freakley and Sutton note that “working creatively in a group brings different challenges. It can be a very rewarding experience since a group of imaginative people working together can very often achieve far more than they could as individuals”. (Freakley and Sutton, 1996, p.120) This is certainly the case in our theatre company as it consists of 10 artists. In order to keep good working relationships, Freakley and Sutton note that they are maintained “by knowing when to insist, when to let go and when to compromise” (Freakley and Sutton, 1996, p.121). This will certainly need to be the case within our theatre company as we are devising our piece.

Within my role, I am responsible for ensuring that the work we create as a company is of a professional standard, finished within plenty of time before the opening night and ensuring all of this is done within budget. It is also part of my job role to communicate with all members of the company, in particular the production team, ensuring that everyone is on task and is on board with the same vision. As part of my role, I will keep minutes of all meetings/rehearsals to ensure that we don’t forget topics/ideas we have discussed and it also means I can make sure we stay on track with the schedule.

We established early on that we wanted to be a collaborative devising company. Although we’d have defined roles in regards to the production, we’d all be able to input creatively into the devising process assisting our Director (Michael). Below is our company structure and how the roles co-inside and communicate with each other;

(Ficken, 2015)

As you can see from the above diagram, several of the company roles are connected. Firstly the producer and director are linked with the stage manager as ongoing discussions need to be had during the process in order to decide what the staging will look like and if it will fit in with the Director’s vision. The stage manager is then responsible for contacting the set, lighting and sound designers in order to set them upon the task of sourcing and creating the set for the performance. As producer I will also be in regular contact with the marketing manager to discuss plans of how and when we will market the show for example discussing the copy of the show and deciding on an image.

As aforementioned briefly, one of my main responsibilities as producer is to make sure that the performance is all kept under budget. Originally we decided that set and costume would have the smallest amount of budget as this fitted with the designer’s vision, however as time passed and ideas progressed it became evident that set would cost considerably more than first budgeted. Luckily as a theatre company, along with our budget given to us by the university, we fund-raised over £100 to add to our budget. Below is a draft of our budget. It is likely to change due to unforeseen costs, such as the labor costs of set.

FITB Budget

(Ficken, 2015)

In order to ensure that the budget is kept up to date, I will be in regular contact with our Stage Manager (Alice S) and Assistant Stage Manager (Katherine).

Verity – Producer, Fill In The Blank Theatre.

Works Cited:

Ficken, V. (2015) Company Structure.

Ficken, V. (2015) Company Budget.

Freakley, V., Sutton, R. (1996) Essential Guide to Business in the Performing Arts. London: Hodder and Stoughton Educational.

Seabright, J. (2010) So You Want To Be a Theatre Producer? London: Nick Hern Books.

April 20, 2015Alice Dale No Comments

Rehearsal Photos #2

Aswell as being the marketing manager for Fill In The Blank, I am also a performer which means I sometimes have to hand over the camera in rehearsals to one of the non-performing members of our company. I then edit these images and upload them to our social media so we can share our progress with our online following.

Here are some of the images from our last rehearsal where we worked with ribbon to try out some new ideas…