Today the company met in our venue, Lincoln Performing Arts Centre, to finalise all of our technical requirements for our performance next week. As LD, I set up the lighting rig with the venue staff, inputted the cues into Qlab and the in-house lighting board. Overall, the day was a great success. All lighting cues went as planned and we were able to run the show in rehearsal to see the effect that the lights and sound had on our production. I provided the technicians with detailed focus charts of each lighting state that I wanted for the whole play – making the task of focusing and inputting the lights a smooth process. A difficult ‘tech-heavy’ scene involved a Time Lapse projection in which we decided to use two projectors, to give a distorted feel to the hectic scene. Here is a sneak peak for what is to come:
Copley, K. (2015)
It has been great to see how the play has translated from our rehearsals in smaller studio spaces to the wider stage. We are all very excited for the upcoming week and the premiere of our first performance as a company!
So today was the day, the opportunity to finally put together the rest of our piece. Our lighting and sound designers have been working so hard, having only 24hours to put together our tech documents, so it was amazing to see their ideas come to life of stage!
Two weeks before our tech, our ASM organised a session with the LPAC stage manager, Darren, for us to try out a few ideas before making our final decisions for tech. We asked the team to provide us with 2 microphones, a Black Optima Pro projector and a small collapsible projection screen. We experimented with the cast performing with rear projection -‘a subset of the silhouette… where figures are seen against a brightly lit background’ (Campbell, 2004, 79)- and front projection -which will reflect the projected image onto the actors bodies- in order to get an idea of the kind of shadows we could create through the light from the projector. As the scene that requires the projection is a timelapse, the front projection seemed to really highlight the character’s confusion. We also decided that the footage would look more effective on the auditorium’s Cyclorama rather than a small screen. This extra time to explore tech really set us up for our Tech day.
I decided that for the first two hours of our 4 hour tech that only 6members of the cast should attend: SM, ASM, SD, LD, PR and DESIGNER. This was purely based on the session with Darren mentioned earlier. Although the power of our creativeness so far has stemmed from there being a large number of us, when it comes to making final decisions so many voices can become confusing. Tech day is the ‘point where everything that has been worked out on paper comes to fruition in practice’ (Bond, 1991, 71), and so the first 2hour session only required those necessary for the set up of production. Attached below is the schedule I created for that day, to which we almost 100% stuck to. The only changes were the cast were rescheduled to arrive at 11.30, and that instead of doing a cue to cue, we in fact fitted in a full run:
Having in-putted all of our sound and video cue’s into Qlab prior to the day, our main focus was on the stage setup and lighting. Due to our piece exposing the science and emotion behind memory loss, we wanted our set to mimic such unmasking…literally! We asked for all of the soft masking and borders around the stage to be removed, exposing the lighting rig and wings. This fed into our scenic ‘statement’ we were aiming to achieve: ‘scenic design can be thought of as the art of addressing three issues: space, texture and “the statement”’ (Campbell, 2004, 21). All of the technical elements were designed to create an aesthetic to the science behind memory loss. The lighting only ever explores three colours, white, blue and red to represent the clinical feeling of a hospital. The set, 18 white box frames with a front cover of sheet music, was then the visual that tied the emotion of the piece and the science of the tech together:
Works Cited
Cambell, D. (2004) Technical Theatre: For Nontechnical People. New York: Allworth Press
Bond, D. (1991) The Stage Management: A Gentle Art. New York: Routledge.
As the piece has developed, I have come to realise that a large amount of the material has been heavily focused on either the emotional impact encephalitis can have on a relationship or the science behind the illness. The emotional and scientific elements are always merged throughout the piece, for example, the ‘Ribbons Sequence’.
(Alice Dale, 2015)
This visually represents the connections in the brain and how, when suffering from encephalitis, these connections don’t match up. During the sequence, The Man and one of the female performers have a duologue, expressing The Man’s confusion about entries in his dairy which he does not remember writing. This shows his emotional state as a result of the malfunctioning brain.
Much of the show currently consists of this format and although it is essential that the style remains similar throughout, I have felt an urge to interject scenes with a different mood to change the dynamics and pace. This resulted in creating a couple of ‘happy memory’ scenes. These are mainly made up of movement sequences using small gestures, props and subtle moments of eye contact which express the mundane lives this couple had before the illness struck. A piece that influenced me for these sections of the piece is Theatre Ad Infinitum’s Translunar Paradise (2011).
What I found captivating about this particular piece was the subtlety in the movements and the connection between the performers. This was something I really wanted to emphasise in our happy memory sequences. It has been more difficult to have these subtle moments in our piece due to the size of our cast and the fact that all of the female performers are constantly overlapping as the character of The Wife, To get around this, I have inserted moments where the couple embrace or are alone on stage which furthermore ensures that the audience understands who is portraying The Wife in these scenes.
In general, I have seen myself as an editor of the performance; I ask the performers to create a scene, movement sequence or write text, all of which are based on a scenario or text that I bring in to the session. I have then gone away and worked on the movement with Rachel, selecting elements that fit together well as well as adding in our own input. Similarly with any text the cast have written in rehearsals, I have then taken it away and put it into context, re-worded and organised it all to flow with the rest of the scene. However, there have been occasions where Rachel and I have had a clear idea of what we wanted for a scene, for example, the scene where The Wife decides to leave The Man. This was a choreographed sequence which we rehearsed and taut to the rest of the group.
After completing these scenes, I have been in a position to start piecing the show together, deciding where scenes should go, what transitions need creating and essentially the flow of the entire piece.
(Michael Woodhall, 2015)
(Michael Woodhall, 2015)
As you can see from these two photos, the piece was constantly changing. Scenes such as the ‘Office Sequence’ did not fit into our narrative and was eventually cut from the show and the order of scenes has also been altered throughout the rehearsal process, even after we began running the entire show. Even at this stage, I am unsure of how the show will end which is both exciting and frightening at the same time!
It’s been a very exciting week at Fill In The Blank! The material for my boxes arrived and they were superbly built! Of course not wishing to just sit back, Myself, Alice the Stage Manager and Verity our Producer joined me in painting the boxes! I decided on matte white to keep in with the clinical/ scientific theme. The boxes themselves looked different to my original designs, yet what were delivered turned out to be much more practical for our show. As the rehearsals developed our director informed me that the actors shall be setting the props in the boxes as part of the show. As you can see for the pictures below the frame work of the boxes make this task much simpler.
(Copley, 2015 )
As our show developed my ideas of what I could cover the front of the boxes developed with it. Our show focuses on how music is something that people who suffer with great memory loss turn to as it has melodies that repeat itself. Research shows that by learning new things, such a new skill like a musical instrument aids a persons’ memory, “music helps with Alzheimer’s as the rhythmic beat in music does NOT require cognitive or mental processing.”(2015). Within our narrative, the only connection the ‘Man’ has are with his ‘Wife’ and with music. We decided to use that as our basis for the narrative because a lot of our research showed that “Music therapy can help to promote reciprocal engagement between care givers and care receivers to help them to reconnect with one another.”(2014). The music element within our story lets the wife be with the man he was before his memories ‘fell out’. Because my boxes have no sides I have decided that there would be too much light leaking to get a strong silhouette. I still want the tracing paper on the front but because the silhouettes aren’t a necessity anymore I have decided to copy out sheet music onto the paper which will hopefully be faintly seen as each box light up. Samples shown below.
(Thorpe, 2015)
Overall there will be 18 boxes. 5 big ones measuring 15”x 15” x 5”, 5 medium sized ones measuring 12” x 12” x 5” and 8 small boxes measuring 10” x 10” x 5”.
Works Cited:
Cognivance (2015) 3 Way Musics Helps With Memory Improvement. [online] Available From http://www.cognivance.com/3-ways-music-helps-memory-improvement/
The AD Plan (2014) ALIVE INSIDE: MUSIC FOR ALZHEIMER’S, MEMORY LOSS & DEMENTIA. [online] Available From http://www.theadplan.com/blog/wordpress/2014/01/music-therapy-alzheimers-alive-inside/
“Costume is so important for an actor. It absolutely helps to get into character; it’s the closest thing to you, it touches you. Some actors like to go into make-up and then put their clothes on, but I like to dress first; that’s my routine” (Howarth, 2012).
In ‘The Man Whose Memories Fell Out’ costume is purposefully understated and enough to complement the staging and the story.
With the performance heavily consisting of physical theatre, the costumes needed to allow the performers to move freely within the space, bearing no restrictions to the choreography. When costume was discussed amongst the production team we realised as a group we wanted it to be ‘neutral’ so not to detract the audience’s attention from the physicality of the performance. With the choreography being the primary device in translating the story across to the audience, essentially costume and set design needed to be subtle in order not to distract audiences from the narrative. In terms of contemporary theatre, we are performers, not actors and this was to be interpreted through the costume choice.
In choosing costume that suited and complimented the content and reflected our work as an ensemble, I knew I wanted the female’s costumes to entail a common thread throughout, yet still be able to distinguish them as individuals, through incorporating different colours. I went for black leggings and three styles of dresses; smock, swing and bodycon in various colours to suggest the different characterisations of the wife. Although the only difference between these costumes was the style of dress and the colour, I was able to display a sense of uniform and collaboration between the different representations of the wife. One way me and my co-designer overcame presenting the character of the wife was through the motif of clipping the hair up. Rather than present this literally we wanted it to be done in a precise and fluent manner that came across as part of the performance rather than to break away from it.
(The Man Whose Memories Fell Out, Crow, 2015)
In terms of the costume for Michael Cahill who plays the identifiable character of The Man himself, I wanted to suggest elements of naturalism through him wearing minimal clothing to represent him as a ‘function as a mobile piece of scenery connected to life’ (Pavis and Shants, 1998, 81). I felt putting him in a white shirt, black trousers, red tie and tweed blazer indicated a sense of belief that he is just as close to real life as your average working man. However by standing out amongst the rest of the cast, he is granted with a great level of importance as a character, allowing for the audience to instantly recognise him as The Man in which the title states. Dressing him so formal indicates a level of intelligence and as the story unravels we discover this is true through his talent of playing music, regardless of his condition. My choice of a red tie was solely to fit to with the aesthetic of the set of draped red ribbon and red chairs.
(The Man Whose Memories Fell Out, Crow, 2015)
Frantic Assembly is a physical theatre company and also a huge influence of ours in terms of inspiration for our choreography. As Scott Graham argues:
“Performers are often asked to move with freedom and dynamism and costume must never impair or limit this. Nor should it pre-empt this by being obviously prepared for movement.” (Frantic Assembly, 2013)
For ‘The Man Whose Memories Fell Out’ I made the point of wanting costume that would not distract the performers with having to fix things back in place or fiddling with accessories, as we are all constantly on stage and in the view of the audience at all times.
