2015 – Page 12

March 2, 2015Alice Dale No Comments

Social Media…

Now we have a company logo and are in the process of creating our show, I thought it was best to get our social media sites up and running.
Here are the links to our Facebook and Twitter pages where our audience will be able to follow us as we work on our debut performance.

Facebook

Twitter

As marketing manager it will be my job to monitor these sites and ensure that we are communicated with our audience to the best of our ability. I plan on sharing photos, updates and competitions with the audience through the means of social media.

For more information on the importance of our online community please see the blog post titled Creating a ‘Cyber-Community’.

February 26, 2015Michael Aiden Woodhall No Comments

Companies that have inspired me

These past few weeks in our theatre company have been fantastic and I’m really excited about the work we are making! Although we only formed as a company in January, I feel that as an ensemble, we have progressed immensely and the direction of our journey is vastly becoming clearer every day.

For a devised piece of theatre the process is much more collaborative meaning that the role of the director can be more adaptable. It is therefore my job to gather devising material, have a creative vision and guide the performers through their tasks and roles, ‘The prolific imaginations of the company, if well managed and focused, can be transformed from chaos into rich, elegant and often deeply resonant productions and performances for an audience.’ (Bicât et al, 2002, p. 9) Once into the rehearsal process I will take on a more ‘traditional’ director’s role and become a spectator, deciding what works well from an audience’s perspective. I will also run workshops to ensure that the performers are comfortable working as an ensemble and to discover the strengths within the group.

In the past few weeks we have been making an effort to see a wide variety of theatre and speak to existing companies about their careers. One which stands out to me is Stateless by Joli Vyann which we saw performed at Lincoln Drill Hall on February 19^th. The company specialises in creating theatre which explores characters and tells stories through dance and circus. The company has ‘created a new fusion style to push this style further by blurring the boundaries of where the dance ends and the circus skills begin’ (Joli Vyann, 2015) What inspired me the most was the visual and physical aspects, making the audience work harder for an understanding and leaving more room for personal interpretation. There were clear emotions, intentions and stories presented but these stories were understood with the assistance of lighting, physicality and music. This is something that I intend to encourage in our workshops and will hopefully be carried through to our performance style. I also found it interesting that all of the pieces of set fitted together and were connected in some way. This made me think about our set and how, perhaps, the set could be the element that connects our stories together? In the video below, you can see how the set was used as well as the physicality of the piece.

Another show I would like to comment on is Broke by The Paper Birds. This was a piece of verbatim theatre, based on interviews with individuals focused on poverty, debt and class. Before the show, I was able to attend a verbatim workshop, led by Jemma Mcdonnell, Artistic Director of the company. Although there are no plans for our piece to be directly verbatim, we are interested in collaborating with our audiences and generating work from conversations. The workshop helped me discover new ways of exploring people’s stories and how to be sensitive during interviews. I had also managed to organise a meeting with The Paper Birds before the show. During this informal interview, we received advice on starting a theatre company; in the beginning, the art is more important than the business and admin side of the company, ‘Keep focused on your work and everything else will kind of just happen. Without a really good piece of work, you’re nothing.’ (Mcdonnell, 2015)

Works Cited

Bicât, T. and Baldwin C. (eds.) (2002) Devised and collaborative theatre. Marlborough: Crowood

Joli Vyann. (2015) [online] About us. Available from http://www.joli-vyann.com/dance-and-theatre-company-about [Accessed 5 March 2015]

Mcdonnell, J. (2015) Career advice from The Paper Birds Theatre Company. [interview] Interviewed by Michael Woodhall, 12 February.

February 24, 2015Alice Saxton No Comments

Understanding the title ‘Stage Manager’

This whole process is a brand new experience for me. I have never been involved in anything more than basic tech: choosing whether the music does or doesn’t play, and deciding if the lights should be coloured, dimmed or a spot light. So the role of Stage Manager is completely alien to me!

As this is the case, I have been doing as much research as possible in order to fulfil the role as best I can for the company; The biggest task I am facing currently is defining my job title. On the surface, ‘a stage manager takes blocking notes, calls the lighting and sound cues during performances, and gives acting notes once the director leaves. But such a simple list of physical activities does not completely describe the stage manager’s real role in a theatre project’ (Kelly, 2009, 20). The biggest task, I feel, for any Stage Manager is to provide effective communication between all members of the company. There are ten of us in Fill In The Blank Theatre, which means there are a lot of voices to be heard! I have taken to recording group discussions and scribing notes in order to keep everyone up-to-date with our ideas, as there is ‘no one to feed the stage manager the line if he or she doesn’t communicate fully… expressing oneself clearly and without editorializing [is] of vital importance’ (Kelly, 2009, 24).

Production Notes

These notes are a more defined compilation of my rehearsal reports. These reports are colour co-ordinated, for my own personal ease, into four categories: Performance, Lighting, Set/Props and Sound. As we are devising, and in the early stages of creating our performance, we are still deciding exactly which ideas we will definitely be using. By colour coding my rehearsal reports I can easily group specific elements together when creating the above production notes, which makes referring back to ideas if the company require me to do so within rehearsals simpler.

Alongside this, I have been and will be attending numerous Tech classes in order to obtain as much knowledge of the subject as possible. Myself, our ASM and DESIGNER are currently attending set design classes, where we are learning how to design and create ground plans. Following these classes will be lighting design, where myself and our LD will have the opportunity to experiment with ‘Front light… Side light… Back light… Down light… [and] Up light’ (Campbell, 2004, 79) in order to add dramatic effect to scenes. As well as both these classes, a few of us will be attending a Technical Masterclass, which will allow us to learn the skills necessary to use the equipment within the LPAC auditorium (Qlab etc.).

If you read these rehearsal notes closely, you;ll get a sneak peak into our current ideas for our performance-in-progress, The Man Whose Memories Fell Out!

Works Cited

Cambell, D. (2004) Technical Theatre: For Nontechnical People. New York: Allworth Press

Kelly, T. (2009) The Backstage Guide to Stage Management. 3rd edition. New York: Back Stage Books.

February 21, 2015Alice Dale No Comments

The Very Beginning…

Fill In The Blank has been up and running for around a week now so I thought it was about time I discussed how I came about creating the image for our new theatre company. As marketing manager for FITB I have been focusing on how the company will look to our audience online and in print. Creating a brand and image that accurately represents what your company does is very important in the world of theatre. It is important that the image of the company goes hand in hand with the art that is made. As we are just starting a company, our online presence is going to be the first thing that our audience sees and this is what is going to draw them in or push them away. In this day and age, creating an online following can really help when it comes to marketing and advertising for show.

I didn’t want to jump to quickly into creating a brand until we had an idea of what we wanted our company to be. As a company, we worked on the manifesto and created what we wanted our company to become. There were three lines that stuck in my mind when thinking about our brand…

Our theatre is visual.

Our theatre is universal.

Our theatre is innovative, fast paced, defined.

During the process of brainstorming for the logo, these four bold words were at the forefront of everything. Our logo had to be visually pleasing and of a good quality. I didn’t want it to look rushed and like we just threw something together because we wanted to launch the company as soon as possible. It needed to be appealing. This brings us onto the second aspect, it needed to be universally appealing. We don’t want to alienate anyone as a possible audience member and therefore it needs to be something that will engage everyone. Being innovative to me meant being original and this meant that our logo had to stand on its own two feet and not look like something any other company could have created, it had to be all us. This encouraged us to create something that was defining and represented what we believed our company would become.

Using all this I started to brainstorm what the company would look like. Another key element was the name of the company. The use of the phrase Fill In The Blank also opened up some ideas about the concept for the branding. I thought it would be interesting to have the logo representing the name and for it to be filling in a blank.

I came up with a few different ideas and colour combinations that I thought were suitable for the companies logo:

After looking at these three samples (and discussing it with the rest of the company), I thought that the image looked nicer with the two lines of text being in different fonts. I personally preferred the last image where the font is more prominent and bold compared to the first one where the second font is more subtle. Once I had decided upon the third image it was time to start playing with different colours. I knew I wanted something that used black and white but also contained a pop of colour. After sampling a few colours we decided upon a teal blue colour which was bright and vibrant against the white and black.

We then decided to share this image with people outside of the company in the hope that we would get some feedback. Our main feedback was that the kerning of the first font was to tight and that it read ALL in the blank instead of FILL. This obviously became an issue and was rectified (with the help of a very technical piece of equipment called a space bar) so there was no more confusion. Another piece of feedback was to include the word theatre in the logo as without it, it is hard to tell what kind of company it is. The final piece of feedback was to possibly have five lines under the word blank instead of forteen. This was something I didn’t think was essential but it did improve the image when changed.

This is the final design that we agreed upon as a company…

I think it sums the company up very well and easily identifies us. I especially like that the background is white as it insinuates that there is a blank to be filled. The colour scheme of the white, black and teal is one that will be carried throughout the companies social media and possibly print. We are very happy with the logo and feel like it gives our audience an insight into our company without giving too much away.

I am excited to continue to design and expand upon the companies brand and see where it leads.
-Alice.

February 20, 2015Michael Cahill No Comments

Starting off… →

We want to hear your stories. To share them. We choose the destination, you join us on the journey, and together we fill in the blank.

So work at Fill In The Blank Theatre Company has finally begun!

We have been working on lots of new, exciting and innovative ideas for our first production at The Lincoln Performing Arts Centre on 20^thMay 2015! As a group of ten people, we have assigned each person roles within the Theatre Company – my own being lighting designer and performer.

As Lighting Designer (LD), I will constantly be searching for inspiration and ideas of different styles of lighting states and shadow work to develop throughout this creative process. I will be working closely with the Director, Michael Woodhall, ensuring that the lighting reflects the mood and atmosphere of each scene. Please follow our company’s Pinterest account; I will be updating the site with photos that have inspired my lighting choices throughout the process, whilst other cast members will be posting images for set design, costume, props and other ideas that have influenced us throughout our rehearsals:

https://uk.pinterest.com/fill0128/

As a company, we decided that we want you, the audience, to form the basis of our work and any future projects that we create. We started discussing the ideas of bucket lists and memories – good or bad. After many ideas, we decided to focus on memories for our first production, The Man Whose Memories Fell Out. After much research, we are interested in creating a piece of theatre which focuses on sufferers of encephalitis – a disease which causes inflammation of the brain, leading to memory loss.

Check back for more updates from all members of the cast and for updates on our creative process!

Best,

Michael