I am one half of Fill In The Blank’s, dynamic duo, the design team. I am in charge of the set design, props and Kirsty, the other half is in charge of costume. I have not been part of a design team before so this is a great opportunity for me! Being a part of FITB is such an exciting experience. Being able to collaborate with people who want to create the same style of theatre as yourself is very thought provoking and a great way to finish off our final year of University!
As I have not been part of a design team before I have been attending a Set Design Master Class in our base of operations, the Lincoln Performing Arts Centre. Over the weeks It will help me get to grips with was is needed of a designer not just within a theatre company but also on the technical side.
I am really, really looking forward to the coming weeks and collaborating with my team to create an awesome piece of theatre, we’re a very tight knit group so we know that even though creating theatre can be stressful everything is going to be absolutely fine!
Hope you keep up to date so you can follow us on our journey and fill in our blanks!
From the outset, it is clear as a company that we were agreed on what we want to achieve in our final performance, we want to make the audience feel something. In order to make it memorable and dynamic we want to include lighting, using the stories of real people, incorporating physical theatre and also the use of live and recorded music to underpin the piece which is my main role; the sound designer. The primary role of a sound designer is to ‘help establish the emotional atmosphere in which the scene occurs’ (Kaye and LeBrecht, 2009, 226). Early on in the process, we wanted to get as much inspiration as we could from professional theatre companies. After seeing Paper Birds incredible and moving performance of Broke at Lincoln’s Drill Hall, I met with the Musical Director afterwards. I discussed with him different techniques and top tips that musical and sound designers should incorporate, and the one thing I found the most useful was the fact that there should be a reason for having the piano on stage. As part of our production, we want to incorporate live music on stage on stage, and by having a piano it will bring a further dynamic for the audience to engage with. As part of my role as sound designer, I have started to explore the kind of pieces of music I want to use.
During this week’s rehearsals, we began to devise our opening, a movement/physical theatre sequence based on a practical task we explored in rehearsal; writing a letter to someone you know you could never actually send. Today we experimented with intertwining our solo movements with pair movements; creating multiple stories on stage for the audience to interpret. In order to reflect the mood of the scene, I gave Michael (the director) a piece of music that had a more uplifting feel to it.
Onde Corte by Ludovico Einaudi:
After listening to it, and trying it out with the scene we had created, it became clear that we needed something that builds in dramatic and then returns to becoming gentler again to reflect the increase in anguish. So I carried on researching into different artists, and came across Imogen Heap.
You Know Where to Find Me by Imogen Heap:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sXnAly79G4
Both pieces of music allow a story to unfold through the piano melody. As Brown mentions ‘hearing is a sense that immerses us in the world, vision is a sense that removes us from it’ (Brown, 2010, 211). Specifically, the melody of the Einaudi piece is based on one repeated phrase that changes key half way through. The simplistic yet beautiful runs of the melody evoke memories and feelings of warmth and joy. Although the Einaudi piece does not fit in with the opening scene, I want to incorporate in somewhere throughout because it is such a beautiful piece of music.
-Naomi
Works cited
Brown, R. (2010) Sound: A reader in theatre practice. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.
Einaudi, L. (1996) Onde Corte [online] Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4B1Nt3TE8EU [Accessed 19th February 2015].
Heap, I. (2014) You Know Where to Find Me (Instrumental) [online] Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sXnAly79G4 [Accessed 19th February 2015]
Kaye, D. and LeBrecht, J. (2009) Sound and Music for the Theatre: The Art and Technique of Design. Oxford: Elsevier.
What is a Choreographer’s role in a Theatre Company?
Well my role essentially is to choreography all the movement based parts of the production. With a discussion early on in our theatre company we decided we would stick to strengths within in our theatre making and physical theatre came up as one of them. We didn’t know who much we would use it but we know that we are equipped with the skills for it.
While we were choosing names, ideas and styles of theatre at the beginning of the process we also decided on roles within the theatre company, I was given the role of choreographer and this was exciting as I saw it as a new challenge. I have previously choreographed a production before for the musical theatre society for their production of Wedding Singer (2014). However, even with that experience it was going to prove a very different. Not only did I work extremely close with the Director, throughout the entire process, we also prided ourselves on being a collaborative company and the input from the group was extremely valid during the creative process.
Why is a choreographer’s role in a Theatre Company important?
Depending on what the theatre company is creating then it will always depend on if the company needs one or not, but for ours it turned out to be extremely important with a majority of the whole performance physical/visual theatre. Every rehearsal I would take the cast and do a warm up routine that consisted of stretches and cardio to prepare us for the strenuous work we were going to do. With a background in dance I had already had warm up routines in my head that I had previously done and I knew worked so I didn’t have to do much research into it before we started as I’d already previously learnt it.
Did I do my job correctly?
I like to think I tried hard and worked well with both director and company and created diverse and new ideas while keeping my colleagues happy and not pushing them to something they wasn’t capable of. “Research is another aspect of preparing to choreograph a dance.” (Cerny Minton, 2007, 8) Research for me took me down many roots but the one I mostly relied on was the internet and other companies.
Cerny Minton, S (2007) Choreography – A basic approach using improvisation. 3rd edition. Leeds:Human Kinetics