February 1, 2017

February 1, 2017Benjamin Rowan No Comments

‘This Could be the Start, of Something New’ (Efron, Hudgens, 2006).

The Topic

The 1st of February hit, and the second semester of third year began. Today was the day, 10 students partaking in the theatre company module met for the first time after deciding to create a theatre company together. We began the process by brainstorming any ideas we each had for the final production. We began the discussion by creating an extremely colourful (thanks to me) spider diagram, displaying all our ideas (see Show Idea’s).

(Show Idea’s from Rowan, 2017)

The Spider Diagram was designed to create a foundation of our final production regarding the plot of the show. Our first creation was to create a piece based on a known celebrity biography. Two celebrities which were mentioned in the discussion were David Bowie and Ellen DeGeneres. This then continued to spark more idea’s, and changing it from a show based on a biography, to a production based on an album showing the audience how we use music to escape our reality. We all shared a great liking to the idea of escapism, so discussed on creating 5 characters which each possess individual sub stories and show different ways of escaping reality; “The ultimate “goal” of escapism is the destruction of “self”” (Mikey D, 2014). Each character’s story would be told through a song from a variety of different albums and genres. For example, it was discussed to include a character suffering from an alcohol addiction, and the story will be told through the music created by Amy Winehouse. (Amy Winehouse, 2006). Alongside the character suffering with an alcohol addiction, we created a character confused about his sexuality. Inspired by the musical Chicago (Marshall, 2002), we wanted to tell the story of a man who works a 9-5 office job Monday to Friday and on Weekends is the most fabulous Drag performer.

Continuing the discussion, we decided as a group to keep the idea of escapism, and develop other ideas surrounding the idea of escaping reality. We played a game of word association, saying words which related to escapism and other ways of escaping (see Show Ideas). 1^st February 2017 was the day we decided our final production was about escapism and the idea of escaping reality.

Who’s Who?

After creating the topic, it was time to decide our roles within the production. Luckily this did not take long as we all already knew who wanted to do what. The roles can be seen in Job Role’s.

(Job Role’s from Rowan, 2017)

Producer: Hannah D’Arcy

Director: Joseph Turner

Stage Manager: Lucy Workman

Assistant Director: Brodie Atkinson

Marketing: Emily Nixon

Technical Designer: Benjamin Rowan

Props: Phillipa Strickland

Choreographer: Roxy Jarold

Creative Designer: Chloe Goddard

Writer: Rob Anthony & Brodie Atkinson

Performers: Brodie, A. Rob, A. Hannah, D. Chloe, G. Phillipa, S. Emily, N. Benjamin, R. Roxy, J.

#FragmentTheatreForever

Once the roles were decided, it was time for the fun part. It was time (finally) to decide the name of our theatre company. Bringing back the word association game, we wrote a list of words which linked to each idea seen in Image One (see Theatre Company Name’s and Fundraising Ideas).

(Theatre Company Name’s and Fundraising Ideas from Rowan, 2017)

We then picked two words at random to see what name we would discover. We ended up with a variety of different ideas of theatre company names, and after researching if any of the names already existed, we became … Fragment Theatre Company.

(Cast from Fragment Theatre, 2017)

Works Cited:

Amy Winehouse. (2006) Rehab. [CD track] 3 mins. 34 secs. Amy Winehouse Back to Black. New York: Allido Studios.

Efron, Z. Hudgens, V. (2006) Start Of Something New. [CD track] 3 mins. 17 secs. High School Musical (An Original Walt Disney Soundtrack). Walt Disney: United States.

Marshall, R. (dir.) (2002) Chicago. [film] United States: Miramax Films.

Fragment Theatre Company. (2017) Cast.

Mikey D. (2014) Feel Happiness. [online] Available from: http://feelhappiness.com/escapism-leave-fantasy-world-live-reality/ [Accessed 1 February 2017].

Rowan, B. (2017) Show Idea’s.

Rowan, B. (2017) Job Role’s.

Rowan, B. (2017) Theatre Company Name’s and Fundraising Ideas .

February 1, 2017Lucy Workman No Comments

Fragment Theatre Company – The Beginning

We formed our theatre company back in December before we left for Christmas, so we thought we would take advantage of that by having an initial meeting in this week before our lessons started at the end of January. In this meeting we allocated roles to each member of the company. We made sure everyone had their say in what they would like to do and everyone seems happy with the roles and responsibilities they were given (see Roles and Responsibilities table on the Production Documents page).

As written in Gail Pallin’s book Stage Management: The Essential Handbook, the stage management role can be split into three sections: 1. Stage Manager, 2. Deputy Stage Manager, 3. Assistant Stage Manager. However, as each member of our company already had individual roles covering every production role, it made sense to just have one Stage Manager. Therefore, throughout this process I will be encompassing these three roles, as defined by Pallin, into my role as Stage Manager, as she states that the Stage Manager ‘has overall responsibility for the stage management team […] but should be prepared to do any and all work within the team’s remit’ (Pallin, 2010, 16).

Once roles were finalised, we then moved on to what kind of piece we wanted to make. We made mind maps and played word association to get some initial words and ideas down and then had a lengthy discussion about what the piece could be. We all agreed that with the media being dominated by politics and world-wide issues, we want to focus on the everyday man. We want to create theatre that explores ‘the reality of the fragmented, the everyday and the individual’ (Fragment Theatre Company, 2017).

Figure 1 and 2 – Pictures of Fragment Theatre Company at our first meeting (Chattaway, 2017)

By the end of the meeting we seemed to have a very rough vision surrounding the idea of escapism and the way in which people use music to escape everyday life.

In this meeting we also came up with the name for our theatre company. We all wrote down words associated with some of the themes we had come up with for performance ideas. There were many that we liked the sound of but when we researched them they were already names of other, pre-existing theatre companies. This process took a long time but after a few hours of racking our brains and constant googling, we found it. So, without further ado, may I introduce you to … Fragment Theatre Company.

In our first seminar session we were made aware of Arts Council England (ACE). This organisation ‘champion[s], develop[s] and invest[s] in artistic and cultural experiences that enrich people’s lives’ (Arts Council England, 2017). If we were creating this production outside of the university, it would be near impossible to succeed without applying for funding from the Grants for the Arts programme run by ACE. We would need to outline exactly how much money we would be applying for and provide a breakdown of what that money would be spent on (similar to our budget breakdown that will be uploaded in our Production Documents page once it has been finalised). However, as we are producing this show as part as our university degree, we have been given a budget of £166.66 from the School of Fine and Performing Arts at the University of Lincoln which we will add to by conducting fund-raising events throughout our process, photos of which will appear in our gallery as the events transpire.

Works Cited

Arts Council England (2017) About us. London: Arts Council England. Available from http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/about-us-0 [Accessed 1 February 2017].

Fragment Theatre Company (2017) About us. Lincoln: Fragment Theatre Company. Available from https://fragmenttc.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/ [Accessed 4 March 2017].

Pallin, G. (2010) Stage management: the essential handbook, 3^rd edition. London: Nick Hern Books Limited.

Figures

Figure 1 – Chattaway, A. (2017) Fragment Theatre Company at our first meeting. Lincoln.

Figure 2 – Chattaway, A. (2017) Fragment Theatre Company at our first meeting. Lincoln.

February 1, 2017Robert Edward Anthony No Comments

An Emerging Theatre Company

Before the first timetabled session for this module, as our theatre company group had already been decided we arranged a meeting on Tuesday 24^th January to establish everyone’s production roles, and to generated potential ideas for both our show and the company’s name.

During this meeting I chose to take on the role of both actor and writer. I decided upon these roles as I wish proceed with acting and script writing on a professional level after university. I believe everyone was happy with their position in the theatre company, and following this finalisation of roles, we decided upon our companies’ hierarchy, in order for us to operate similarly to how a professional theatre company would. The document containing the roles and responsibilities for our cast, will be uploaded to this site once finalised.

Figure 1 – Initial group meeting (Chattaway, 2017)

As a group we then ‘mind mapped’ our initial thoughts for our 45-60 minute assessed piece. From this an idea regarding escaping into music became apparent to us. The concept escapism using music, or the utilisation of lyrics and songs in everyday situations to create a ‘fantasy world’ or ‘ideal scenario’ was one which we believed held a lot of creative potential.

The notion of escapism stemmed from a discussions regarding the current political situations occurring worldwide. Whilst we did not wish to ignore these global issues, we equally did not intend to base a performance explicitly on these matters.

Figure 2 – Mind mapping potential ideas (Chattaway, 2017)

As a result of this, we decided to explore how the ‘individual’ person copes with these ‘big issues’ on a daily basis: by escaping. From this discussion came the word ‘fragment’ and subsequently the name Fragment Theatre Company.

I believe this name suits the initial ideas we have for our company as we intend to focus on the uniqueness of individuals and how their story creates perspectives to ‘big issues’ that aren’t often voiced.

Since this initial meeting we have had one seminar with our lecturer, which has reinforced the ideals of having individual production roles, a hierarchy and code of conduct for our company. These documents will be uploaded in the ‘Production’ category of our ‘Documents’ tab on the blog’s menu bar, when completed.

Despite this being an early stage of the module, I have also been made aware of the significance of Art’s Council Funding, in regards to the success and practicality of working as a professional Theatre Company. Although we will receive £166.66 from the School of Fine and Performing Arts at the University of Lincoln, and aim to fundraise further budget to aid our production, I understand that if we were a professional theatre company we would need to apply to the Art’s Council England (ACE) for funding.

ACE “offer awards from £1,000 to £100,000 to support a wide variety of arts-related activities, from dance to visual arts, literature to theatre, music to combined arts” (Arts Council England, 2017), through their Grants for the Arts project, which would be vital to our process and budget if we were operating as a professional theatre company.

Following this first session we have decided to research further into escapism in order to expand the potential ideas for our final performance.

Works Cited:

Arts Council England (2017) Arts Council England. London: Arts Council England. Available from http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/ [Accessed 1 February 2017].

Arts Council England (2017) Get Funding. London: Arts Council England. Available from http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/funding [Accessed 1 February 2017].

Figures:

Figure 1 – Chattaway, A. (2017) Initial group meeting. Lincoln.

Figure 2 – Chattaway, A. (2017) Mind mapping potential ideas. Lincoln.