Rehearsals are well under way, and at the moment there are so many ideas for our show I’m not sure we will ever come to a final decision! Although we all have the same overall aim; to show an audience ‘the little people in a bigger picture’, how we send this message is becoming a tough nut to crack.
One thing is certain, individual stories are being used as the main basis of our piece in some form. With this, we all brought in a story personal to us that we are willing to share that has impacted our life in some way. This rehearsal was really eye opening, and came with lots of raw emotion and empathy. This solidified the idea of using personal stories to enhance our performance on stage as emotions would be real. We then played around with how we would go about this, as if the stories we use are true to life, we would need ‘characters’ as such. This is when the word ‘meta-theatrical’ performance was brought to light. It all sounds very fancy and to be honest I wasn’t 100% sure what it meant. Whilst researching meta-theatrical shows together we came across a number of comedic approaches. This greatly excited us, because as an ensemble our talents in acting lean towards comedy and playfulness. I wouldn’t say we are unsure, I’d lean more towards ‘artistic overload’ of ideas. So after this rehearsal, we decided our show would be based on… ESCAPISM. We decided to stick with the personal stories, but rather than tell them, we would show how we escape them. We decided to go with this idea because we felt a lot more people would find our show relatable.
Last week, I volunteered to be in charge of making ad ordering our company t-shirts, and yesterday they have arrived! It’s perfect timing as our fundraising quiz was tonight, so we made our debut in them as a group. Taking away the quiz prizes, we managed to make £88.90 profit!
Fragment tops (Jarrold,2017). Fundraising quiz (Jarrold, 2017).
This week also came with some exciting news. Brodie has decided to step down from the marketing role to focus on being a writer, so our producer Hannah asked if I would like to help Emily with the marketing side of things. At the moment my role as choreographer is practical in rehearsal but not much outside of them, so of course I am happy to have a more productive role! I got started straight away; overseeing the Twitter account. I’m really enjoying being a marketing assistant so far, as it’s something I’ve never done before. Choreography will always be ‘my thing’ but if the route for the show we are going down is meta-theatrical and comedy, I’m not sure how much choreographed movement there will be. Still, I’m having lots of fun creating different warm ups to keep everyone on their toes!
Warm up (Jarrold, 2017).
Another big decision we made this week is the name of our show! Now we are clear on the route we want to take it became easier to think of details such as names. Possibilities were flying left right and centre, but i’m pleased to announce the name of Fragment Theatre Company’s debut show is… EXIT THIS WAY.
Work cited:
Jarrold, R. (2017) Fundraising quiz.
Jarrold, R. (2017) Fragment tops.
Jarrold, R. (2017) Warm up.
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