Our company has recently made the decision to include Brodie as a second narrator, alongside my own character. This decision has been made to enhance the post dramatic style we intend our piece to have.
We plan on using these two narrators (who will be heightened versions of Brodie and I) to explicitly ‘create’ scenes and characters when establishing the four sections of the show (which are childhood, food, writing and music) through fast paced and possibly comical dialogue. The two of us have been selected as actors due to the contrast between our serious and comical natures, which I believe exaggerated on stage, will give us the potential to create enjoyable, energised characters who can be used to set and maintain the pace of the performance.
The intermediate space in which these playful interludes between the different sections will occur has been titled ‘limbo’. This ‘in-between’ space may also adopt themes from an initial idea of including a ‘video game’ or ‘game show’ section as a form of escapism, which will be documented once our technical designer uploads his mood boards to the Technical Documents page of our blog. I believe this deliberately playful aspect this will convey the narrators as a form of ‘game show hosts’ when ‘creating’ the different sections.
This challenges my role as an actor, as for this performance I will be portraying a heightened version of myself as the ‘game show host’ styled narrator, which will entail breaking in and out of moments of ‘polished performance’ and ‘rehearsal discussions’. The difficulty here will be creating a distinct ‘switch’ between these states through either gestures of use of voice, or both.
Whilst scripting and rehearsing the dialogue between the narrators thus far, I have been identifying specific lines which signify the change between the ‘polished’ and ‘rehearsal’ moments to help myself differentiate these switches in pace and tone of delivery.
Figure 1 – Annotated Script (Anthony, 2017)
During rehearsals this week as shown in the above video, we have also experimented with these changes in the narrators dialogues being accompanied by a physical movement either to or away from the proposed microphone stands the narrators will have either side of the stage, to reinforce the idea that the polished performance moments are ‘pre-meditated’ and therefore delivered through the microphones, with the ‘rehearsal conversations’ being delivered in the space between the microphone stands at the front of the stage, at a slower pace to extenuate the illusion that these lines are being thought of in the moment.
Throughout the following weeks I will continue working on the distinction between ‘Rob’ as the ‘polished and prepared narrator/game show host’ and ‘Rob’ as the ‘narrator/game show host in conversations/rehearsals’ during the different sections of the script.
Figure:
Anthony, R. (2017) Annotated Script. Lincoln.
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