April 2017 – Page 2

April 15, 2017Brodie Atkinson No Comments

‘I’m a deeper shade of blue, And there’s nothing I can do’ (Steps, 1998)

Throughout this process, I have always had a personal ideology of failure. This can be attributed to a large array of things, including personal and theoretical, but all of them have come together to create a distaste for ‘perfect’ theatre.

As mentioned previously, I have always wanted to avoid this theatre company being a cliché and for us not to present a glorified version of the world or the issue we are dealing with. This may be viewed as pessimistic but I rarely agree or enjoy theatre that presents a golden version of an issue, simply to attract audience or be nice. To me, this is not staying true to a theatre company’s storytelling role. Plus, I don’t think it presents a fair or honest view of reality. ‘Failure challenges the cultural dominance of instrumental rationality and the fictions of continuity that bind the way we imagine and manufacture the world.’ (Bailes, 2011, 02) shows how this representation of failure, especially within western theatre, can be a powerful tool. I know that therefore I like failure within theatre, it represents the truth about the world and doesn’t add to the imaginative stability of this world.

I think this also links to the type of comedy that naturally came from the development process, with it instantly taking a darker, more sadistic tone, especially more tongue in cheek. A quote I kept coming back to, when writing the script especially, was Freudian view on laughter and how he ‘saw humour as frequently harbouring our aggression towards forces, institutions and individuals that hold power over us.’ (Gray, 2009, 10), which works perfectly with this sense that we wanted to show the unknown everyday story, that is often lost in the sea of big news stories.

This meant that I always wanted the characters to ‘fail’, in some way or other. The character may have succeeded or learnt from their experience but in all cases, they needed to ‘fail’ or return to the position they were in the beginning. I believe that this shows a true representation of the world, especially when it came to escapism. A huge part of escapism is that you don’t actually deal with the issue, but just avoid it…so why should our show be any different.

End of Childhood (O’Donnell, 2017)

The one character that I think this was presented through most was Laura. Throughout the creation process of her, we always had the aim for her to fail. Yes, she may have escaped into her childhood fantasy but she was always going to be dragged back to her harsh reality. This is shown in the line that ends her scene, showing that her fairy tale was a lie all along and was destined to fail, unlike a fairy tale usually does. Of course, this was seen throughout all the characters, but Laura’s was the harshest to deal with. Thus, achieving the effect of failure that I wanted in this play and presenting a real view of the world, something Fragment wanted to do.

Works Cited

O’Donnell, S. (2017) Fragment Theatre Company’s Tech and Dress Run.

Bailes, Sara Jane. (2011) Performance Theatre And The Poetics Of Failure. 1st ed. London: New York, 2011. Print.

Gray, Jonathan. (2009) Satire TV: Politics and Comedy in the Post-Network Era. 1st ed. London: 2011. Print.

April 15, 2017Chloe Catherine Goddard No Comments

More Than Just a Costume?

The use of costuming is often overlooked as an element within theatre and has been purely regarded as an added embellishment to the stage. However ‘we can consider the power of costuming to shape identity’ (Monks, 2009, 3), which proves an important aspect in the creation of characters within a show, offering the audience a greater insight into who that character is.

At this point in our process, we wanted each character to have a clear costume to display that person’s personality and to make it obvious that the focus of the show was now targeted on this particular character. Our show is centred around the key prop which is named as ‘The Wheel of Escapism’, which ultimately decides the structure of the show by randomly selecting which section will be performed at what time. Each section of the wheel had a different theme and a different colour, for example the food section would be a purple segment with the word ‘food’ written on it. This prop influenced each characters costume vastly, as the colours of each characters outfits had to compliment the colour of each section. This was to enhance the idea of the game show aesthetic we were looking into using as it implies that each character can be seen as a team competing to win this escapism game show.

The end result of the costume/prop ‘The Wheel of Escapism’ (Odonnell, 2017)

An initial sketch of ‘The Wheel of Escapism’ (Goddard,, 2017)

The logo for ‘The Wheel of Escapism’ (Odonnell, 2017)

Each characters costume symbolised their way of escaping through the assigned colours. For example, the character of Laura escapes through childhood games, such as building a fort in her run down adult flat to avoid her adult responsibility of being in debt. Hence Laura’s costume would be something that she would wear whilst relaxing at home, e.g. a dressing gown.

There’s a heavy use of colour applied to each characters costume apart from the two hosts character that were recently created. This was because the host characters were in charge of this world and held the power over the other characters, therefore the difference between them and the other characters needed to be apparent. To portray this, they were dressed in formal suits to signify their importance and their passive colours of black and white helped to emphasise the fact that they were not participating in the game show.

Final costumes

Sketches of the costumes for each character

(Goddard, 2017)

Works Cited:

Goddard, C. (2017)

Monks, A. (2009) The actor in costume. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillian, United Kingdom.

Odonnell, S. (2017) Fragment Theatre Company. Lincoln: SO Photography.

April 10, 2017Joseph Peter Turner No Comments

Influences to Our Process

As a group we were slightly over stimulated by the amount of different ‘escapes’ that we as a company could explore. We were able to combat this problem by using an exercise which was taught to us in a workshop by Flickbook Theatre that I like to call ‘The Idea Tree’

The Idea Tree (Turner, 2017)

The premise of the idea tree is to take an area of exploration such as ‘Gaming’ or ‘Religion’ and go onto the Wikipedia page for that word. By clicking on the hyperlinks on that page we were able to create a train of thought sprouting off from that word. An example of this is ‘Gaming’ which became gaming therapy, anxiety, fear and Hypertension giving us new avenues to explore if and when we looked at gaming as a means of escape in the show.

Flickbook are also well known for their use of narration, something which I thought could used to our benefit in the show. Through having to explain an event in our lives including all the detail of the room, the furniture, the people etc. I was able to gain a better understanding of how the intricate details of the description is what makes an audience member visualize said space/event. This technique was implemented in the show within the childhood section in which Chloe described the room around her and minimal props and costume were brought on to help the audience visualize the space.

Laura after her childhood escape (Odonnell, 2017)

One thing that I was overly aware of was the need and the necessity to go and watch other theatre companies perform in the LPAC to broaden our horizons as a company and help pinpoint our own interest and inform our work. For example, the shows Focus Group by Toot and Wail by Little Bulb introduced us to the notion of direct address of the audience which in turn led us to the idea of our piece adopting a Postdramatic style (see next blog post).

Once we began working with the meta-theatrical ideas of Postdramaticism, I noticed that we were beginning to lose the individual and personal narratives which we started the process with. This was the case until a workshop and lecture with Third Angel Director Alexander Kelly on the 6^th April. In his talk Kelly spoke about how he came about creating some of his shows and how he used real life stories from real life people and how “the truth is better than any fiction you could create” (Kelly, 2017) which prompted us to go back and look at the original escapes and personal experiences which we began the process with.

Works Cited:

Kelly, A. (2017) Discussion of Third Angel and Contemporary Performance [lecture]. University of Lincoln, 6 April.

Odonnell, S. (2017) Laura After Her Childhood Escape. Lincoln: SO Photography.

Turner, J. (2017) The Idea Tree.

April 7, 2017Robert Edward Anthony No Comments

Rob – Actor, Writer, Character?

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.

April 1, 2017Chloe Catherine Goddard No Comments

Exit This Way?

Creating the name of a show or piece of theatre that had yet to be completed proved more difficult than we initially thought. Though we now had a basis for our show, a complete script was not yet complete and ideas were still being continuing altered.

Through the name of the show we wanted to indicate what the performance was about and what our theatre company stands for, without giving too much away. The name needed to hold a sense of intrigue for potential audience members to entice them enough for them to take an interest in without giving too much away.

Though we had a rough basis for our show, the theme of escapism, and an idea towards the fragmented structure, the rest was still in development and yet to be decided. This consequently made it more difficult to name as it needed to represent something that did not yet entirely exist.

When thinking about ideas regarding the name, the main theme that appeared to me, was the idea that ‘escaping’ is in some way leaving reality into what feels like a safer fantasy. This appeared ironic as theatre itself is a form of escapism for many people, including myself, as it helps to forget your own reality and become absorbed into the spectacle of theatre and the performance. As is the profession of acting as a person escapes their own identity to be become another through within a show.

‘Exit This Way’ came from the glowing, green sign obvious to see in the LPAC auditorium, the very setting the show will take place in. As ‘exit this way’ is a common phrase often used in everyday life, it occurred to me that escaping is something normal that many people do daily also. ‘This way’ also suggests there are multiple ways of leaving or escaping and not everyone does it the same, a key theme that is shown throughout our show.

Exit This Way sign that inspired our show’s name

(Exit This Way, 2016)

The imperative in the title also suggests escapism can be powerful and dominating over a person’s life. This is also portrayed throughout our own show as the character of the host appear to somehow own and construct this world that is built on the stage throughout the show and could represent someone’s own controlling thoughts.

We further tried to show this aesthetic through our poster for the show. The idea regarding the poster was to show the idea that the narrator had a greater power than the other characters in the show and had the ability to influence the way that people escaped. Working with our marketing manager, we decided that as our show was exploring the serious topic of escapism, however through a comical style, the poster and name itself needed to imply this.

Our finished poster

(Nixon, E, 2017)

Works Cited:

Exit This Way (2016) Exit This Way. [blog entry] 30 August. Available from http://nerissagolden.com/2016/08/exit-this-way/ [Accessed on 1st April 2017].

Nixon, E. (2017)