2017 – Page 10

February 8, 2017Brodie Atkinson No Comments

‘Ah we can dance if we want to, we can leave your friends behind’ (Men Without Hats, 1982)

As it got closer to the Theatre Company module, I realised the excitement I had for it. An excitement I had never really had before, especially when it came to theatre and this course. I struggled to put my finger on why this was.

After several meetings with my fellow company members, it dawned on me: the excitement was due to the fact that this group of people, which included me, had been given an amazing opportunity. An opportunity in which we could tackle any issue, present our unheard opinion on anything within this world or simply laugh at something that needed to be laughed at. The whole point is that we had been given an amazing opportunity and we needed to use it.

However, this realisation quickly turned the excitement into panic. This opportunity had two sides to it: the amazing chance to create our own, personal work but the other side to that, was what did we all believe in, as a theatre company. This lead to countless discussions on what we cared about and wanted to create content on, which, may I add, varied from raising awareness of illnesses to drag. This is where a personal admiration of my theatre company came from, and developed a notion that I desperately wanted to be seen in our material: the fact that this was a group of amazingly unique people, each with their own hates and loves, that had found themselves in Studio X on a cold Tuesday morning in January, trying to create a show.

Totally not posing so to seem like I was doing work. (Nixon, 2017)

From that point on, we all aimed to find a common thread throughout all of our interests, in which we could all connect and come together to create this show. This ideology has been there from the start, as shown by the fact that one of our first name ideas for the company, was Common Thread Theatre Company. Due to a theatre company already existing under this name, we had to [reluctantly] move on and I’m glad we did. Because if we had stayed with Common Thread, we wouldn’t have discovered a deeper meaning to this ideology of us being a group of people, brought together to create content.

This was where Fragment came into play. The concept that there are countless people, who feel dejected from society and rarely get their story told. That these people play second fiddle to the ‘bigger’ stories within the news, the ones of politicians and wars often seen on our screens. The concept that the human race has become the most fragmented it has ever been, with tensions and judgement at breaking point. This created the name of our theatre company, the manifesto and the saying that we aimed to follow throughout our creative process, We speak to: Someone. Anyone. Everyone.

Works Cited

Nixon, E. (2017) Fragment Theatre Company’s Gallery.

February 8, 2017Chloe Catherine Goddard No Comments

Where to Start?

When initially meeting and discussing the aims and principles of our theatre company, we discovered that we wanted to avoid some overpowering issues often seen in the news that seem to be surrounding us in recent times, such as political conflicts. Subsequently, we began looking at sections or ‘fragments’ of people’s everyday life and how this is an interesting theme that is often overlooked in theatre, ultimately naming our company.

After discussing ideas regarding fragments of everyday life, one common theme that recurred seemed to be the idea of escapism. Escapism proved to be something that each member of our theatre company could easily relate to, and once discussing this further we realised escapism wasn’t as simple as just that, it could be used and often abused through many different ways. When discussing our manifesto, we came up with the idea that our company would speak to ‘Someone. Anyone. Everyone’, as we wanted to target individuals and their personal ways of escaping. In co-operation with the Arts Council England, one of their 5 main aims is to make work that would be available for everyone, in which we aim to achieve in our show.

Escapism is defined as: ‘the avoidance of reality by absorption of the mind in entertainment or in an imaginative situation, activity, etc.’ (Dictionary, 2017).

There was something particularly interesting about this idea of ‘the avoidance of reality’, and how this was such a common occurrence within not only everyone within our company, but many people in day to day life as well.

As escapism proved to be something ‘normal’ we started to discover the different ways that people escape and how some can become unhealthy and even dangerous. We discussed ways that either ourselves or people we knew used to escape from everyday life. Some as serious as physically abusing their own body through eating and exercise and some as simple as listening to music. This sparked many new ideas for our show and how we could explore this idea of escapism within a theatre production.

Though we had a key theme of escapism, we also began to look at how our ideas regarding escapism appeared to be disjointed and did not always link to each other in a very cohesive manner. Furthermore we realized this actually added to the feel of our company, and how it would be interesting to explore this idea of a ‘fragmented’ structure within a show, as this not only added emphasis to the escapism theme but also creates an interesting structure of exploring many issues throughout one show.

Brainstorming initial ideas

(Chattaway, 2017)

Works Cited:

Dictionary (2017) Dictionary.com. [online] Available from http://www.dictionary.com/browse/escapism [Accessed on 3rd March 2017].

Chattaway, A. (2017)

February 7, 2017Emily Nixon No Comments

Making Fragment Theatre Company Recognisable

The first task for Fragment Theatre Company was to create a logo that represented us as a company. A logo is essential as it becomes the identity of the company; “identities are the beginning of everything. They are how something is recognised and understood” (Scher, 2017). Identity is a visual representation of who you are and as a new company starting out it is essential to be easily recognisable.

For the topic of our show we are focusing on the fragments of society, the individual and the small events that occur in our world. We wanted the logo to illustrate exactly this as this is how we wanted to identify ourselves.

Logo 1 (Fragment Theatre Company, 2017) Logo 2 (Fragment Theatre Company 2017)

As a company we decided to choose logo two as it focused our attention on the word ‘fragment’ and the cracked theatre mask. We felt that the font was readable and would stand out to a passer-by. The design depicted the company’s vision that things needed to be fragmented so that we can educate ourselves on the selected topic and make people aware of the smaller issues in the world.

Works Cited:

Fragment Theatre Company (2017) Logo 1

Fragment Theatre Company (2017) Logo 2

Scher, P. (2017). 6 Design Quotes for Brand Greatness | Brandfolder Blog. [online] Brandfolder. Available at: https://www.brandfolder.com/blog/6-design-quotes-to-help-you-achieve-brand-greatness/ [Accessed 7th February 2017].

February 4, 2017Joseph Peter Turner No Comments

Origins and Intentions

Fragment Theatre Company first met on Tuesday 24^th January to begin discussing production roles, names for the company and ideas for the show. Although the lessons hadn’t started yet we thought it would be beneficial to get a head start, having created the group two months previous.

Once production roles were decided we began to think about potential areas of exploration for the show. Amongst discussions of mental health, we also quickly became aware of the political and social climate that currently exists. I was very aware however that we were in danger of joining a long list of companies focusing on political turmoil or cultural disruption and so we instead looked at alternative ways of looking at these issues that were perhaps more subtle.

First meeting to discuss ideas (Nixon, 2017)

It was at this point that we decided to focus on the individual and what makes us all different. This in turn led us to the idea of Fragment for the name which is defined as a part broken off or otherwise detached from a whole. This idea will carry on throughout our company’s manifesto and mission statement that we will create over the coming weeks.

Rather than focusing on the politics that we all felt overwhelmed by, we decided to use this as context and focus instead on the notion of how we escape when we feel trapped. We spoke at length about the power of music and its ability to help us get away from situations by either cheering us up or helping us cry and ideas included having a soundtrack which we handed to the audience as they came into the auditorium. After a discussion about how each of us escaped however we soon realised that there was a greater variety to the topic and that it was a broad area for us to explore. We discussed having various themes linking together through some kind of story arc and also shared a common desire to create a show that was aesthetically pleasing, discussing the use of TV’s, projection and shadows amongst other ideas.

My Personal Story of Escaping through Childhood (Joe Turner, 2017)

I think my role as director will take the form of two primary roles within the devising process. Initially I think I will be a facilitator between the devising that will be created as a cast and the refining and writing that will be done by the ‘creatives’ (the writers of the piece). I then think, later on in the process, my role becomes more authoritative when the devising stops and rehearsals become focused on perfecting and refining material to make it the best it can be for the final show.

Works Cited:

Joe Turner (2017) My Personal Escape. Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbgemA8fwJA&t=1s [Accessed 26 May 2017]

Nixon, E. (2017) First Meeting to Discuss Ideas.

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 .