Author: Lucy Workman

Our entire company went into our technical rehearsal day with all the enthusiasm and energy we could have. After four days of intensive, long rehearsals perfecting the show and creating our props and set, we felt ready to get into the space and see our show fully take shape with the lighting, sound and set all in place.

To ensure this day ran as smoothly as possible, I created a schedule (that can be found in our Technical Documents page) that I sent to all members of the company and the LPAC technical team the day before our technical rehearsal so that everyone involved was aware of the plan of action. I also decided to create the Qlab file in advance of the Technical Rehearsal to save time. This meant that, after we built the set, all that needed to be done to the sound was setting levels which then freed up our Technical Designer, Ben, to programme the lights.

Figure 1 – Screenshot of the first 12 cues in the Qlab file (Workman, 2017)

We faced a few obstacles throughout the day, including rescheduling, as it took longer than anticipated to build our set so a cue to cue run was not able to happen. We were also confronted with an issue surrounding the AV which was originally going to be played across multiple TV screens scattered across the stage. However, after a conversation with the technical team on the day it turned out that this was no longer possible. They gave a few suggestions on how to overcome this, which lead me to make the executive decision to have three white bed sheets rolled up and tied to the platform at the back of the stage, which were released by the cast during the final scene to facilitate the projections that made up the end of our show. I made this decision because I believed that the aesthetic of the bed sheets tied with string would contribute to the overall mise en scène of our production.

Figure 2 – Picture of Interviews Projected onto Sheets (Odonnell, 2017)

Show day ran smoothly thanks to the updated day schedule I created after the technical rehearsal. I ended up both calling the show and operating the lights, neither of which I have done before. I feel as though I did a good job at both as the show ran perfectly on time with no technical faults or missed cues. I felt so privileged to be able to sit and watch all our hard work over the last few months come together on the LPAC stage that evening. Sitting in the tech box with the cans over my head confirmed for me that a career in technical theatre and stage management is definitely what I want to pursue.

Figure 3 – Picture of  Stage Manager with Cans and Book (Odonnell, 2017)

After reflecting on our own work and process and being introduced to the notion of DIY theatre, I undertook individual research in which I found a book by Sarah Jane Bailes entitled Performance Theatre and the Poetics of Failure. In this book, Bailes states that ‘The proliferation of independent do-it-yourself/home-made artistic production […] reflects the intensity of urban living and the countless subversive and often invisible ways individuals and communities are able to undermine the political, cultural, and social order propagated by hegemonic ideology (Bailes, 2011). This quote sums up the reason our show utilized DIY theatre without necessarily realising it. We wanted to create a show that spoke to the underdog, the little people in society that get overshadowed in a world ruled by hegemony.

I also found an article written by Lyn Gardener for The Guardian about DIY theatre.

DIY is often associated with an aesthetic that celebrates the imperfect and the make-do-and-mend mentality. But that’s not to mean that it is inexpertly crafted or just throwing a show together and plonking it down in front of an audience and hoping for the best. In times of financial hardship or when buildings and programmers act more like gatekeepers than midwives, DIY can be born of necessity.

(Gardener, 2014)

Following this, I realised DIY theatre correlated with the overall aesthetic of our piece, which I believe, if we were to produce the show again, we could embrace further. Gardener mentions Little Bulb theatre company in this article whom we as a company were lucky enough to see performing their most recent production Wail on 17^th March 2017, which, in hindsight, set us on the path of DIY theatre before we fully realised what we were creating, as we enjoyed the make shift aspects of their production and wished to replicate this.

Trailer for Wail – (Little Bulb Theatre, 2017)

Following on from this, if we were to continue as a company with this production or any other shows we may create, to ensure viability to tour around the country where necessary, we would definitely keep this idea of DIY theatre at the forefront of our aesthetic.

Works Cited

Bailes, S. J. (2011) Performance Theatre and The Poetics of Failure. Oxon: Routledge.

Gardener, L. (2014) DIY theatre (because nobody else will). The Guardian, 23 October. Available from https://www.theguardian.com/stage/theatreblog/2014/oct/23/diy-theatre-little-bulb-chris-goode [accessed 26 May 2017]

Little Bulb Theatre (2017) WAIL – UK TOUR 2017 [onilne video]. Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8U7zBYhNS3k [accessed 26 May 2017]

Figures

Figure 1 – Workman, L. (2017) Screenshot of the first 12 cues in the Qlab file. Lincoln.

Figure 2 – Odonnell, S. (2017) Picture of Interviews Projected onto Sheets. Lincoln.

Figure 3 – Odonnell, S. (2017) Picture of  Stage Manager with Cans and Book. Lincoln.

A challenge we have recently faced whilst creating our show, which has now been titled Exit This Way, is how to end it. As the show has developed, we have become aware that it can be classed as postdramatic or postmodern. By this, I mean to say that our show fits into the theatre that Hans-Thies Lehmann ‘identifies as postdramatic [as it] […] focuses on exploring the usually unacknowledged anxieties, pressures, pleasures paradoxes and perversities that surround the performance situation as such’ (Jürs-Munby, 2006, 4). For this reason, we were adamant that the ending could not be generic. For example, an early idea for the ending of our piece was to have Rob and Brodie switch the lights off on stage and then start cleaning the stage space. When we became aware that our piece was showing aspects of postdramatic theatre, we knew that our ending needed to change. This is when we had a discussion as a company where everyone had their say on how the show should end. One of these ideas was to have every member of the company interviewed about how they think the show should end and for these interviews to be played on the TV screens that are scattered around our stage as part of our set. Hearing all these ideas from the ten different voices of our company coupled with this idea of interviews is what formed the ending to our show.

We wanted to ensure every member of the company played a part in the ending so I organised for a friend of mine, Jack Kirsop, on the Media Production course here at the University of Lincoln to film the interviews for us on Sunday 7^th May which he then edited for us too. Here is an example of one of the interviews.

Video of my interview that played at the end of  Exit This Way (Workman, 2017)

We thought that to just play the interviews one after the other would get repetitive and boring, but also that it seemed too final. For this reason, we decided to have some of the interviews play through, then start having multiple interviews playing on different TV screens at the same time which would end in a cacophony of our voices which the audience would then walk out to when the house lights would eventually come up, with the interviews still playing. This fits in with the postdramatic feel of our show as it is us, as company members, talking as part of the show, about the show. We feel as though this is a ‘deep and thoughtful ending to a metaphysical piece on the world of escapism and human nature’ (Anthony and Atkinson, 2017).

Works Cited

Anthony, R. and Atkinson, B. (2017) Exit This Way [live performance]. Performed by Fragment Theatre Company. Lincoln: Lincoln Performing Arts Centre, 19 May.

Jürs-Munby, K. (2006) Introduction. In: H. T. Lehmann Postdramatic theatre. Oxon: Routledge.

Workman, L. (2017) Fragment Theatre Company Interview – Lucy – Exit This Way [onilne video]. Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ie6I4YAQJaI [accessed 29 May 2017]

As the Stage Manager of Fragment Theatre Company I am ensuring that I know the show inside out. This means arriving early for every rehearsal and ensuring I am making detailed rehearsal notes as well as keeping mental notes for myself so that I am able to answer any questions posed to me about the practicalities of the show or schedules or deadlines that I am in charge of creating.

My job as Stage Manager also consists of booking and running weekly production meetings to ensure each part of the production team is aware of what needs to be done and by setting deadlines in these meetings I ensure everything to do with the production is kept on track. All production meeting notes (that can be found in the Production Documents page) that I create after each meeting will get posted on our private Facebook page so everyone has access to them and is aware of all the deadlines that have been set. For the first few meetings, I prepared a list of things to discuss to keep the meetings on track. However, I quickly realised that a more efficient way of running the meetings was to create an agenda each week and make that available to everyone a few days before so each member can be fully prepared for the meeting, an example of which you can see below.

 

Figure 1 – Screenshot of Production Meeting Agenda for Friday 17th February 2017 (Workman, 2017)

The first few weeks of this process have been focused on devising material to put into our show, so the need for rehearsal schedules and rehearsal notes has not been necessary until this point. Now we have started getting our show off the page and on its feet, I will be posting weekly rehearsal schedules to our private Facebook page. This will ensure each member of the company knows when and where they need to be for rehearsals. All Rehearsal Schedules will also be posted in the Production Documents page on our blog.

I will also be creating rehearsal notes where necessary so that all discussions about props, set, sound, lighting and costume for each section of the show will be all in one document and easily accessible to whoever may need them. These rehearsal notes will come in handy particularly when members of our company with production roles are not needed for rehearsals, as they can read through the notes once they have been typed up and take the information that relates to their production role.

As a professional theatre company, we are required to provide a technical rider to the theatre, encompassing everything they need to know about the show before we arrive on Tech Day. This document outlines any set, props or lighting we will need them to provide for us, including any other technical requirements we may need. This, alongside all our other technical documents will be posted on the Technical Documents page on our blog.

Our company had a production meeting with Martin Rousseau, Stage Manager at the Lincoln Performing Arts Centre (LPAC), on Tuesday 14^th March to discuss our initial ideas for the show and preliminary technical requirements for our show. This required me to translate our concept for the show into practical terms and communicate that to Martin clearly. I did this by creating a draft technical rider (as seen below) clearly outlining everything we will require from the LPAC. This draft document then formed the basis for our final Technical Rider, as I added and removed things as our show progressed.

Figure 2 – Screenshot of Draft Technical Rider (Workman, 2017)

Figures

Figure 1 – Workman, L. (2017) Screenshot of Production Meeting Agenda for Friday 17th February 2017. Lincoln.

Figure 2 – Workman, L. (2017) Screenshot of Draft Technical Rider. Lincoln.

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.