Author: Brodie Atkinson

‘Now that we are the best. We are going to tour the world with fragment because we’re the best.’ (Goddard, 2017)

Is what most of the members of Fragment Theatre Company would say when the question of the future is brought up.

In all seriousness, this experience has made me believe more in the process of theatre and creating a theatre company. I think the key to it was finding a group of people with the same work ethos and the want to create similar theatre, resulting in the final product being a metaphysical and tongue in cheek interpretation of escapism. Something we had wanted all along. Though we started with a more serious tone, we always knew that our strength would be in dark comedy, a comedy that uses those serious tones but laughs at them.

 

                                                                                      Making a Monster. (Nixon, 2017)

 

As this picture shows, throughout the whole process we had this playful approach to the creation of our material and I think the moment we struck gold as a theatre company, was when we fully utilised this approach. We quickly realised that through the metaphysical and DIY style of theatre that we were making, we also were achieving this comical approach to the serious nature of escapism.

Talking about the comical approach we brought to our show, I feel like this had more of an impact then we realised. Even in the tech and dress run, we realised how much quicker and witter the script was. Plus the tongue in cheek and darker comedy was amplified by the audience being there, as was seen by the laughing section in Roxy’s section. This was a serious section, however due to the shows tone, the audience joined in laughing which created a really dark and sadistic moment. That was when I fully knew we had achieved the comical approach to a serious topic.

As well, the DIY aspect of our theatre company means that it creates a fun and quirky presentation of our shows. This was fully utilised with the writing scene, which on show day, found a new level of comedic effect.

                                                                                                                        The Space Scene comes alive. (O’Donnell, 2017)

 

Looking towards the future of Fragment Theatre Company, and I see a company that could take their manifesto and create more great content. The shows we would be able to produce, especially within the current political and social climate, would bring a bit of the comedy back to this world. At least on the stage and for some time afterwards, in the minds of our audience. We would of course have to scale down Exit This Way to make it more tour able but I think this is totally achievable and would add more to the play, due to our use of DIY theatre. I feel like due to the metaphysical and DIY aspect of our company, Arts Council Funding would be fully utilised to create a show that could easily be toured around. This is already seen by the fact that all our Props and Costume could be placed into my car and transported around Lincoln, and after dealing with the set and lighting, we could easily have a show that works around the country.

Overall Fragment Theatre Company has developed into a thing that I can be proud of. We stayed true to ourselves and our creativity, even in the face of worries that our style of comedy wouldn’t work with a live audience. We created a company that wanted to bring a bit of fun and humour back to this world, that is finding itself in a rut of sad and evil stories. This isn’t to say that we sugar-coated the world though, we just showed that it is fine to laugh at yourself and the problems within this world. All-in-all, I’m very proud of Exit This Way and Fragment for producing a show that doesn’t need to rely on favouritism or pre-existing opinions and successfully showed the quirky nature of the people within it.

Works Cited

Goddard, C. (2017) Blog Sesh in the Library.

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

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

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.

The Common Thread: Escapism?

 The previous blog shows the way we decided to tackle the issue of having so many different and unique people in the company, and being tasked to create one show. Try to find a common thread throughout all of our ideas and that is what we did.

The ideas of mental health, various illnesses, drag and many other things were thrown around in our discussions. It was when we remembered what had been said several times throughout our talks on theatre company and being on a drama course in general, that we started on the path that would eventually lead to Escapism.

                                                                             Brainstorming Post-It Notes. (Nixon, 2017)

 

We had been told so much that, us as drama students and content makers, found ourselves in a goldmine of material, due to the massive shifts we were witnessing within politics and society. Brexit, Trump, Terrorism and countless other things are what dominate our screens and have placed us on the edge of a cliff, one that we have to be careful not to fall off of.

A personal mentality I have had from the start of University, let alone the start of this theatre company is that I never wanted to be cliché. I never wanted to (or want to) create content that is obvious, that is expected due to the current situation of the world and deals with issues that are commonly found in the world of the arts. It is a big question that hangs over the art world, Originality. We can never achieve true originality with our content, it is just impossible but I always wanted to not create something that was obvious.

So, we spoke about how we could create a show, that applies to everyone but doesn’t do the obvious and become a direct ‘attack’ on the big issues of today.

 

The image that inspired our journey. (Allan, 2015)

 

We began to speak about our personal experiences with this political and social situation we were living through, and once again discovered a vast difference in how we all viewed it. Some were strongly involved in it; some weren’t that fussed by it all and others just didn’t want to give a damn about it. But a theme that ran throughout all of us was a sense of being tired by it all and wanting to ‘escape’ from it.

Quickly, we realised that we had discovered that common thread we so desperately wanted for the piece. From that point, the meetings changed from brainstorming to looking more into this thing, that we all used but had no clue on. From this we quickly discovered a whole world of escapism and how it is a big debating topic when it comes to psychology and copying mechanisms. A key moment, especially when it came to the start of the script, was when we found the sugar and salt speech. ‘Think of escapism like sugar or salt. You can sprinkle it on top of your life to make it better, but too much will ruin the whole thing.’ (Allan, 2015) was the first time we felt like we understood escapism, and would be able to make an audience understand it too.

We had found an ideology that perfectly represented our company manifesto, something that wasn’t limited to a type of person but was available to anyone and is found throughout the world. Something that could reconnect all these fragments.

 

Works Cited

Nixon, E (2017) Fragment Theatre Company Gallery.

Allan, P (2015) How to Snap Back to Reality when “Escapism” Becomes “Avoidance”. Available from http://lifehacker.com/how-to-snap-back-to-reality-when-escapism-becomes-av-1723091630 (Accessed Feb 12th 2017)

 

Now we had discovered that the common thread of our theatre company was escapism, we quickly wanted to establish a personal approach to the theme. This was due to the manifesto that we wanted from Fragment but also the fact that we believed the strongest content we could make was the personal kind.

This lead to several exercises in which we wanted to discover every member’s personal experiences with escapism. One was to brainstorm away from an item that represented the thing we escape into, another was to post-it notes a progression of our thoughts. This all eventually led to a group discussion, where we presented our own personal escapes.

 

     

                                                                    A typical group discussion on the show. (Nixon, 2017)

 

This created a list that contained music, nights out, writing, reading, gaming and so many more. As we went through the various forms of escape, the personal aspect came straight out, with each person’s story or reason to escape being shown. This is where the more personal approach to writing the characters came in, the fact that at its core, escapism is a personal and individual thing.

Eventually we shortened this list down to the ones that appeared in the final show, though we always stated that the others would influence us massively. These were Food, Childhood, Writing/Reading and Music, each having a personal impact on a company member and perfectly showing our understanding of escapism.

Works Cited

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

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.