lucycoughlinmp1 - Tumblr blog

lucycoughlinmp1 · 3 years

Text

Evaluation - reflective journal

Overall our piece felt very successful. There was a huge difference in our final performance compared to our rehearsals because of that adrenaline every actor faces before performing. For example, the torture and heightened scenes felt so powerful in the performance because we hadn’t yet felt comfortable to perform it. This was the climax of our piece and also the most emotionally straining part however I think we achieved the audience response that we were aiming for which was to make that uncomfortable scene really loud and graphic but without showing anything, portraying the fact that these women’s stories were silenced and unseen and actually unknown somewhat by everyone. I felt that the women would have been very proud of us and that was the driving force behind each of our individual performances, we have wanted to tell their story as much as we can and all we wanted to do was make them proud which I think we surely achieved.

One moment in the performance that I found very effective was the scene where three of us read from a book about the three women. We started off with this idea by reading from a piece of paper as if it were a news article and we were announcing it however we changed this to reading from a book as it represents the archival material as well as how we were retelling a story to the audience, through the use of a book. This was very effective in my opinion as it represented so much in terms of the idea of telling these women’s story. This was my favourite part within the piece and if I were to redo the performance, I would use this for different sections (perhaps the introduction instead of the voices over the video reel) as it portrays the intention to the audience very clearly and enhances the idea of the audience learning something and taking something from our piece.

The theme of togetherness was very important to us and something we wanted to continuously represent. I think it came across well through different aspects of our performance. For example, the monologues where we are all individually shown on the screen at a time highlights the togetherness more so in the next scene. This light and shade is what we could use more of if we were to do it again as there are a lot of moments, I would’ve liked to have with just one woman on screen at a time as it really helps to bring the together moments to life. Another example is when we are all reading the letter together and reacting at the same time. Even though during this part we weren’t playing the women, it still shone through that there was a sense of togetherness which was so important to us as actors and practitioners. To add to this, the scene where we were showing the women being taken to their individual cells (leaving me/Andree) alone on screen felt very effective as the darkness represented the loneliness they would’ve felt after being split up. Again highlighting the importance of them being together.

Having watched some other performances I found a lot of elements that I would like to use if I were to perform it again and develop it further to be even more successful. Firstly, the use of inserted video that we could’ve recorded prior to the performance would’ve been very effective. In particular, we had one idea to film hand prints on a steamy window/ shower screen which of course was impossible to do live without distracting the audience from the story, to represent the torture and how they tried to escape, this would’ve provoked a very uncomfortable atmosphere in the audience which is what we really tried to achieve through just sound scaping however video would’ve been much more successful.

As well as this, the use of shadows would’ve been very visually impressive and a great representation of their ghosts creating a more eerie and scary feeling if that is what we were trying to evoke. However, we were given this idea from our tutor the night before the performance and didn’t have time to recreate it as we had alr4eady established our placement in the room which proved to be the wrong direction of the sun and we couldn’t produce shadows from where we were sat. The use of shadows can be really effective though as seen in other performances and can even be effective through camera which is useful for the platform we performed on.

The use of voiceovers proved very smart for one performance I watched where the actors were seen on screen however another character was created by using a voiceover. The actors reacted to this on screen, playing students looking above the camera to the teacher. This looked very realistic and was used very cleverly to create another character. It created another dimension and intrigued me as an audience member. If I were to use this in our piece, I would have a voice over of perhaps a male talking to the women, calling them to execution and showing it a bit more through that. The fact this character is unseen would intrigue the audience and leaves something to the imagination, just as the group I saw did.

Going back to shadows and lighting I think using the lamp (just as we did) perhaps behind the camera creates a sense of interrogation and makes the actor seem more ghostly as it creates a pale appearance. This would’ve worked perfectly for us, if we perhaps contrasted the scene where the women are alive and about to be executed, to show them in a natural light and then after their execution shown in a bright white light, this would’ve created an effective contrast and a shock to the audience also, evoking an emotional response due to the realisation of what has just happened.

Finally, in the ‘Hiroshima’ piece they used a small paper crane to represent fleeting. One actor lit one on fire which was incredibly effective. Having a small representation of something so delicate and then lighting it on fire meaning it incinerates and disappears would’ve been incredibly effective for our piece. Perhaps we could’ve ended the piece with ripping aq page from a book and burning it on camera to represent how their stories were actually hidden away and no one knows what really happened. I would love to use this and was incredibly inspired by this and really wish we thought of something like this as it would’ve evoked a real emotional response from the audience as they come to realise that their stories were effectively burnt and there is nothing left to represent them except people like us who just happened to come across them. It also shows that even though we are restricted to a small computer screen, there are a lot of opportunities that we can take that perhaps we couldn’t do on stage.

In order to really bring this piece to life I would’ve oved to have more creative freedom in terms of the platform we were on. Of course this was out of our control but even so, there are so many inspiring ideas that I would love to have used if we were to do it again. However, it felt very successful and I am happy with how it came across to an audience also.

0 notes

lucycoughlinmp1 · 3 years

Text

Rehearsal diaries - reflective journal

Rehearsal one:

This was our first meeting together and we started off by brainstorming ideas we were interested in. As talked about by Tom Marshman about biographical theatre, it is important to think about stories you are interested in, but it is even more important to think of the stories that perhaps haven’t been told or spoken about enough. So, we began to talk about different topics that are perhaps hidden from history and decided, being 4 young women we wanted to look into the influential women of history that haven’t had their stories told. Within minutes we were researching and reading into so many amazing stories that none of us had ever heard of that we all agreed we should’ve been taught about alongside the influential men in our history lessons.

Some of our initial ideas led to topics such as:

- Women’s suffrage

- Women in prison

- Sexual assault

- Female WWII spies

As we came across the history of female spies during the 2nd World War, Sophie mentioned a book that she owned called ‘Bloody Brilliant Women’ (Newman, C, 2012) This book has accounts of women in history that perhaps we haven’t heard of, but they are just as influential as some men and women we have learnt about in different aspects of history. This idea inspired us to do some more research into some of these women that had been silenced by history. This became our source material.

Moving on we decided to think and talk through Tom Marshman’s recommended who, what, where, why and how structure to enable us to think about our goals for the piece and the reasons behind what story we are choosing to tell.

WHO – The women who were erased/ silenced by HIStory.

WHAT – History is dominated by the male perspective. What happened to our women of history?

WHERE – In America/ Britain. France etc. Small scale setting – maybe inspired by Top Girls? Historical women around a table at dinner.

WHY – Bringing forgotten voices to the foreground.

HOW – Format – like top girls? OR modern girls/ women finding this information about ther female ancestors.

Next, we decided to go away and do some research into women that we ourselves had found online who haven’t been spoken about enough let alone taught to us in school. I found information about a lady called Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin:

· A British-born American astronomer and astrophysicist.

· She came up with the theory that stars are composed of hydrogen and helium.

· Her thesis was rejected at first due to the scientific wisdom of the time, but she obviously was way ahead of her time because later on this was proved to be correct.

· She went on in 1925 to be the first person, not first woman but first person to earn a PhD in astronomy from Radcliffe College of Harvard.

· She remained scientifically active all her life and spent her whole academic career at Harvard. When she began women weren’t allowed to be professors at Harvard.

· She relied on low paid research jobs and ended up publishing several books.

· Eventually in 1956, her hard work was recognised and as she was being promoted constantly, she became the first female professor within Harvard’s faculty of arts and sciences.

· And later, the chair of the department.

My other group members researched into women named: Hedy Lamaar, Paulina Luisi and Andree Borrel.

Sophie was the one to research into Borrel’s life as the first female paratrooper in WWII and how she saved a lot of soldiers and pilots overtime. She was accepted into the Special Operations Executive’s first female class where she quickly became command of her team. Unfortunately Borrel was captured in a Gestapo raid but refused to talk during interrogation so was held in prison in Paris. She was transferred to a German prison but two months later was then secretly sent to a concentration camp where she was recognised by another prisoner she had worked with prior. She was given a ‘lethal’ injection before being placed in the crematorium oven. She woke up, her injection had failed but she was forced into the oven by a number of prison guards and buried alive. After her death she was posthumously awarded an MBE along with a resistance medal by French Forces after the war.

After reading a little bit into all of this, we decided to research further and found there were in fact, 7 other women who had trained together back in England as SOE agents. We were now thinking of pivoting our plan to focus on this prison (Fresnes, 1943). We were all immediately inspired by this historical story and had already come up with ideas, such as setting it using the computer screen to our advantage and using our ‘boxes’ on screen as prison cells. We felt there was so much to explore. We decided to bring this rehearsal to a close as there was a lot of research that needed to be done. We each went away and looked into 1 or 2 of the women involved in the SOE to enable us to see which ones we would like to portray in our performance. We decided that we would most likely choose 4 women enabling us to have one woman each to delve deeper into her story and retell it in detail to an audience.

The women we researched were – Odette Sansom, Vera Leigh (my research), Sonia Olschanezky, Diana Rowden, Yolande Beekman, Madeleine Damerment and Elaine Plewman (my research).

Rehearsal two:

Prior to this rehearsal we pitched our ideas to our class and class tutor. This enabled us to get an outside perspective and also highlighted some obstacles we may face. Here is the feedback we got:

- Is there enough information to produce a full piece? – to which we answered yes, for most of the women. There was a lot of information on Wikipedia so we figured there must be resources somewhere online. We wanted to research on different platforms to make sure its reliable and also to gain different perspectives (documentaries, online information, e-books, books, digitised archives.)

- We could look into the relevant topic of HIStory vs HERstory – who has told these stories? To which we found that most accounts of these women came from male soldiers/prisoners – inspiring us to highlight the male perspective dominating history.

- The idea of histories being in a prison – this added to our idea and inspired us so much that we names our performance ‘Imprisoned HERstories’ as the women’s stories had been silenced just as they were when captured and imprisoned literally.

So in this rehearsal we talked through our individual research (pin-pointing interesting facts and character traits that we found). It helped us shape our initial idea for our performance in the way that we could choose who we wanted to represent. We uploaded all of our research into a Google drive folder so that we could share it easily without wasting time going over it in rehearsals. This was a very useful platform throughout the rehearsal process and will definitely use it in the future. We also found lots of different links and documents that helped us shape the character basis and plans for representing the women correctly, backed up with the correct facts.

Eventually, we decided on 4 women based on several factors – their interesting lives and back stories, their experience during the war, their mistreatment and also the amount of online information about them in order to create a successful and truthful piece. These women were Odette Sansom, Madeline Damerment, Andree Borrel and Vera Leigh. However, after looking at the timeline of each of the women’s imprisonment and execution dates we decided to replace Madeline with Diana Rowden as it fit in with the others a lot more. After joining our research together we realised that all women were imprisoned and executed together at the Natzweiler concentration camp, apart from Odette as she survived. This gave us a bit more to work with in terms of structure because the fact that Odette was placed in a different camp gave us something to play with in terms of why she wasn’t killed etc. We actually found that Odette had a lover called Peter Churchill who was the nephew of Winston Churchill himself which is the reason she was the only one saved (because she was used as a weapon/ safety net).

Rehearsal three:

We checked in with our tutor and gained some guidance and advice for the next steps as we weren’t sure how to actually begin writing it. We showed back some testimony we had found from Odette as she was the one who survived (and also the only one with interviews and recordings, she lived on to tell the others’ stories). We did this just to get some sort of script together and to hear how it sounds rather than just reading into research. This proved very helpful as we were immediately inspired to add more to the script just from reading some facts aloud. We were starting to think of dramaturgical choices here but not in depth yet as we wanted to get all of our research clear and edited first.

Due to our performance only allowing 20 minutes we had to filter through our research to find which parts we wanted to perform. To do this we came up with a basic structure of our piece, starting with the introduction with became the factual section. This is where we talked a bit about the SOE and what they did and also introducing each woman but not going into their backstories too much as we wanted to keep this part brief. After all, we were focussing on their experience with the SOE not their lives prior. However, we wanted to ensure also that the audience felt connected to each woman so knowing a bit about their life did feel important. This proved difficult as there was only testimony material for Odette. This problem reoccurred throughout the development process however we overcame it by using the information and research about the other women we did have to our advantage. By getting to know the other women through our research we were able to build their character and write a monologue for each one. There were some small snippets of their personality that were shown in our research such as, Andree Borrel was known to have rolled her own cigarettes and Vera Leigh was known as very confident. Things like this are what helped us build our characters and develop them. In order to portray these women correctly.

Rehearsal four:

After structuring our piece we were able to move onto the dramaturgy of each section, we did this through blocking which enabled us to create transitions and creative choices. This was quite hard to begin with as we felt we were disrespecting the women if we played them too much in the sense that we could lose the true meaning with too much showing rather than telling.

We started with the monologues, we decided to pin-point specific moments that created visual images for us. We then chose different movements (about 3 for each of us) that we would perform to bring the story to life. However, this is where we faced the obstacle, I mentioned earlier of showing too much rather than telling. We grew to learn more about this as we went on, and our class tutor described it to us as, letting the story tell itself. Which initially we thought was too simple but in fact felt a lot more natural and enabled the audience to listen to the words rather than focussing on our movements. This reminded us to stay true to the story and keep it as natural as we can. We also decided to turn our cameras off whilst the remaining woman spoke her monologue as we felt this was more focussed and made more personal for the audience.

Additionally, we chose to speak out each woman’s name, birth date, death date and age at death. This started as Odette being first as we felt it important to show her as the only on who survived. We also thought this would help highlight the matching death dates of the other three women. However, after rehearsing this in different ways we decided to place her as the last introduction. The remaining three women, (played by Sophie, Carlie and I) spoke in unison on the line ‘died 6th July 1944’ because this highlights further how they were executed together. The placement of Odette at the end of the introductions would make the audience feel like something is missing when she speaks out her death date alone. We thought it made it clearer as well as a lot more effective dramaturgically.

Through experimenting with our staging, we decided to place our cameras against a white/ plain background (as much as was possible). This was to make the piece feel clinical and bare, just as the prisons would’ve been. We also decided that it was important for Odette (Rachel) to move around, carrying her laptop to show how she was in hiding and to differentiate her from the rest of us. This proved difficult as Rachel only had one plain area in her bedroom, and we didn’t want to distract the audience from the story. To overcome this, we decided that Rachel could simply pick up her laptop, bringing her face closer to the screen but staying in the same position. This had the same effect.

We had a lot of guidance from our tutor and although we would’ve wanted some more it was difficult to meet these ideas because of the restrictions of our online platform. We did take some ideas on board however such as keeping some parts simpler. The ending was originally going to be each of us walking on screen for the final ‘in memory of’ call to represent the women ourselves, but it proved a lot more effective to just have the picture of the woman and the candle as the ending image, enabling the audience to feel sad and emotional towards the deaths of these inspirational women.

0 notes

lucycoughlinmp1 · 3 years

Text

Influences - reflective journal

One influence came from Tom Marshman whom I touched upon earlier. We were lucky enough to have a class with him where he performed a piece of his biographical work and also answered any questions we had about maintaining a good performance through this mode of theatre. This was the first time I had learnt about the creative process of biographical theatre and I found it incredibly interesting and intriguing. The fact that he is a gay man who has had uncountable negative experiences due to his sexuality, creating a piece of theatre about the struggles and history behind the LGBTQ+ community was very inspiring to me and I felt very attached to the piece solely because I knew how personal it was to the actor/practitioner. I feel that choosing a topic that in some way relates to you or even just something you find interesting, makes a huge difference when it comes to devising, rehearsals and end performance because your passion is portrayed through your work.

This is what inspired us to base our project on four influential women of the SOE in World War 2. I feel very strongly about this matter, personally, because I have always pushed myself further than expected and done more than what is traditionally expected of a woman. Even though times are changing, and women are now able to do almost as much as men, there are still inequalities in terms of how women are treated in the workplace, education and so much more (even walking in the street). To add to this, I am more than fully aware that what those women went through is incredibly huge compared to anything I will probably experience in my lifetime but as soon as we came across these women, we felt obliged to retell their story for the sake of women now and then.

Another influence that really helped us to ensure we were telling our story for the right reasons was Brian Astbury. He describes an issue called ‘vanity’ that comes up in his book ‘Trusting the Actor’ (Astbury, 2011). He talks of how the retelling of a story can become stale and it can lose its intentions if the story teller uses it as something other than to inform. I was worried this may be the case for us in making work based on true events, as actors as well as practitioners, because we wanted to ensure the story stayed fresh and the intentions stayed the same throughout. In order to maintain the intentions we continued to research and bring certain facts to rehearsals every week, meaning we were constantly learning something new and were still shocked and interested by what we were creating. This kept our rehearsals exciting and invigorating which then motivated us to be creative with our work.

A final influence came from Bryony Kimmings and her work on ‘Sex Idiot’. She described the steps in which it takes to devise a biographical piece, which I found very helpful when it came to researching and devising our project. One step that stood out to me was the importance of knowing how you want your show to come across to an audience. Personally, this is something I haven’t thought about much when devising previously, however I now realise the importance of it when creating biographical work. It is very important that the audience takes something away from a piece even if it is fiction. But in this case, it’s non-fiction meaning it is even more important for the audience to take a moral/lesson or even just a better understanding of the topic from the piece of theatre. Another idea came from the quote we explored earlier in the semester, she said ‘the form will be dictated by the subject matter’ meaning that the subject/ topic of the show should be the driving force of your creativity rather than relying on ideas from other shows she has seen. The subject of the show should always be at heart of every decision which I agree with completely and it is clearer for an audience too when this is the case.

0 notes

lucycoughlinmp1 · 3 years

Text

Research - reflective journal

My group and I came together for the first time and started to discuss the different areas of theatre we could explore, auto/biography, testimony and verbatim. However we all seemed to agree that after working with Tom Marshman and learning a bit about the reason behind auto/biography work we decided to go with this theme for our project. It intrigued me personally as I enjoy watching plays that are based off of true events that I know a bit about but have never actually learnt the ins and outs of what happened. This is what we all came to agree on, and we felt it was important to produce work that could teach an audience as well as entertain them. Auto/biographical theatre is when a practitioner creates a piece based on true events, as said by Ursula Canton in the title of her book ‘Biographical Theatre: Re-Presenting Real People?’, this mode of theatre is a way of representing people in the past and re-presenting them again in order to have their story live on.

By doing a bit of research into auto/biographical theatre we were struck with one main obstacle that we would have to face and conquer in order to create a successful play. This was the idea that the play needs to portray an ‘honest depiction of life [but in] a form that is entertaining’ (Ward, 2010). This meant that we had to ensure we used factual information that we have found through reliable research and putting it into practice to see which parts of the story could be turned into a piece of theatre. There is always the risk of being ‘too dramatic’ and disrespecting the real history but with biographical theatre there isn’t always a need for drama as the story can almost always tell itself. This is something we grew to learn when developing our piece creatively, which I will touch more upon later. We did some more research into this idea and came to realise that biographical plays are usually ‘based on, but not limited by, real lives’ (Lyall-Watson, 2013) which essentially pushed us into this mode of theatre as we felt we could produce work and retell someone’s story whilst at the same time creating a very entertaining and informative piece of theatre.

0 notes

lucycoughlinmp1 · 3 years

Text

Dante Or die: User Not Found

Why do you think the company asked us to watch the play on a phone and what did that add to the performance and the dramaturgy?

At the start of the show the narrator introduces the style by saying how he and the audience are in one place and connected by something as simple as a phone. This is very effective because it makes it personal and quite intimate that you feel you are looking at the same thing and place as the person telling the story.

The use of the headphones make you feel that you are in the same place as him, sat in that coffee shop ‘trying to write’ just how he is. It’s effective through the use of imagery and descriptions of the coffee shop and encounters he faces during his visit.

Watching things like someone typing back to a message on someone else’s phone screen is interesting because you can empathise with them because you know how frustrating that moment is when you really need an answer.

The use of sound in the headphones, you can play with things like volume and different sounds. It creates such a different almost claustrophobic experience for an audience member compared to in a theatre or cinema. It’s like you can’t escape the sound, except you can but you don’t want to.

The immersive experience is what is so good about this piece. The phone enables you to see into someone’s life in a different way to on stage shows and any other online performance. Nobody likes to share what they get up to on their phone, but this enables you to be as intrusive as you like.

Watching the play on a phone enables the writer to change time and set very simply as you can literally see the time of day change on the screen. This is very useful for the audience to realise where they are and also for the writer to easily put this across to the listener.

If you were to describe this play to a friend how would you describe it?

It is an auto-biographical narration of someone finding out that their loved one has died. It is told through descriptive words which open your imagination more than you can imagine and the visual adds even more to it. It shows a phone screen, their notifications including messages, emails, apps and all things personal to them. The narrator lets you into their mind and social life which is very immersive and intrusive in the best way.

What specific dramaturgical choices were made in the piece – which made it feel immersive as an audience experience?

The headphones – it creates a more immersive experience for the audience as there is no way to be distracted by the outside World and its sounds as well as this it makes it feel like you know them as a person, because they are literally in your ear. It also sets the scene and ensures that the audience can listen and watch from wherever they are. It enables the writer to ask however is listening to sit in a different setting to make it feel more immersed, such as a café, park bench, busy high street etc.

Sound is a big factor that makes the piece outstanding from anything I’ve ever seen or listened to. It creates a ‘4D’ experience because it feels like you’re trapped with this overwhelming sound as if it’s suffocating you. You want to get away from it but also want to feel the suspense and horror.

Having a plain video to watch (just the phone screen) makes the audience member focus more on the audio and words he is saying. This creates great visual imagery for the listener because you have no choice but to imagine what he is describing. HE uses very floral and descriptive words to make it easier for you to imagine.

The blurry images on the phone screen makes the audience try to imagine what is showing behind the blurred images, forcing you into being imaginative and open with your creative mind. It also makes you focus again on the audio and music which is what is important in this story.

4D audio – the lioness going from one ear to the other makes it fe el quite eerie and scary. It is almost a jump scare because you don’t expect it. It make you feel like you really are there.

The use of volume through the narrator’s voice is incredibly effective. Not only the volume but the emotion you can hear in his voice when he is expressing his heartbreak over Luca’s Facebook pictures after he has died. It really effects the listener because it is raw emotion in your ear that you might have experienced yourself once before. It is a great way of receiving an empathetic response from an audience as it triggers such a sad feeling for them. It jumps from angry to sad very quickly which many people can relate to as that is what heartbreak is. Even though the volume doesn’t actually change you can hear him talking louder and how his tone of voice changes to something so much more broken and sadder.

To add to my previous points playing around with different sounds such as whispering is very effective as you can use the same volume through different sounds in your voice to create a different kind of atmosphere.

What specifically might you take away from this piece when developing your own final performance?

I would like to use headphones for my piece, I would like to learn the different ways of using sound and audio within someone’s headphones – it creates a much more immersive experience especially through the use of music (to set the mood and tone o the scene). But also, to use my own sounds such as whispering, shouting, clicking, swallowing to show all sorts of different emotions (embarrassment, anxiety, happiness, anger, sadness etc).

Having more basic visuals paired with very descriptive and painted words makes the audience focus on what is being said more than what is on the screen. This is important when it comes to verbatim/ biographical work as you want the audience to focus on the words and message of the play more than what is being performed and shown. At the same time however I wouldn’t want to create a piece which is plain visually as it is one of the elements that keeps the audience entertained and immersed also.

Setting the scene at the start of the performance was very effective in my opinion, as it created a sense f intimacy and feeling like you are there with the narrator, experiencing the things he is explaining. I like this and would even like to push it further by asking my audience, prior to the show to sit in a similar place to where my story is set (e.g. a coffee shop). This would be easy to do if the headphones were used as you can literally listen anywhere.

0 notes

lucycoughlinmp1 · 4 years

Text

Bryony Kimmings - Fake it till you make it

What theatrical devices and images is Bryony using in this show? And what do you think those devices/images do to the audiences experience of the story and theme of mental illness?

The white costumes – exposes them, the audience can see anything. Nothing can be hidden, and it is as if they are making themselves vulnerable to any emotion or reaction.

She says “the audience have this rollercoaster experience of it being really funny and then very sad all the way through,” – the unexpectedness of the show is what makes it so moving because from the trailer you can’t really work out what type of show it is, comedy, tragedy, drama etc. The audience experiences all emotions.

The hiding of his face (using binoculars, a cloud, a paper bag – makes the audience feel disconnected from the usual dramatic devices such as facial expressions and makes them focus more on the actual storytelling. It also represents how men feel they have to hide their feelings as it is ‘immasculine’ to show any type of sadness, worry etc.

The use of different objects as his face again but as in the choices Bryony made to hide his face – a ball of confusion – demonstrates how he and many men feel about themselves and how they should react to their own feelings. Animalistic mask shows how many people don’t feel human due to their mental health and inner emotions.

The use of music and set/ props to make the show look a certain way – loud and energetic music doesn’t excite the audience as it usually would but it more-so makes them feel uncomfortable and confused because so much is going on onstage, just how many people with mental disorders may feel.

Confessional Verbatim style moment of Tim introducing himself and his mental health issues – This is very personal and hard hitting for an audience it makes it feel so real and you fee nothing but close to him in this moment. I felt sympathy and anger for him just from the trailer as I felt he shouldn’t have to feel ‘immasculine’ for feeling emotion and showing emotion. This is a feeling, I expect many audience members experience, Kimmings has used many techniques to move the audience.

How can you use similar ideas to theatricalise your own work?

The hiding of an actors face is very useful and interesting for verbatim theatre because some stories can be so personal and private to someone that they may not want to expose themselves so much to it. Even if the actual person isn’t telling their own story this makes the audience feel as if the actual person is on stage in front of them rather than a retelling.

As well as this, wearing costume that exposes the actor in a way, whether this be tight fitting black clothes, nude coloured clothing or literally in underwear/ naked makes the audience feel so close to the actor and their experience. It would make someone who has never experienced their type of story feel as if they have. It creates a sense of empathy and embarrassment for the character. It also allows the audience to see every single movement and gesture of the actor.

Music is another way of presenting any type of mood such as confused, overthinking, sad, happy, excited, depression etc. In this instance Bryony uses upbeat, loud music to represent the confusion and overthinking going on in Tim’s head however I could also use this technique more literally by using sad, slow music to represent the same emotion.

0 notes

lucycoughlinmp1 · 4 years

Text

VERBATIM THEATRE

1) “Who is speaking, who is spoken of and who listens is a result, as well as an act, of political struggle?” (Alford in shedding, p129). What does Alford mean by this and how might it relate to the process of selecting material in the creation of a piece of verbatim theatre? He explains that many Verbatim theatre creators want to tell the story or ‘voice of the voiceless’ meaning they find out who’s story isn’t being told. He talks about the 2nd wave of feminism and how they used their ‘lack of voice’ to perform their autobiographical stories as a political move. Staging the stories of those who haven’t been heard is a way of making the public aware and less naïve to certain subjects such as, sexism, feminism, racism etc.

2) What do you understand by the term ‘metatheatrical’? I understand that it means theatre that is made for the audience to think about. I have heard this term be referred to as a ‘play within a play’ and I think having a reality aspect within a play makes the audience look at the message of the play on a deeper level instead of what is happening on stage. Direct address and audience participation can enable the audience to think about the meaning behind the play rather than just the play itself.

3) In the chapter on ‘Ethics: The story of the other’, theatre practitioner Emily Mann is quoted as saying “there is no such thing as an objective documentary”. What is Mann referring to here and how might this be felt in the challenges with representing verbatim material theatrically? She is referring to the fact that this type of theatre is still theatre and not real life. A documentary is known to be a factual report which uses interviews with real people about real events on a certain subject and even though this is what verbatim theatre is all about, it is still not a documentary due to the dramatization and dramaturgy of the factual reports. As well as this, the fact that the writer/ creator can pick and choose which parts of the interview to dramatize and which parts to leave out adds to the fact it is a piece of drama and not a documentary where it would simply be a recording of a full interview with all relevant information. Trying to steer away from this documentary style can be hard as Mann says she doesn’t ‘bend a person’s testimony’ however some creators have to do this in order to create an entertaining piece of dramatic theatre. This ‘bend’ of information doesn’t mean changing the whole account it simply means, adding to or taking things away in order to explore the story in more detail and add to the theatrical element.

0 notes

lucycoughlinmp1 · 4 years

Text

Uninvited Guests - Love Letters From Home

Describe the show as if you were telling a friend about it: It’s a really emotional experience. I was expecting it to be very improvised and quite comedic, I thought they were going to take our songs and stories and make scenes out of them. What they really did, however, was so much simpler but it provoked the audience to feel emotions some hadn’t felt in a long time. They take a song that a member of the audience has nominated before the show, and use it to either: lip sync, dance to or simply just read aloud the message that was attached to it. They also did little snippets that they’d created themselves and showed us what love is. The show really opened up our eyes to how you see love, whether it’s after an argument with your partner or how much love you have for your bottle of wine. Love is in everything and they really show that through an amazing concept of retelling factual and real-life stories. It’s definitely an experience even the most ‘cold hearted’ should get involved with at some point in their life.

How did Uninvited Guests create the sense of a live event? Or how didn’t it work? It did feel very live to me as they used a lot of interaction and direct address even though it was through a screen. The use of audience participation was a big element that made the audience feel involved. Even those who didn’t get to have their stories read out, they still felt involved in other stories and felt the same strong emotion. The use of ‘toasting’ brought everyone together as we toasted our celebrations of love and we all could hear each other repeating the topic being toasted out loud. The fact that this was addressed throughout the show several times enabled the audience members to feel involved again just as they were settling into the listening part of the show. As well as this the use of eye contact in the camera from the actors felt very personal. At one-point Richard was staring into Jess’ eyes but it also felt as if he were staring into my eyes and soul! It felt more personal and up close than actually looking into someone’s eyes in real life.

What did the use of audience dedication add to the piece? How did you feel if your piece were read out? The dedication element was very thought through ad used very well. It must be hard, I can imagine, to work with other people’s personal stories and it is a big responsibility to ensure you don’t offend or disrespect the story. However, the actors did this with such a care that each and every story came to life and felt personal to me even if it wasn’t relatable at all. When my dedication was read aloud, I felt attacked at first in the way that I was very exposed (even though I put it as an anonymous dedication, and no one knew it was me). After I had got over that fact, I felt honoured to have someone read it out, and it felt really good to hear what I’d written. I felt very proud. My boyfriend (who I dedicated it to) sat and watched with me and even though at first we both found it uncomfortable, we both ended up getting emotional and feeling very touched by the way it was performed.

What will you take from this piece when you develop your own biographical work? (be specific) I will use the direct address element in my piece, even though this sounds simple I think it can be quite hard to actually look into the camera and obtain a connection with the audience. I will have to be believable in my eyes as well as just looking at the camera. I found this very effective and even though it may only be aimed at one person, the entire audience will also feel that connection as they are looking at you too. I really enjoyed the audience participation as well so I will be using this somehow in my performance. I think it keeps the show alive and interesting because watching a screen can get quite tedious if nothing exciting happens. The use of audience participation could be subtle, for example the use of ‘a toast’ in Uninvited Guests’ performance or it could be literal direct address by calling out their name and asking for participation. Either way, when used very well it can

0 notes

lucycoughlinmp1 · 4 years

Text

Making solo performance - Bryony Kimmings

1. What are the main steps Bryony Kimmins talks about in her devising process when describing developing ‘Sex Idiot’?

- Come up with an idea, use your own memory or someone else’s (with the right facts). Don’t worry about how it could be ‘too inappropriate’.

- ‘Collect, mine and research’ your story’s topics and themes.

- Come up with how you want your show to come across to the audience and what action will take place in order for them to take something away from it.

- Figure out how you want it to be structured. I.e. Chronologically, episodically etc.

- Look at the dramaturgy and see what is missing.

2. A. Explain what Bryony might mean by saying ‘instead of egotistically driving forward to make another show, the form will be dictated by the subject matter,’

I think Bryony meant that the subject or topic of the show should drive the story and development rather than trying to create a show based off another show. She fears making a story out of something she has already done or that she has seen before, so she uses the subject matter as the starting point.

3. Looking at the practical work Tom Marshman did with you and the wider work within his showreel, what are the crossovers/similarities between Tom’s work and Bryony’s work in form of subject matter and process?

- From the workshop with Tom Marshman I learnt that he likes to base his shows off of real-life situations and memoirs. This is the same work that Bryony thrives off. Tom talked about how he liked working autobiographically and relating

4. What kind of autobiographical/ archival work would you like to make?

- I would like to make autobiographical work based off of something personal to me as I feel I will be able to put across the right message to my audience if I know exactly what I am talking about. I will use research to find out if someone has been through the same thing as me and use these as anecdotes. I really like the idea of anecdotal theatre.

0 notes

lucycoughlinmp1 · 4 years

Text

Brian Astbury - Overcoming problems with acting

1. What are the main problems with acting that Brian Astbury identifies?

- ‘Being in the moment’ – he explains an exercise and analogy to help the actors understand how to be in the moment. He goes on to explain the psychology behind the left and right brain and how the brain knows what our bodies are going to say or do only one second before we do it. To be in the ‘perfect state’ of acting you must trust your instincts and let your body and brain decide one second before. Rather than learning the character’s instincts you must instead, inhabit their instincts.

- Vanity is another issue he describes. He talks about one instance where he was retelling a very touching moment in his life to a class he was teaching. He repeats the story so much that it loses the emotion and ends up falling flat, he realises in this moment that he has been using this true and heart-breaking story to benefit himself more than thinking about the emotions and intentions behind it.

2. How does this resonate with problems you’ve had with acting in the past?

- I have had many problems with trying to feel and become the character I am playing as I let my own intuitive get the better of me. It is very hard to replace your natural habits and gestures with what you think the character might naturally do instead.

- I have most likely experienced this myself, subconsciously when telling a story of someone I have perhaps crossed in the street or met briefly. The idea that recreating a character’s emotions can sometimes fall flat due to vanity is worrying and something I will work on in future work. Sometimes a character can be misinterpreted due to the actor’s vanity getting in the way and the actor’s intentions being impure.

3. A) How do you think his exercises could help you to overcome/ address some of those challenges with acting that you identified in your previous answer? B) What was your experience of working with them to prepare your monologue performance?

- The image streaming exercise – I find that this exercise can really help me feel and see through the character’s eyes more than I have ever been able to. It sounds so easy, but it can be hard to focus on just your thoughts and not worry about what is going to come out of your mouth. I found that, when using this exercise to prepare for my monologue, when I started talking in the first person ‘I am doing... I am wearing… I can see’ it was a lot easier to add more and more specific detail and it started to just roll off the tongue as if it really were me. However, as Astbury says, when doing this exercise with my boyfriend being the note taker, I found it hard to get ‘in the zone’ and feel free as I felt he would judge me for saying certain things. This exercise definitely works better with someone you don’t know or someone who understands the process and it’ advantages.

0 notes

lucycoughlinmp1 · 4 years

Text

Dramaturgy: David Lanes article & NTS

1. In the NTS film look specifically at the dramaturgical choices being made, how does the character create a sense of urgency? How do they create another person/ people in the story even though it’s a monologue?

- Sense of urgency is created by him being out of breath as this shows he is rushing. The whiney voice he uses as if he is a child to ask ‘mum, I need help’ sounds very childlike and different to how we’ve seen him portrayed so far. The panic starts to evolve as he is ranting to his mum about a random topic, as if he is going crazy.

- The fact that he is answering questions of ‘Becka’ and ‘mum’ sounds like he is reading a script that is meant to be staged over the phone as a phone conversation. It is interesting because it makes the audience want to hear the other part of the conversation but at the same time, we can imagine what they are responding because of the attention to detail in ‘father’s’ dialogue.

2. In where I go (when I can’t be where I am) what are the dramaturgical choices created through music and images to depict her pain?

- I couldn’t watch this as I don’t have a TV licence.

3. From David Lanes article and the Tuesday lecture define dramaturgy in your own words.

- Dramaturgy is the way in which each element on stage works together to create a successful performance. This can be anything including acting, light, sound, music, text, staging, how the audience is cast, how the audience move through the work imaginatively, intellectually, physically. Lane describes to types of ‘dramaturg’s’ – an outside of the company eye to see it from another perspective and help the director see what’s working and what needs improvement, that he has worked with; a desk dramaturg (someone who works with the writer, director, whole company either over the phone or in a room with them). The other is a ‘floor dramaturg’ (someone who is in rehearsal with the actors, directors and sometimes the writer), they look to see if everything that is seen on stage portrays the director’s meaning and objectives to the audience successfully.

0 notes

lucycoughlinmp1 · 4 years

Text

Making performance 1 - Task 2

After listening to the Tuesday lecture and reading Tannahills essay on liveness and @thetheatre what do you think are the most important elements needed to create a live experience? - Please refer directly to at least 2 examples in either the essays or the lecture.

- It is important to use your imagination to come up with “different movements within the frame, new angles and trying to subtly illustrate the narrative points within the monologue.” (@thetheatre1) This keeps the performance feeling fresh and exciting rather than just a person in front of a camera. It is important to think of transitions, movement, facial expressions etc just as much as you would if it were a live onstage performance.

- The immersive and personal experience really stands out to me as a very important element of live online performance. It is interesting how the audience can be even more involved online than if they were in the theatre and essentially the same space as the actors. One example from @thetheatre1 essay is the Facebook take on live performance by New Paradise Laboratories entitled ‘Fatebook’. The characters are understood by the audience through Facebook profiles. The audience had to access the character’s profiles online which enables them to know their place within the story.

- ‘A live engagement that forces us to confront the humanity of others.’ This quotation taken from Jordan Tanahill’s essay entitled ‘liveness’ is very important in terms of goals within a theatre. The writer explains that at some point in an artist’s life they will experience a piece of work that transformed their idea of theatre forever. It’s stated that the piece of ‘transformative’ work doesn’t have to be overly exciting and can be as boring as you like however, the experience you take away from that piece of theatre is what is important. The goal of a piece of theatre should be to make the audience think about something (a moral), this is the most important thing in theatre to me, even more than the actual plot because the plot doesn’t work unless there is a reason you are telling the story.

Describe what Tannahill was trying to achieve by putting Rihannaboi online and whether you think it was successful as a piece of live theatre?

- By putting Rhiannaboi online he achieved the empathetic feeling in the audience as we felt we knew him on a personal level because there is so much eye contact. Personal pronouns in the monologue play a big part in the personal direction of the speech, as well as this the fact that he is constantly breaking the fourth wall makes it feel too personal to be performed in a room full of people (as it would be in a theatre). The fact that the audience is most likely watching this at home, in bed by themselves makes the viewer feel even more close to the character.

- One unsuccessful point was when someone ‘knocked the door’ but it was clear that no-one was there, this ruined the reality aspect for me at this point because he was simply not talking to anyone and wasn’t even leaving time for them to answer. The suspension of disbelief was interrupted.

- The chosen topic of the performance is very important and relevant. The online aspect makes it very easily accessible and relatable for a young audience who is perhaps going through something similar, unaccepting family, coming out etc.

Were there any moments in Rhiannaboi that were particularly successful in terms of portraying connection to audience, character or world? Please name them and describe how you might develop these techniques in your own work for the in class monologues.

- The fact that the camera quality is awful makes it seem very realistic and makes the audience forget that this is a piece of theatre and rather more of a ‘day in the life’ video of a real person talking to the real viewers (just as if he were a youtuber). If I want to my monologue to feel very relatable then this is a great technique to use and very simple too, as long as the acting style matches the quality of the video (too melodramatic will ruin the realistic feel).

- He talks directly to the audience a lot; ‘thanks guys’, ‘I love you’ whilst looking into the camera lens which makes it seem as if he’s looking into our eyes and breaking the fourth wall. The use of personal pronouns could be useful in my monologue because it creates a strong connection between the character and audience making them feel involved.

- The bedroom setting is more effective than I imagined, it makes it feel so real. The imperfect set is what makes it realistic because there isn’t perfect lighting, high definition quality and overly done costume, its simply a boy talking to a camera.

- Also, the fact that he is moving the camera reminds us that there isn’t a camera crew or director behind the camera again, bringing back the reality feel. Even though this is obvious for a self-filmed video diary style piece, I would like to use the same movements in my piece to keep reminding the audience that it is meant to be relatable and easily watched as if they were watching a YouTube video.

- The fact that you can have props and costume changes in camera and visible is interesting but different to how it would be on stage. It’s also very useful because you can simply bring props on and off ‘stage’ by grabbing them from beside you or behind the camera (if you want to make it seem smoother).

- The mirror in the background of 26:40 is very interesting because it makes the audience feel as if they are talking to him, on facetime or zoom. The audience can see the reflection of the laptop screen which ruins the stage magic, but it also feels very personal and real.

- ‘Comment down below’ - the live aspect is very inclusive for an audience, the idea of the audience being able to interact with Sonny who isn’t even a real person makes it feel so welcoming and accepting – the moral of the story is acceptance and this is shown simply by asking the audience for advice in the comments because he feels safe online and that he is accepted by his loyal viewers. I would like to include this in my performance because for me, as a viewer, I felt very involved. The interactive idea is another element of making the performance feel realistic and involved, I would like my audience to take something away from my performance and I think I could achieve this by making them as involved as possible.

0 notes

lucycoughlinmp1 · 4 years

Text

Making Performance 1 - Lucy Coughlin

Describe briefly in a few sentences what each of the Paines Plough monlogues was about.

Manchester by Chris Thorpe: A graphic description of how a football team found it funny to sexually assault one of their team mates (narrator). The narrator describes how he got revenge and assaulted the ‘friend’ to get his own back. This all links in to how he met a girl and how he found out that he has no control over his hands.

Plymouth by Hannah Silva: A confusing account of a daughter reading a letter from her dad. He has dementia and can’t remember the memories he made with her. He remembers a dream, tiny details from the war and music. She describes it repetitively to mimic how his thoughts process. One word triggers a memory.

Liverpool by Chloe Moss: A young school girl who hates school and I presume is suicidal, lied in order to get out of school early. She goes to the beach even though she has had a lesson on quicksand and is now afraid of the beach. She meets an old woman who plays the role of perhaps an angel and saves the school girl from whatever she had planned. She repeatedly talks about a mantra which she realises she no longer needs.

London by Zia Ahmed: It’s all about love and race. A girl couldn’t get past the fact that her father didn’t agree with her Pakistani boyfriend from London even though he was from London and not from Pakistan. ‘I love you but… we’re different’ is repeated and eventually it changes to ‘I loved you but we were different’. At the end he sings in his language a lot more as he comes back to his roots that she was perhaps holding him back from.

Cardiff by Alan Harris: A grown man who has been trying to fit in his whole life. He retells the story of his first adult arrest in Caerphilly, it sounds like he is oon drugs as he talks about seeing a duck in the cell with him. He inhabits this duck’s body and puts his ‘webbed feet’ in the toilet water in order to feel a sense of home. He is missing home as he is far from his way back home.

What images/ characters / moments particularly stuck out for you in any of the Paines plough monologues and why? ( choose 3)

Lisa Hughes in ‘Liverpool by Chloe Moss’ - She seems to be liked by everyone and she is nice to everyone which isn’t the normal stereotype for a ‘popular’ girl. Lisa clearly makes even the most lonely pupils feel welcome.

The inappropriate story that the father in Hannah SIlva’s monologue told his daughter about the French woman. - It felt very awkward and sexualised. It made me think that he was perhaps sexually assaulting his daughter when in reality he didn’t remember his daughter and didn’t know who he was talking to, so couldn’t see that it was inappropriate.

‘I love you but… we’re different’ – the repetition of this in Zia Ahmed’s monologue is very effective because anyone who says I love you shouldn’t have to say ‘but’, it should just be ‘I love you’. This is very effective because it creates embathy for the listener and a sense of heartbreak is strung throughout the whole 16 minutes as it is such an overpowering feeling of sadness.

How were the National Theatre Scotland monologues using the frame ( screen) to succesfully tell a story?

A mug’s game - He sits down and looks past the camera as if he’s answering a journalists’ questions. This is effective as it creates an interview setting. He is using two eyelines at the start, one is looking and talking directly to someone behind the camera and the other is looking down to the floor naturally as he speaks,

Isolation – The bed frame in the camera frame is effective simply because it is off centre and not straight, it gives the whole scene a very off feeling as if something has gone a bit wrong in this story. The toy animal in the crinkled bed sheets makes us think the lady in the frame has a child, and the bottle of water and tissues next to her bed connote that she is unwell. The fact that she is in bed and it is daylight shows that she is stuck and vey much isolated, portraying what a lot of people were and still are going through over lockdown. Just her hands in the camera as she washes and sanitizes her hands as if that’s the only thing that matters. As the camera angle changes slightly, we are zoomed in on her lying down close to the camera making it feel very boxed up and enclosed ‘this room is a box that I can’t get out of’. She is videoing herself pacing the carpet, this shows boredom. The image of the curtains slightly open as if we have only a glimpse of the outside World. Again, she is asleep during the day as there is nothing else to do in isolation. She looks directly to the camera which makes it feel very personal and aimed at whoever is watching. Its like eye contact in the theatre being done through a camera lens. She cleans up the background of the scene, she makes the bed up with pink bedding connoting pure happiness, tidies her bedside table, puts her hair up and describes the colours outside which all present happiness. A lot of focus on her hands which is where this pandemic is mainly focussed.

1 note · View note