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Bibliography

Art and Technique of Design, Elsevier/Focal Press

Visit Bristol (2022) What Remains of Us at Bristol Old Vic Available at: https://visitbristol.co.uk/whats-on/what-remains-of-us-at-bristol-old-vic-p2807373 

Bristol247., Anderson, Sarski (2022) Big Boys Don’t Cry…do they? Available at: https://www.bristol247.com/culture/theatre/big-boys-dont-cry-do-they/ 

Broadway WORLD Uk Regional (2022) WHAT REMAINS OF US Comes to Bristol Old Vic in March Available at: https://www.broadwayworld.com/uk-regional/article/WHAT-REMAINS-OF-US-Comes-to-Bristol-Old-Vic-in-March-20220114 

Deiorio, Victoria (2018) The Art Of Theatrical Sound Design: A Practical Guide London: Methuen Drama, Bloomsbury 

Dugan, Dan (accessed: 3/22) Dan Dugan’s Personal Page Available at: https://www.dandugan.com/personal/personal.html 

Figure 53 (accessed:3/22) Available at: https://figure53.com/ 

Fight for Shelion Bar (1974) Directed by Peter Cheeseman

Hands up — for You the War Is Ended (1971) Directed by Peter Cheeseman

John Bohen Synth Design (2022) Available at: https://www.johnbowen.com/index.php 

Kaye, Deena. and LeBrecht, James (2009) Sound and Music for the Theatre: The Art and Technique of Design, Elsevier/Focal Press

NAMM (2022) John Bohen | Oral Histories Available at: 

https://www.namm.org/library/oral-history/john-bowen 

Paget, Derek (2019) ‘Verbatim Theatre’: Oral History and Documentary Techniques 

Sound Speeds (2020) Dugan Automixing Explained By Dan Dugan Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_KSBx02jCI 

Wikipedia (2022) Auto Tune Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-Tune 

Wikipedia (2022) Dan Dugan (audio engineer) Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Dugan_(audio_engineer) 

Wikipedia (2022) History of sound recording Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_sound_recording 

Wikipedia (2022) John S. Bohen (sound designer) Available at: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_S._Bowen_(sound_designer) 

What Remains of Us (2022) Directed by Sita Calvert-Ennals

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Here's the playlist of all my viedo content from the blog to make it more assessable.

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Key word/poster map on delight

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Personally I loved all three flip grids for a variety of reasons.

 

Week10 group 4: The overall meet the character doesn't give too much away but i wish it was more a sit down interview idea that gave the audience a direct one line intro/snippet of the character. (36 words)

 

Group 4 week7: my favourite the overall trailer gives the audience an idea on what they should be expecting yet no giving away any of the story or best parts away. I think this trailer is very simple but effective in keeping the audience's attention and suspense, leaving them with a lot of questions like shadow puppetry and shadow work. They looked like they were having fun. (words 64)

 

Group 4 week 6 ensemble: this one was very clean. I liked the cuts and editing of these videos a lot. The transitions aren't too jumpy and all makes sense within their chosen topic. One comment i personally would have had a tripod as at times the camera is a little shaky however this to me is the cleanest and nicest cut and editing so far they have done was impressed.  (64 words)

 

Most of the flip grids:  chosen really good music and sound bits however the audio quality was a little bit inaudible in very small sections due to the overlay of the soundtrack and probably using a mobile mic which does not allow for clear and unfiltered sounds of the actors. In other videos the music is a little too loud and humans can only take 70 dB ( decibels) before causing the average human hearing damage, their video did hurt my ears I would, I like the hinting not telling approach however and making the audience a lot more suspenseful. If to refilm again i would recommend using a external microphone or to use a film camera to allow their video the best quality (103)

(Over all Word count 267)

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*was having issues downloading the original clips*

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Big Boys Don't Cry by playwrights Dik Downey, Adam Blake and director Emma Williams, explores what masculinity is, for example, its toxicity trates, expectations and societal norms that could be extremely damaging to most men of this generation. This is done through physical comedy, puppetry, multimedia and by the actors, who are also the playwrights, sharing their own experiences.

The reason this play is not verbatim is that the people who are affected are personally giving their own experiences, making it more biassed. Secondly, the playwrights do not use the material gathered from research on this topic, or stick to a set script made from interviewee material. This play takes a clowning around approach to bring the audience on a journey of self-discovery that is from their own personal experiences being the farthest thing from verbatim.

This play rather focuses on the idea of the stereotypical ‘ alpha male’ ideology and how men with this identity are focused to suppress their emotions, through laughter and silence. This being a universal experience from sons to fathers that their dreams, problems and communication being impacted by this societal portrayal that isn't true for most. Both Downey and Blake clearly wanted to use puppets to deconstruct our preexisting knowledge of what is expected of a man and make us question how this portrayal was even constructed. They did this by deconstructing a puppet on stage in a surgery scene where they show the insides of him and there being a whole new world inside being a metaphor for the beauty within. who've said “We’re just not macho men. We grew up playing war, shooting and dying, high speed car chases, cops and robbers and all that, but it never became anything more than play. We are somewhat bewildered by what it must be like for some men, but we can only be who we are.`` (S.Anderson/ D.Downey, 2022)

Word count: 311

All References from this point in bibliography.

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What Remains of Us by playwright David Lane and director Sita Calvert-ennals is about the unresolved tensions within neighbouring countries, North and South Korea. There is high tension between the two, and there are ramifications of the war for families caught in between. Both countries face centuries of significant instability, corruption and national divisions that both societies have normalised for generations. 

This play follows the reunions between separated families, which were arranged by both governments and the red cross in 1985. This play takes a mournful positive lens that uplifts yet opens discussion on the longing for closure between the last remnants of a broken family, farther and daughter, separated by a the war, generational trauma, time and life (experiences/exposures) ( S.Wild ,2022)  This play also discusses the consequence on mental health that war creates though Kwan-Suk characters mental-lapses within scenes. A bright white flashing light appears from the table, and a sound of a hospital blink starting.The blinking hospital sound is yet another symbolic metaphor of his neglected mental health due to his state and what he has witnessed throughout his life living in survival mode. The hospital blinks show transitions between mental states, a reserved seemingly stable man to complete meltdowns on his own , and how the war left him with symptoms of PTSD. This is also shown through physical theatre and dance. (words: 225)

Source links *reference in Bibliography*

https://www.broadwayworld.com/uk-regional/article/WHAT-REMAINS-OF-US-Comes-to-Bristol-Old-Vic-in-March-20220114

https://visitbristol.co.uk/whats-on/what-remains-of-us-at-bristol-old-vic-p2807373

https://visitbristol.co.uk/whats-on/what-remains-of-us-at-bristol-old-vic-p2807373

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This verbatim piece follows William and Maggie going through their last days together supporting each other in their old age and ailments, whilst reminiscing their relationship and life together. Their memories show the foundations of their relationship through flashbacks, round by view and sound to switch through different time periods. The climax of the play is the lead up to a big sunday dinner for their friend visiting and Maggie's supposed suicide. 

One scene that displays a breathtaking sound-scope is when round by through, inspired by Frantic Assembly, was incorporated for the transitions between their younger flashback selves to current. One hour and fifteen minutes in a light sound ambience begins that slowly progresses louder and intensifies throughout. A bird sound track is consistent throughout the duration of the play, aiding in transitions from present to past selves and at pinnacle cliff hangers. For example, where the audience might be under the impression one of the characters might have taken a turn for the worse.

The bird's soundtrack is also a somblic sound of freedom which Maggie believes she will be giving Bill when taking her life. However, in this scene it allows Bill to transition to the bed towards Maggie to comfort her, which we know at this point Maggie experiencing pain from her chronic ailments and imminent passing. With their past and present selfs coming from within the bed, through round by view, this shows two separate entities that become one in an emotional embrace emphasising the heart wrenching crescendo of the music. (Word count 253)  

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artistic influence 2- Dan Dugan is an audio engineer, nature sound recordist, and inventor from America. He is credited as the first person with the title sound designer. I love his work on going into public spaces and recording what he had actually hears to use in the theatre. Dugan was the creator of the first-ever effective automatic microphone mixers, this is a piece of equipment that reduces the strength of a microphone’s audio signal when it is not being used, stopping loops and unwanted background sound from being picked up. Originally, Dugan was a lighting designer, however changed his career path to sound design in 1967. He began recording his original naturalistic nature sounds in the late sixties by recording the outdoors in various locations including national parks, shops, nature preserves, institutions, and more. he assisted in research relating to the harmful effects of human-generated sounds on the environment and the ramifications they could have. Ergo, he attempts to sound design in a more eco-friendly way not just because of the time period he began his career but rather himself pioneering the field of sound design and

currently “works in his laboratory in San Francisco designing new versions of his inventions and editing his surround-sound nature recordings.” (daggan website) decades later. Dugan mostly uses occasional sound effects that are performed live or played back through recorders and tapes to bring the sound of the world to the stage. Dugan's paper about the system he was working on was published in the journal of the audio engineering society in December 1969 and lastly In 2021 he was awarded a fellowship by the same group. Due to him being such a groundbreaking sound designer for the theatre world I want to use some of his techniques of recording within the pieces I work on. If this is by either using real-world sounds that I've recorded or finding clips from nature videos that I can sample the sound from.  (Word count without qoute 324) (344)

Direct source link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Dugan_(audio_engineer) 

https://www.dandugan.com/personal/personal.html 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_KSBx02jCI

(All References in bibliography)

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I'm interested in exploring man-made technological sound and how new forms of technology can change the scope of the theatre world. One sound engineer that does not work within the theatre but impacted the overall sound industry as a whole is the synthesiser designer John Bowen. Bowen started as the first official Moog clinician in 1973, this was an American instrument company founded in 1964, where he began to develop and promote his model 200 sequencer whilst working on his craft on developing technology to do with synthesisers and electronic sounds. Bowen is responsible for the original 40-factor programs of the prophet 5, however engineer Robert Moog is the real inventor of the overall instrument, which are the sounds that you can press on a keyboard to make new original sounds from the same set of keys due to the programming within the circuit board which was a huge advancement to the digital sound industry. This new advancement allowed more people to learn about electronic sound which wasn't as available at the time to the masses. This knock-on effect means more advancements happened in a shorter space of time starting the era in the sound industry called ‘the digital era.’ and within the next 20 years starting to see the early beginnings of auto-tune, 1997 from a research engineer Andy Hildebrand whose main field is stochastic estimation theory and digital signal processing, and sound applications for the public use. Within theatre, we mainly rely on appellations to produce the lighting and sounds generated for most modern shows. In the theatre we use cue lab to accurately implement, change, and tech shows. Cue lab was created by ‘figure 53’ in 2007 and is the sound industry standard for on-stage theatre and live entertainment. I believe that without the beginnings of digital sound production/engineering  we wouldn't be as advanced within the sound design and overall sound engineering industry as we are today and inspires me to keep playing with electronic sound and as most of my plays rely on electronic sounds, music which I hoped to produce originals. Word count: 347

Direct source links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-Tune

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QLab 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_sound_recording https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_S._Bowen

*reference's in bibliography*

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video 1: gen research  Derek Paget is known as the man to coin the term verbatim theatre. However, this new documentary-style format of theatre was not fully defined at the time until paget but had been prevalent for years prior. This form of theatre consists of mostly using tape-recordings, written confessionals, and the telling of events from people who are experiencing real-life ramifications and impacts of the themes being discussed. This theatre style over time becomes verbatim which intends to convey to an audience real-life experiences people go through, with added relative research, to make into a formative and impactful theatre that relies on the testimonials of those involved, exposing their voices to the masses who’ve never experienced or even knew about the subject matter, issue, or event, that accorded. The pioneer of verbatim theatre is Rony Robinson, however the first forms of verbatim theatre originated in the UK in the early ’70s by Peter Cheeseman which are named Hands up — for You the War Is Ended (1971) and Fight for Shelion Bar. (1974) these plays are viewed as some of the first plays to introduce verbatim influences; however the key point of verbatim theatre is for the playwright to use the interviewees' recorded responses and use their exact words, no adaptations or changes can be made. I feel like verbatim theatre can aid in social activism and create change within communities that have been discarded by society. An example of a modern verbatim playwright is Alecky Blythe, a British play/screenwriter who has written several verbatim plays including the one I am the sound designer for ‘the girlfriend experience.’ which was her first play to come out to win ‘the time out award.’ According to Pagets own Cambridge essay "'verbatim theatre': oral history and documentary techniques, Robin said “Since the mid-1970s, there have been many examples of verbatim plays in a number of significant performance contexts in the UK. Although the development of Verbatim Theatre can be said to have been facilitated by the portable cassette recorder, it undoubtedly owes its inspiration to Peter Cheeseman's local documentary work at the Victoria Theatre, Stoke-on-Trent, from 1965 onwards'' (D Paget, 2019)  i believe verbatim theatre doesn't just open dialog for people from different aspects of life but incorporates documented real-life historical events though recorded material and  brings to life a persons personal experience of an event that millions could of experienced for example 9/11 through a survivor's point of view or ww2 thought a mothers of a soldier perspective. Verbatim can either be done through either abstract or naturalistic forms depending on the director, playwright, and source material gathered in the interview or text provided.

Word count 441

 

Direct source: https://collective-encounters.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Verbatim-Theatre-Derek-Paget.pdf

*reference in bibliography*