Projects
Telling Tails
For my first graduating production, I had the pleasure of working with director Keeley Lane. The production that I worked on is also known as the Alternative Production. It is a research and devised piece that we work on as a group and with a director. We had three weeks to work on devising and rehearsing this piece and performed it during the fourth week.
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It started with a set topic: seasons and how we could create it towards a family audience. The process began with discussions about what we know about seasons: the colours, the plants, the animals, and the weather. Stories, poems, and songs about seasons were also looked at. Discussions also lead to the ideas of climate change, pollution and other environmental issues caused by humans. After the first day in the rehearsal room, a list of questions was created to help guide us, and we wanted to have answered at the end of the process.
- How long should the piece be?
- What are the themes of the piece?
- Who is the audience?
- What is the message of the piece?
- Do we want to make this piece interactive?
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After the questions, we began by creating short improvised scenes to stimulate ideas. The scenes created explored different elements of theatre: dialogue, movement and music. We looked at how we could incorporate them into this devised piece. This helped start the process of creating a storyline. During this, we began to identify the characters and how we could link the scenes created into a story. The storyline of this piece for the first two weeks kept altering how we could create this piece going from a journey of following a group of kids on a journey to find Mother Nature and help bring back the seasons to the final idea of the forest animals working together to create a festival for Mother Nature. With the structure that we had decided on we were able to easily create a storyline with scenes that were independent but still linked to the main storyline. This storyline allowed us not to go into a loop with a storyline that goes up and down but to follow a structure that has a clear beginning, middle and end.
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In our final week of rehearsals, we had the opportunity to work in Howden Theatre. On this day we happened to be able to try out a scene from the piece in front of a group of primary school kids who were on a school trip. From this trail, we were able to identify exactly who are target audience was and if what we had made worked through their reactions. This gave us a positive feeling and knowing that we were on the right track.
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In the fourth week, we had a tech run and dress rehearsal a day before our performances. With each one, we kept getting better and more confident. Our second show helped us to fully see and feel what it is like to create a piece like this in front of our target audience.
Government Inspector
The Government Inspector was the second production I got to work on with an outside director and the first scripted production. I was able to work with Jordan Langford and got to learn how he works in the rehearsal space.
I was able to work in a rehearsal space in which we started to work on our feet straight away. from the start, we used different techniques to find and understand how the words can be heightened when spoken and still contain naturalistic elements. throughout the rehearsal process we as actors were able to experiment during the scenes and take note of ourselves along with a bit of direction from Jordan to see and feel what worked for our characters at that moment and then slowly towards the end of the rehearsal process refining and keeping certain elements set which worked with the storytelling.
During the rehearsal process, Jordan also worked with us to deepen our knowledge of our characters and the world that we were building.
Road
Road, this was the third and final production of my graduate year. This was also a scripted production. I was able to work together with my lecturer, Samantha Robinson, who directed our final production.
With this production, we started with research. We looked up the history of the United Kingdom in the 1980s, what occurred before it started in 1945, what events led to the events occurring in the 80s, and the events which took place lead to what is occurring now in today's society. We also looked specifically into Scotland and, more specifically, the city of Glasgow.
Since the play has many individual monologues, we looked at who interacts with whom in the play to understand the different dynamics.
We also created this play to be a type of actor musical by incorporating the music of the '80s, which fit into the themes of the play but also created an element of fun.
I started with my character, Molly, who is one of the oldest in the play and has something along the lines of dementia. I needed to research how her mental state can affect her and how she interacts with the world around her.
I was also to work together with Sam during the rehearsal process to experiment and explore Molly. We worked to gather to create her space, and by doing so, I was able to explore my character in her personal space.
Throughout the rehearsal period, we slowly started to link each element together and run each transition so that everyone knew what was going on to create a well-oiled machine.
I also was able to explore a second character who was a lot younger and how she interacts when she is on stage with the other characters. We had also changed her from the Scots girl to the Dutch girl since we had changed the location of the play from northern England to Glasgow
I had a lot of fun exploring both of these characters and learning about the period and how history reflects today's society.
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A new project hopefully coming soon!