Initial ideas
From the beginning of our journey, we wanted a reaction from our audience, which is why we decided to create a performance based around taboos subjects. We wanted to create a moral, social and political play that have an impact on young people, which is how we came up with the name “X-Pose”. We soon thought that name was too risky to be portrayed as a Theatre Company and we had changed our minds when we realised we wanted to create a play around social taboos, where “X-Pose” would sound too political. This is where we found our inspiration with the name “Pushing Boundaries”, as we would explore the different taboos that people tend to stay away from since they are uncomfortable subjects to discuss. We decided our company would produce theatre that would notify communities about social taboos.
Our four main topics were based around homelessness, alcoholism, student culture and rape (particularly male rape). We found these topics by exploring different taboos through workshops held by our director and assistant director, Sara McGrath and Amber Pyatt. We had worked around the plays Men in the Cities by Chris Goode, Pornography by Simon Stephens and Vinegar Tom by Caryl Churchill. Our producer Chloe Nugent and I had watched the performance Cloudcuckoolanders by the theatre company LaPelle’s Factory at Lincoln Performing Arts centre inspired us as well to come up basing a performance around taboos. We also realised we needed to do more research as we did not know enough on these subjects, we looked at websites such as Survivors UK and Life Centre.
We wanted to create a naturalistic piece with naturalistic acting; this decision was made when we realised we wanted our audience to relate to our characters are much as possible. I had not done a naturalistic piece in quite a while so I was nervous how the style of acting would change and that it would be very different from what I had done these past few years at Lincoln Performing Arts Centre, which is why I decided to work extra hard on my character development and consult our director and assistant director as often as possible to check I was on the right track.
Concept
As part of the narrative, we decided to find something the majority of our audience would be able to relate to; this is where our writer Alexander Marshall decided to base our piece around the end of university and everyone getting on with their lives and future. It would be set in a student house with five girlfriends. Our editor Joe Facer thought it would be a good idea to put scene 4 as our first scene to show the audience we went back in time. The different characters in the play show the different types of people there usually is when you share a house with other people. I saw my character Zoe as a mix between the two characters from the famous sitcom Friends, Rachel Green and Phoebe Buffay, I took some inspiration from those two characters and developed it into my own. “The actors should ask themselves if their character is like anyone they know” (Abbott, 2012), I saw Phoebe’s ditziness and Rachel’s drama queen moments in Zoe when I first read the script. I was excited to develop the character of Zoe and wanted to make sure I did it successfully! I thought the casting had been done very well and Zoe was a character that suited me.
Character development
“Truth on the stage is whatever we can believe in with sincerity, whether in ourselves or in our colleagues” (Stanislavski, 1989). As a performer, your character development is key in order to produce a successful performance. I took my character development seriously; I wanted to have a clear distinct character from everyone so the audience would be able to identify each character from one another. Our director cast us all, but it was our job as actors to develop that character and make it our own, “believe that it is you standing in the shoes of the role” (Churcher, 2011).
My character was described as “an energetic character who always tries to bring up the energy in the room and of those around her” (McGrath, 2016). I found it easy to connect and relate to that character, as I am a happy, energetic and enthusiastic person in life. Sharing some of Zoe’s personality traits made it easier for me to step into the role and allowed me to be more daring to explore other personality traits of hers, as I felt confident with the ones I shared with her. For example, it helped me to discover that she was an over the top character and very dramatic wanting all attention on her most of the time. These ideas came to me as we did character workshops held by our assistant director, such a hot heating.
Having a dancer’s background made it easier for me to develop my characters’ physicality as I tried all sorts of different ways to portray my character in the studio. “Finding a physicality that suits a character is a potent method of becoming someone else” (Abbott, 2012), having done several workshops on physicality really helped me to embody my character. A dancer’s background also helped me with projection as I knew how to use my diaphragm correctly and not end up shouting, which would result in the loss of my voice. I discovered Zoe was meant to be a loud character, so I had to make sure my projection was excellent and according to our director I was successful in doing so!
I made the final decision with consulting our director that Zoe would have a bouncy walk around the stage, swinging left to right that would come from her shoulders and always keeping her head up high. I did this in order to show the audience she is a positive character who only believes in having fun and being the centre of attention, which is why I had to make sure whenever she had an entrance on stage, it had to be very clear the adorable little “drama queen” was present. Zoe for me was a loud, ditsy, talkative and hyper character, as well as being over the top. Even though our piece was naturalistic, over the top people do exist in real life, which is why we wanted to portray Zoe as that character, and it worked with the contrast of the other naturalistic characters on stage, so the audience would see a clear difference between everyone’s personality and could put a label on us. Below is a collage of Zoe having the time of her life trying to bring life into the room!
(Phill Crowe, 2016)
What I particularly struggled with was finding the balance between Zoe being an over the top character and not overplaying on stage. Having done the module “Theatre for Young Audiences” last semester I had experience in having to create a big, expressive character on stage, where my concern back then was also to find the balance between overplaying and creating a successful character. For this module however, our play was a naturalistic one with naturalistic acting; I was afraid I would create another “Theatre for Young Audiences” character as our director had told me to be “the over the top character”(McGrath, 2016). Amber Pyatt’s workshops helped me finding the balance; I got told numerous times to bring the energy of my character down, as it is easier for the director to tell actors to bring the energy levels down instead of bringing them up, which made me feel more confident I was doing something right.
Amber Pyatt did numerous exercises with us, including where she gave us paper shaped into people and asked us to fill in five characteristic traits our character would portray in each scene, as you can see on the picture below. This exercise particularly helped me finding the balance. It made it clear in my head and helped me portray something different (more of less) in each scene, where the audience would see that Zoe was either sad, stressed, depressed or hyper, talkative and energetic.
Our assistant director also made us write an inner monologue for the original scene 4, the one I found to be the most difficult one. The original scene 4 was also a scene I struggled with as it was the scene where the energy of all characters had been brought down after what had been discovered about the main character Ben the previous night. The audience was meant to see a difference between the actors’ attitudes in the original scene 4 and the original scene 1 where everyone would be having a great time. Writing my thoughts down helped me understand what my character was dealing with, and Amber Pyatt would then ask me how I, Maria would react in this situation; as my character is quite similar to my personality, it helped me understand how I should play it, and I knew it would not be overplayed. Below are pictures of what our assistant director made us do in workshops.
(Maria Yngvell, 2016)
(Maria Yngvell, 2016)
In the collage below, the first photo is from the original scene 1 (Friday night) and below are a few pictures from original Scene 4 (Sunday morning). There is a clear contrast of people’s attitudes, and Zoe has developed a slouched position on the sofa and lost her upbeat attitude.
(David Turner and Phill Crowe, 2016)
Show time!
We did it! Show day came and went and I could not be prouder of what we all accomplished! All our hard work over these past few months has truly paid off. I was very delighted with how our final performance went, and that our piece brought some audience members to tears. We received some wonderful feedback from our audience members and a lot of them felt touched and impressed we had done such an original, unexpected piece with a strong twist. I personally thought it was the best performance we had delivered over all of our rehearsals, there are only so many times you can rehearse a piece in a studio between actors and the director. At one point, you need to take it all to the theatre space and as an actor having an audience gives you that extra kick of adrenaline to deliver a successful performance!
(Phill Crowe, 2016)
I was very impressed with how well we cooperated as performers during the final show; a few things went wrong on the night, and without any communication we all pitched in to help one another out as performers. Instead of being a selfish performer who only wants the best for himself, we all worked together as a successful ensemble. For example, during the second bridge scene where all characters were getting ready for a night out, Catherine, one of our performers accidentally put her costume the wrong way round and had to remain behind the wings. It was a panicking situation but as I was stood next to her I decided to walk on stage shouting for someone to grab me a beer and bring it to my room, which gave Catherine some time to put her costume back on correctly. I was able to improvise as I felt I knew my character so well, I knew what my character would do in an unexpected situation, “the process should allow you to feel that you have really got to know your character as a three-dimensional being made up of many composite parts “ (Unsworth, 2012), I was happy I had spent so much time on my character development.
We had agreed that if someone would not be able to walk on stage at a specific moment (since the bridge had been carefully choreographed) another performer would have to jump in and improvise so the stage would not look empty and the audience would figure out something had gone wrong. The audience is smart, they know what is meant to happen and what is not; when I watched the other theatre companies performances there were some things that went wrong however the actors covered it up perfectly and did not freeze on stage. As a performer, these are the things you need to take into consideration, anything can go wrong on the show night, which is why it is crucial to be present and focused during your performance. Having done some warm up exercises before the show led by Amber Pyatt, Joe facer and myself helped us focus and get into character.
If the piece was to get developed further, there is a section I would like to improve on. Most of the time we would get the timing perfectly done for our second bridge section where all characters would get ready for a night out. During our dress run and performance night we struggled a bit with the timing, this was because it was the first time it had been brought on stage with the new size so we had to change and add a few things on the day.
Work Count: 2195
Works Cited
Abbott, J. (2012) The Acting Book. London: Nick Hern.
Churcher, M. (2011) A Screen Acting Workshop. London: Nick Hern.
Crow, P. (2016) Lincoln School of Fine and Performing Arts : Suitcases in the Hallway. [online] Available at https://m.flickr.com/#/photos/61839232@N02/albums/72157668418084582/ [Accessed 24 May 2016].
McGrath, S. (Dir). (2016) Suitcases in the Hallway. [play].
Stanislavski, C. (1989) An Actor Prepares. New York : Routledge.
Turner, D. (2016) Lincoln School of Fine and Performing Arts : Suitcases in the Hallway. [online] Available at https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B3RfKkyAHBzdamh1V1k1MWllSWs&usp=drive_web [Accessed 24 May 2016].
Unsworth, T (2012) Becoming an Actor.London : Nick Hern.