Post by someone on Apr 22, 2007 21:54:45 GMT
sorry to be doing this... but floppy discs etc arent working... n i figured this was as safe a place to back it up as any....
Rationale:
For this year’s practical exam I chose to work as a technician in a group with Selina Kelway-Bamber and Catrina Simpson as I knew they would give me something more challenging and satisfying to do, and they certainly did not fail. For our theme for the pieces we chose “Drama is a human being in a mess”, Heathcote, as we felt this was a more fluid theme and would give us more scope to find texts that we liked and also free up ideas for an improvised piece more than we felt the other suggested themes would. Having discussed thoughts and ideas that this sparked off for us we then set out to find a pre-1900 and a post 1900 text that we felt followed our initial ideas from this theme well.
Our first thoughts went to the post 1900 text; we wanted to do something a bit different from anything the others have ever acted in before and so started looking at some absurdist pieces. We read through a few pieces, and having rejected our favourite, ‘The Chairs’, Ionesco, as we could not cast the parts, we found ‘The Zoo Story’, Albee, and were immediately filled with a desire to do it. ‘The Zoo Story’ was written for two men; Jerry and Peter, which as a group we decided would be too difficult for the actors to convey with true emotion and remain believable by the audience, for these reasons we changed the character names to Geri and Petra, inevitably changing the gender of both characters to be female. Changing the gender of the characters lead also to the amount of cutting we had to do to get a working script as changing the genders meant some parts just did not work with women saying them.
Having found a post 1900 text that we were more than happy with we then set about finding a pre-1900 text, we decided as a group that we wanted to find something lighter and less shocking to an audience than ‘The Zoo Story’, and started looking through various pieces by Shakespeare. We read through ‘Merry Wives of Windsor’ and really wanted to do that, but looking into it further we decided to try and find a piece with characters nearer the ages of Catrina and Selina and we eventually found ‘As You Like It’. We chose two short scenes which we felt flowed on from each other well and showed ultimately that ‘Drama is a human being in a mess’ as it showed how the girls overcame being banished and then the slight issue of Rosalind being clothed like a man, it also showed their strength of character as they ventured into the forest, a place that was not safe for two girls to go.
Once we had successfully decided which pre- and post 1900 texts we were going to perform we then set about trying to write our devised piece, this brought up many different and challenging ideas, all of which we developed and attempted to script before settling on our final idea. One of these original ideas was centred around the question ‘what is perfection?’. We sent questionnaires around our year at school to have other ideas than the ones we were having. We followed this idea for a while, partly scripting it and putting it on its feet but then came to the decision that it was getting a bit too heavy and not what we wanted to perform so we started again. For our final improvised decision we used ideas sparked from ‘The Chairs’ to create our own absurdist piece of drama. Selina and Catrina took on the parts of guests at a wedding party and proceeded to ‘talk’ to many different people they encountered, building up a story as they went along.
For these three pieces we then sat down to discuss our initial staging ideas so that I would have some idea what the other two felt fitted the pieces best and indeed what style of set they wanted. This also enabled me to start thinking about how best to enhance their acting with my use of light. We felt that for ‘The Zoo Story’ we wanted to get as close to our audience as was possible and so decided we would try and get audience to sit on three sides of our acting area, this in turn meant that I would have to plan a rig as though for a piece performed in-the-round, which would prove itself to be more difficult than it first sounded. We felt that this style of staging would also work well for our improvised piece as well as it draws an audience into the action. We did, however, want to retain an element of distance for ‘As You Like It’ and so this was set more for an audience from the front, using different levels of the acting area to represent different places in the play. It was decided that at no point throughout the three pieces would the lighting stand out from the action, it was to be used to enhance the acting and allow the scene to be set. For all three pieces we decided to keep the set minimalist, using only what was essential in order to get the storyline across, however for our improvised piece we needed to have a fair amount of ‘stuff’ onstage to represent the other characters. This being said, we still wanted to keep our set and our props as realistic as possible, enabling our visions and ideas to be clearly understood by the audience. My aims for the sets for these pieces would be basic and light yet strong enough to withstand both rehearsals and production week. It was decided that I would make: a free standing tree, a tree stump that would be suitable for an actor to sit on, a decorative tree stump and two corners of a large picture frame. It was decided that I would find two benches and a mannequin, and that I would make some sort of ‘blood bag’ or device, so that when Geri killed herself in ‘The Zoo Story’ lots of blood would be seen making it gory and realistic, and the blood to go in it.
Research:
Before we came to our conclusion of which pre- and post 1900 texts we would perform we researched both the lives of the writers, the plays as a whole and not just the sections we would perform, and we tried to decide how we would classify each of the pieces.
Our pre-1900 text, ‘As You Like It’ was written in either 1599 or 1600 by William Shakespeare. It was originally performed in The Globe Theatre, on a stage raised above the majority of the audience and surrounded on three sides. Our staging mirrored the staging at The Globe to a degree as we also had audience on three sides of our acting are, however our acting area was not all raised above the majority of the audience. Our acting area differed as it had a larger space on the side not containing the audience. It is a light comedic piece, and, as was very unusual for Shakespeare a ‘happy-ever-after’ play in which every character was content at the end. It was written during the reign of Queen Elizabeth and so flattered the monarch by portraying women as strong, feisty and resourceful characters. This was a contributing factor as to why we chose the piece as plays written by Shakespeare during the reign of James I had mainly mad and dangerous women which flattered him. When ‘As You Like It’ was first performed at The Globe, the lordly characters such as the Duke were played between the pillars on the stage, this we mirrored in setting the scene with the Duke on the upper level of our staging giving him the status throughout the scene. More comic scenes in Shakespeare’s time were played on the forestage, closer to the audience in the pit; this in a way was mirrored by us setting the forest scene on the floor which was much closer to the audience.
Our post 1900 text, ‘The Zoo Story’ was written in 1959 by Edward Albee. Albee was born in 1928 in Washington DC and was adopted by Reed Albee, the son of an American Vaudeville producer. The piece is heralded to be the start of American absurdist theatre. Absurdist theatre is based on the comment that ‘life is inherently without meaning, and so one must find one's own meaning’. This lead to plays that cause an audience to question and to see things in a way they had never before done. The American absurdist movement happened later than in Europe, this is because Europe was still reeling from the effects of World War II, whereas America was not touched with the same sense of losing the meaning and purpose in life. ‘The American Dream’, also written by Albee draws on this thought and shows how shallow the ‘ideal American’ is, these plays, along with others written by Albee, started the smaller absurdist movement in America.
In devising our other piece, ‘The Wedding Party’, we looked closely at ‘The Chairs’, Eugène Ionesco, this is another absurdist piece, written to show the insignificance of ones existence. In ‘The Chairs’, two characters hold a series of conversations with non existent guests sat on chairs to represent where they were.
Development process:
We got off to a quick start with both our pre- and post 1900 pieces, however our improvised piece took a while to get our heads around and agree totally on what we wanted to do. We wrote down a list of ideas we had, and followed these through, partially scripting them until we came across something we felt would really work.
In doing set design and construction as well as the lighting for the pieces, I had to talk to the other groups doing the exams too, to make sure we were all working with the same goals in mind and also to ensure we all had a clear picture in our minds as to what the acting area would look like (how big it was, the different levels etc). This proved to be a hard task as even though I had circulated simple drawings and a note explaining them to all the different groups only one person in another group came to talk to me about it and get it explained fully.
Our group worked incredibly well together, we bounced ideas off each other effectively and took direction from each other. I helped with the general blocking of both the pre- and post 1900 texts, and Selina and Catrina, in turn, kept me up to date with extra pieces of set and props that they felt they needed. We were understanding and aware of the capabilities of what each of us could achieve, which meant that there were no overly stressed conversations taking place about other people in the group.
Once we were under way with the pre- and post 1900 texts I split off from the group during lesson times to source and make all the scenery we required. I also used the time to develop my rig plan. The week before the production we started using the pieces of scenery I had spent the time working on. This proved to be a good idea as it allowed Selina and Catrina to get used to the pieces yet at the same time they were only used a few times before production week meaning that they did not get broken or damaged.
We decided as a group to put the benches for ‘The Zoo Story’ perpendicular to the raked audience, this, we felt, would add to the sense of oddness to the scene as typically if two benches are set up on stage they are angled slightly towards each other to make them look more naturalistic.
For my lighting rig I chose to use four different coloured gels; (insert name here)- for a warm general wash; (insert name here)- for ‘lightning’; (insert name here)- for the circle in ‘Faustus’ and (insert name here) for my forest effect. I also chose to use a (insert name here) gobo to enhance the forest feeling I had created with the (insert name here) gel.
Performance:
On the night of the practical exam I feel that my group performed brilliantly. In ‘As You Like It’ Selina and Catrina played their roles incredibly well, enabling the audience to truly see them as the characters they were portraying. In ‘The Zoo Story’ the characters were definitely believable, the audience were laughing and chuckling along at the funny bits and were also suitably shocked by the climactic ending. I also feel that the acting for ‘The Wedding Party’ was suitably in character and allowed to audience to see clearer what was happening with the baffling pairs of shoes they had originally seen when the lights came up.
From a personal point of view I feel that all my technical work went well, all the lighting states were adequate- they both allowed the audience to clearly see the action and help to set the scene and create the right atmosphere. The set I had made for ‘As You Like It’ looked amazing and the tree stump that Catrina sat on worked well as part of the scene. The minimalist tree with one branch looked fantastic when in place under the green dappled lighting I had created using a break up gobo. I felt this was a very important piece of set and the tree having only one branch added to the comedy of the piece. As Orlando writes, and Celia reads off, ‘Tongues I’ll hang on every tree’ I felt that it would be amusing to have letters scattered everywhere but only one actually hanging from a tree. This caused amusement to some of the audience, and I received comments after the exam saying that it was funny and well thought out. The scene change in the middle of this piece was slick and went without a hitch.
For ‘The Zoo Story’ the set, minimalist as it was, was actually quite heavy, something you do not remember when the adrenaline is pumping. The benches looked great onstage and the different sizes and types of benches used made it look slightly less uniform to the audience. This also aided in creating the tension as to why the characters were fighting over one bench when there was another, newer, less battered looking one nearby. My favourite part of ‘The Zoo Story’ worked incredibly well on the night, the part I’m referring to is, of course, when Geri impaled herself on the knife held by Petra. The blood bag, which we had created between us, worked incredibly well and the fake blood I had concocted looked fabulous and very realistic under the bright lighting I had used to signify a warm, sunny day in the park. I was worried during rehearsals that this would not work as a couple of times when we tried the stabbing scene the blood did not emerge around where the knife was impaled but rather nearby (wherever the bag had decided to split, or had splurged projectile blood all over the floor). This, although dramatic, would not have looked realistic, which is what we were aiming for, and thus followed Albee’s intentions of apparent reality concealing an extreme and abnormal situation. The scene change at the end of ‘The Zoo Story’ into the next piece was slick, I got the benches off quickly while Selina and Catrina concentrated on stopping more blood leaving the bag and then mopping up the floor.
In my eyes the only technical hitch of the evening happened during ‘The Wedding Party’. The bolt holding the base plate perpendicular to the pole going into the mannequin had managed to come slightly undone in the wings, something I did not notice until I came to put her together on stage. This was a bit annoying as I then did not have time to redo it and put her together properly, which ultimately led to her being slightly unstable and rocking backwards when Catrina accidentally bumped into her. The scene changes to begin and end this piece were, in my opinion, slightly long but necessary in order to make sure all the shoes were matching pairs and in the right positions.
I think that the staging of each of the three pieces worked wonderfully, the audience were kept slightly at a distance for ‘As You Like It’, were drawn closely into the action for ‘The Zoo Story’, in particular when Geri actually walked through the back row of the audience. I also feel it worked well for ‘The Wedding Party’ however, I personally feel that the different levels were not totally needed and that the piece could have worked much better on just the floor. This would have made the different characters more believable and the setting of the piece seem more realistic.
Evaluation:
I have learnt a lot over the months working towards this exam. I now feel much more proficient with my lighting skills having successfully rigged for our quasi arena staging for the first time. This was made easier by the fact I had helped with and operated on a performance of ‘Skellig’ where the acting was more central, and more often on the floor area and therefore the lighting rig had to be more suitable for in-the-round, even though we, again, only had audience on three sides. This was not possible for the exam pieces as the area in front of the green tabs and the levels of thrust also needed lighting, which I could not feasibly have done if I had used the lanterns to light the floor space. I also feel my skills with set design and construction have improved enormously. If I had been asked before we started working on the pieces to create a tree stump capable of supporting an actor’s weight I would not have known where to start. Now I know all I need is the inner cardboard tube from a roll of carpet, chicken wire, nuts and bolts, papier mache and active imagination! I have gained skills with my model making, doing things I never thought I could do, as making benches out of balsa wood is not something you do everyday. I have gained enormous satisfaction from working in the group I worked with. I got to work with people I had not worked with before and learnt a lot from them. I feel the three pieces looked amazing on the night and I am very proud of myself, Catrina and Selina for all the work we did. I did not receive any comments from audience members about the lighting we used which I took to mean that nothing was obviously out of place or annoying in any way to the audience.
If I had the time again I am not sure that there would be many things I would do differently. I would, however, have liked to have spent more time with the others when writing the improvised piece as I feel that there might have been some more work written in for me to do if I had been there every time they met up to suggest it. In the future I would hope to find some more exciting, technically challenging pieces pre-1900. I feel my lighting for ‘As You Like It’ could have been more spectacular, maybe by using candle or lantern, or by gelling some of the lanterns with chocolate brown to create a candlelit more ‘olde worlde’ feel to the piece. This, however, is talking from a design point of view and I was satisfied with the atmosphere the lighting states I used created. I did have the chance to work with other groups on the night of the exams and in the time leading up to it and the group doing ‘Faustus’ decided they wanted to experiment with candle light to create a circle lit inwardly with a deep red gel, that Mephostophilis could not step out of once she had been conjured until she broke the spell by getting Faustus to give her soul to Lucifer; this worked incredibly well on the night, it looked very effective and fitted well with their way of playing the different characters. If I had more time in which to improve the pieces I would have researched more into the ways ‘The Zoo Story’ has been performed in the past and taken ideas from that as our version was completely our own. That being said, I feel our interpretation of the text was brilliant and I feel that on the night it went incredibly well. Selina and Catrina had the audience captivated and enjoying what they were watching yet at the same time feeling slightly shocked and frightened for Petra. The bit where Geri actually walked through the back of the audience was well thought out and definitely drew the audience into the action further than if she had just walked in a circle onstage.
The main challenge I encountered over the duration of rehearsals and indeed during production week was to get all the groups to use the staging we had originally agreed on. In future I would endeavour to get the staging set up as we decided for a rehearsal a short time into the rehearsal process so that all the actors were aware of the space they had available to them. This would be easier than rehearsing in a different space every time and getting used to that to then be shocked when faced with what they had forgotten we had agreed on.
If I had the time again I would also make sure I liaised more with the other groups, enabling all the difficulties we had closer to production week to be sorted out earlier in the process. This would have made things a lot easier for everyone and taken away some of the stress we definitely did not need during production week. This is something I will definitely remember to do in the future.
Bibliography:
en.wikipedia.org
www.imagi-nation.com
Esslin, Martin. The Theatre of the Absurd, Penguin, 1961.
Walters, Graham. Stage Lighting, London, A&C Black, 1997
Rationale:
For this year’s practical exam I chose to work as a technician in a group with Selina Kelway-Bamber and Catrina Simpson as I knew they would give me something more challenging and satisfying to do, and they certainly did not fail. For our theme for the pieces we chose “Drama is a human being in a mess”, Heathcote, as we felt this was a more fluid theme and would give us more scope to find texts that we liked and also free up ideas for an improvised piece more than we felt the other suggested themes would. Having discussed thoughts and ideas that this sparked off for us we then set out to find a pre-1900 and a post 1900 text that we felt followed our initial ideas from this theme well.
Our first thoughts went to the post 1900 text; we wanted to do something a bit different from anything the others have ever acted in before and so started looking at some absurdist pieces. We read through a few pieces, and having rejected our favourite, ‘The Chairs’, Ionesco, as we could not cast the parts, we found ‘The Zoo Story’, Albee, and were immediately filled with a desire to do it. ‘The Zoo Story’ was written for two men; Jerry and Peter, which as a group we decided would be too difficult for the actors to convey with true emotion and remain believable by the audience, for these reasons we changed the character names to Geri and Petra, inevitably changing the gender of both characters to be female. Changing the gender of the characters lead also to the amount of cutting we had to do to get a working script as changing the genders meant some parts just did not work with women saying them.
Having found a post 1900 text that we were more than happy with we then set about finding a pre-1900 text, we decided as a group that we wanted to find something lighter and less shocking to an audience than ‘The Zoo Story’, and started looking through various pieces by Shakespeare. We read through ‘Merry Wives of Windsor’ and really wanted to do that, but looking into it further we decided to try and find a piece with characters nearer the ages of Catrina and Selina and we eventually found ‘As You Like It’. We chose two short scenes which we felt flowed on from each other well and showed ultimately that ‘Drama is a human being in a mess’ as it showed how the girls overcame being banished and then the slight issue of Rosalind being clothed like a man, it also showed their strength of character as they ventured into the forest, a place that was not safe for two girls to go.
Once we had successfully decided which pre- and post 1900 texts we were going to perform we then set about trying to write our devised piece, this brought up many different and challenging ideas, all of which we developed and attempted to script before settling on our final idea. One of these original ideas was centred around the question ‘what is perfection?’. We sent questionnaires around our year at school to have other ideas than the ones we were having. We followed this idea for a while, partly scripting it and putting it on its feet but then came to the decision that it was getting a bit too heavy and not what we wanted to perform so we started again. For our final improvised decision we used ideas sparked from ‘The Chairs’ to create our own absurdist piece of drama. Selina and Catrina took on the parts of guests at a wedding party and proceeded to ‘talk’ to many different people they encountered, building up a story as they went along.
For these three pieces we then sat down to discuss our initial staging ideas so that I would have some idea what the other two felt fitted the pieces best and indeed what style of set they wanted. This also enabled me to start thinking about how best to enhance their acting with my use of light. We felt that for ‘The Zoo Story’ we wanted to get as close to our audience as was possible and so decided we would try and get audience to sit on three sides of our acting area, this in turn meant that I would have to plan a rig as though for a piece performed in-the-round, which would prove itself to be more difficult than it first sounded. We felt that this style of staging would also work well for our improvised piece as well as it draws an audience into the action. We did, however, want to retain an element of distance for ‘As You Like It’ and so this was set more for an audience from the front, using different levels of the acting area to represent different places in the play. It was decided that at no point throughout the three pieces would the lighting stand out from the action, it was to be used to enhance the acting and allow the scene to be set. For all three pieces we decided to keep the set minimalist, using only what was essential in order to get the storyline across, however for our improvised piece we needed to have a fair amount of ‘stuff’ onstage to represent the other characters. This being said, we still wanted to keep our set and our props as realistic as possible, enabling our visions and ideas to be clearly understood by the audience. My aims for the sets for these pieces would be basic and light yet strong enough to withstand both rehearsals and production week. It was decided that I would make: a free standing tree, a tree stump that would be suitable for an actor to sit on, a decorative tree stump and two corners of a large picture frame. It was decided that I would find two benches and a mannequin, and that I would make some sort of ‘blood bag’ or device, so that when Geri killed herself in ‘The Zoo Story’ lots of blood would be seen making it gory and realistic, and the blood to go in it.
Research:
Before we came to our conclusion of which pre- and post 1900 texts we would perform we researched both the lives of the writers, the plays as a whole and not just the sections we would perform, and we tried to decide how we would classify each of the pieces.
Our pre-1900 text, ‘As You Like It’ was written in either 1599 or 1600 by William Shakespeare. It was originally performed in The Globe Theatre, on a stage raised above the majority of the audience and surrounded on three sides. Our staging mirrored the staging at The Globe to a degree as we also had audience on three sides of our acting are, however our acting area was not all raised above the majority of the audience. Our acting area differed as it had a larger space on the side not containing the audience. It is a light comedic piece, and, as was very unusual for Shakespeare a ‘happy-ever-after’ play in which every character was content at the end. It was written during the reign of Queen Elizabeth and so flattered the monarch by portraying women as strong, feisty and resourceful characters. This was a contributing factor as to why we chose the piece as plays written by Shakespeare during the reign of James I had mainly mad and dangerous women which flattered him. When ‘As You Like It’ was first performed at The Globe, the lordly characters such as the Duke were played between the pillars on the stage, this we mirrored in setting the scene with the Duke on the upper level of our staging giving him the status throughout the scene. More comic scenes in Shakespeare’s time were played on the forestage, closer to the audience in the pit; this in a way was mirrored by us setting the forest scene on the floor which was much closer to the audience.
Our post 1900 text, ‘The Zoo Story’ was written in 1959 by Edward Albee. Albee was born in 1928 in Washington DC and was adopted by Reed Albee, the son of an American Vaudeville producer. The piece is heralded to be the start of American absurdist theatre. Absurdist theatre is based on the comment that ‘life is inherently without meaning, and so one must find one's own meaning’. This lead to plays that cause an audience to question and to see things in a way they had never before done. The American absurdist movement happened later than in Europe, this is because Europe was still reeling from the effects of World War II, whereas America was not touched with the same sense of losing the meaning and purpose in life. ‘The American Dream’, also written by Albee draws on this thought and shows how shallow the ‘ideal American’ is, these plays, along with others written by Albee, started the smaller absurdist movement in America.
In devising our other piece, ‘The Wedding Party’, we looked closely at ‘The Chairs’, Eugène Ionesco, this is another absurdist piece, written to show the insignificance of ones existence. In ‘The Chairs’, two characters hold a series of conversations with non existent guests sat on chairs to represent where they were.
Development process:
We got off to a quick start with both our pre- and post 1900 pieces, however our improvised piece took a while to get our heads around and agree totally on what we wanted to do. We wrote down a list of ideas we had, and followed these through, partially scripting them until we came across something we felt would really work.
In doing set design and construction as well as the lighting for the pieces, I had to talk to the other groups doing the exams too, to make sure we were all working with the same goals in mind and also to ensure we all had a clear picture in our minds as to what the acting area would look like (how big it was, the different levels etc). This proved to be a hard task as even though I had circulated simple drawings and a note explaining them to all the different groups only one person in another group came to talk to me about it and get it explained fully.
Our group worked incredibly well together, we bounced ideas off each other effectively and took direction from each other. I helped with the general blocking of both the pre- and post 1900 texts, and Selina and Catrina, in turn, kept me up to date with extra pieces of set and props that they felt they needed. We were understanding and aware of the capabilities of what each of us could achieve, which meant that there were no overly stressed conversations taking place about other people in the group.
Once we were under way with the pre- and post 1900 texts I split off from the group during lesson times to source and make all the scenery we required. I also used the time to develop my rig plan. The week before the production we started using the pieces of scenery I had spent the time working on. This proved to be a good idea as it allowed Selina and Catrina to get used to the pieces yet at the same time they were only used a few times before production week meaning that they did not get broken or damaged.
We decided as a group to put the benches for ‘The Zoo Story’ perpendicular to the raked audience, this, we felt, would add to the sense of oddness to the scene as typically if two benches are set up on stage they are angled slightly towards each other to make them look more naturalistic.
For my lighting rig I chose to use four different coloured gels; (insert name here)- for a warm general wash; (insert name here)- for ‘lightning’; (insert name here)- for the circle in ‘Faustus’ and (insert name here) for my forest effect. I also chose to use a (insert name here) gobo to enhance the forest feeling I had created with the (insert name here) gel.
Performance:
On the night of the practical exam I feel that my group performed brilliantly. In ‘As You Like It’ Selina and Catrina played their roles incredibly well, enabling the audience to truly see them as the characters they were portraying. In ‘The Zoo Story’ the characters were definitely believable, the audience were laughing and chuckling along at the funny bits and were also suitably shocked by the climactic ending. I also feel that the acting for ‘The Wedding Party’ was suitably in character and allowed to audience to see clearer what was happening with the baffling pairs of shoes they had originally seen when the lights came up.
From a personal point of view I feel that all my technical work went well, all the lighting states were adequate- they both allowed the audience to clearly see the action and help to set the scene and create the right atmosphere. The set I had made for ‘As You Like It’ looked amazing and the tree stump that Catrina sat on worked well as part of the scene. The minimalist tree with one branch looked fantastic when in place under the green dappled lighting I had created using a break up gobo. I felt this was a very important piece of set and the tree having only one branch added to the comedy of the piece. As Orlando writes, and Celia reads off, ‘Tongues I’ll hang on every tree’ I felt that it would be amusing to have letters scattered everywhere but only one actually hanging from a tree. This caused amusement to some of the audience, and I received comments after the exam saying that it was funny and well thought out. The scene change in the middle of this piece was slick and went without a hitch.
For ‘The Zoo Story’ the set, minimalist as it was, was actually quite heavy, something you do not remember when the adrenaline is pumping. The benches looked great onstage and the different sizes and types of benches used made it look slightly less uniform to the audience. This also aided in creating the tension as to why the characters were fighting over one bench when there was another, newer, less battered looking one nearby. My favourite part of ‘The Zoo Story’ worked incredibly well on the night, the part I’m referring to is, of course, when Geri impaled herself on the knife held by Petra. The blood bag, which we had created between us, worked incredibly well and the fake blood I had concocted looked fabulous and very realistic under the bright lighting I had used to signify a warm, sunny day in the park. I was worried during rehearsals that this would not work as a couple of times when we tried the stabbing scene the blood did not emerge around where the knife was impaled but rather nearby (wherever the bag had decided to split, or had splurged projectile blood all over the floor). This, although dramatic, would not have looked realistic, which is what we were aiming for, and thus followed Albee’s intentions of apparent reality concealing an extreme and abnormal situation. The scene change at the end of ‘The Zoo Story’ into the next piece was slick, I got the benches off quickly while Selina and Catrina concentrated on stopping more blood leaving the bag and then mopping up the floor.
In my eyes the only technical hitch of the evening happened during ‘The Wedding Party’. The bolt holding the base plate perpendicular to the pole going into the mannequin had managed to come slightly undone in the wings, something I did not notice until I came to put her together on stage. This was a bit annoying as I then did not have time to redo it and put her together properly, which ultimately led to her being slightly unstable and rocking backwards when Catrina accidentally bumped into her. The scene changes to begin and end this piece were, in my opinion, slightly long but necessary in order to make sure all the shoes were matching pairs and in the right positions.
I think that the staging of each of the three pieces worked wonderfully, the audience were kept slightly at a distance for ‘As You Like It’, were drawn closely into the action for ‘The Zoo Story’, in particular when Geri actually walked through the back row of the audience. I also feel it worked well for ‘The Wedding Party’ however, I personally feel that the different levels were not totally needed and that the piece could have worked much better on just the floor. This would have made the different characters more believable and the setting of the piece seem more realistic.
Evaluation:
I have learnt a lot over the months working towards this exam. I now feel much more proficient with my lighting skills having successfully rigged for our quasi arena staging for the first time. This was made easier by the fact I had helped with and operated on a performance of ‘Skellig’ where the acting was more central, and more often on the floor area and therefore the lighting rig had to be more suitable for in-the-round, even though we, again, only had audience on three sides. This was not possible for the exam pieces as the area in front of the green tabs and the levels of thrust also needed lighting, which I could not feasibly have done if I had used the lanterns to light the floor space. I also feel my skills with set design and construction have improved enormously. If I had been asked before we started working on the pieces to create a tree stump capable of supporting an actor’s weight I would not have known where to start. Now I know all I need is the inner cardboard tube from a roll of carpet, chicken wire, nuts and bolts, papier mache and active imagination! I have gained skills with my model making, doing things I never thought I could do, as making benches out of balsa wood is not something you do everyday. I have gained enormous satisfaction from working in the group I worked with. I got to work with people I had not worked with before and learnt a lot from them. I feel the three pieces looked amazing on the night and I am very proud of myself, Catrina and Selina for all the work we did. I did not receive any comments from audience members about the lighting we used which I took to mean that nothing was obviously out of place or annoying in any way to the audience.
If I had the time again I am not sure that there would be many things I would do differently. I would, however, have liked to have spent more time with the others when writing the improvised piece as I feel that there might have been some more work written in for me to do if I had been there every time they met up to suggest it. In the future I would hope to find some more exciting, technically challenging pieces pre-1900. I feel my lighting for ‘As You Like It’ could have been more spectacular, maybe by using candle or lantern, or by gelling some of the lanterns with chocolate brown to create a candlelit more ‘olde worlde’ feel to the piece. This, however, is talking from a design point of view and I was satisfied with the atmosphere the lighting states I used created. I did have the chance to work with other groups on the night of the exams and in the time leading up to it and the group doing ‘Faustus’ decided they wanted to experiment with candle light to create a circle lit inwardly with a deep red gel, that Mephostophilis could not step out of once she had been conjured until she broke the spell by getting Faustus to give her soul to Lucifer; this worked incredibly well on the night, it looked very effective and fitted well with their way of playing the different characters. If I had more time in which to improve the pieces I would have researched more into the ways ‘The Zoo Story’ has been performed in the past and taken ideas from that as our version was completely our own. That being said, I feel our interpretation of the text was brilliant and I feel that on the night it went incredibly well. Selina and Catrina had the audience captivated and enjoying what they were watching yet at the same time feeling slightly shocked and frightened for Petra. The bit where Geri actually walked through the back of the audience was well thought out and definitely drew the audience into the action further than if she had just walked in a circle onstage.
The main challenge I encountered over the duration of rehearsals and indeed during production week was to get all the groups to use the staging we had originally agreed on. In future I would endeavour to get the staging set up as we decided for a rehearsal a short time into the rehearsal process so that all the actors were aware of the space they had available to them. This would be easier than rehearsing in a different space every time and getting used to that to then be shocked when faced with what they had forgotten we had agreed on.
If I had the time again I would also make sure I liaised more with the other groups, enabling all the difficulties we had closer to production week to be sorted out earlier in the process. This would have made things a lot easier for everyone and taken away some of the stress we definitely did not need during production week. This is something I will definitely remember to do in the future.
Bibliography:
en.wikipedia.org
www.imagi-nation.com
Esslin, Martin. The Theatre of the Absurd, Penguin, 1961.
Walters, Graham. Stage Lighting, London, A&C Black, 1997