Month: March 2017

Starting influences

Holly Margaret Lomas Choreographer ,

I have been actively looking at physical theatre performances, one such performance being Lovesong (2011), written by Abi Morgan and performed and choreographed by Frantic Assembly. The movement in this performance is very similar to what I see our performance containing. It is very personal and emphasises the relationship between the characters.

Frantic Assembly have become my foremost influence when choreographing, as I want primary focus to be on the performers relationships and connection within the scene, something which Frantic Assembly always show in their work, as they understand that “[t]heatre exists between performers, lighting, the audience, the music and that moment on that day” (Steiger, 2006, 314).

Lovesong, 2011
Intimacy between performers in Lovesong, from citz.co.uk

Frantic Assembly are skilled in lifts, leans and weight shifts. This is something I have taken influence from as I believe lifts are a great way to show an exclamation of emotion. To prepare for lifts, I researched into how Frantic Assembly prepare for lifts through trust exercises, and the common lifts that can be done. The video below was my starting point in this research.

Frantic Assembly  have a seamless balance of extravagant lifts, and small, subtle movements in their work. Of their performances, the co-founders of the theatre company state that “much is made of the limb-threatening, high-octane, full-blown physicality that has become our trademark [… yet] we are as dedicated, if not more so, to the subtle, nuanced end of the physical spectrum” (Graham and Hoggett, 2009, 40-41).

Lovesong, 2011
Lifts between performers in Lovesong, from citz.co.uk

It is important that I find the balance between extravagant and subtle, as one accentuates the other. Because of this, I have begun practising ground work which will emphasise the lifts we have been practising; subtle movements such as stylised walking can be just as effective as a lift. To develop this, I will dedicate as much time choreographing the nuanced movements as I will the lifts.

 

Citizens Theatre (2017) Frantic Assembly’s Lovesong Media Release. Glasgow: Citizens Theatre.

Graham, S. and Hoggett, S. (2009) The Frantic Assembly book of Devising Theatre. Abingdon: Routledge.

Morgan, A. (2011) Lovesong. [performance] Scott Graham & Steven Hoggett (dirs.) London: Lyric Hammersmith, 11 January.

National Theatre Discover (2015) Frantic Assembly Masterclass: Learning to Fly. [online video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4mXhW7TXQ8 [accessed 7 March 2017].

Steiger, N. (932006) ‘Absolute immediacy’: A conversation with Scott Graham. Contemporary Theatre Review. 16 (3) 312-317.

 

The Beginning of Kalopsia

Jason Lodge Assistant Stage Manager

The Pin Hinge Collective

The Pin Hinge Collective today finally began to shape the roots of our show. The group decided to challenge how theatre can be veiwed by audiences, aiming to produce a show that would not cater to one specific group, but instead, be something that could be enjoyed by all. Modern theatre  is usually fed towards the educated and the cultural committees of the United Kingdom. To accommodate these various groups, Arts Council England (2014) segments different audiences in orientation to their interest and likely hood attending theatre. Therefore, The Pin Hinge collective wanted to target a range of audiences with our performance, changing the segmentation that Arts Council England believes currently stands (Arts Council England, 2014).

To achieve this, the group decided that we would devise a play which was build with to core features. Firstly,  an enjoyable easy to watch story driven narrative, to cater for new audiences to theatre as the less interested in theatre, the Heydays, Kaleidoscope creativity, Facebook families and Up our street segmentation groups, all who have differing interests in theatre ranging from people seeing a show that interests them to those who have some to little in the theatre. Secondly, the play should also hold contemporary performance styles to encapsulate and entertain more venerated theatre goers,  such as the Dormitory dependables, Experience seekers, Commuterland culture buffs and the Metroculturals segmentation’s, these groups unlike the lower brackets commonly come to enjoy the theatre and are interested in the various styles of modern theatre, such as our contemporary performance style (Arts Council England, 2014). Thus, our show holds the opportunity to open doors for theatre novices to also experience different styles of theatre whilst not pushing them to understand differing theatre concepts.

The group believed in the eyes of Arts Council England this would produce a show which could be granted funding, as our performance style would allow differing margins of theatre audiences to to interested in our show. Thus allowing the The Pin Hinge Collective to make its mark within the English theatre community.

Works Cited

Arts Council England (2014) Culture-based segmentation. Available from http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/participating-and-attending/culture-based-segmentation [accessed 12 march 2017].

Producer – Understanding The Role

Jay Charles Petherick Producer

Becoming the companies Producer was a mixture of both my own choice and by appointment of the rest of the group. At the time, I knew little of the role and its requirements. I was simply aware that the producer tends to make the ‘final call’ and is responsible for ensuring the team is heading in the ‘right direction’. Because of this, I knew that a good producer would need to be a good leader. Someone who can make decisions but also delegate and push a team to fulfil their own job roles and tasks, making sure they hit deadlines.

Understanding the hierarchy within a theatre company
Understanding the hierarchy within a theatre company

Whilst I feel that taking on this role was a huge and daunting challenge, I was willing to accept its responsibility and believed that I had the necessary leadership skills to undertake it successfully. I began researching the role, discovering what would be expected of me and how to good be a successful producer. In his book So You Want To Be A Theatre Producer? James Seabright points out that “[t]he producer is responsible for delivering a good show, on time and in budget” (Seabright, 2011, 5). Despite being a relatively broad definition, his advice gave me direction. I knew I needed to immediately begin to thinking about our budget and planning ways in which we could raise funds for the show. I also started deciding what we would spend the money on, considering how I would divide the funds up between things like marketing costs, props, set and costume.

In addition, Seabright states that a producer is often “involved in every aspect of a show: creatively, financially, administratively, technically and promotionally” (Seabright, 2011, 5). Consequently, I began having regular meetings with each member of the team, discussing their progress and setting them targets and deadlines to hit. I believe that this was important in establishing a consistent expectation and work ethic throughout the process. Furthermore, the quality of communication meant that each department worked alongside one-another, ensuring that one wasn’t relying upon another to complete their task.

Works Cited

Seabright, J. (2010) So You Want To Be A Theatre Producer? London: Nick Hern Books.

 

Social Media Marketing: the early stages

Emily Claire Bickerdike Marketing Manager , , , , , , , ,

The first few weeks of marketing have been very successful. As something I’ve never really done before, I was apprehensive about the time management side, understanding algorithms, and gaining a decent following. However, what these past few weeks have proved is, it’s a lot more fun than I was expecting!

So what have we been getting up to?

Facebook

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Our Facebook page is by far the social media account that our audience is interacting with the most. We have over 300 likes, and our posts are reaching over 5,000 people. It has been proven that videos are the most powerful marketing tool on Facebook, so we’ve been uploading little snippet videos from rehearsals regularly, a lot of the time using the ‘Boomerang’ app. Boomerang records videos on a four second loop, making the image appear to go backwards and forwards – it’s a great little way of previewing our work without giving too much away, and they’re fun to watch!

Since videos are such a great way to connect with our audience, we decided to create a video advert on Facebook which will be pushed out to a select audience of our choosing (18-50 year olds). We used a Boomerang video from a movement rehearsal, and within an hour of the advert going live, it had already reached 80 people outside the organic audience (people who like our page and their friends).

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Something we have also been doing on our Facebook page is introducing our company members individually to get a better connection with an audience, allowing them to know a little bit about each of us. We’ve been posting these daily between 13:00-14:00, the peak hours for Facebook use in the week as people at work are often on their lunch breaks and want to catch up with social media.

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Within this, we tell our viewers three things each company member loves the most, keeping the theme of our upcoming show, love, in people’s minds. It also emphasizes people as individuals and what sets each other apart, something deeply rooted in our company manifesto.

Something else that is happening on our Facebook page is the promo for our first fundraising event! We are holding a quiz all about love on the 7th March and have gained a lot of interest through promoting the quiz and the prizes to our Facebook followers.

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The event information reads:

The Pin Hinge Collective presents

The Quiz of Love!

Think you know about love? Reckon you know your rom-coms from your tear-jerkers? Bet you’re clued up on your famous couples? Can you REALLY remember the lyrics to that cheesy 80s ballad you always attempt?
Test your trivia at The Swan with some VERY exciting prizes to be won, including
PAINTBALLING FOR 4 as the GRAND PRIZE!

There will also be a raffle for the chance to win a romantic stay in a B&B for two lucky people!

£2 to play
Teams of no more than 4!
All proceeds go towards our fundraising campaign for our new show.

Details of our company and show can be found at:
facebook.com/thepinhingecollective
twitter.com/pinhingetheatre
thepinhingecollective.wordpress.com

We’d love you to be there!

This event has been viewed by 269 people and reached a total of 1.8k, but of course due to venue size this large number would not be possible…

We’re aiming to have around 60-70 people attend and to hopefully achieve this, we’re going to do a countdown to our event as a reminder, and push the event through sharing and Facebook advertising.

Instagram

Instagram has also proved a popular tool, however not so much so as Facebook. Far fewer people use Instagram than Facebook so the difference in numbers isn’t surprising, as well as Instagram being far less interactive and familiar to use than Facebook. However, we post Instagram updates regularly, focusing on mainly photographic material than videos, although Boomerang videos are also now incorporated into Instagram so we do tend to replicate relevant videos on there as well as Facebook.

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Since our show will be very visual, we understand that our Instagram use will develop as the show does, and in turn, our audience engagement will increase. However, the engagement we’ve been getting so far is excellent, we’ve been getting lots of likes on our photos and the correlation between Instagram likes and Facebook likes is interesting to watch, as people who like one page often go and visit the other.

Twitter

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Our Twitter experience has been somewhat different from Facebook and Instagram. We’ve found it hard to establish a following due to the large amount of ‘traffic’ on Twitter and accounts/tweets getting lost in the masses. I believe the next way to get around this is promoting our Twitter account on Facebook to make people more aware of it, and engaging with other theatre companies and venues in order to make a connection!

What are we going to do?

Video Dwain Brown Director

‘What we are going to do?’ a question asked at every rehearsal and often there isn’t an answer. Not that because I can’t give an answer, but our group didn’t quite work out who were as a ‘Company’ and hadn’t quite worked out our social hierarchy as of yet.  Of course, we knew our roles, I the Director, Jay, the producer and Dan, the Stage Manager. It made sense for us three to be in charge but with a fresh, new group it took us a while to find our feet and take charge.

 

After the first few rehearsals, witch unfortunately weren’t all that productive. With a company of nine people and hearing nine voices all at once and trying to bring them all together without clear leadership was a next to impossible task. Dan, Jay and I decided to do something about it. We spoke to our group and placed ourselves at the top of the hierarchy like roles would suggest. The group were happy for us to do this, Dan, Jay and myself met up weekly and planned each rehearsal beforehand so that the dreaded question ‘What are we going to do?’ would never be met in silence again.