Overall, I believe our final performance was very successful. Despite all the problems we faced and the amount of times we felt it was necessary to change our performance to create the best show we possibly could, as an ensemble, we pulled together and put on a show that was incredibly entertaining and got an audience invested in the characters we had created. I believe we achieved what we had set out to do at the beginning, which was to celebrate individuality and involve other audience segments in contemporary theatre.

In terms of evaluating myself, I think I could have spent more time in the early stages putting together the paperwork for the show, however, this was difficult to do as we changed our show drastically in the first few weeks.

On the show day, we realised that whilst a lot of our audience was mainly university students, a large percentage of people who came were people who would be considered as ‘Trips and Treats’ in the Arts Council England audience segment questionnaire. These people aren’t necessarily interested in contemporary theatre and the arts, but they “Enjoy mainstream arts and popular culture influenced by children, family and friends” (Arts Council England, 2017).

Looking back on the entire process, had we come up with our final show idea sooner, our show could have been even greater and the characters explored even deeper. Despite this, I believe that as an ensemble, we created a fantastic show that really shows who we are as a company and showed how wonderfully we worked together as an ensemble. Whilst there have been a few disputes, I never believed we could have put on such a visually stunning and intricate show as Kalopsia. I am extremely proud to have been a part of the show and worked so closely with The Pin Hinge Collective over these last 5 months. Our debut show has taught me so much about the running of a theatre company and has given us all so much to take forward into the future.

Works Cited:

Arts Council England (2017) Culture-based segmentation. [online] Available from http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/participating-and-attending/culture-based-segmentation [Accessed 27 May 2017].

Show day has arrived! Our company were well prepared for Kalopsia, but  coming into the dressing room, there was a daunting task ahead of us. Despite having a rocky start, as our idea had changed drastically from what it was from our very first devising session, the show received great feedback from our audience and tutors. As props manager, it was an extremely busy day of running around and making sure everyone knew where everything was and that it was all in the right place before the show started. In order to help everyone understand where everything was, I set up props tables that would mark out to everyone on stage where everything was supposed to be in the pre-set and where it needed to end up. I had also drawn up a ‘props plot’ so everyone knew when they were moving props or who they were handing them to. At the end of the performance, I ran the ‘get out’ session which involved checking off where all the props were going; either to the props store or if they were going to any other members of the group.

Pictured above (top to bottom): Props Table B, Props Table A, Props Table B List, Props Table A List (Avery, M. 2017).

Our dress run didn’t perhaps go as well as we wanted to as it was a lot more difficult having to perform in the space rather than in the rooms we had been using for rehearsal. Therefore, our projection and character wasn’t as good as we wanted them to be. We also received some feedback off our tutors who gave us a few ideas on how to improve the show before we performed. Off the back of this, we pulled together and performed the show to the best of our ability. Whilst it was extremely difficult to get the show to the point we wanted it at, it was also very rewarding, and I’m very happy with our group and myself for end product we put on the stage.

In addition to creating and sourcing props for the show, I am performing as the character of ‘Joanna’ who has been a struggle for me to get to grips with. Joanna is an extremely fiery character who doesn’t allow people to get in her way, particularly Beth (Emily Bickerdike), with whom she is caught up in a sales war with. However, Joanna is losing the battle as she struggles to care for her ill father and stay in the office to make sales. Her delusion is set during World War 2, in which she sees Beth as a Nazi; the ultimate villain in Joanna’s mind. Despite her best efforts in this ‘war’, she knows she is losing, with her units eventually being destroyed and her bunker hit with a missile.

The difficulty with getting into the character of Joanna is trying to find the vulnerability within her, as she puts up such a good front in the office around everyone else, until she is around Zoe (Holly Lomas). When together, both of these characters can finally be themselves and their friendship shows a real different side to both characters, which allows our audience to empathise with them and really become invested in the show.

Despite her fiery attitude, Joanna is not an all-out horrible person and knows when to admit defeat. Despite her having her delusion, she is very much a realist and accepts life for what it is, more so towards the end of the play. After it’s announced that Joanna has not got the promotion, she accepts it gracefully and congratulates Beth on her success, despite their previous hatred for each other.

I feel if we were to perform Kalopsia again, I would do a lot more work into discovering who Joanna is and what has led her to behave in the way that she does. I would certainly ask a lot more questions of who she is and what has led her to make the decisions she has in life. Overall though, I will miss playing such a brilliant character who has become one of my favourite roles to play at University.

Today our show idea took a big turn for the better! After having looked over our manifesto and the Arts Council England (ACE) funding policy, we decided to change who our show was aimed at and the kind of show we wanted to create. Whilst the ACE funding policy dictates that students creating shows as part of their course cannot receive funding, we decided to change our idea as part of following their funding guidelines. After taking part in their quiz to find out what kind of theatregoers we all were, we discovered we were all part of the audience segments that were “highly engaged” (Arts Council England, 2017) in the arts, such as ‘urban arts eclectics’ (Arts Council England, 2017). After looking through ACE’s five goals for arts and culture, we were particularly interested by “Goal 2: for everyone” (Arts Council England, 2017), which states that successful shows will show that “engagement levels have increased among those currently least engaged in arts and culture” (Arts Council England, 2017). Our goal from this point was to create a show that would actively engage the people who fell into the audience segments that were least engaged in the arts and theatre and show them contemporary theatre practices, such as physical theatre.

Changing our idea however, means that as props manager, I am faced with a difficult task, as a lot of our original ideas for props had now been changed completely. However, now our first scene consists of a silent film, I am able to still incorporate a lot of the props that have already been sourced into our new opening scene as they are from the same era we wanted to set our original show, such as the typewriter and candlestick telephone.

We still want to keep our original ideas, but the way we have decided to present them has changed. We have now decided to present a straight naturalistic play set in an office, following the lives of seven ordinary people but celebrate their individuality by allowing them to drift into the delusions of their own lives. We’ve began by introducing Michael, a character who’s delusion is a silent film that shows how he wants to be perceived as a hero who manages to save the ‘damsel in distress’ and she falls in love with him. However, it becomes clear that this girl in the office doesn’t have much time for him and he immediately comes back into reality.

In order to come up with the best props to dress the set and to show the characters personality, I asked our director Dwain Brown for ideas and suggestions and took away what he said to come up with some ideas. I looked at pictures of how offices were set up and what I really noticed is that they are all very similar without too much personality and I really wanted to emulate this to the best of my ability to highlight the changes in props and set when the delusions are taking place.

In terms of the props for the characters, Dwain gave me ideas of each character profile and as a group we came up with these ideas:

• Joanna : A stress ball/elastic band ball, to show an audience how worked up she gets as a result of the ‘war’ she has with Beth and a photograph of her father on her desk to show the importance she places on her family
• Louisa : A mug that says ‘World’s Best Boss’ to show how much she values her career and how people see her
• Beth : We decided on no personal props as she makes herself distant from everyone else due to her wanting to advance in her career and not stay in the office for very long
• Michael : Michael also didn’t have a personal prop as we wanted the focus of him to be all about Beth
• Simon: Simon has an apple that he eats during the lunch scene which is a deep red, to show his menacing nature. He casually eats this as he hurls insults at Michael and Tom
• Zoe: Zoe has a clipboard and a pen shaped like a flower to show her organisation and cutesy character traits.
• Tom: Tom has an engineering textbook in his toolbox that he reads to show his aspirations in life and that he is a character striving for better.

Works Cited:

Arts Council England (2017) Goal 2: for everyone. Available from http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/our-mission-and-strategy/goal-2-everyone [Accessed 20th March 2017].

Our company came together as part of the Theatre Company module for the undergraduate degree in Drama at the University of Lincoln. As theatre makers who were all interested in creating performances that celebrate life and individuality, we decided to join together to create the best group dynamic we possibly could. In our first meeting, we set down our group manifesto, code of conduct and how we were going to run our rehearsals to ensure our group dynamic was working efficiently so we could create a show that showcases our talents and gives our audiences something a little bit different whilst keeping them entertained. From our first meeting, we also assigned roles that we felt comfortable in and that we thought would give us a challenge. I chose props manager, as it’s what I’ve done in previous productions and I feel comfortable with organising this side of production.

Our first devising workshop we focused heavily on exercises that helped us all to discover who we were as individuals, such as how our personality and life experiences leads us to make choices in life. For example, one of the questions we focused on in detail was “Would you choose to be happy in a relationship with no money, or single with a lot of money?” From this we began to ficus more on love as all of us had been affected in some way, we all know what it’s like to be loved or to love someone else and it started us off asking questions about how being in love can change our personality and individuality. From this, we began improvising small episodic scenes which we decided were to become part of our first performance!

Along the lines of celebrating individuality, we decided to make our first show about love, using our own experiences and stories from our loved ones to create the story lines. Our main goal is to put a piece on the stage that reflects who we are as individuals and so our initial workshopping device is to write short stories that answer a question and then storyboard them from those initial ideas. From this, we have discovered our initial idea that we want to turn into an episodic sequence of love stories that develop and give an audience perhaps a different understanding of love. A different outlook on how love is portrayed on the stage. We believe that love is portrayed through rose tinted glasses in films and on stage and we were keen to change how people see this.