final performance

The End of the Road

Emma Jane Haigh Costume Designer , ,

After months and months of the most intense process I have ever put myself through, Kalopsia comes to an end. I’m so pleased I had the chance to throw myself at such a rewarding project at the very end of my degree.

I took on a role which was completely new to me. Being Costume Designer has been extremely challenging at times, exhausting, time consuming and emotionally exhausting.

But OVERALL, more than anything it’s been an absolute pleasure. Seeing the professional photographs and hearing people’s kind feedback have made the entire experience so worth the hours of work I have thrown at it through the process. It has taught me that I am perhaps more creative than I first thought I was.

I couldn’t submit my final post without mentioning what a wonderful team I have worked with whilst creating Kalopsia. As The Pin Hinge Collective I feel we really put everything we had into our show and I’d really like to think that our hard work came across.

Our show changed and developed a lot during the process as we continued to better and fine-tune our understanding of who we are as a company. I feel that we began the process trying to capture too many ideas and by the end of the process we had sieved our ideas right down to create a much more clear and concise performance.

We sculpted the show to fit with our company’s ethos. The show remained about what makes us human and what makes us each unique individuals.

If we had the chance to begin the process again, I would try to balance my production role with my secondary acting role more. I feel like I could have spent more time working on my character and making sure I really knew her inside out. I would also have tried to come to a final show idea sooner than we did, I feel that if we had had more time to work on our final idea, our show could have been even stronger.

Thank you to the rest of The Pin Hinge Collective for helping me to finish my degree with a bang! I really couldn’t have done it without the lot of you. ph1

A Performer’s Perspective: Reflection

Emily Claire Bickerdike Marketing Manager , , ,

Throughout this blog I have discussed my role as Marketing Manager, and even reflected upon my abilities and tasks in this role. However, now that Kalopsia has come to an end, I believe it is important for me to briefly reflect upon my secondary role as a performer.

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(Howard Rees-Jones, undated, cited in Facebook.com, 2017)

Performing has always been what I’ve wanted to do. From very early on in my educational career, I knew that acting was the path I wanted to take. Since being at university I have involved myself in as much acting as possible, usually avoiding production/technical roles and focusing solely on acting. I knew that since my time at university was coming to an end, I should branch out and jump head-first into something different whilst I still had the chance.

This was my main reason for choosing the Marketing Manager role; whilst it was a large, very important, and time consuming production role, I would still have the time and flexibility to act in the final show I would have during my time at university.

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(Howard Rees-Jones, undated, cited in Facebook.com, 2017)

My character was Beth Campbell, a 23-year-old office worker with big ambitions to become the boss. Of anything. Of everything…? I wanted to ensure that Beth was a multi-dimensional character, therefore I undertook a lot of character profiling and found out things about her, that were hidden in the script, that I had not considered. I based Beth on a younger version of Louisa, Emma’s character. Lousia was the boss of the office, incredibly head-strong, and could come across as a bit of a ‘bitch’ because of her strong female presence *eye roll*.

I decided that Beth should be very similar to how I pictured Louisa was when she first got into business. Driven, with ideas and aspirations perhaps unreachable by others, a work-ethic that others could only dream of, and a lack of time/patience for anything that could disrupt that. However, the major difference I wanted between Beth and Louisa is that Beth still cared somewhat about being liked, whereas Louisa, I feel, had given up.

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(Howard Rees-Jones, undated, cited in Facebook.com, 2017)

Beth’s delusion/daydream took place during her speech after successfully getting the promotion at head office. She imagines herself as a Queen, the ruler, addressing her loving subjects; she is leading those that serve her into battle, willing to lay down her own life for her duty (or job). This shows not only Beth’s desire to be a leader, but also her superiority complex over those in the office, which slowly diminishes towards the end as she takes pity on Michael, who she knows is in love with her, and gives him one last nice gesture before she leaves. After all, she doesn’t have to put up with him trying to distract her any more.

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(Howard Rees-Jones, undated, cited in Facebook.com, 2017)

Upon reflection, I believe I could have done more physical work on my character. Our choreographer, Holly, gave me some Comedia del Arte characters to research and base my movement around, yet I don’t feel I gave this enough time or experimentation. If I were to play this role again, I would undergo a detailed exploration of these characters and find the features in their movement that I could incorporate in a subtle manner into my movement to create a more naturalistic portrayal.

All in all, I very much enjoyed playing Beth Campbell and would love to revisit the character one day if ever Kalopsia resurfaced. I believe it was a very fitting character to play in my final university performance; driven, headstrong, and sure of where she wants to be. Something I will take with me after graduation.

Works Cited:

Howard Rees-Jones, G. (undated) Kalopsia. [online] Lincoln: Lincoln Performing Arts Centre. Available from https://www.facebook.com/ghrjmedia/?fref=mentions [Accessed 29 May 2017].