Author Archives: Emma Huggins

Performance Day Reflection

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On reflection of the performance day, I would say we had a smooth running and organised day. The technical team (Larissa, Alex HS and I) along with the director were in the performance space for 9am ready to start. Luckily we had been in the theatre with some of the LPAC technicians the night before to hang the frames ready for performance day. This meant that we were already ahead in terms of our performance day schedule.

Here are some of the photos from throughout the night before and the day of the performance:

DSC05252 Centre stage

 

Here we are marking centre stage to get an idea of where the frames will hang ^

Preparing the bungee   Alex (the technician) and I are preparing the bungee chord and rope for the frames here.

Rigging the lights Discussing the lights Discussing the lights in relation the the frames (We rigged the above head spotlights at the same time as rigging the frames).

 

The Performance Day DSC05305 These are taken of the first walk through with the frames – taken on the night before the performance.

 

After rigging and focusing the lights, Larissa Oates, Alex Watson (who was cueing the show) and myself went up to the lighting box to start the cueing process. In total we had 92 LX cues in the script that needed to be programmed in chronological order, ready for a cue to cue, a full dress run through  and the actual performance.

After finishing programming the lights we broke for lunch ready to come back for a cue to cue. The cue to cue lighting did not go as well as planned as the blue wash didn’t programme on all the cues as intended. In saying this it was sorted out through liaison with the technical team ready for the full dress run through.

As a performer I felt the dress rehearsal went great, a few stumbles happened with lighting cues but apart from that all was well. The actual performance also went amazingly well, and we’ve had a great response from the audience both in person, and on our social media sites.

If I could do it all again to change anything, it would be the strength of some of the frames. One did snap mid performance, but I think I handled it well enough for the audience to notice but not know if it was on purpose or not. Little glitches to happen in performances that sometimes can’t be helped but overall I think we put on an entertaining show that matched what our manifesto said it would, and hopefully you’ll hear from STAMP Theatre again some time.

Thank you for reading,

Emma Huggins

 

Communicating our lighting needs

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In our manifesto we state that as a collective, STAMP Theatre aim to focus solely on performance rather than the visual aesthetics such as lighting design. Therefore when it came to lighting design the artistic director and I liaised often about keeping the differing lighting states simple.

In our production we had 8 lighting states in total and when creating a lighting plot Alex Harvey Sporle (ASM) and I tried to make this as easy as possible for our venues to comprehend. In total we had 18 spotlights (2 on each of the 8 hanging picture frames, one on the door frame at the back and one DSC), a general white wash, a general blue wash, a split downstage wash (separating stage left from stage right), a state where both downstage areas were lit at the same time, and back lights (to create shadows).

In order for the LPAC technical team to understand exactly what we wanted I had to make additional documentation to transfer our ideas over. This documentation enabled them to get a general idea of what we required when it came to rigging on the day. This also meant we didn’t spend too long discussing what we required on the day of rigging. This documentation included a focus chart – detailing exactly what each light needed to do, and a magic sheet – which works hand in hand with the LX plot and focus chart to reiterate the function and positioning of each light.

Here are the completed magic sheet and focus chart, Alex Harvey Sporle will post the finished LX plot.

The Trial – Focus sheet

Magic sheet – stamp

I made these documents in a generic format that is clear and understandable for technicians across different venues.

The focus chart is a simple way of communicating what each light on the LX plot is needed for. This gives the venue an idea of any lights they may need to use as substitutes to create different states if they do not have the specific ones stated on our LX plot. A good example of this from our LX plot we requested moving wash lights, but the LPAC were unable to provide these so, knowing what we wanted to create the technical team were able to ensure substitute lights were available (we used shutters instead).

‘[T]he magic sheet sorts the dimmers or channels into graphic focus locations’ (Shelley,2009, p.264). As you can see by the magic sheet I put together, I have used arrows to show what direction the light is coming from and the channel number within the arrow to point out what light it is. The magic sheet goes hand in hand with the LX plot and the focus chart, each showing the channel numbers.

 

Works Cited

Shelley, S.L. (2009). A Practical Guide to Stage Lighting. Oxford: Elsevier Inc. 

 

Thank you for reading,

Emma Huggins

Character Development: The Priest

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The Priest is the very last character that Joseph K comes into contact with in the play. He is yet another bizarre character and I for one struggled with coming to terms with characterisations for him. The role of the priest was without doubt the hardest role for me; I found it much easier to be a part of the chorus as various roles than to become the priest. For me he was a character of the unknown, I didn’t know what I wanted from it and I wasn’t sure how to play it. Usually to create a grotesque character I would take influence from stereotypes and exaggerate it, like that of the guard and the ‘cheeky chappy’ police man. However when it came to the Priest I found it difficult to select a stereotype.

In our rendition of The Trial the Priest character had one long speech right at the end of the play. I found this speech very daunting as I didn’t want to end the play on a low note after such high energy levels. In contrast with my other character as Guard two,  the Priest had long winded speeches in contrast to short and snappy sentences, he was a man of the church who seemed to be calm and collected, unlike the hysterical Guard two, who was all over the place.

The clear distinction between characters is important when multi-rolling on stage. To create a different persona from the Priest to the Guard I gave him a hunched over walk, a calmer, older voice, and a different facial expression. With guidance from the Director I eventually found my feet in terms of characterisations. One of the main reasons I struggled with characterisation was due to the fact I found it extremely difficult to learn the big chunk of speech. In all my years of acting I have never had to learn a monologue and I tried various techniques to drill in the lines, and failed several times (though I did eventually get them).

In his writing Richard Jackson Harris comments on Helga and Tony Noice’s theory of learning lines. Harris tells us that the Noice’s discovered actors who make a connection of feeling and movement to a character are more likely to memorize their lines better than someone who does not make this connection. ‘Professional actors and students using these techniques had better verbatim memory for lines than those who tried to explicitly memorize the words’ (Harris, 2009, p. 54). This could be one of the reasons I struggled as the Priest did not get as much time spent on it as the guards did due to the fact it was at the end of the play in contrast to the guard at the beginning.

Works Cited: 

Harris, R. J. (2009). A cognitive psychology of mass communication (fifth ed.). New York: Routledge.

 

Thank you for reading,

 

Emma Huggins

Character Development: Guard Two

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Upon our first read through of The Trial I knew I had never been involved in a play or performance that came across as bizarre as this one. The story and stage directions made little sense to me, leaving me feeling slightly nervous for the first rehearsal. We had discussed what practitioners we wanted to influence our work and it was decided that Brook would play a huge part in our influences, along with various styles of theatre including that of the Commedia dell’arte, and its larger than life characters.

From the offset, the idea of grotesque theatre has been applied to every scene within the play. Edward Braun states that ‘the grotesque mixes opposites, consciously creating harsh incongruity, playing entirely on its own originality’ (Braun, 1998, p. 68). That is true to our production in that the character of Joseph K is the complete opposite to the rest of the characters (such as the guards or Leni), and these characters are each entirely different to one and other, then as an audience you are bombarded with a clash of the chorus who are almost ridiculous. Each member of the chorus is similar, but still the opposite to K, creating this notion of the grotesque.

The chorus within the play carry huge responsibility in terms of keeping the grotesque manner throughout.  I have never been in a play where the invisible network between the ensemble members was so important. We were always working together to create a different environment for Joseph K and our audience, often exploiting synchronised movements or creating still, grotesque tablos and imagary for the audience. Jacques Lecoq, in his writing Theatre of Movement and Gesture speaks about a chorus, and states that ‘a chorus is a body, which moves organically like a living creature’ (Lecoq, 2006, p.109). In saying this he is referring to the invisible network created amongst the chorus members. This network allowed us to work together in synchronisation with one and other throughout the play.

Aside from the chorus, the first two ‘grotesque’ characters that are to interact with K are the Guards. From day one the Guards have been an ongoing project for Alex (Guard one) and I (Guard two), and the characterisation has developed and changed throughout the rehearsal process. The original direction we were heading for in terms of characterisation was the classical comedy double act with the ‘sharp-guy-and-idiot structure’ (Medhurst, 2007, p. 123). However after playing around with the characters and with great directional structure from Lucy, we came to the decision that both Guards needed to seem like they had some kind of authoritative status. Giving the guards a cockney accent and a “cheeky chappy” stance, the characters started to unfold.

Due to the fast paced structure of the Guard scene it was essential that we knew our own and each other’s lines inside out. Lucy (Director) gave us the instruction that it needed to seem like we were finishing off one and others sentences, so learning lines early on was imperative to the development of the guards.

Once we eventually had the right pace it became easier and easier to experiment more with the character of the Guards. Together Alex and I developed a walk for each guard, he swished, and I dipped; contrasting movements that worked well together.

Here is a video of the walk we first came up with together, without the contrasting movements.

We decided to alternate our walks as we weren’t always in sync, which wasn’t a bad thing at times, but often enough it was. With different walks it was much easier to focus on our own character development which then stemmed to the development of a double act.

 

Works Cited

Braun, E. (1998). Meyerhold A Revolution in Theatre. London: Methuen Drama.

Lecoq, J (2006). Theatre of Movement and Gesture. New York: Routledge.

Medhurst, A. (2007). A National Joke: Popular comedy and English cultural identities. New York: Routledge.

 

Thank you for reading,

 

Emma Huggins

My Role within STAMP

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To enable a theatre company to run and produce a show, certain roles need to be assigned to the members of the company. Some examples of roles and teams needed within a theatre company are: a production team, someone to manage its finances (budgeter), a producer (to over look all decisions), a director and the obvious one of actors. Within our company, STAMP Theatre, I have been allocated the roles of lighting director and actress.

When delegating the roles within our company we had to make a team decision of who would do what, and since I had the most experience with lighting (though I do not have much myself) I volunteered myself to be a part of the technical team.

Often in theatre companies people will double role to save the cost of paying two people when one person could do both jobs. This obviously is not the case in our company, as no one is getting paid however, we have chosen to multi-role within our company because most of us wanted to act therefore, like a professional company some of us had more than one role.

As lighting director it is my job to transpose the ideas of the artistic designer to the technicians at our venue in a way that is understandable. I need to create various documents that will provide our venue with the knowledge to create the lighting settings we want. The documentation I need to provide is, a Lighting plot (also known as an LX plot), a magic sheet and a focus chart. Each document will need to be in a generic format that the technicians at various venues will be able to understand – if we were to tour the production, this would save making a new focus chart each time.

 

Thank you for reading,

 

Emma Huggins