Category Archives: Joe Pope

Character Evaluation- Chorus & Titorelli

Working as a member of the chorus throughout the past four months has taught me many things. Having never worked in a chorus before, I was happy to take the chance at experiencing it with STAMP Theatre but I did not imagine the extent of how much a chorus could be involved in a production before! In my opinion the chorus was the most important element in The Trail because not only did they have to carry out all the transitions between the scenes themselves, but we also had to stay incredibly focused and in tune with one another. If one person in the chorus should start to fall in posture, gesture or sound, the other members of the chorus would have to become aware of this and in order to combat it, make sure that they increase their own movement and volume in order to bring the other member back up to the required level. In this, we felt that we had an invisible network connecting us together as we were so aware of each other, that if necessary, if one member of the chorus forgot a line or movement, any one of us could step in. That is what I found so interesting about the chorus; the ability to link actor to actor without the realisation of it throughout rehearsal was a wonderful thing and something that I am extremely privileged to be a part of.

My characterisation of Titorelli had undergone much work throughout the rehearsal process, the most noticeable of which was the accent I chose to use for him. Starting rehearsal with an Italian accent was fine and everyone believed that it suited the character well, however as each session went on and the actors were becoming more grotesque in the way they played a character, I felt it was necessary to develop his voice as well as his physicality. Upon trying separately, French, German and a Cockney accent with the character I still believed that there was more that was required with Titorelli’s voice. I then began to think about Titorelli not as a grotesque character. He wasn’t naturalistic so therefore, why should he have a naturalistic accent? This is when it clicked and my thought was to combine a mixture of European accents to create a strange accent that the character believes to be real, but Joseph K does not. As every character K meets during the play tries to get something from him and deceives him in one form or another, I thought the same should be applied to Titorelli. Therefore, I wanted to play him as an imposter of a court painter; A painting of a mask within a masquerade ball. As K’s character starts to deteriorate toward the end of the play and he becomes a broken man, I feel that so should the characters and the world of the play around him reflect that. This is why I chose to play Titorelli in such a way. I played him as a character playing Joseph K’s image of what a court painter should be within the corrupt world that is crumbling around him.

Thanks, Joe.

Flyer Distribution

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Once the flyer had been created and they were delivered back from the printing house, we were able to start distributing them; the only problem was… where?

Everyone in the marketing team new Lincoln pretty well but we had to decide where was the best places to put our flyers as to reach the widest demographic as possible. We wanted to steer clear of just having an audience primarily consisting of a student demographic. Although there is nothing wrong with this, I felt that it would be more beneficial for STAMP Theatre as a company to gain some recognition and support from other key demographics too. I made a list of all the different possible places we could distribute the flyers, such as coffee shops, museums, other local arts venues, the university campus, hotels and B&B’s, restaurants and transport links such as the train station. We felt that these different places would give us the widest possible range in order to reach the different areas of demographics.

I printed out a map of Lincoln City Centre and began to highlight the different areas that the flyers needed to be distributed in. I colour coded each different section for example, coffee shops in pink, and then made it clear on the map where these places where situated. I then showed this to the rest of the marketing team and they decided which places they wanted to deliver the flyers to.

A hard copy of the colour coded map of the city centre and a full list of the places where flyers where distributed can be viewed in our Marketing Pack.

Thanks, Joe.

Press Release

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As I mentioned in an earlier post, one of my responsibilities as Marketing Manager would be to write a Press Release.

In order to do this I first looked at some examples of press releases from existing Theatre Companies such as: Look Left Look Right Theatre and Tortoise in a Nutshell Theatre. Both of whom had a press release published in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival Guide on: How to Sell a Show. Here is the link to the online guide which I found extremely useful as it contained many handy marketing tips and advice.

https://www.edfringe.com/uploads/docs/participants/Fringe_Guide_to_Selling_a_Show.pdf

The Fringe guide suggested that when writing a press release you should use language that the general public can understand. It also mentions that you are effectively trying to sell your show as well give the public enough information without bombarding them details. For example, I needed to include the basics of, Who, What, When, Where and Why? Then after covering these points it was then possible to talk briefly about the style of performance and what sort of theatre company STAMP is. I had to be very conscious of what words I chose to describe as to make sure the press release would appeal to a wide range of demographics.

After writing the press release, I e-mailed it along with a promotional image to local press contacts. These included:

BBC Lincolnshire
The Linc
The Lincolnshire Echo
The Lincolnite

In order to make sure that we covered a wide area of demographic, I also e-mailed the release to other local newspapers and sites. I chose other towns close to Lincoln that had a working theatre. The reason for doing this was to try and branch out our marketing campaign so that it could reach the widest amount of the public as possible, and thereby increasing our potential for expanding our audience capacity. This meant that I also contacted:

The Louth Leader- the Riverhead Theatre in Louth has regularly attended shows by their local public.
Skegness Standard- Skegness is also a town which is travelling distance from Lincoln that has a fully functioning receiving house theatre.
Newark Advertiser- With a direct train only taking you 25minutes, and a regularly attended theatre, Newark was also a town that we tried to reach with our campaign.

We had the privilege of having the press release published by the Lincolnshire Echo and below is a link to their website where it was also published.

http://www.thisislincolnshire.co.uk/Lincoln-graduates-producing-innovative-work/story-19020281-detail/story.html#axzz2Tphz3s19

The full press release and our list of press contacts are available for viewing as a hard copy in our Marketing Pack.

Thanks, Joe.

Costume

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As stated in our manifesto, STAMP Theatre doesn’t want their audience to be bombarded with visual spectacle in the palpable forms of set and costume design. Therefore, the costume for The Trial had to represent this. The Artistic Director discussed that she wanted very simple costume with clean lines which wouldn’t detract attention away from the actor wearing it. She also said that she didn’t want the costume to reflect any particular time period, just that it was clear to the audience that the time of the play was sometime in the past.

Starting with the character of Joseph K, it was important that the audience could see a resemblance between the character and the ‘everyman’ figure which they could relate to. As it is mentioned in the script that Joseph K is a manager in a large bank, I wanted him to look smart and presentable throughout the play as if he were ready to go into work and carry on with his everyday life. Therefore, the actor was to wear: black trousers with a white shirt tucked in, a neck tie which had a plain design on it, smart black shoes and black braces which were fastened to the trousers. I did consider having Joseph K in a smart blazer however, during our rehearsal period we discovered that the blazer restricted the actor in his movement and so I made the decision for the character not to wear it.

With the performance dependant on a chorus, I wanted the eight actors, except Joseph K, to have an item of clothing which they all wore. The reason behind this was to show that the actors were unified and bound together while they were on stage as the chorus. I did this by having every member of the chorus in the same white shirt which was buttoned up to the neck. I wanted to tea stain the shirts of the chorus to make them different from Joseph K’s white shirt. This meant that in comparison; the shirts were duller, looked older and discoloured. The reason behind doing this was to age the shirts. This also relates back to the Artistic Director wanting the costume to look like it was from the past. I aged the shirts by using the tea staining process which is as follows:

Boil 2L of water and add to a large bucket with 10 Tea bags.
Allow to brew for 5 minutes and then cool the liquid by adding 1L of cold water.
Remove the tea bags from the liquid.
Add the shirts to the bucket, making sure they are all completely saturated, and leave to soak for 15 minutes.
Remove from bucket and drain off excess liquid and leave to dry.

With four members of the chorus playing female characters and the other four playing male characters opposite Joseph K, I also wanted the female members of the chorus to wear skirts. I felt this was important as every female that Joseph K meets throughout the play tries to seduce him in some form. Therefore I wanted the female chorus members to have a certain amount of femininity in what they wore. I purchased four black maxi skirts in a viscose fabric. The benefit of having the skirts in a viscose fabric was that the skirts were very stretchy and this meant that the female chorus would be able to move around the stage in them easily. After testing the skirts in rehearsal we found they were very figure hugging to the point where they looked too modern, they were also quite short on some of the girls because of their different heights. To combat this I added an extra six inches of stretchy black lace to the top of the waistbands on the skirts. This meant that the girls could pull the skirts down so that they fell to the floor and the extra material made the skirt look as if it had an ‘A- line’ structure, with the waist band fitting just underneath the bust. As well as this, I also added an extra ten inches of the same black lace down the side seam of each of the skirts. I did this by cutting along the seam of each skirt and then sewing the additional material onto the side of each hem.

The extra material meant that the skirts were not as fitting around the hips and I felt that it made the skirts look of an older fashion.

The male chorus members were to wear smart black trousers with the aged shirt tucked in and a belt. This was to show that there was some similarity between Joseph K‘s costume, to symbolise that male chorus could have been in a similar position to him in the past. All chorus members were to wear smart, black, hard sole shoes.

My Job Role- Marketing Manager