Flyer Distribution

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.

Character Development: Block

Personally I find Block to be the most interesting character in The Trial, mainly because he stands as a haunting vision of what Joseph K’s future could hold but also because he is very enjoyable to play. Block is a strange little man who has been on trial for a long time, he explains that he has ‘taken on five extra lawyers apart from Huld’ (Berkoff 1988, P. 51.) Who is also Joseph K’s lawyer. When Block first enters he jumps onto K’s back as he believes he is an intruder in Huld’s house (where Block lives). He then begins to tell K about his struggles against the judicial system. At the beginning of the rehearsal process I found Block to be very difficult to play. Lucy suggested that he is an agitated and paranoid character due to what he has been through. So upon entering I moved around a lot and was constantly looking over my shoulder into the wings to see if anyone was spying on me. These quick movements actually made my characterization more difficult at first as I felt that my lines had to be said quickly in order to match my physicalisation and since some of my lines were very wordy and had long sentences in, it was difficult to articulate them.But through more rehearsals and line learning I was able to speak in a way that I felt fitted the character and also allowed me to speak clearly, taking pauses only when it was necessary.

When further looking into Blocks physicality I decided that playing him slight hunched over would reflect his scatty nature as well as reinforcing him as a tragic character. This also helped me develop a nasally voice that I felt worked very well with his hunched over movements. Block is a very important character in The Trial, especially in our version, which features many comical characters. Block is different as he represents a change in the bathos. Block’s story is of course very tragic, he is a broken man. By this point in the play we have come to connect with Joseph K and we see in Block elements of him so by extension elements of ourselves. There is no doubt that Block’s crimes are also non existent so he too has be deceived by the law. He was also once a rich businessman but has been betrayed for no reason in the same way that Joseph K has. This was something I thought about very carefully when playing Block. It also occurred to me that he is somewhat similar to the character Gollum in The Lord Of The Rings, both characters have been morphed physically and mentally by the constraints they have been placed under. Despite consciously making this link I did not deliberately base my characterisation on Gollum and it was not until quite late in the rehearsal process that this occurred to me. But this did help me think more about my physicality especially as Block’s character develops throughout Act Two.

When Huld reveals to Block that he has done little to no work on his case, Block begins to have a break down. For me this was the most physical and tragic moment of The Trial. Block becomes more and more worked up as he learns that all his efforts have been a complete waste of time. By this point I was very crouched down, almost crawling on the floor in fact, I wanted to show how Block had changed from when he first came on stage. So I tried to move quicker and quicker pacing up and down until collapsing into a mess at the front of the stage. Despite having no lines in this part I was able to use Huld’s lines to somewhat dictate how I would move, until finally building up and leaping to attack Huld after saying my final line. I found Block to be an immensely enjoyable character to study and play and feel that he is very important character within The Trial.

Thanks for reading, Alex.

Works Cited

Berkoff, Steven (1988) The Trial, Metamorphosis and In The Penal Colony, Amber Lane Press.

Creation Of The Programme ..My Role in Advertising and Marketing

Within the creation of the Programme we had an immediate idea of making something that followed the theme and genre of what ”The Trial’ represented. We wanted them to try and look as professional and creative as possible as from the very beginning, as discussed at the first Marketing and Advertising meeting. As the audience entered the performance we wanted to try and create the feeling of mystery and slight confusion with the addition of programme’s presented in black envelopes. The idea of the black envelopes were suppose to create a message of the ‘summoning of K’s Trial’, and add something a little different and unique. From feedback from the audience we soon gained knowledge that some people were unaware they had to open their envelopes and thought this maybe something they had to do within the show. On reflection to this, if we were to do this again, maybe the idea of adding an ‘you are summoned or ‘please open’ on the front of the envelope would be more understandable than just a plain black one.

We also had discussion of how we were going to distribute the programme’s within the theater. The initial idea was to place them on the seats so as people entered they could pick them up but then we had the slight issue of the seats automatically folding up so there was a difficulty of them getting lost. In the end we simply arranged for the front of house people to distribute them as people were entering the theatre.

When designing the programme we approached a company named ‘Decon Design’ to which we discovered online and inquired for pricing and printing. After negotiating with the Co founder, we came together with a great price for quality designing and printing then agreed on what dates we needed them by ect. After some discussion with the Co founder, and how this new and upcoming business as creating a lot of advertising from us, we were kindly asked to be sponsored by Decon Design to which from this we created a brief template for how we wanted the programme to be set out with a clear idea of what we wanted to include. ..

Our Theatre Companies name and the name of the production we are putting on, along with our logo and the LPAC logo.
The Directors Note and the Show Copy
STAMP THEATRE- cast and what roles we all played within the production, along with our theater head shots.
Acknowledgements on the back that thanks everyone who has assisted us with the creation of the trial.

Inset is a copy of the final programme , with design and printing assistance by Decon Design

Rebecca Ward

Character Development: The Priest

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: Miss Burstner and Chorus

Ms Burstner, a woman who lodges in the same building as Joseph K, is a character I find extremely interesting to play. During the initial stages of rehearsals I began to brainstorm what elements of Ms B’s personality would best suit the grotesque and exaggerated feeling of our performance. Getting used to Grotesque Theatre as a concept was something I found extremely hard, as I have never performed in this style before. However, after extensive rehearsals and workshops with the group I began to slowly get used to this theatrical genre. Exercises and techniques that helped me do so include…

Short improvisation exercises where we exaggerated every day situations into ridiculous and artificial physicality – this helped me break the barrier of performing to such a degree like Grotesque Theatre.
Performing ‘The Trial’ as if in fast forward – this forced us to push every physicalisation to the maximum.

My character development underwent a huge change in the late stages of rehearsals, which I believe transformed Ms Burstner into a much more grotesque and surreal representation on stage. Below is a mindmap surrounding this.

During the early stages of our rehearsal process, our first response to the character of Ms Burstner was…

A middle-aged woman, posh, eloquent.
Pompous, looks down her nose at Joseph K.
Flamboyant and extravagant.

A concept that all of STAMP Theatre agreed on was that we wanted to combine grotesque theatre with extreme characterisation, to the point that not a single element of the character we were playing was reminiscent of our real selves. I felt that my portrayal of Ms B thus far was not exaggerated to this point, as her shocked reactions to Joseph K telling the story of his arrest was too honest and realistic. Because of this, alongside the director’s suggestion, the character of Ms B was then completely changed into a seductive prostitute.

Components of this new characterisation include…

Slow, seductive physical expression – I imagine Ms B being extremely unattractive, but believing that she is beautiful.
Husky vocal expression.
Constantly preening herself – this can be used alongside the element of grotesque theatre within our performance to a comic effect.
Seducing Joseph K throughout the scene. What I thought might deem comical to an audience was if Ms B thought Joseph K was there to have sex with her, but was actually just wanting some advice on his upcoming court case.

Although this change in characterisation occurred very late in the rehearsal process, I believe it resulted in a much more dynamic, grotesque, and sometimes comical character.

I also played a part of the chorus throughout our performance, a very challenging role. This is because I have never before played part in a performance like our rendition of The Trial and find it very challenging; the physical demands and extreme concentration required throughout is something I have never experienced to this degree before, and the chorus being on stage throughout added to the focus the performance needed. Our dramatic aim for the chorus was a collective, united group of people embodying grotesque theatre- ugly and distorted physical and facial expression is used throughout to convey the surrealism of our interpretation of The Trial.

An additional component of the chorus’ development was the physical theatre used throughout. Through extensive rehearsal we manage to create numerous images and objects using our bodies, for example a bed, a car, and an elevator. I believe this correlates directly to STAMP Theatre’s mission statement and manifesto of creating intelligent and innovative work through different styles of theatre.

Caitlin Clark