It has been a while since my last post, for which I must apologise. I had very much managed to get myself into a routine of blogging on a regular basis but with a variety of events going on I managed to fall behind. Now however begins the catch up.
So first of all I have the show Ever Blurry Line to talk about. It was held a couple of weeks ago (31st October to be exact) on campus and seemed to go rather well. As I believe I mentioned in my last post, my main role within the piece was to take the interviews which had been carried out by different members of the cast, and use the responses to create various scenes using a wide variety of characters of our own creation. The trick was however, despite using characters that we had created, it was also important for us to try and keep the actual text itself as close to the original source as we possibly could.
Ultimately we had three main scenes:
1) A scene in which we created a character that suited exactly what was being said in the text. We would then take that character and then try to recite the material as honestly as we were able.
2) The Creature Comforts Scene: In this scene we took recordings of the interviews and edited them together to make one continual track which switched between the different interviews. We would then use the sounds of the subject's voices to inspire a physicality for that character which we would show on stage when becoming that character. The scene would take place with the interviews playing into the audience with ourselves taking turns to adopt the physicality we created for whichever character was speaking, whilst moving our lips in sync with what was being said at the time (hence creature comforts).
3) Larger Than Life: This scene was the climactic scene of our three. With this scene, rather than use the material to inspire the characters, we created the characters first and then selected whichever interview suited that character the most. When we created the characters we intentionally when for larger than life and stereotypical characters. The characters we used for this scene were: A farmer from Somerset, a cowboy, an American cheerleader, a sultry woman (think Joanna Lumley in Ab Fab!), Igor and finally a circus clown. All of the recitals of the interviews within this scene were hammed up to the max in an attempt to, to quote the show itself "glorify and promote drinking". The only exception to this rule was ironically the clown. We deliberately chose to use emotional and moving material for the clown in order to juxtapose the fact that clowns look silly and are generally linked with comedy with the fact that what was being said was serious, powerful and also, most importantly, someone's genuine and real life experiences in order to have some form of strong impact with the audience. From the feedback I have had so far, it was indeed a success and if I'm honest, to me this was the most important scene for me to get right as I had collected the interview myself from someone I personally know. They also came to see the show and were thankful for the scene in that it helped them to face some of their own demons which for me is something I find very important when it comes to theatre and indeed art in general. Another audience member expressed how it had effected them too, being able to focus on and be emotionally affected by the story being told by me (the clown) before suddenly being brought back to a sense of pure entertainment the moment that the clown returned to his objective of being entertaining. All in all I am very pleased and indeed proud of how my scenes came out, but naturally there is always room for improvement.
So all in all the show was a success with feedback being predominantly positive but as one project ends another begins (or at least during your training). The next four or five weeks will be full of intensive workshops on creating different types of applied theatre. For example; this week we have been working on creating performances for children of around the age of 5. Also to compliment this we have had lessons on creating workshops for that same target audience. Next week we will be moving on to Reminiscence Theatre. This is all for the module entitled 'Acting in Small Scale Theatre' and will culminate in creating a short, small-scale production to be toured in the Northampton area. At this stage I can tell you no more about what to expect but certainly keep your eyes open for any more details as they will come in the not too distant future.
In other news, for those of you who do not visit my website (www.wayne-ingram.co.uk) on a regular basis or follow me on Twitter (@Wayne_Ingram), a small viral advert that I starred in was entered into a competition held by Global Graphic in order to advertise their latest computer software call gDoc Fusion. It is with great pleasure that I inform you that the advert did indeed win and can be viewed here.
And finally this weekend I will be taking a trip to London to see my good friend Adam Alexander in his first professional show and I am sure he will be fantastic. No doubt however I will be sharing the experience with you all next week. I hope this has brought you all up to speed with things and hopefully I shall speak to you before too long. Ciao for now!
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