February 18, 2015

Adult?

February 18, 2015May 25, 2015Hope T-P, Hope Tarney-PetersLeave a Comment

What it is to be an adult has been a big topic to many of our team at this point of our life, as at the end of this academic term we will be out of education and off into the big wide world to go and get a ‘real’ job. It came apparent that we all had different ideas about what it is to be an adult, depending on what we have done through our lives and how we have experienced big birthdays, hitting the legal ages for things, becoming a teenager and no longer being a teen. Forefront Theatre looks to explore how an adult is identified, and how people at different points of their lives and ages define an adult.

Something that highlights the two sides of adulthood, that of a young adult trying desperately to be older than they are and the mature adult that is inundated with the tasks of being a full time adult, a parent, having a career, paying bills, ect, is the film ‘Freaky Friday’. Though a comedy film it manages to highlights these two types of people very well and the struggle between the wide generation gap, in the movie and full time writer and psychologist mother Tess and her teenage daughter Anna, a young girl wishing to grow up and star her music career, fight continuously. Tess wishes her daughter would stop trying to rebel and grown up, Tess doesn’t understand how hard school is and how passionate she is about music, whereas Anna is constantly saying that Tess needs to relax and stop trying to be a control freak this would allow her to spend more time with Anna. They end up by the use of magic swapping bodies and having to spend the in each others life’s. They experience how hard the other ones life is, this greater understanding allows them to do something meaningful for the each other and they eventually swap back.

freakyfriday — Disney. 2015. Freaky Friday.

This movie really highlights the difference between children always wanting to grow up and adults wishing they could be children again as they overwhelmed by the responsibilities they have to take on. In response to this we had a couple of ideas for our piece, the first being inspired by a Haribo advert:

It takes children’s voices and opinions on the sweets but lip-synced by adults to show that the sweets are still enjoyed across ages and can make you feel like a big kid. We decided that we will interview children between the ages of 5-13 and ask them what it is to be an adult then using these responses we will have a scene where we replay then and lip-sync. This should allow us to highlight the difference in what we think being an adult is when we are young and what it actually is when we become one.

As we really liked these two views we decided to collect pictures of the Forefront company when we were children and use it as part of our marketing, on the blog it would become our background and also as part of our poster campaign.

Another scene idea that came from these views was the using lyrics, film and books quotes to create a conversation between a child and an adult, one showing their excitement to be an adult and all the benefits of it, the other talking about how being an adult isn’t all it was cracked up to be and how they wish they could be a child again.

YouTube, (2015). New Haribo Starmix Advert 2014. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9scm3NCIH_E [Accessed 18 Feb 2015].

-Hope

Being inspired by The Paper Birds Theatre Company (12/02/2015)

February 18, 2015May 25, 2015Blogs, Final Blog, Tamsyn Webley, Tamsyn WebleyLeave a Comment

On Thursday 12th February, I had a brilliant opportunity to attend a verbatim workshop that was run by Jemma McDonnell from The Paper Birds Theatre Company. In this workshop I was able to hear about how verbatim theatre can be used in a performance.

Later on in the evening I also got a chance to watch The Paper Birds performance of Broke (The Paper Birds, 2015). This was a great opportunity for me as director of Forefront Theatre Company to see how others’ words can be used to create intriguing theatre.

Tamsyn.

Work Cited:

The Paper Birds (2015) Broke. [performance] Jemma McDonell (dir.) Lincoln: Lincoln Drill Hall, 12 February.

Growing up with Stanislavski! (Rehearsal – 11/02/2015)

February 18, 2015May 25, 2015Blogs, Final Blog, Tamsyn Webley, Tamsyn WebleyLeave a Comment

In our first practical workshop, to help get the performers in the right mind set, I chose to lead a workshop around Stanislavski’s techniques in a hope that this would make our Forefront performers think about age and how different we act as a result of it.

Stanislavski’s style of theatre is what I want the actors to engage with in their performance, “It was crucial for Stanislavski to find a technique which the actors could use to transfer to the role their own ‘honest’ feelings and experiences…”(Actor’s Way, p.75). Whilst Naturalism might not be the main style of the work we create for our final production, it is something I would like to see worked into our piece. To create a naturalistic character on stage is a skill that I want the performers to show off on stage which is why I felt he would be a good starting point for this process.

I decided to use Stanislavski techniques to help me run activities that would help my performers with characterisation and to be able to differentiate between adult and non-adult behaviour.

For my first activity, I chose to use the Stanislavski technique ‘What if’. I gave the scenario that the performers were at a party and then proceeded to have them enter the scene giving each individual their own, ‘What if’. Then using these the performers improvised the scene. I then spoke to the actors about the scene in relation to adult behaviour.

For my last activity I chose to do ‘Given the Circumstances’. I gave the group of performers lots of circumstances and then let them improvise the scene. The performers used levels, without thinking about it, which also reflected the age they were representing. Some of the tasks are shown in the photo below.

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Adults will be Kids from Webley (2015)

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Interaction Changes with Age from Webley (2015)

For some scenes, I would ask them to do the same scene but as a different age group. In these cases I asked how the performers felt their performance changed and it stirred up some interesting thoughts which we will explore when creating our piece as the weeks go on.

Tamsyn.

Work Cited:

Actor’s Way (1993) Actor’s Way. n.p.: Taylor & Francis Ltd. (p. 75)

Webley, T. (2015) Adults will be Kids

Webley, T. (2015) Interaction Changes with Age