Headphone Verbatim

This week, verbatim theatre was experimented with in rehearsal. ‘The term verbatim refers to the origins of the text spoken in the play. The words of real people…’ (Hammond and Steward 2008, p9). The particular form of verbatim we used was Headphone Verbatim, first pioneered by director Mark Wing-Davey in his Drama without Paper workshop in 2001 (Oades, 2014).

In a previous rehearsal we had been recorded answering interview style questions about what it meant to be an adult to us and how we had felt at various milestones in our life, for example going off to university. During this week’s rehearsal we each chose a recording that was not our own, and spent 10 minutes listening repeatedly to it through headphones. Then we attempted to speak the words of our subject at the same time as the recording. We did not attempt to copy the exact voice or accent of the person but tried to repeat the words in the same tone, dialect and context as they were first said. Some members of the group performed this in front of the group and it was interesting to hear imperfect but ‘real’ speech. Often there were a lot of pauses, ‘um’s’ and ‘err’s’ as well as regional ‘slang’, which is a contrast to what we as audiences usually hear in a theatrical piece and what we as actors usually perform.

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(All photos by Oliver Samuals)

Of course with the use of ‘real’ people’s words there will always be ethical considerations to take in to account. As Janet Gibson details ‘Verbatim theatre uses the narratives of people who may perceive that their life stories and their identities are co­extensive.’ (n.d, p10) Therefore we will have to be very particular about how we use the words of others in our piece and ensure we do not take them out of or distort the original context in which they were said, as this will not only be a misrepresentation of the words but also of the person who said them.

Hello, Goodbye & Happy Birthday by Roslyn Oades is a headphone verbatim piece which looks at a similar topic as our own performance “the threshold from child into adulthood, as well as, from self-sufficient adult into aged care dependency” (Oades, 2014). Although Hello, Goodbye & Happy Birthday focuses more on the “bookends of adult life” (Oades 2014). Aside from the use of headphone verbatim, Oades also used theatrical contrast to create Hello, Goodbye & Happy Birthday, for example some of the younger actors performed the audio created from the words of an elderly care home resident. Oades decided to use this technique of ‘ mismatching voices and bodies to explore perceptions of ageing and visibility’ (2014). Similarly in Monkey Bars by Unicorn Theatre this juxtaposition of voice and body is used as ‘adults playing adults’ speak the words of children (Unicorn Theatre, 2013). By creating this contrast between voice and body, examinations into identity and perspectives can be achieved. This is particularly relevant with our topic of adulthood as we can begin to examine if our perspectives of what it is to be an adult ‘grown up’ alongside us.

(Hello, Goodbye & Happy Birthday trailer, from Youtube 2014)

 

WORKS CITED

Gibson, J. (n.d) Saying it Right: Creating Ethical Verbatim Theatre. Macquarie University Faculty of Arts. Available from http://arts.mq.edu.au/documents/hdr_journal_neo/neoJanet2011_2.pdf [Accessed 26/02/15]

Hammond, W. and Steward, D. (2008) Verbatim Verbatim. London: Oberon.

Oades, R. (2014) Hello, Goodbye & Happy Birthday. [online] Available from http://www.roslynoades.com/HelloGoodbye.html [Accessed 26/02/15]

Oades, R (2014) Hello, Goodbye & Happy Birthday – behind the scenes [online video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpE1OQX8wnY [Accessed 26/02/15]

Oades, R. (2014) Hello, Goodbye & Happy Birthday – trailer. [online video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpE1OQX8wnY [Accessed 26/02/15]

Samuals, O. (2015) Photo of Headphone Verbatim in Rehearsal

Unicorn Theatre (2013) Monkey Bars [online] Available from https://www.unicorntheatre.com/whatson/38/monkey-bars [Accessed 26/02/15]

 

The start of something new

The term ‘collaborative’ refers to a negotiated group process where three or more people work as a collective or co-operative company in an amateur or professional capacity. Collaborative devised theatre implies that the work is original and created by the company’. (Mackey, 113, 1997)

In having a company of eleven there are a lot of voices to be heard! Our group strongly feel that our show should be a collaborative process. At the beginning everyone has strong ideas in what to bring forward to the table. In our group we had a variety of talent which would be very useful for our creative devising. It is important for us to work professionally together especially when we are pitching our ideas to the group in order for everyone to have a voice in our work.

Myself and Hannah who both musical background would like to bring some music to the show too…so hopefully some original music shall feature in the show!

Today we all discussed, what themes would we like to take on board for the production?

At the moment we have many ideas. We all liked the ideas of finding the truth behind adulthood, the politics behind gender in 21st century, and the idea of show that tells a meaningful message. We all would like our piece to have a comedy aspect too. For now we shall put to workshop some of these concepts to potentially create some scenes!

We must keep in mind;

Who are we? What do we want to represent? What style do we want to take on board?

Our group want to take on a Stanislavskian approach. We feel we should discuss the topical issues in the news and also discuss issues not being portrayed in the media. This is our chance to tell untold stories and put a message out there to our audience!

 

Follow the link below to see our manifesto:

Our Manifesto

 

Works cited:

Mackey, S. (1997) Practical Theatre: A Post-16 Approach. Cheltenham: Stanley Thornes

Are You An Adult?

An idea confirmed! Woooo!

As the exciting news has been confirmed, we finally have an idea that Forefront Theatre Company would like to explore, ADULTHOOD! This idea generated from us asking ourselves, what constitutes to being an adult, is it the law, is it society, is it yourself? Or is there something else. There are so many mixed opinions out there, and we want to know yours! With this conclusion, we decided to create a survey to get your opinions. Myself and Rachael sat down and generated ten questions in which we want you and everyone else to answer. (If you would like to help and have your say, I have attached the link to the survey below) By having this survey, it will enable us to generate scenes from your opinions/views and by doing so we can include some verbatim theatre scenes within our piece.  As a company we have had lots of ideas on how to create these scenes such as using headphones which play interviews with each cast member, where the writers asked us questions about being an adult. This idea, Tamsyn is going to be explore in rehearsals this week, so expect some exciting rehearsal photos coming your way. The inspiration for the use of verbatim theatre came from watching ‘Broke’ by The Paper Birds Theatre Company, who also ran a verbatim workshop in which our wonderful director, Tamsyn attended. Check out her blog to read about her experience! We have had a great start to the rehearsal process and with ideas developing on a daily basis expect some tech ideas to be shared here soon.

As I mentioned above here is the link to our survey:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Q8SKZ2W

 

If you have a spare moment it would be great if you could complete our survey.

Until next time,

Emmie

 

Work Cited:

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