Day: April 3, 2015

As a company, Forefront Theatre want to use the words of others to create a performance piece which reflects other people as well as us. In order to do this we had to think of ways to portray their words in a respectful and honest manner. So, we chose to look at Verbatim theatre to help with this.

In a previous rehearsal, our writers had interviewed the Forefront Theatre Company members to help with their writing and I had recorded them so as to use the audio in a possible scene for our production. Using this idea Rachael Caulton, our dramaturg, put forward headphone verbatim theatre as a suggestion and so these recordings were experimented with in that way.

All performers were asked to pick someone else’s answers and listen to them. Once they had listened to the audio, I then told them to repeat what they were hearing as they were hearing it. I did not want the performers to mimic the accent they were hearing but instead to match the words and rhythm of the voice. To pretend to be the person would be difficult and is not necessary as the words are important in our piece not the accent of the voice.

Listen from Webley (2015)

This rehearsal was very productive and headphone verbatim theatre proved a challenge but is definitely  worth pursuing by our company. It helped the performers develop their understanding of verbatim and experience how to perform it to an audience in a stylised manner on stage.

Tamsyn.

Work Cited:

Webley, T (2015) Listen

 

On the 20th of February 2015, I came into Forefront’s rehearsal  with the idea of wanting to produce a physical theatre scene that explores somebody trying to break into or out of adulthood. After some great physical exercises ran by Mia Kaur (Forefront’s Choreographer), I had our performers create some chair duets, similar to those Frantic Assembly create. As seen in the video below (franticassembly, 2008).

I gave each duet, and one group of three, a theme or scenario of what they were doing and then allowed them the freedom to create a physical theatre piece using their bodies and the chairs they were on. The themes were all linked to adulthood and growing up, such as being on a date and drinking at a pub with a friend. These simple ideas opened the imagination of the performers and enabled them to create simple yet effective chair duets, as can be seen in the photographs below.

Love story from Webley (2015)

Love Triangle from Webley (2015)

Once all the performers showed their work back it became apparent to Emmie Kearns (Forefront’s assistant director) and I that we could put the seperate pieces of work together to create a timeline of relationships. This work opened the minds of our performers to the world of physical theatre.

Tamsyn.

Work Cited:

franticassembly (2008) Chair Duets by Frantic Assembly. Available from:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYPC-KjLRj0 [Accessed 25 May 2015]

Webley, T. (2015) Love story 

Webley, T. (2015) Love Triangle