Category: Tamsyn Webley

On Monday 18th May 2015, Forefront Theatre Company stepped out onto the Lincoln Performing Arts Centre stage and performed Shoes to Fill for the first time.  The verbatim and physical theatre workshops, the creation of characters, experimenting with shoes and taking inspiration from other companies; everything we had ever done in rehearsals had led our company to this point!

If I am being honest, I did not have a clue how the audience would react to the piece they were about to see. Then I heard the first laugh, less than two minutes into the performance and my worries went away. Whilst I am aware, as a director, there were weak areas in our final performance; I am also aware that our piece had a through story, it delivered our message and it made the audience laugh on multiple occasions.

Cast Warm Up from Webley (2015) 

Having previous assistant director experience, whilst amazing, it could not have prepared me for the challenge of directing a fifty minute performance. With eleven company members, nine of which performed on stage, we were the biggest Theatre Company within the module.

As a result, at times, it was challenging but we got through it together! We became a stronger company as the module went on, especially over the last few weeks! We put in a lot of hard work, determination and started working better as a team! Whilst watching the performance from the gallery, it became very clear to me that each and every member of Forefront Theatre Company should be proud of their performance on show day!

Pre-Show Run from Webley (2015)

If the process has taught me anything, it is that as a director whilst it is important to take a leading role, it is also crucial that you work collaboratively with your performers. I could not have put a performance of this scale together without the amazing work of all my performers, my choreographer and my assistant director.

Tamsyn.

Work Cited:

Webley, T (2015) Cast Warm Up

Webley, T (2015) Pre-Show Run

Tech day with the huge stage, the lights, the set and the sound made the whole experience of putting Shoes to Fill together feel so much more real. There were some directorial decisions that needed to be looked at. Spacing issues became very clear, as the rooms we were using are not as big as the stage and so certain scenes need minor adjustments to avoid time delays. However, the performance is starting to take shape and the lights made the work more visually interesting.

Love or Lust? from Webley (2015)

Did you expect a spotlight? from Webley (2015)

Tamsyn.

Work Cited:

Webley, T (2015) Love or Lust?

Webley, T (2015) Did you expect a spotlight?

When I went to the Paper Birds workshop the woman talked about performing verbatim. She talked about how you can never truly become the character you are portraying. So you can rather try and become them, to the best of your ability, or essentially create your own version of them. I knew that pretending to play a woman in her 70’s or a man in his 30’s is more than likely going to cause offence, especially given that the person acting that age is a 20 or 21 year old drama student. So, I needed to work with my actors so as to could capture the emotion of their character without trying to mimic them.

I started to talk to the performer about who they thought their character was just by reading the words on the page. I wanted them to develop their own back story for their characters. I wanted the actor to think about who this person could be. I worked with many of them and we gave their character a voice through giving them an age, a mannerism and thinking about the life they might have led. I wanted the characters to be portrayed as if real people but not a replica of the actual person telling the story. Working with the performers in this way helped myself and them gain a better understanding of the type of performance they would give on stage.

Shoes play a big part in our piece. When you have more characters on stage than performers it is important to show the audience that they are different. Logically, it made sense for our group to show characters through shoes. We place the shoes in front of the mic for verbatim so as to let the audience know the performers are not trying to be the person. We want the audience to know the words being spoken are real. We are doing this through what we have labelled the ‘reality mic’. The microphone front stage left is where verbatim is told and audio of real voices is played. Making it subtle yet effective.

When written scenes occur on stage, we have made directorial decisions as to whether shoes seem necessary. Where there is a clear character they will have shoes. The constant appearance of the character Ashleigh and the character that says her fears throughout the piece need shoes. This is to show the character is the same. For the expectation vs reality scenes, characterisation is crucial as they are not wearing shoes. This was decided as they are the same characters but they are talking about what they want from life and so are waiting on the shoes they will eventually fill. For the reprise song, I have asked all performers to wear their own shoes. To the audience this may not be obvious but to the performers and myself it is sending a clear message that you should choose the shoes you wear.

Working with actors to build on their characters is an enjoyable experience for me and it is how we fit naturalism in our piece.
Tamsyn.

Here at Forefront Theatre Company, we want to talk to our audience through our feet. Clare (Performer) and Emmie (Assistant Director) came up with an idea of how to stage a particular scene we have in our performance using the performers’ feet. It is different and inventive. Yet would have been a nightmare to light. So, I suggested torches. That way then the performer is in control of what they want the audience to see.

We tried this out in rehearsal and it worked so well that I decided to choreograph a couple of other scenes in the same style. I had recently looked for videos showing footwork and I fell in love with a particular one, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ef8e_JENKNA (lilpinkponies, 2010). The way the feet seem to show a narrative through simple movements is amazing and I wanted our performance to have that; so I looked at putting some footwork to a poem, our writers had written, and the performers do the movement without shoes on. It is different to the other parts of our show and it is a nice way to reflect the words, being spoken, visually.

Tamsyn.

Work Cited: 

lilpinkponies (2010) Billy & Lauren – Boogie Shoes. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ef8e_JENKNA [Accessed 30 April 2015]

For our performance of Shoes to Fill we have two brilliant writers. They are both good at what they do, yet they have very different writing styles. One of them perfectly captures the serious and the other captures the humorous parts of life. This worked massively in our favour.

As a company we decided we wanted a script which both used our words and those of real people. This meant thinking of a structure where we could include all this information and still have the piece make sense. So I started to think of how we could do this successfully. I thought about all the verbatim pieces we were collecting and started to think about how we could link them all in.

We had written our copy by this point and so I knew it needed to reflect this. There was a word that stood out and remained in my head and that was ‘expectations’. I started to think about and write down simple things, such as; ‘Married life is great!’ and then I would think about the possible reality of this, for example, ‘He stopped saying that after buying his wife’s tampax for the third time’. I then thought about the expectations people have for their lives and the expectations society has for people. From this I created a structure, which I ran by the writers and performers and everyone agreed with.The structure would be built on the five expectations not only I, but others feel they should fulfill in order to have lived life ‘correctly’ according to society. They are: grow up okay, go to uni or get a job, find the one, become a parent and grow old.

I wanted to put on stage a piece that tests what we know using subtly and humour and I think this structure will do that.

Tamsyn.