Category: Clare Owen

I felt performance day went extremely well. Considering that 2 weeks ago we were still very much in the process of blocking, we have come a long way very quickly. In terms of lighting and sound, everything ran smoothly (thanks to Emmie and Tamsyn) and looked and sounded fantastic, despite having a few problems with the wireless microphone earlier on in the day. In terms of acting, on the whole I was pleased with my performance. I do feel however that in the Tinder scene I should have perhaps overacted my sexuality a bit more and also remembered to pause to allow the audience to laugh.  Overall our piece appeared to receive positive reactions from our audience members.

As a theatre company we have grown a lot closer. With differing personalities and tastes in the group it has sometimes appeared an impossible challenge to create a performance. This experience has taught me that forming and being within a theatre company cannot be a selfish endeavour. Compromise has been fundamental to our success.

Below are a few photos from show night. Goodbye for now!

Clare Owen

(Photo by Eden Shortt 2015)

(Photos by Forefront Theatre 2015)

(Photo by Clare Owen 2015)

WORKS CITED

Forefront Theatre (2015) Photos of Cast On Stage

Owen, C. (2015) Photo of Clare and Ollie

Shortt, E. (2015) Photo of Cast Backstage

(All photos by Clare Owen 2015)

 

WORKS CITED

Owen, C (2015) Photos of Tech Day Lighting and Set

 

 

Preparing to play a character in any form of acting requires a huge amount of research. An actor or actress must ‘know’ their character in detail, from their background and upbringing right up to their current emotional state and thoughts when performing scenes on stage. My main character in our production was called Ashleigh, whose story the audience ‘drop in’ on throughout the performance when Ashleigh is at different age stages.

In order to prepare to be Ashleigh there were several different techniques I used. The first was to read through all scenes in which Ashleigh appears (even though I would not be playing Ashleigh in all of them) to be able to understand where the character began and where the character was going, in terms of life experiences and emotional experiences. Secondly I built a ‘Character Profile’ for Ashleigh, which involved creating a table of the character ‘facts’, ‘history’ and ‘personality hints’ that I found in the script. Paul Elsam describes the importance of these elements in his book Acting Characters as they become a tool to create ‘a real, believable, three-dimensional character’ (2006, p14). This ‘Character Profile’ is similar to Stanislavski preparation method, in which he asked his actors to assess their character from a psychological perspective, taking in to account the character’s given circumstances, their objectives (what the character wants to achieve in each scene) and their super objectives (what the character’s overall objective is in the play).

(Photo by Clare Owen 2015)

Ashleigh’s experiences throughout the play were different to my life experiences, as described by Shomit Mitter, this can be tricky as it is hard for the actor’s mind to ‘create and then construe as real what it does not already know in some measure.’ (1992, p16) However by recreating unfamiliar experiences in rehearsal, I was able to create ‘novel dimensions of engagement and experience’ (Mitter 1992, p16). An example of this is in Scene 3 when Ashleigh overhears her parents arguing through the door. The scene was rehearsed in blackout so that I could only hear their words just as Ashleigh would. This helped me to react naturally when saying the lines which documented this scene.

WORKS CITED

Elsam, P. (2006) Acting Characters. London: Methuen

Mitter, S. (1992) Systems of rehearsal: Stanislavsky, Brecht, Grotowski, and Brook. London and New York: Routledge

Owen, C. (2015) Photo of Character Profile

With it decided that the verbatim and expectation monologues would be lit by spotlights it was time to address lighting the rest of the scenes. On the whole I decided to use general washes or pools of light to light scenes in which there would be more than one actor on stage or if there was a lot of dialogue, such as the songs. This was so the audience could see and hear the actors clearly as ‘actors who are difficult to see will usually be difficult to hear’ (Reid 2001, p1).

I decided to only light part of the stage if I wanted to draw attention away from the actors setting up for the next scene, for example Hope’s monologues took place at the front of the stage and were lit with strip lighting so upstage could be set up in blackout.

We also used torches on stage as a form of lighting whilst the rest of the stage was in blackout, with the light focusing on the character’s shoes. This idea of the actors being in control of their lighting and deciding what the audience could see and what they could not, was influenced by Macbeth in Pitch Black (London Contemporary Theatre, 2013) which I saw at Lincoln Drill Hall. I found as an audience member my other senses were heightened when my sight was taken away and particularly for Ashleigh’s diaries as we wanted the audience to focus on the story they were hearing and the movement of the actors’ feet.

WORKS CITED

Reid, F. (2001) The Stage Lighting Handbook. Sixth Edition.London and New York: Routledge.

London Contemporary Theatre (2013) Macbeth in Pitch Black. [performance] Lincoln: Lincoln Drill Hall, 8 Nov.

My choice to use spotlights to light the verbatim scenes stemmed from the initial informal chat with Darren. When I told him that our script featured verbatim he stated that the most important thing in ‘verbatim is the words’ (Page 2015). This in my mind meant that the verbatim scenes would require microphones, in order for the actors to accurately perform the verbatim without having to worry about whether or not they would be heard by the audience. In First World Problems (The Lincoln Company, 2014), the actor spoke in to a microphone when reading out ‘problems’ that members of the audience had written that night. The use of the microphone led myself as an audience member to focus solely on the actor who was reading. I decided that our verbatim microphones would appear in the centre of a hard focused spotlight down stage left, whilst the rest of the stage was in blackout so the audience knew where to focus their attention. I decided to use a coloured light (Lee 201 Cold) to suggest that this was the cold face of reality, as many of the verbatim stories were emotionally challenging, for example the Forced Marriage verbatim.

(Verbatim Microphone on Tech Day by Clare Owen 2015)

In contrast there would be another spotlight and microphone used down stage right, which we referred to as the ‘Expectation Microphone’. Here the actors would address the audience with expectations of life events for example ‘Santa will always bring me good presents.’ (Forefront 2015) The spotlight used was a soft focus spot with the colour Lee 103 Warm, to create a hazy warm feeling as the actors’ were stating happy expectations about their futures.

(Expectations Microphone on Tech Day by Clare Owen 2015)

 

WORKS CITED

Forefront (2015) Shoes to Fill. Lincoln.

Owen, C (2015) Photos of Microphone lighting.

Page, D. (2015) Informal Chat about Lighting and Sound. [interview] Interviewed by Clare Owen and Emmie Kearns, 10 March.

The Lincoln Company (2014) First World Problems. [performance] Lincoln: LPAC, 26 September.