Author: Stephanie Newell

During our tech rehearsal, we had to adjust a few small things due to the larger spacing and lighting but our first dress run fortunately went rather well. This reduced any anxiety we had about the first performance. We fixed the few problems quickly and once everything was set in place. The only thing left to do was wait for the doors of the auditorium to open. We started the performance pre-set on the stage. Being able to see the audience as they came in only built my excitement. Previous to this point, we had only ever performed to each other, to the walls of our rehearsal rooms. I was excited for people to see what we have spent so long creating. I wanted to see their reactions and hear their responses.

The show ran reasonably smooth, it went so quick and I was completely engaged with the story we were telling. We took audience on our emotional roller coaster and used them as a source of energy to perform to our best ability. The feedback was incredibly positive. Hearing their response “One minute I was laughing and then I was crying” hearing them review the show only reassured me that we had done our job.

And then that was it. “Game over”

We have come to the end of our journey. It is strange to think a few months ago we did not even have a name for our company, we were just a group of people with a common goal: to create theatre. Now, we are Refract Theatre Company and we have finally took our first piece of theatre to the stage. We have put in a lot of work and spent many hours each week devising, creating and defining a performance we could all be proud of. The whole process has been thoroughly enjoyable and I feel fortunate to have worked with such a talented bunch of people.

 

Working with all these different pictures has brought to my attention the thought that it could be anyone in the images, the idea that if circumstances were different it may have been somebody else. What if it was you? Most of the images we have worked with have included a theme of loss or a theme of tragedy. As each image has been presented, I have attempted to put myself into the situation that I can see, to imagine and try to represent the emotion that I believe would have been experienced. However, I do not know the people, I can only try and reach the truth I see within the image and it is important to remember that “Emotions aren’t on tap like water, to be turned on and off at will. They have to be coaxed from the unconscious” (Alfred, 2007, 92.) Because the piece we are creating is being done in small fragments, our journey throughout the piece is broken up. Making the changes in emotion rather rapid, we have to learn to prepare ourselves for the journey of the piece so the build of emotion happens naturally rather than forcefully.

The piece is called When You See It? We are not aiming for people to guess the global images straight away.  Laura has been finding many different ways in which we can slowly reveal the situations of the images. In one scene, we represent the Sydney Siege. Below are a few images that will give an idea into one of the many ways we are building these scenarios.

 

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Works Cited.
Alfreds, M. (2007). Different every night. London: Nick Hern.

Throughout this process we have developed a piece of theatre that displays a particular interest in movement and the physical embodiment. Movement is a passion for the majority of the group, so I’m glad we are making use of it. Movement is a part of every scene we have created and I think it suits our purpose. Images are still and in order to give them life we need to make them move. We use the images to serve as the “Material from the real world and from direct observation, selected only those elements which revealed the relationships and the tendencies lying under the surface” (Benedetti, 1982, 17).

We have recently worked with an image that was taken from the tragic event of 9/11. (See Below)

We took this image and focused on falling. What is falling like? These were some of the answers that appeared when Laura asked us. This is now being used to form some text for the piece.

• It’s like losing all self-control
• It’s like a puncture
• It’s like giving in to the forces of nature
• Tom, our choreographer created some movement that gestured toward the motion of falling, using tilts and reaches, we repeated his choreography and began developing and creating an atmosphere through use of dynamic expression.

Whilst working closely with the body it is easy to ignore the importance of facial expression. “Movement can be a heightened reality and can be rooted in everyday situations and, most poignantly, be performed by everyday characters. Encourage your performers to use their personalities within movement and not to lose themselves behind a physical theatre mask” (Graham, S and Hoggett, S, 2012) Laura has ensured we are always aware of what we are trying to show. She has consistently made us aware to act with both body and face and reminded us to use them simultaneously and not to think of them separately.

Works Cited.

Benedetti, J. (1982). Stanislavski, an introduction. New York: Theatre Arts Books.

Graham, S and Hoggett, S. (2012) The Frantic Assembly Book of Devising Theatre. Oxon: Routledge

 

Early on in this process the group discovered a common interest in music, we had various people who could sing and various people who could also play instruments. We used these talents to our advantage.

“Knowing, using and reflecting the strengths of people in the company are vital resources for the devising process and product” (Oddey, 1994, 25)

As we are exploring photography, an area we thought would be interesting to cover is ‘selfies’. They are very current ‘craze’ and something we thought could add humour to the performance. It was decided that we would do this in the form of a song.

The first difficulty in doing this was the lyrical process. The song has to translate to an audience so we knew we wanted something simplistic but comical. We started by choosing certain topics within the ‘selfie’ domain that we could cover.

• What to do? “The first thing to consider”
• What not to do?  “Never take from down below”
• The different faces. “Duck face, bite the lip”
• The time and place for selfies. “You know the time is right”
• Displaying selfies. “Twitter gets you trending”

So, that part was easy enough, the most difficult part was finding the first lyric, but once we had found that, we had a pattern to follow which meant the process began to flow and with everyone contributing, we soon found ourselves with the beginnings of a song. It was not easy to create and sometimes the most random suggestions were thought of but it made the process a lot of fun and I think it’ll add a lot of light into the performance.

To make music a theme throughout we have additionally created some instrumental pieces that will accompany specific scenes, we have included vocals to this music but no lyrics. Below is the accompaniment we created for a scene that involves Billy and Dolly’s wedding.

We also decided that it might be nice to use the talents of the group to do some fundraising for the company. We decided we could promote ourselves singing in the street and set up in town to participate in some busking. Not all members of the group sang but those who didn’t used the time to flyer and spread the word of our upcoming performance

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Works Cited.

Oddey, A. (1994). Devising theatre. London: Routledge.

 

This piece of theatre is not a direct story, it tells many stories. We are not playing named characters and we have no personality specifics. We portray emotion, mood and dynamics. The ones we have witnessed in the images and questioned. We hope to convey an understanding of shared feelings that we believe these images display.

In order for this piece to work, there needs to be something that combines it all together, something that connects the whole performance so that the audience has a story to follow. We have created all these small sections of the performance but what is the through line? We came across these images of an elderly couple that took a photo outside of their home each year. It is these images that are inspiring a story.

We are using the two people to develop two characters, a relationship and a story that will hopefully take the audience on an emotional rollercoaster, whilst also gluing together all the other images we have used.