In a company of ten, we knew that it would be important for us to develop a particular way of working. For this to happen we firstly needed to understand each personality within the group and the roles that each of us would undertake. This will hopefully help us later on in our process when managing the work we create. It also separates the responsibilities of the company, providing each individual with specific jobs and giving us a basic structure for work. After sharing our past experiences and interests, it was decided that I would take on the roles of performer and prop manager.
As a new and upcoming theatre company we are right at the beginning of our journey, ready to create and piece together our first ever piece of theatre as a collective group. Choosing roles was our first task and once that was sorted, we faced our first real challenge of deciding on the topic for the piece: “Devising begins with the interaction between the members of the group and the starting point or the stimulus chosen” (Oddey, 1994, 24.) What should this performance be about and what should it convey? What do we have to say and what do we want to say? All of our current discussions have revolved around finding this stimulus and a purpose for making theatre. There have been many ideas thrown around but we wanted something specific, we needed to narrow it down so we would lessen the chances of over loading ourselves with a thousand puzzle pieces that did not fit together.
“Choice is a key word when devising theatre” (Oddey, 1994, 26.) Everything we will do within this piece will come down to choice. We need the discipline to decide, to be confident and comfortable to share opinions so that we are creating the piece of theatre we want to make. The stimulus we have decided on is photographs, images of intrigue, iconic images that are known globally. We hope to bring the still image to life, give a voice and a story to the people in the photographs and bring them to a personal level.
Works Cited –
Oddey, A. (1994). Devising theatre. London: Routledge