It has been a turbulent few weeks since our theatre company formed with ideas busily discussed and formulated regarding what to present to an audience. When starting a theatre company, Alison Oddey states its members must first ‘organise a power infrastructure’ (1996, 9). This, she advises, can be achieved through the organisation of a company’s members’ roles and was our first plan of action. We realised the importance of doing this promptly to aid a smoother running devising process. It was decided that my primary role will be as a performer with costume designer my secondary role.
After deliberation, we have also chosen the name of our theatre company; we are ‘Refract Theatre Company’. This decision was made thoughtfully to reflect our mission statement. With our ambition being to depict ‘real stories in an alternative light’ (Refract, 2015), the name ‘Refract’ complements this criterion. We have developed an interest in using widely recognised, iconic images as our stimuli and are beginning to explore how these can be transformed from ‘a global scale to a personal scale’ (Refract 2015). We want to portray alternative narratives to these images, ones that from a first viewing will not be readily conceivable. I am excited by setting ourselves this challenge.
Works Cited:
Hitchen, T. (2015).
Lancashire, A. (2015).
Oddey, A. (1996) Devising Theatre: A Practical and Theoretical Handbook. London: Routledge.
Refract Theatre Company (2015) Manifesto. [online] Available from https://refracttheatrecompany.dev.lincoln.ac.uk/our-manifesto [Accessed 1 March 2015].