Tempest/Shoreham process and analysis

We had the chance to perform some of the key scenes from our adaptation of The Tempest at the Shoreham Shakespeare festival, before performing the whole show at the Brighton Open Air Theatre on Monday 8^th May. As a class, this gave us all the opportunity to perform to a live audience in a site specific setting, prior to the final performance. This was a brilliant chance for a number of reasons. Firstly, some members of the class had never performed this type of theatre in a site specific set up before; giving them the opportunity to get a feel for how the final performance will feel. Secondly linking to this point, we were able to practise adjusting our performance qualities to being in an outdoor environment. This included our vocals, projection out so all audience members could hear us clearly and our body language, making sure movements were exaggerated and larger than usual so they came across clear to audiences.

In the end, we did not have much of an opportunity to chose specific scenes we wanted to perform before we arrived at Shoreham. Therefore, when we arrived, we decided upon five or so scenes we wanted to showcase in the space provided. I was involved in two scenes; Prospera’s first meeting with the Ariels and the dog scene.

The stage area was quite small, so we only had room to bring the front part of our staging, which was three staging blocks. This allowed us to have some levels to work with in the space. The audience crowded round in a circle, almost creating the stage space for us, themselves. I made full use of the space at Shoreham, by moving around and exploring each part instead of staying static throughout. Amber and I both play Ariel; she is the sensible leader and my character represents the emotions to her. This means that I am able to play with lots of different emotions such as anger and excitement, giving me lots of ideas and opportunities for movement material based off of this. When in the space, I immediately found myself running around the stage more than I had anticipated. I followed the set blocking however I found I was able to fully utilise the space by giving more energy to the running around as more space was available to me in Shoreham than had been during rehearsals in the theatre space. This is definitely an advantage for me as a performer as now when I go over this scene in rehearsals before the final show in May, I will remember that I will have more pace to perform the running than I expect. Having the opportunity to perform at Shoreham allowed me to be prepared for the final show as it was a larger space and also outdoors; so the final performance space will not come as such a shock to me when we arrive there.

During the dog scene, Amber and I spend the majority of the time sitting at the front of the stage, watching over the scene happening on stage. At the end, we laugh to one another as we watch our magic rub off on other characters in the play. There are two things I have learnt from this. Firstly, how important volume is. I. Started off way too quiet with the laughter as this is what I had been so used to doing. As soon as I realised I could not be fully heard by audiences, I increased the volume of my laughter considerably. Along with increasing the volume, I also exaggerated my movements to portray the laughter and happy emotion. I did this by throwing my head back and increasing the size of my smile. I also used frantic arm gestures, bringing them up, down and in front of my face to show how hilarious my character was finding the situation. Amber and I also interacted with each other, mainly through eye contact and turning our bodies to face each other to show that our characters were working together to cause the havoc.

Amber and I worked together through out the entire rehearsal process on Ariel’s characterisation and how we wanted the audience to interpret her. From the start of the process our teacher Rachel wanted us to be quite choreographed with the role as both of us are string dancers. We took this onboard and created a magical feel to Ariel through use of movement and dance phrases. We made sure the dance elements of Ariel were subtle and stylised as we wanted to make the dance blend in with her personality and become a part of it rather than the dance being separate or out of character. 

I came up with the idea of choreographing arm movements whenever Amber and I were standing still on stage. This idea of Ariel always having some sort of movement going on really reinforces the idea that she is a spirit and I think this brings to life the magic of her character. I created mostly flowing and swaying arm motions, usually performed in front of the body, as if mocking a wave. I also came up with the idea that whenever Amber and I have characters under a spell, we have them in a clump somewhere on stage, and to show we are controlling them, we perform fluid turning movements around them. This portrayed to audiences that they were totally under our influence and control, without having t say so. This was a powerful metaphor, spoken through dance instead of word, which was special as Shakespeare’s literature can e quite full on and complex for a modern audience to follow. Having the dance element really brought a touch of modernisation to an old classic.

I feel as though my contribution to the process has been valid and creative. I have worked closely with my classmates, especially Amber, Megan, Bryleah, Izzy and Max as we mostly worked separately from the people playing the ‘Royals’ as they do not usually appear on stage at the same time. Ideas that I suggested throughout the process were always considered and worked into the play in some way as they were relevant and suited to the style we were aiming to create. For example, I came up with the idea to choreograph a minor fight scene between the two Ariels and Caliban to show their dislike towards him. After suggesting this, the scene became conflict based and we blocked and choreographed it around the idea of a fight. I felt that my original idea helped spark the team’s imagination, inspiring us to come together to create a brilliant scene.

The Tempest has lots of underlying theme such as love, loss, conflict, class, relationships, magic and gender identity. These ideas lead to lots of possible artistic and creative opportunities such as experimenting with modern characterisation and character relationships. We made it clear to audiences that the Royals were separate from the rest of the cast. We did this by having the Royals wear red and purple dominant colours, whereas the rest o the cast who are ‘earth like’, stayed with natural colours such as browns, greens. Ariels, Prospera and Caliban all had foliage featured on their outfits whereas the Royals wore full dresses, suits and looked well groomed, to show this contrast in class and to highlight the conflict.

Sharing the role of Ariel with Amber meant that we were able to show the audience the two contrasting sides of the character. I worked on the rebellious and childish side when Amber took the responsible ad level headed side. We were able with this to split the lines up to show different tones to the character. This enabled audience to have a thorough insist into Ariel and to appreciate the spiritual side even more than if the part was only played by one person. This is because Amber and I were able to perform movements at the same time, which seemed to have double the impact, visually. Amber’s character would often look over to my character and calm her down, by giving reassuring looks and gentle touching my arm. I would automatically react to this and momentarily change my character’s behaviour because of this, which highlighted their relationship too the audience, creativity.

We all created our costumes individually, from scratch around basic ideas that we were given by Rachel. Amber and I were given dark green baggy trousers and plain crop tops to work with. We decided to cover our costumes in plastic leaves, which links to the earth theme our characters follow. To show our magical and spiritual side. We had the idea of hanging satin material off our arms, which will make our arm movements look more fluid and mysterious. We spent hours with the glue gun, ensuring leafs covered the whole of our tops, to make them look as naturalistic as possible. I feel as though being independant with making the costumes added to the structuring of te process. As actors, we all took responsibility for our own costumes, which evenly distributed the work between the class. This allowed us to make progress quickly and easily throughout the process.


In conclusion, I feel as though I was a valid team member in this process as I took responsibility where nexessary, being the team leader whem choreographing however being able to take a step back and listen to instructions.

Production risk assessment

It takes a lot of effort to organise the production of a play, especially when you, s a company are taking your adaptation of an original play, to a venue. There can be conditions and restrictions imposed on the production for example by the licensing of the play and the venue itself. In this case we also have to consider The Brighton Fringe Festival and Shoreham Shakespeare Festival as they run the event and ultimately decide what they want to showcase at their venues.

Referring to the licensing of the play, normally you can get into a lot of trouble with the licence holder if you miss out a number of lines or interpret the play in a different way to which the owner is happy with. The owners can go to the extreme of suing the company responsible for the misinterpretation of the play if they feel necessary. In our case The Tempest is by William Shakespeare who passed away hundreds of years ago. If the artist wants to pass the licensing of their work onto someone else or a company, then they can (much like Walt Disney.) However, Shakespeare died before this became possible as licensing laws were not in place in the Elizabethan period. This means that with the Tempest, we have the ability to chop and change as much of the play as we like, without any legal obligations. This is not a worry for us.

Following this, comes venue restrictions and conditions. We did not advertise or make any tickets for our performance at the Shoreham Shakespeare Festival as the venue is in the town centre. We performed on a Saturday morning, which is peak time for any town to be busy with locals doing their shopping. If we were to advertise this as a performance and sell a significant number of tickets, the issue would be that the town would become too busy and not all audience members would be bale to see our performance. The crowd gathered round our performance space in an intimate manor as we had not set up a small area for this reason. Therefore, we did not need to sell any additional tickets for this performance.

Performing at the Brighton Open Air Theatre (BOAT) was a different story. E had to think about different potential restrictions regarding this venue. A conversation was had between our company’s organiser, Kim Sheldon and the BOAT owner, Anne-Marie Williams which saw Anne-Marie check if we had sold any additional tickets for the show as the BrightonFringe website that she was selling the tickets on, had sold out. BOAT is a site specific venue however has seating, mocking that of an Ancient Greek theatre. This limits the amount of audience members able to watch the performance. This would not be an issue say if the performance were in a field as this is a fully open space with no number restrictions (within reason of course.) Therefore, number of tickets sold was a restriction for us. As the solution, we made sure that the number of independent tickets we sold as a company, were kept to an absolute minimum.

Another possible restriction for us as actors when performing at the BOAT is the Astro turf flooring. We have to be considerate of what set we bring to the venue eg- is there any chance it could permanently mark or damage the flooring? We are bringing a large wooden and paper Mache tree as the main feature of our set. We will be painting it so to avoid any unnecessary damage, w Weill have to make sure the tree is painted way before the show day so that it is fully dry in time and can not cause any damage to the flooring or the surroundings.

Moving on finally to the content of what you are bringing to the event. You must Erne that the work, play in this case, that you are presenting at the venue, is appropriate to the event theme and that they are happy with what you are showing. You must think about your audience’s age appropriateness to the content and what the event are actually advertising will be at the showings.

Luckily with the Shoreham Shakespeare festival, it is in the name. The audience who turn up to see our Tempest adaptation are fully prepared and know they are watching a Shakespeare convention therefore all content will be based around his work. The Tempest fully qualifies for this criteria.

However, differing from this, the Brighton Fringe Festival is a celebration of the country’s art forms and hosts many different medias such as plays, dance performances, puppetry, singing workshops and the list goes on. Unlike Shoreham, Brighton Fringe do not dedicate their showings toShakespeare. Because of this we had to consider factors. Firstly, you must remember that the age of the audience members may vary so to ensure no one is offended, we could write on the poster or indirectly suggest that our play is not appropriate for vey young children as they may find it difficult to sit and concentrate on a Shakespearian play for over an hour without becoming a distraction. Secondly, the Fringe is all about new and old artistic ideas so we have put a odeon twist on the Tempest, which will hopefully make it appealing both to die hard Shakespeare lovers by being true to the origins of the play however we added singing and dance elements into the show where fitting to give it more of a modern day, contemporary style which will attract the younger audiences.

Site specific presentation analysis

Site specific discussion


Site specific discussion part 2


London Bubble- Me


Artichoke- Amber


Emergency Exit Arts- Luke


Will Dorner- Jaydee

The site specific company I researched is London Bubble who work within the community to share theatre with the young and old. They travel around, performing at many different locations including car homes for the elderly to bring ten up their day and nurseries for toddlers, to educate them through art and visual learning. The way they travel around the community tells us they are very much social and community based, they are having a fantastic impact on London as they are able to reach out to a wide range of audiences with their work. Their mission is- “To provide the artistic direction, skills, environment and resources to create an inclusive, involving theatre, which shares stories that animate the space of the city and the spirits of its citizens.”

One of their projects is called ‘Speech Bubbles’. They take this round nursery and primary schools with the aim to educate children using language and through theatre. An interview with on of then school’s teachers revealed that the company were not only helping the children's language development through speech, it was helping their writing, socialising and also confidence levels in the classroom, playground and at home. This is just one example of a project that London Bubble create. They are a community based company.

Emergency Exit Arts are a company which create large events in the streets, using music, visuals, pyrotechnics and puppetry. They mainly focus on taking old ideas and making them into something completely fresh and modernised. They create parade style performances, similar to those you would see at a holiday park. They use recycled objects to create their spectacles. They have a large team behind the company, with people working on the design and construction to the events managers.

Will Dorner is an Austrian choreographer who specialises in site specific performance. He is highly trained and has toured around the world, performing and taking his works with him. One of this most recent worlds is ‘Bodies in Urban Spaces.’ This first premiered in Paris. It is a moving trail, choreographed for a group of dancers who lead the audience round through public spaces. The dancers ultimately blend into the street as it were. They lay on benches and hide in small holes, as if part of the street. This is fascinating for audiences to watch as it is out of the ordinary however the dancers act as if it is perfectly normal.

The company Artichoke are a U.K. based organisation. It is a charity which works with companies and put on large scale events, which attract thousands of people. They strongly believe that art should not be restricted to only theatres and galleries. One of their most famous events was that they created a life like replicate of a young girl out of mechanical materials. This was on a huge scale and was so fascinating as audiences were in ore of the art.

All of the above companies perform in site specific venues and make full use of their surroundings to impact on their audiences. Emergency Exit Arts, Bodies in Urban Spaces and Artichoke all fully utilise the outdoor environment they perform in which is the streets, making their art more adventurous and professional. Differing slightly, London Bubble do not specifically use the streets to perform in. They go to locations such as community centres, hospitals and nurseries as all of their work has a specific target audience which determines which location they visit with which piece of theatre. This differs from the other three companies as they do not necessarily have a target audience; there audience will be however wants to stop their day and appreciate the art out in from of them.

Artichoke work with charities with their work and London Bubble are very community based. These two companies are quite similar as they give something back to the community they are involved in. The other two companies, Bodies in Urban Spaces and Emergency Exit Arts are not charity based, they just showcase their work purely as they love what they do. This is where the companies differ again, however they all have in common a love for the arts.

The final comparison I will make is the scale of the companies. Emergency Exit Arts and Artichoke have many people behind the company as they create large scale performances. This means they need crew to create the art work, publicise it and manage the events. Differing, Bodies in Urban Spaces has one single choreographer behind the work, Dorner. This differs to Emergency Exit Arts who have numerous members of crew on board to design and bring to life their creations as there is a lot more to think about than just the dancers. The larger the scale of the company and events they showcase, the more of a team will be working behind the scenes.

The most surprising thing I have found whilst doing my research into these fantastic companies, comes from London Bubble. I am pleasantly surprised that they have such an affect on their target audiences. They help young children develop in confidence at the same time as educating them with language and developing their writing skills. I was not fully aware of how much of a positive impact a theatre company could have on their target audience. This has taught me that site specific companies not only entertain their audiences, but are able to educate them, in this case help with the key stages of development and socialisation which are such important stages in a child's life.

I am most drawn to Bodies in Urban Spaces. This is because I love dancing myself and also always love to watch live dance performances, no matter the genre. I feel as though this company really break boundaries as the performance is mostly still images of the dancers blending into the street, which gives the audience a chance to take in the surroundings and what the dancers have created in the naturalistic space. I would like to see this site specific performance live the most as I feel it would be such an interesting journey to follow the dancers around a city and appreciating how they make use of the space, with such a brilliant art form.

The Tempest, BOAT analysis

Shoreham Shakespeare performance analysis

Developing contemporary dance techniques- 7/04/17

Cunningham plies exercise


Cunningham foot exercise


Cunningham main phrase


Cunningham main phrase, different timing and facings


Cunningham main phrase, different timings and facings- 2


Limon swinging phrase


Limon travelling phrase
Limon phrase



Limon phrase, 2

Leaps
Leaps, 2
Leaps, 3

Developing contemporary dance techniques- 24/03/17

Limon phrase technique


Leaps


Cunningham main phrase


Cunningham main phrase, 2


Cunningham main phrase, 3


Discussion/ target setting