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.