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Dear Dora…

Dear Reader,

Our main focus as a theatre company as you can tell from the title is letters. As Bird’s Eye View Theatre are celebrating the centenary we delved into the archives (I now have my own membership) and found old letters sent from loved ones from Billie to Dora and from Harry to Alice, we were excited by the prospect of holding these old letters and falling in love with these characters of the past and their stories Ellie, Louise and I were shocked at the amount of history we could hold in our hands, actual letters that were sent that talked of the stonebow in Lincoln and Barclays bank,places that as students we walk past every day and now they have some hidden history and  story that we can share.We desperately wanted to give history a stage and let voices of the forgotten past be remembered.

We found some amazing things in the archieves including embroided post cards that the soilders either bought or made and sent them to loved ones.

forget me not

Forget Me Not Mooney. C (2014) Taken in the archives

The Birds also had the pleasure of Louise and Lauren’s grandparents checking in their attics and finding lots of old embroided post cards which made the whole experience feel a little bit more real. Touching the cards that were passed through so many hands in WW1 made it a little bit eerie but made the Birds feel like we as a company were beginning to become apart of bringing the stories to life.

Yours Sincerely

Charlotte

xxx

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What sort of flyer shall we have?

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Cox, E 2014

When we were deciding how to create flyers and programmes we took inspiration from what marketing and promotional materials we had seen around campus and at other theatre venues. We absolutely loved the postcard flyer for A Letter To Lacy,  we thought it was incredibly different, small yet eye-catching and bold enough to still have the distinctive image that will make people pick it up. We decided that this was the style of flyer we wanted, using World War One postcards as a template and creating our own stitched pattern on the front.

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Cox, E 2014

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Cox, E 2014

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Cox, E 2014

Cox, E (2014)

Cox, E 2014

If you want to see how well the process went click this link to read Louise’s blog post.

Images

Cox, E 2014

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My Great Granddad

So, a trip home last weekend uncovered some amazing family history for me. My grandma had an entire folder full of original postcards that were sent during World War One.

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Simpson, L. (2014) Postcards

The postcards vary from being written by my great granddad to his mother and father, to then some being written to him by his French girlfriend, Juliette. There is not always much written on them due to censorship but they always let the family know that he is safe.

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Simpson, L. (2014) Postcards

There are also some lovely hand stitched cards in this folder, sent on special occasions like Christmas or a birthday. The detail on them is incredible which shows the amount of time that must have been spent on them.

We really love the aesthetic of these and so we are currently looking at ways of incorporating this style into the set. The words that are written on them will also, hopefully, make an appearance in the final performance. This adds a real personal element to the performance for me and it will hopefully ring home with a lot of the audience members too. Here is a final picture of the man himself:

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Simpson, L. (2014) My Great Granddad

 

All Images:

Simpson, L. (2014)

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So how are we going to do this?

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Going back to our Theatre Compay Manifesto which we created a couple weeks ago, we mentioned that we wanted to create “REAL theatre. Honest theatre. Truthful theatre”.  As this is an important motive for us as a theatre company, we want this to reflect in our final project. By doing this there is a lot to think about such our space, the aesthetics of the theatre and also our research. These are the ideas we have come up with so far:

First of all, we would like to strip the theatre back by making sure that everything we do in our performance such as moving the set, changing of the lights, creating soundscapes through ourselves or even microphones is visible. By doing this we feel as though we are being honest and truthful not only to ourselves but also our audience. By doing this we aren’t hiding by what we want to achieve.

The honest and truthfulness won’t be just in our aesthetics of the performance but also in ourselves. We don’t want to be characters. The type of theatre we want to portray is verbatim theatre which is a documentary based language with real people’s spoken words. We want to be able to share their own words and not take credit for them and by doing this we will be representing their words in a variety of mediums.

Even though we would like to strip back our stage, as a company we would like to use a lot of technology such as projection to show the audience more visually what research we have gained through our experience of making this project. We would like to project text and also images. By projecting quotes from our interviewee’s shows the audience not only our research but our journey and other people’s views and opinions on WW1 that we have gained over the past weeks. Another medium I have mention is images. Members of our theatre company have collated images of their past relatives during WW1 and also have explored the Lincolnshire Archives where they have found useful pictures.

My last point taken from our manifesto is that we mention about taking “the lost and forgotten documents that are stored away, in your attics, archives and annex’s”. This would be a great image to start our performance with. By decorating the stage with lots of clutter and boxes, and then slowly taking the items away throughout the performance would represent history slowly fading away. It is the same with our performance, it will be once there on the stage but once we have finished it is as though it wasn’t there.

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Women in WW1 and Our Performance

We, as a company, have now established that our performance will be about the women of WWI. In order for us to follow through with our manifesto and ideas as a company, a lot of research will be required. As the company’s dramaturg it is my job to not only research as well as the other birds but to double check whether the material is appropriate for our performance. By this I mean, historically and conceptually appropriate.

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(Chapman, 2014)

It would seem ideal then for us to start with the roles women took on when the war came about. Many women did work before the war began, however, this was the first time where there was mass employment for all women. Half a million women worked for the first time during the war as well as over one million volunteers (BBC, 2014). Much of the work undertaken by women, over 600,000, during this time were roles that had previously been dominated by males especially those within industry (Brosnan, 2014).

Women’s took up jobs in policing, working the land, public transport, the post office, nursing, factories, the Armed services, the Government positions, clerks in businesses and many other. Many women went to work in the munitions factories, a job that was highly dangerous. The munitionettes produced 80% of the weapons and shells for the British Army and were exposed daily to the poisonous substances without strict safety measures (Martin, 2009). They became known as the ‘canary girls’ due to the yellowing of their skin dealing with sulphur contained within the shells (ibid).

With the knowledge of the munitionettes, we decided that this would be a part of our performance somehow, We wanted to show that not only were the men fighting on the front line were risking their lives for their country but also women back home were also risking their lives to support their boys and war effort. We began to develop a choreographed sequence to show the monotony of the factory work, the character of these brave women and the demand for the front line. Below is some of the improvisation we did, to start developing the scene:

 

Another way in which we are portraying the women in WWI in our piece is through the use of verbatim inspired by Dan Canham and Stillhouse’s performance Ours Was the Fen Country. Both Lauren Simpson and Louise have researched their family’s involvement in the war. Both have interviewed relatives and discovered more articles that we can potentially use in the performance. We are hoping that we can use their interviews as part of the verbatim as both talk of women in different areas of work including the cotton mills and munition factories and also working as a butler. We don’t wish to act these people’s voices but we want to transpire these voices through us to the audience as Dan Canham explains”…we’ve been playing a lot with people’s voices almost as if they’re not with us, so placing people’s voices in little speakers or having their voices disembodies, what it means to embody their voices, almost as if we’re kind of bringing them into the room making them visible, making them embodied because they’re not with us literally” (Stillhouse, 2013).

We are also going to, hopefully, use the letters we have found at the Museum of Lincolnshire Life and the Lincolnshire Archives from Billy Lounds and Harry Butt. We have researched both Dora and Alice, the two recipients of their letters, and have found some details about them. However, again we do not want to act as these women reading these letters as we don’t know who these women were or what they were thinking when they did receive the letters. In order for us to use these letters, we will have to negotiate a way in which to speak these letters without fabrication.

letters

(Chapman, 2014)

 Works Cited:

. BBC (2014) iWonder: What Did World War One Really Do For Women? [online] London:BBC. Available from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/z9bf9j6. [Accessed February 2014].

.Brosnan, M. (2014) The Women War Workers of the North West. [online] London: IWM. Available from: http://www.iwm.org.uk/history/the-women-war-workers-of-the-north-west. [Accesssed 10th February 2014].

Imperial War Museum (2014) Women’s Services in the First World War. [online] London: IWM. Available from: http://www.iwm.org.uk/history/womens-services-in-the-first-world-war. [Accessed 10th February 2014].

.Martin, S. (2009) Women and WWI- Women in the Workforce: Temporary Men. [online] Available from: http://www.firstworldwar.com/features/womenww1_four.htm [Accessed 10th February 2014].

Stillhouse (2013) Ours Was The Fen Country- Research and Development, May 2012. [podcast] 2013. Available from: http://vimeo.com/45147781. [Accessed 20th February 2014].

 

 

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Family during the war

This week I visited my Grandma and she allowed me to record an interview with her about her parent’s role in WW1 as well as sharing her memories of what life was like as a child during WW2.

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My Great Grandad, Christopher Arthur Ellerton, Pearson, 2014

Grandma told me that her father, my Great-Grandfather, Christopher Arthur Ellerton was a Policeman who became a stretcher bearer during the First World War, serving at the Battle of the Somme and at Ypres, surviving the whole war and returning after it was over to marry my Great-Grandmother. I also learnt that my Great-Grandmother worked as the equivalent of a butler to a large house, as all the men were away. My Grandma read out some of Arthur’s diary from his travels during the war including some comments on what the conditions were like. It was amazing to see and hear his words and know that I am actually related to him.

All of this was recorded on a Dictaphone so it can be incorporated into the performance, possibly through speaking Grandma’s words ourselves or acting out the images in her stories.

Works Cited:

Pearson, A. (2014) Christopher Arthur Ellerton. 

Pearson, A. (2014) Grandma’s World War One Stories: Fourth Story. [interview] Interviewed by Louise Pearson, 19 February.

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The Archives

We have been to the Lincolnshire Archives twice now and have found some fascinating material that could be included in our piece:

Letters:

Letters from WW1

Letters from WW1, BBC, 2014

There are several sets of letters from people during WW1. The most interesting ones are from Private Officer Harry Butt of the second Fourth Battalion Lincoln Regiment to Alice Smith which span from 1915-1918. They discuss his whereabouts, what he has been doing and in one place he talks about going ‘over the top’.

Photographs:

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A Munitionette, BBC, 2014

Significant photos at the archives are of Tanks, Planes and their construction, with several images of women in factories and ‘Munitionettes‘ (women working in munitions factories). There are some very memorable images, such as Munitionettes pulling a Ruston plane on Monks Road, in Lincoln, to raise support for the troops.

Postcards:

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Library of Birmingham, 2014

Not only were there letters at the archives but there were delightful embroidered postcards. Many of these embroideries opened like an envelope and held tiny message cards such as ‘Happy Christmas’ and though they wouldn’t have been made by the soldiers themselves the beauty of the cards certainly wouldn’t have gone unappreciated.

Works Cited:

BBC (2014) Women at war. [online] BBC. Available from http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/worldwarone/hq/hfront2_02.shtml [Accessed 22 February 2014].

BBC (2014) World War One: How did 12 million letters a week reach soldiers? [online] BBC. Available from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25934407 [Accessed 22 February 2014].

Library of Birmingham, The. Silk Embroidered Postcards. [online] The Library of Birmingham. Available from http://www.libraryofbirmingham.com/silkembroideredpostcards [Accessed 22 February 2014].

Lincolnshire County Council (2014) Lincolnshire Archives. [online] Available from http://www.lincolnshire.gov.uk/residents/archives/ [Accessed 14 April 2014].

Lincs to the Past (2014) Letters and photographs relating to Private Harry Butt. [online] Available from http://www.lincstothepast.com/Letters-and-photographs-relating-to-Private-Harry-Butt/699691.record?pt=S [Accessed 14 April 2014].

Lincs to the Past (2014) Photograph. [online] Available from http://www.lincstothepast.com/photograph/301780.record?ImageId=113280&pt=S [Accessed 14 April 2014].

Lincs to the Past (2014) Photograph. [online]. Available from http://www.lincstothepast.com/photograph/302778.record?ImageId=114349&pt=S [Accessed 14 April 2014].

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“The power of post”~ BBC News

As this exciting process develops we are discovering more and more sources for exploration with each passing week. This week in particular we are really honing in on a main idea for our performance piece, which is to take letters from World War One and use them as a basis to tell the stories of those who are no longer here to do so.

After each session the company all take a few minutes to write a letter addressed to our lovely audience (hopefully those reading this will become our lovely audience), in which we explain the session we have just took part in and highlight our favourite points. I personally love the art of letter writing and I think that somewhere down the technological fuelled line it has become lost and sort of cast out.

By delving into Lincolnshire’s past and finding letters from soldiers to their mothers/sweethearts/daughters etc, I have been inspired and moved by the power of words. So my personal aim in writing these letters to our audience is to inspire them and let them in on our creative process so they can become part of the performance and really engage with what we are trying to do.

Booklet of letters from soldiers at war.

Museum of Lincolnshire Life 04/02/2014

Another reason for writing these letters is to keep track of how our ideas are developing, not everything we do in sessions and write about will make it into the final performance but it is all relevant to the end product, which I think is important to include the audience in.

“12.5 Million letters left the home depot every week” (BBC , 2014) during the first world war, so you can see the great importance they had at the time and with so many letters floating around we have a lot of material to work with. For now it is just a case of narrowing down the stories we want to tell, who stands out above the rest and how we can make a performance that incorporates these letters with dance, music and verbatim all in one. All I can say is watch this space, the birds are moving forward and developing some great ideas to put into practice shortly.

Works Cited:

Johnson, A. (2014) How did 12 million letters reach WW1 soldiers each week? [Online] London: BBC. Available from http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/zqtmyrd#z2p634j [Accessed 20 Feb 2014].

Ford, S. (2014) Booklet of soldiers letters. [Image] Lincoln: Museum of Lincolnshire Life. 04 February.

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“Remember Me To All The Birds!”

Oh What a Lovely War

Original cast production of Joan Littlewood’s ‘Oh What A Lovely War’ 1963, Google Image.

Although Birds Eye View Theatre Company are focusing creating a piece based on the local people of Lincoln during World War One, we thought it best in the research and development process to discuss and improvise with all aspects of text we think we can work with whether it be musical, play, or poetry.

 

 

With some of the company having studied it , We came across ‘Oh What A Lovely War!’ written by playwright Joan Littlewood . The play was first performed by Theatre Workshop at the Theatre Royal, Stratford in 1963.

 

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Above: A revival production from Nothern Stage, Newcastle 2011, The Guardian.

In the directors introduction, Littlewood states there is to be no Khaki costume involved and that the musical numbers are loosely based on songs of the sixties era.With this parody effect in mind, we decided to learn the song ‘Goodbye-ee’ which features in Act One:

 

 

Brother Bertie went away
To do his bit the other day
With a smile on his lips and his
Lieutenant’s pips upon his shoulder bright and gay.
As the train moved out he said, ‘Remember me to all
the birds.’
And he wagg’d his paw and went away to war
Shouting out these pathetic words:

Goodbye-ee, goodbye-ee,
Wipe the tear, baby dear, from you eye-ee,
Tho’ it’s hard to part I know, I’ll be tickled to death to
go.
Don’t cry-ee, don’t sigh-ee, there’s a silver lining in the sky-ee,
Bonsoir, old thing, cheer-i-o, chin, chin,
Na-poo, toodle-oo, Goodbye-ee.

(Littlewood, 2000, p.37.)

After learning the lyrics, we recorded it and used the song as a backing track to introduce our pitch to our peers. We enjoyed the language of the era such as ‘na-poo’ and the track was a light-hearted approach for World War One. The song itself had a very traditional feel, an element we hope to incorporate into our work as well as making refreshing the era. Birds Eye View Theatre have also been looking at another song from the play, ‘I’ll Make A Man Out Of You’ which we will be working on in the coming weeks. Studying music of the era has been a great help for Charlotte and myself as collaborative directors. Here is our cover below…

Originally from a textual director’s perspective, I read ‘Oh What I Lovely War’ with the mind set that the dialogue written could be a potential basis for the piece. However, a musical element of the arts will also help to add diversity to our show. ‘Oh What a Lovely War’ does not fit the particular style of scripting we are looking for. The text is almost a mockery of the war and as we wish to explore the truth of the matter, we must tread carefully when portraying the First World War. We are hoping in introduce verbatim into are piece and as a team we are fully aware we must take a sensitive approach to this so not to offend any of our audience members.

Although we will be potentially using texts such as lyrics and poetry, we have be looking at letters from Grandparents, archives and museums to stylize our piece. Stay tuned to hear our musical director Charlotte teaching the birds to sing!

Works Cited:

Littlewood, J. (2000) Theatre Workshop: Oh What A Lovely War.London: Methuen.

The Guardian (2011) Oh What A Lovely War: Nothern Stage Newcastle. [online] The Guardian. Available from http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2010/mar/11/oh-what-a-lovely-war-review [Accessed 19 February 2014].

 

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Marketing, what is popular performance?

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Vivsaks (2009) The LPAC at night

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Lincoln Drill Hall (2011)

First to talk was Simon from Lincoln Drill Hall, he mentioned that their mission statement is to make ‘special moments’, that ‘art makes lives better’ and that they offer a ‘bucketful’ of experiences. The main importance is the accessibility of space, he gave an example of performances that are expensive but the reputation and accessibility of the show sold itself. These challenging performances that push boundaries have become incredibly popular, and this questions what we know about popular performance. Popularity is about ‘getting people through the door’ and The Drill Hall is already a Lincoln landmark so a lot of people don’t really see it as a traditional theatre venue like The Lincoln Theatre Royal. They even hold election night there and Simon even sees it as a ‘performance space’. He mentioned that there are three programmes available when it comes to performance: Challenging, Core and Popular Culture. Popular Culture is not about low production costs and values but it is about performance accessibility and its relevance. Simon asks questions about the audiences, ‘why would people be tempted to attend?’ and ‘what kind of experience do people have?’ However, he also mentions that the three programmes that are listed above are actually becoming fluid this also challenges about what can also be popular. It also pushes the boundaries of what the building is capable of and it is also a very versatile space. It is their responsibility to make high quality work popular and it seems that there is a complex relationship between the commercial and the popular.

Howes, T (

Howes, T (2013)

Richard and Laura spoke on behalf of Chapterhouse . They mentioned that they don’t get funding so performances have to make money therefore, they can’t do experimental work. The company performs in venues that want and need to bring people in e.g. stately homes, gardens, National Trust, Heritage sites, so it has to sell. The performance will usually be one of the busiest days the venue will have. After being asked what he thought of popular performance, Richard sees it as a ‘responsibility for himself and for the venue’. He mentioned that Shakespeare is a harder sell than it used to be so now the company have moved towards staging classics like Jane Austen and Charles Dickens. This creates a nostalgia where they use things that people recognise but it is always vital to have an innovative take on the text. With Laura writing the company she wants to create nostalgia, with modern interpretations, creating existing plays within a nostalgic format that the audience recognise, but it is innovative within that format. She also has a feminist agenda, Chapterhouse has become Event theatre, an entire entertainment package and she notices that the majority of people who go to these performances are women, so they need to give the audience what they want.

The LPAC has the problem of being a presenting venue when it comes to discussing what is popular, so is it about how we present the work we offer? They have less control over the productions that are put on so balancing the programme is always tasking as it is how the LPAC is perceived and received. We need to start to think about different forms of popular for different audiences, as there are so many different popular avenues of performance.

The talk was incredibly insightful to understand that popular performance is so hard to define, it shifts and changes like the indecisive Lincolnshire weather. This is what we need to be careful of when marketing our piece, we need to understand the audience in order to market the audience.

Works Cited

Byrnes, W.J. (2009) Management and the Arts. 4th Ed. Focal Press: USA.

The Drill Hall (2011) [image] http://www.lincolndrillhall.com/events/lincoln-drill-hall-s-third-annual-bangers-mash-ball [Accessed: 16/05/2014].

T, Howes (2013) Chapterhouse at Chatsworth. [image] http://tamaraausten77.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/pride-prejudice-at-chatsworth-house-my.html [Accessed 16/05/2014].

 

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Through Speaking, We Learn.

As a company we have been lucky enough to have the opportunity to speak to working practitioners within the industry. We have been able to ask them about their companies and experiences in building a company and making art. As a new company this has been very helpful as we have learnt what to do and, in some cases, how to steer away from problematic issues.

Still House (2014) online

Dan Canham from Still House came to speak to us about the process and production of Ours Was The Fen Country . The production focused on verbatim text and he discussed his process of gathering the interviews and sifting through hours of dialogue to pick out the most interesting points. our experience will be very similar to his as we will be interviewing a wide rage of people about their stories of World War 1. Still House’s production was more than just verbatim text and one aspect of creating our show that concerned me was getting from spoken word to a performative state. Canham’s advice was to play and to avoid worrying about the final outcome of the show. ‘It will happen’ he told us. Continue reading →

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Finding Our Pebble…

Something Ollie Smith said in the post-show discussion of The Trilogy (2013) hit home with me. “You start with your pebble and you toss it in the lake and watch it ripple”. The pebble represents your initial idea and the ripples are continuations of that idea that spread and develop. This analogy calmed my initial nerves about creating a fully developed and functioning theatre company from scratch. We just needed to find our pebble!

finding our pebble

With this mind-set, we began our first meeting. Simply throwing around our own preliminary ideas showed that we were all having similar ideas, which is a huge advantage with such a big group of people. We wanted to create something of our own and as 2014 is the beginning of the centenary of World War One, this is the topic that seemed most appropriate.

There is so much existing material regarding World War One that the script wouldn’t need to be totally devised. We want to take extracts from poems, novels, plays and newspaper articles and incorporate them with our own words to create a performance. We also like the idea of using real people’s voices throughout, to give an element of truth. This combining of extracts from multiple sources reflects altermodernist Nicolas Bourriaud’s ‘postproduction’. He states that: “artists today program forms more than they compose them; rather than transfigure a raw element…they remix available forms and make use of data” (Bourriaud 2005, p. 18). He draws a parallel between this and the work of a disc-jockey (DJ). A DJ doesn’t use original music, but collects them from other sources. The remixing of the music creates a new way of listening to the songs. This is the technique that we want to adopt when creating our piece.

Our initial rehearsals are well and truly underway and we have dived head first into the research and development stage. As we are right at the beginning of our devising process, we are simply playing. Just as children would when given a large space, we have been dancing, singing and playing games. However, this is not all in vain.

The songs we have been learning have been from World War One, as have the dances. The foxtrot and the castle walk are the first two that we have attempted. Having the freedom to play without the pressure of creating ideas seems to allow ideas to happen more regularly. Simply from a dancing workshop, we created the idea of having no men present and just representing them by dancing with a jacket or a hat, for example. This is a beautiful idea to come at such an early stage in the process.

Games have also proven to be useful in channelling our thoughts and ideas. For example, we were inspired by a picture of blindfolded men leading each other through the trenches.

gassedbig2

We wanted to create a similar feeling and so we blindfolded ourselves and then set a task for us to complete. One of which involved us having to get in height order without any form of verbal communication. We just about managed it, but it proved a difficult task.

 

These early ideas are exciting as we have no idea if they are going to make it into the show or not at this stage. Watch this space!

 

Works Cited:

Bourriaud, Nicolas, Schneider, Caroline, Herman, Jeanine (2005) Postproduction: Culture as Screenplay: How Art Reprograms the World, New York: Lukas & Sternberg.

Simpson, L. (2014) Birds Eye View of the Company.

Singer Sargant, John. (1919) Gassed, Accessed from: http://conflicts2.wikispaces.com/WWI+Art+Gallery [online] [12/02/14].

Smith, Ollie (2014) The Triology Post Show Discussion: Thursday 30th January 2014.

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‘In the beginning…’ ~ Pinchbeck

Starting the process of setting up a Theatre Company is not an easy task! However, I feel we have begun our journey with positive footing. I believe we have gelled well as a group and share the same ideas and direction in terms of where we want this process to go.

‘The Trilogy’ (2014) [Online] at forestfringe.co.uk/edinburgh2013/artist/michael-pinchbeck/

Right from the off we delved into opportunities that inspire us and upon watching Michael Pinchbeck’s outstanding performance, The Trilogy came together buzzing with ideas to use for our own piece of work. The initial groundwork and basis of our ideas can be seen in the manifesto (you should take a look if you haven’t already), this was an important part of creating our theatre company because it gave us an aim for our current project and of course for future projects we undergo.

INSPIRATION!

This word is key for our process, inspiration is all around us and we are fortunate to be a Lincolnshire based Theatre Company, due to the historical relevance that it lends to our performance idea. We hope at the end of this process to create a performance that looks into the role of women within the First World War. Much to our delight we found out that the first ever tank used in the war was built right here in Lincoln, and fortunately for us a replica still stands at the Museum of Lincolnshire Life. So of course the only thing to do was to have a field trip!

Flirt II

(Ford, 04/02/2014) Flirt II

She was beautiful, named Flirt II and to top it off she was built by women as part of the war effort. This along with other stories of women in the war such as ‘the canary girls’ and munitions workers put us in good standing for going further with our ideas and beginning to move forward with our performance piece.

All in all these first initial workshops, meetings and outings have really got us excited for what’s to come and how much we can do as a Theatre Company for our first performance to make our mark in the industry.

Works Cited:

Forest Fringe. (2013) Lowres-Publicity-Image-Final. [Online] Edinburgh: Forest Fringe Edinburgh. Available from http://forestfringe.co.uk/edinburgh2013/artist/michael-pinchbeck/ [Accessed 10 February 2014].

Pinchbeck, M. (2014) The Trilogy. [Performance] Lincoln: Lincoln Performing Arts Centre, 30 January.

Ford, S (2014) Flirt II. [Image] Lincoln: Museum of Lincolnshire Life, 04 February.

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Verbatim on the Fens

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Ours Was The Fen Country by Dan Canham, MAYK, 2012

After seeing Ours Was the Fen Country by Dan Canham last night I was really inspired by the company’s use and manipulation of sound. After beginning by putting on iPod headphones and synchronizing their music the Fens were brought to life through a combination of audio recorded interviews with the inhabitants of the Fens, many of whom spoke on similar topics, so their words were layered together to create a verbal collage.

Though throughout the piece the actors used the words in a variety of ways: repeating the interview to the audience as themselves but keeping the spoken idiosyncrasies the same, using the rhythm of the language to create movement or saying the words at the same time as it could be heard on stage. My favourite use of the voice recordings was when an actor, alone in the spotlight, mimed to the words heard on stage, and moved as if it was him speaking them. It was the subtlety of his movements which really made it memorable for me, it was so seemingly unconscious and natural. The fact that the interviewee on the recording sounded older than the actor didn’t seem to matter, but it made the personality of the bodiless voice on the recording come alive, and brought humour and empathy to the man who was telling his story.

Y Ganolfan, 2014

Works Cited:

MAYK (2012) Still House: Ours Was the Fen Country. [online] Bristol: MAYK Theatre Ltd. Available from http://www.mayk.org.uk/portfolio/ours-was-the-fen-country/ [Accessed 9 February 2014].

Still House (2013) Still House. [online] Available from https://soundcloud.com/still_house [Accessed 10 April 2014].

Still House (2014) Ours Was The Fen Country. [online] Available from http://www.stillhouse.co.uk/stilhouse/stillhouse_-_ours_was_the_fen_country.html [Accessed 10 April 2014].

Y Ganolfan (2014) Ours Was the Fen Country – Research and Development \ Ymchwil a Datblygiad. [online video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iooLjMs90aw [Accessed 20 April 2014].

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“To start with it’s the script and by the end it’s the set.”

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Pinchbeck, 2013

After watching Michael Pinchbeck’s, The Trilogy at the Lincoln Performing Arts Centre on Thursday 30th January, I related The End to our process the most. The performance was inspired by one line of stage direction found in William Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, which was “Exit pursued by a bear”. 

Pinchbeck 2011

As Michael Pinchbeck states in this video:

“We have these cards, which contains the text, which we drop. So to start with it’s the script and by the end it’s the set” (2011 online).

This is how I believe our theatre company’s performance will be fabricated. After discussing what our performance theme would be, we decided to base it on war as this year it is The First World War Centenary. Due to our highly factual and unmistakably emotional topic we were incredibly fascinated by having recorded interviews, photos, music anything that could make the performance feel real and use it as our set. Whether it was used as a projection, printed photographs or a montage of sound it would all accumulate together to become our set.

Rose, M (2009) The Book About Death

Rose, M (2009) The Book About Death

This process reminds me of an art installation called A Book About Death, it’s not the content that I can reflect upon but I can with the process. Artists were invited to contribute a 500 postcards to create an unbound book. 486 artists responded to the request and A Book About Death was installed at The Emily Harvey Gallery in New York city on September 10, 2009. These small images were installed on a white wall while the remaining postcards were in large boxes on the gallery floor and visitors to create their own version of the unbound book.  It reveals how we have no idea what we are going to get from researching this project and how our final performance can be ideas taken from any little fact we uncover or a moment we enjoyed in devising.

Our next step is to research into Lincoln’s involvement during the war, we will be visiting The Museum of Lincolnshire Life tomorrow, where they have an authentic World War One tank.

Works cited:
The Book  About Death (2009)  [image] http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_SAUcA31atjA/SqpTGdO2RgI/AAAAAAAADcE/vNJ29ZIKsj8/s1600/Install.1.jpg [Accessed 31/05/2014].
The End (2011) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOEJVxc-qBg [Accessed on 3/2/2014].
The End (2013) [image] http://michaelpinchbeck.co.uk/the-end/ [Accessed on 3/2/2014].

 

 
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Making the logo

We had been dancing around in the beginning with many topics and themes for our company name and ended up with… “Drum roll please!”

‘Birds Eye View Theatre’.

I played around with the computer hoping to develop a digital image however, I wanted the logo to reflect our company manifesto. So I had an arts and crafts day trying out some different ways of creating birds. I did not want to make the logo war themed as the theme for this performance could be a one-off, if we were to take our company on after this module. I ended up photographing the finished result – once I had secured it to my desk with plenty of tape. I then added a black and white filter to the photo.

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Cox, E 2014

Having made the logo, it keeps the aims of our manifesto applicable as it a real, handmade logo, an honest take on birds (especially as I am not the best at creating bird silhouettes, as you can see). The only thing I changed digitally was the filter, but I don’t think we would have wanted the original colour of the string, especially as it is pink!

cropped-image.jpeg

Cox, E 2014

It was important for me to get the right image for our logo as it would be our consistent ‘visual identity’ (Pieters 2008, p.1) and this is what people will relate us too throughout this process. I love how the birds look as though they are on a washing line or a telephone wire looking down, and literally have a “Birds Eye View”.

Images cited

Cox, E (2014)
Pieters, R and Wedel, M (2008) Visual Marketing: From Attention to Action. Routledge: USA.