Danny Smith
25.05.2016
Final Blog Submission
Photo Credit: Dave Turner
“In our art you must live the part every moment that you are playing it, and every time.” (Stanislavski, 2008, 19)
“How do you deliver a funny line? Don’t be funny . . . If you believe it, the laughs will come.” (NYCDA, Undated)
The Beginning
Picture the scene. The 5th of February 2016. My room. Will Mortimer. Lee Meachen. Me.
We opened a word document. And then… nothing.
How do you write a play? What is theatre? What are words? Who am I? Is God real?
We discussed World War One bunkers, a one room play in the style of Samuel Beckett, until finally, the Brighton hotel bombings.
A Yorkshireman. Southerners. Got it.
Thus spawned The Magpie and The Yorkshireman.
Photo Credit: Phil Crow
Creation
The Magpie and The Yorkshireman (TMTY) is a play that I will look back upon with fondness. It was fast, sharp, and, in my opinion, genre defying. We originally set out to write a dark comedy, yet when mistaken identity and confusion came to fruition, it led toward a farce. The Cambridge Introduction to Comedy labels a farce as “a kind of dramatic text, which, formally, includes a roster of two-dimensional character types and a plot based on keeping up appearances amid pursuit of love and/or sex and/or money. . . . [containing] extreme coincidence, escalating confusion and opportunities for physical humour” (Weitz, 2009, 24). TMTY did indeed contain elements of this, yet we strived to avoid categorisation! We decided to frame it with references to popular culture and include instances of meta-theatre, making this farcial comedy fresh, original, and unique! For example, Brian’s monologue at the beginning is a reference to Kill Bill: Volume 2, in which Uma Thurman’s character recites a monologue before stating “when I arrive at my destination, I am going to Kill Bill”, and the overly-sentimental ending was a reference to the ending of Ocean’s Eleven, in which the thieves reminisce about the journey they have just undertaken while Clair de Lune plays, eliciting an atmosphere of maudlin and exaggerated affection (Tarantino, 2004; Soderbergh, 2001; Debussy, 1905). It was elements such as these that we wanted to dissect, turning them into punch lines. Furthermore, we wanted to give the characters a deeper level of grit and motivation. We did not want to play “two-dimensional character types”, we wanted our characters situations to be real, the stakes to be high, and the motivations to be impassioned (Weitz, 2009, 24). Thus sprung the idea of Jean’s miscarriage, Harold’s anxiety, and Sam’s naivety. It was these elements that gave our production a contemporary twist. We are aware of our cause being comedy, yet we do not want to have the shackles of categorisation. We want Full Frontal Theatre to proceed with the freedom of creation. Not being limited by the expectations of farce, or stand-up, or black comedy. We want to make comedy, and as our mission statement articulately states: ‘we don’t want to change the world, we just want people to laugh at it.’
This process of writing the script, for me, was one of the most exciting and fun aspects of this entire experience. I saw the jokes, the gags, and the drama I planned (under Will’s supervision, of course) come to life! If I was asked to sum up the play from Brian’s perspective, it would be with the line “a single magpie drawing my attention to the skyline of Sheffield.” Firstly, a single magpie literally turned Brian’s attention to the skyline of Sheffield. But, further than that, a bird that is famed for being a symbol of sorrow when on its own drew Brian’s attention to his home being left wanting. Even further than that, Margaret Thatcher’s reign as Prime Minister turned Brian’s mind toward a place of his livelihood, his childhood, and everything he knows as his. Hello? Is that Hollywood? Ring my agent.
Becoming Brian
“You and your character need to believe in everything you’re doing and commit to it wholeheartedly.” (Sedita, 2009)
Originally when faced with performing a comedy I was apprehensive. Since my GCSEs I have been told that comedy is a troublesome route to take. However, upon reading around comedy acting I found that the actor’s job is not about making the audience laugh, but rather committing to the moment. To break it down, the script must be written in mind for the situations to elicit laughter, yet the acting must be performed as if the scenario was real. ‘Real’ to the point that the moment played is everything to the character. In A Practical Handbook for the Actor, it is said that “the job of the actor is to analy[s]e the text for action and then live truthfully and fully under the imaginary circumstances of the play” (Bruder et al., 1986, 42). It is with living ‘truthfully and fully’ that the actor must grapple. I trusted in the director, and most importantly, trusted in the script.
Photo Credit: Phil Crow
Being Brian
“[The artist] must fit his own human qualities to the life of this other person, and pour into it all of his own soul. The fundamental aim of our art is the creation of this inner life of a human spirit, and its expression in an artistic form.” (Stanislavski, 2008, 14)
My character of Brian Marsden was the most serious of the play. In his reality, he was planning to murder the Prime Minister, destroying a hotel, and ruining the lines of those around him. Such aspects are seemingly matched with a tragedy, yet to make the comedy effective, I had to believe that this was my reality. The seriousness I had to apply to the ‘funny’ situations was daunting and tiresome, as the entire play may be said to be based on Brian’s overall objective – ‘I work to kill Thatcher’.
In preparation for the role, in rehearsals I discussed with the group the thought of my overall objective and its importance in our work, from Ivana Chubbuck, I expressed that it was Brian’s desire to ‘kill Thatcher’ that “infuses the action with a sense of urgency”, and it is a sense of urgency that leads to a comedy’s success (Chubbuck, 2005, 7). Chubbuck explains that every character has “a righteous reason for doing what they do” as no matter how absurd their objective is, “that person feels that what he or she is doing is right” (Chubbuck, 2005, 16-17). I thus worked to portray a sense of urgency in rehearsals, believing that Jack and Jones (the clueless plasterers who I thought were hitmen) were tiring and taxing, rather than how the audience viewed them, which was that they were hilarious.
Part of the process for me was creating a back story for Brian. I used John Abbott’s character questionnaire. I used this resource in the past, and decided that my approach would be different. Due to my independence as an actor in the context of this performance, I decided that I would answer all the questions, but go into detail about certain ones of importance that helped to add depth to my character, rather than skimming over them all. One that I explored was question “71. What are you secret about?” (Abbott, 2012, 89). For this I went (in character) into detail, rather than giving a short hand answer:
‘I have never felt a sense of worth to others. I feel as though others do not give me respect. I am walked all over and never appreciated or cared about, whether it be friends, family, or the government. I need something in my life to give me purpose. I have a wife who I believe does not love me anymore, yet I do not even know if I love her. My friends are sparse to due to my loss of a job and I cannot be true to others. I never show this as I am afraid of appearing weak, and it manifests itself as a persona of bitterness and an over-developed sense of status. My outbursts towards others are due to my worries that Jean is unhappy. All I want is for her to be happy and for us to live a simple life.’
Photo Credit: Phil Crow
I kept this dark and solemn introspection of character in mind during the entire rehearsal process. I made conscious decisions as to whether what Brian was saying was his true self or this persona. One line which stood out for my understanding of Brian was his most truthful moment in which he tells Jack and Jones, ‘[Jean]’s not in a position where I can say no at the minute’. My objective for this short unit and line was ‘to communicate truth and seek sympathy’, yet my obstacle was the persona that Brian had learnt to adopt. Brian was his own obstacle. This was a difficult unit for me as I had to handle both the persona of a capable and strong-willed Brian and his insecurities seeping through. This marked a change in unit and objective as I then went on to ask ‘Anyway, what’s wrong with your lass? She thick or what?’ Using Actions: The Actors’ Thesaurus, the change from objective to objective was made clearer, as going from ‘I haunt you’ in the previous line, to ‘I cut you’ shifted the dynamic, leading to a deeper layer of Brian’s character being portrayed (Caldarone and Lloyd-Williams, 2004). Throughout the play, I thought that he remained as the persona of bitterness, and only showed his true self during Scene IX in which Brian broke down from the stresses and went on to discuss the miscarriage of his son with Jean, and the end of Scene X when he realises he has accomplished something of worth. From my perspective, acting as Brian, TMTY is a play about self-discovery, one in which Brian applies himself to something, trying to right a wrong, and giving himself a sense of worth.
“Yeezy [Kanye] Taught Me” (West, 2010)
As well as acting, I was also one half of the Marketing team. I was extremely excited for this, as so many times before have I seen theatre companies market their show in a standard form: Create the show → Tweet that it is happening → Print some posters → Tweet some more → Show date. I wanted to redefine this process. Even though I have not been involved in marketing in the past, I have taken great inspiration from Gary Vaynerchuck and Kanye West (hear me out!). Gary Vaynerchuck outlines “outmarket[ing] the market”, or, by what he calls it “just to market in the year we live in” (Vaynerchuck, 2015). He claims we have to be aware of our audience and create content that is engaging and means something. Kanye West however, ignores every other marketing scheme around, and redefines what marketing is. From turning his website into an “interactive map highlighting the times and locations of . . . ‘performances’” (United by Design, 2013) (leading fans to see Kanye’s face projected on to buildings rapping New Slaves around the U.S.) to his sold out Yeezy Season 3 presentation at Madison Square Gardens in which he marketed both his new clothing line.
I took inspiration from these figures, and created something that has been in my head for a while: A flyer that stated ‘PLEASE ADD GRAFFITI’ featuring a representation of Margaret Thatcher’s face. This is a unique and exciting idea, I believe, as it leads to audience engagement and sparks the interest of the public. An idea that the head of marketing at Lincoln Performing Arts Centre (LPAC) replied to, stating: “Novel idea – I’ve not come across this before.” We also purchased beer mats with the poster image on, a 
print idea in which the audience would want and use, rather than getting passed a flyer in the street and placing it in the nearest bin. I wanted our social media presence to follow this level of engagement. Posts that the audience can interact with and take part in. If I repeated the process however, I would have paid more attention to Twitter – a high-speed platform in which your voice can be easily lost. Not enough attention was payed to it, as I felt I did not have enough content to post frequently. As a rule of thumb, for my posts on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, I made sure that each post ticked two of three boxes or it would not be posted. It had to be either: useful, engaging, and/ or informative, and if it missed two of those criteria then why would it be necessary? This led to great statistics that can be seen here.
“We Did It Lads, Didn’t Think I’d See the Day”
In this past week, the lights went down on our cast in the auditorium of LPAC. The process was ruthless and tiring, yet to know we had full creative control over such a project is fulfilling to a degree that I have never experienced before. To go in front of an audience in a Sheffield United shirt from the 80s as a title character of a ‘Yorkshireman’ and trying to assassinate Margaret Thatcher? That is surely something out of a conversation with my friends in Sheffield!
It’s been emotional.
I’ll never forget The Magpie and The Yorkshireman.
Works Cited
Abbott, J. (2012) The Acting Book. London: Nick Hern Books.
Bruder, M., Cohn, L. M., Olnek, M., Pollack, N., Previto, R., and Zigler, S. (1986) A Prectical Handbook for the Actor. New York: Vintage Books.
Caldarone, M., and Lloyd-Williams, M. (2004) Actions: The Actors’ Thesaurus. Hollywood, USA: Drama Publishers.
Chubbuck, I. (2005) The Power of the Actor: The Chubbuck Technique. New York: Gotham Books.
Debussy, C. (1905) Clair de Lune [CD]. Suite bergamasque.
Kanye West (2010) Blame Game [CD]. 7 mins. 50 secs. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. The Avex Recording Studio, Honolulu, HI; Electric Lady Studios, NYC, USA: Roc-A-Fella, Def Jam.Sedita, S. (2009) The Top 10 Tips for Becoming a Successful Comedy Actor. Backstage. Available from http://www.backstage.com/advice-for-actors/acting-teachers/the-top-10-tips-for-becoming-a-successful-comedy-actor/ [Accessed 23 April 2016].
Soderbergh, S. (dir.) (2001) Ocean’s Eleven [DVD]. Warner Bros. Pictures.
Stanislavski, C. (2008) An Actor Prepares. London: Methuen Drama.
Tarantino, Q. (dir.) (2004) Kill Bill: Volume 2. [DVD]. Miramax Films.
The New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts [NYCDA] (Undated) Tips on Acting for Comedy. Available from http://nycda.edu/tips/tipscomedy/ [Accessed 29 April 2016].
United by Design (2013) Kanye West uses unconventional marketing to promote “New Slaves”. 1% for the Planet. Available from http://onepercentfortheplanet.org/2013/07/kanye-west-uses-unconventional-marketing-to-promote-new-slaves/ [Accessed 17 January 2016].
Vaynerchuck, G. (2015) Stop Marketing Like It’s 2012. Gary Vaynerchuck. Available from https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/how-to-market-your-business/ [Accessed 23 May 2016].
Weitz, E. (ed.) (2009) The Cambridge Introduction to Comedy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
11.05.2016
Margaret Thatcher
Today we unleashed our brand new flyers! Something that I have wanted to do for a while now and fit perfectly with the marketing that we are aiming for!
Already we have been sent pictures of Margaret Thatcher with her face scribbled over!
Photo Credit: Georgia Green
10.04.2016
Prints!
Over the last few weeks I have worked with Martha Hukin extensively to have a hands on approach in creating our poster! I can now reveal what it looks like!
The font is not what I originally wanted, as I wanted ransom lettering. But this design is better than I could have imagined. I am now excited to see this coming to life!
24.03.2016
Script – Looking Back
The Cambridge Introduction to Comedy labels a farce as “a kind of dramatic text, which, formally, includes a roster of two-dimensional character types and a plot based on keeping up appearances amid pursuit of love and/or sex and/or money. . . . [containing] extreme coincidence, escalating confusion and opportunities for physical humour” (Weitz, 2009, 24). The Magpie and The Yorkshireman does indeed contain elements of this, yet we strived to avoid categorisation! We decided to frame it with references to popular culture and include instances of meta-theatre, making this farcial comedy fresh, original, and unique! For example, Brian’s monologue at the beginning is a reference to Kill Bill: Volume 2, in which Uma Thurman’s character recites a monologue before stating “when I arrive at my destination, I am going to Kill Bill”, and the overly-sentimental ending was a reference to the ending of Ocean’s Eleven, in which the thieves reminisce about the journey they have just undertaken while Clair de Lune plays, eliciting an atmosphere of maudlin and exaggerated affection (Tarantino, 2004; Soderbergh, 2001; Debussy, 1905). It was elements such as these that we wanted to dissect, turning them into punch lines. Furthermore, we wanted to give the characters a deeper level of grit and motivation. We did not want to play “two-dimensional character types”, we wanted our characters situations to be real, the stakes to be high, and the motivations to be impassioned (Weitz, 2009, 24).
Works Cited:
Debussy, C. (1905) Clair de Lune [CD]. Suite bergamasque.
Soderbergh, S. (dir.) (2001) Ocean’s Eleven [DVD]. Warner Bros. Pictures.
Tarantino, Q. (dir.) (2004) Kill Bill: Volume 2. [DVD]. Miramax Films.
Weitz, E. (ed.) (2009) The Cambridge Introduction to Comedy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
10.03.2016
Marketing
Today I found this article. I think this is worthy of note. It features a discussion of marketing in the modern day. Utilising social media as a platform of great gravity and not merely ‘spamming’ your followers.
Vaynerchuck, G. (2015) Stop Marketing Like It’s 2012. Gary Vaynerchuck. Available from https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/how-to-market-your-business/ [Accessed 23 March 2016].
15.02.2016
Questions
Today, I used John Abbott’s character questionnaire. I used this resource in the past, and decided that my approach would be different. Due to my independence as an actor in the context of this performance, I decided that I would answer all the questions, but go into detail about certain ones of importance that helped to add depth to my character, rather than skimming over them all. One that I explored was question “71. What are you secret about?” (Abbott, 2012, 89). For this I went (in character) into detail, rather than giving a short hand answer:
‘I have never felt a sense of worth to others. I feel as though others do not give me respect. I am walked all over and never appreciated or cared about, whether it be friends, family, or the government. I need something in my life to give me purpose. I have a wife who I believe does not love me anymore, yet I do not even know if I love her. My friends are sparse to due to my loss of a job and I cannot be true to others. I never show this as I am afraid of appearing weak, and it manifests itself as a persona of bitterness and an over-developed sense of status. My outbursts towards others are due to my worries that Jean is unhappy. All I want is for her to be happy and for us to live a simple life.’
This dark analysis is one that I have discussed with the director, Jess, and one that is going to influence my decisions on-stage.
Works Cited
Abbott, J. (2012) The Acting Book. London: Nick Hern Books.
14.02.2016
Anxieties
I am now faced with performing a comedy. The last couple of days I have been apprehensive. Since my GCSEs I have been told that comedy is a troublesome route to take. However, upon reading around comedy acting I have found that the actor’s job is not about making the audience laugh, but rather committing to the moment. To break it down, the script must be written in mind for the situations to elicit laughter, yet the acting must be performed as if the scenario was real. ‘Real’ to the point that the moment played is everything to the character. In A Practical Handbook for the Actor, it is said that “the job of the actor is to analy[s]e the text for action and then live truthfully and fully under the imaginary circumstances of the play” (Bruder et al., 1986, 42). It is with living ‘truthfully and fully’ that the actor must grapple. I trust in the director, and most importantly, trust in the script.
Works Cited
Bruder, M., Cohn, L. M., Olnek, M., Pollack, N., Previto, R., and Zigler, S. (1986) A Prectical Handbook for the Actor. New York: Vintage Books.
02.02.2016
Execution
Upon our first meeting, I was assigned the role of an actor, as well as one half of the Marketing team alongside Ellie McHale. For my last performance on LPAC’s stage I wanted to be marked on acting, yet I approached the process with being part of the Marketing team in mind. For a while now I have been interested in alternative marketing techniques and have had ideas that I wanted to come into fruition. Due to the ever changing world of the internet, brands are having to come up with fresh and innovative ways to market their product.
Although often mocked, one of the great leaders in marketing in popular culture is Kanye West. From turning his website into an “interactive map highlighting the times and locations of . . . ‘performances’” (United by Design, 2013) (leading fans to see Kanye’s face projected on to buildings rapping New Slaves around the U.S.) in order to promote Yeezus, to his sold out Yeezy Season 3 presentation at Madison Square Gardens in which he marketed both his new clothing line and his upcoming album The Life of Pablo as he played the new album through his phone via an auxiliary cable while he observed the happenings and enjoyed his own show (Trammell, 2016). Both of these unprecedented events created a viral buzz for Kanye’s work and most importantly creates a conversation. Something I see as vital to a brand.
“Everybody feel a way about K but at least y’all feel something” – Kanye West, Bring Me Down (West, 2005)
In the article ‘Six Lessons Kanye West Can Teach Us About Marketing’, Jenna Gross proposes the following six lessons:
“1. Create hype with great content . . .
2. Align your tone with your audience . . .
3. Build a bigger stage . . .
4. Offer (some) content for free . . .
5. Timing is everything . . .
6. Take calculated risks” (Gross, 2016)
In the first lesson she states “If you do what everyone else does, you’re not worth talking about and will never rise above the competition”, and it is with this in which I hope to redefine the rule book of marketing at the university and produce exciting, interactive, and original marketing products (Gross, 2016). As throughout my studies, I have seen marketing techniques that are used routinely and habitually by the majority of productions, ending in the content blending in to the background and not striking the public with the same power that a more unique product would.
Aligning with the aforementioned article, I also noticed the importance of timing, I plan to stay away from intense marketing far away from the date of the event, and increasing traction online and in print closer to the date. As one thing that personally detracts me from engaging with a brand or company is marketing that is speaking, but not saying anything. Each of our posts and prints must be useful, engaging, and informative, and if any of them are lacking more than one of those aspects, it will not be posted. Our marketing will be brave, trying to connect with each follower/ audience member, rather than a mass of posts that do not engage the receiver. Quality over quantity is key in mind.
EDIT: A sentence in Gross’ piece reads: “The goal should always be to create great content, and the virality will follow”, a notion that aligns with an article I read recently by Gary Vaynerchuk called How Important Is A Logo To Your Business? How Important Is A Logo To Your Business?, in which he states:
I’m a big fan of actions over words. People can hate the logo but use the product even more today than they did before the change. . . . If a company executes on the product, the service, the narrative, the user experience, and the many other things that go into a successful business, the easiest thing to get over is a logo. If your product sucks, your logo design means nothing. Execution is the end result.” (Vaynerchuck, 2016)
It is the product that comes first. No matter how I package it on social media, or in print, the product must come first.
Works Cited:
Gross, J. (2016) Six Lessons Kanye West Can Teach Us About Marketing. Forbes. Available from http://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2016/04/22/six-lessons-kanye-west-can-teach-us-about-marketing/#1415ec6275fb [Accessed 23 April2016].
Kanye West (2005) Bring Me Down [CD]. 3 mins. 19 secs. Late Registration. The Record Plant, Hollywood, CA, USA: Roc-a-Fella, Def Jam.
Trammell, M (2016) Kanye West Shrinks Madison Square Garden. The New Yorker. Available from http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/kanye-west-shrinks-madison-square-garden [Accessed 14 February 2016].
United by Design (2013) Kanye West uses unconventional marketing to promote “New Slaves”. 1% for the Planet. Available from http://onepercentfortheplanet.org/2013/07/kanye-west-uses-unconventional-marketing-to-promote-new-slaves/ [Accessed 17 January 2016].
Vaynerchuck, G. (2016) A Logo To Your Business? How Important Is A Logo To Your Business? Gary Vaynerchuck. Available from https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/how-important-is-a-logo/ [Accessed 23 May 2016].