Lee Meachen
My final blog post submission – 25th May 2016
The establishment of Full Frontal Theatre Company
Full Frontal Theatre Company (Being funny of course) Photo Credit: Full Frontal Theatre Company, (2016).
In our first session we established and decided all the members of our theatre company and as soon as we knew who our colleagues were, we decided to begin discussing the roles that the theatre company would entail. Every person had a clear idea of what primary role they would like to take on throughout our process although a longer discussion was needed for everyone to settle on which secondary role people would take. I decided my primary role would be to perform and after our discussion it was decided I would also be giving a helping hand to our stage manager Alys, as her assistant and this would be my secondary role of the theatre company.
Once everyone knew what roles they would be taking on, we had to come up with a mission statement and manifesto that clearly demonstrates what we want to achieve as a theatre company. We decided that our mission as a theatre company would to look at historical events and revive them and carefully extract comedic elements that would open up new ways in which audiences would look upon them for the short time they are in the theatre and use our performances as a sort of escapism from what the historical events really are. The name ‘Full Frontal’ for our theatre company came from part of our mission statement as we wanted to make sure our company name, mission statement and manifesto were all linked together. “We want to peel away the skin of seriousness to reveal the core of comedy theatre”, we thought about this particular section of the mission and realised how peeling away the layer of skin was in a way ripping the clothes off what people see as a serious topic to reveal the comic underlay, leaving the seriousness in a full frontal state and creating an air of vulnerability in order for it to be laughed at. Alas, came the name Full Frontal Theatre Company.
Script ideas
Once everybody’s roles were settled we moved on to the next step in our process which was to try and decide the play we would rehearse and perform over the coming months. Initially, we were all torn between using an existing script and staging it ourselves or formulating our own ideas and crafting our own script from them. The first idea that was bought forward as a potential performance was a Shakespeare play in which we could rework and polish with our own original concepts and plans. We thought Shakespeare’s theatre might be a good place to start as we would not have to pay for rights and we were also fully aware that reviving and reworking Shakespeare is an effective way to draw in an audience. During this session together we decided that we should all figure out our preferences when it came to performing. As the discussion went on, several different ideas were being thrown around and more than half of them were different genres of comedic theatre, ranging from black/dark comedy to a traditional farce idea. Every person in our theatre company seemed to be happy with the idea of creating a comedic performance, yet we were still unsure about the genre we wanted to use to take our performance that one step further.
Looking over the script. Photo Credit: Full Frontal Theatre Company, (2016).
Although it seemed the majority of the theatre company were leaning towards staging an existing piece of work, Danny, Will and myself were given the chance to come up with our own ideas and write a scene or two before making a final decision. With this opportunity and the knowledge that our showcase was going to be a comedy, the three of us met up a few times during the week to discuss ideas and were hopeful to produce something worthwhile to the rest of the group. The first session was purely brainstorming ideas and writing down several different possibilities of what could be our final performance.
The original idea that we decided we could progress with and take further was a black comedy situated in one room, the one room being a war bunker, and to try and bring a light heartedness approach to aspects of war that would not normally be joked about. In our second session of meeting and writing, a mutual friend of ours told us about the IRA’s failed assassination attempt on Margaret Thatcher in Brighton that happened in 1984. From this, we researched what exactly had happened in Brighton aside from the seriousness of the event we managed to find a comedic element to the story and then rolled with it for the rest of the session until we had vague outline of what our final performance could be about. The outline of the story consisted of a character from Sheffield wanting to assassinate Margaret Thatcher for shutting down the mines, putting him out of a job and starting the long journey that was his crumbling life.
Using the story outline we had created we began to venture deeper in to the story and we attempted to create characters to help move the process along. The first character we developed was Brian Marsden played by Danny Smith, through this character we carefully crafted our first written section of the script which was a monologue that we decided would open the play. From here, we had the rest of the theatre company to read what we had written and they thought it was a very strong opening for a solid idea that we all believed we could develop effectively. We all had a discussion about other potential characters and how they could fit in to the story outline we formed. The outcome of this discussion was everyone that was definitely performing in the play knew what character they were playing and we were encouraged by Jess, our director, to drive these characters forward.
Character work
“It’s time for the actor to get creative. Try things out. Make things up. And be inventive.” (Abbott, 2012) Which is exactly what I did throughout the long journey of creating Jack Jones a solid, believable character. The basis of Jack is that he is the nephew and work colleague of Jones and also got married very recently to his wife Annie. The purpose of Jack in the plot is that he, along with his uncle, have been wrongly hired by Brian as he thinks they are trained assassins and he believes Jack and Jones are going to help him in his efforts of killing the prime minister when in reality, Jack and Jones believe they have been hired for a plastering job. During the same session Jess asked us to write down some characteristics and given circumstances about our characters that we believed our characters would have from what we currently knew about them. I thought Jack would be a rather clever character yet is often stupid in most situations, along with this I wrote down as part of my early character bio that Jack does not think things through properly, and also does not like saying no to people which gets him in several other bad situations with Jones. Will and I thought our characters of Jack and Jones would closely relate to the characters and relationship of Derek and Rodney Trotter from Only Fools and Horses and we used this notion to help further our characters development.
Shortly after our characters were decided Jess booked to have character work sessions with us, she booked me and Samantha to have the same session as she was playing my wife and our character work would drive each other’s forward as well. The first method we used to develop our characters further was to use John Abbot’s acting book and go through the character development questions he listed and answer any and all of the relevant questions towards our characters. Nearly all eighty-five questions could have been answered, there was only a select few that we struggled with as we made our way through it. The questions that we had to answer covered pretty much all aspects of our characters’ lives ranging from simple questions such as; what is your character’s name? What is their profession? And as the questions go on the more and more you have to think about the answers; what sort of childhood did your character have? Is your character happy with their life now? Every question that could be answered, was answered and with every passing question and answer, I gained more and more knowledge of my character’s life and characteristics. We also attempted an improv situation between my character and my wife Annie. We decided to go back in time an improvise how Jack and Annie first met using a few different scenarios. this was so we could decide and establish how the relationship between the two characters has been since the very beginning which helped strengthen our presence on stage as a married couple.
Couples Improvisation with given scenarios. Photo Credit: (K, Beresford, 2016)
All of this knowledge I had expanded upon was the groundwork and foundation of Jack which, in many ways helped me really get into his mind set. I found it extremely helpful that Jess had us get a solid start on the character work before we had even started our first rehearsal. As soon as the script was ready to start rehearsing scenes I was very confident about how I was going to present myself physically through different gestures and facial expressions and also how I would be presenting myself vocally using the correct speed, accent and cadence. This gave everyone a huge head start as from the foundations we had all created, the rehearsal process could only drive it forward to be better.
With a finished script and after several rehearsals, we started one session with our usual warm up game of zip zap boing although instead of using the usual words we changed it to use either over exaggerated clapping motions or using specific lines from our play to keep us on our toes and help us stay focused as we all started getting a bit too good for the usual style of the game. As our entire performance is set inside a hotel in Brighton we used an improve session to aid in furthering our character’s development. The session consisted of splitting off into three groups, my group being Jack, my uncle Jones and my wife Annie. The other two groups were pairs, one consisting of Brian and his wife Jean and the other was the two hotel owners, Harold and Phyllis. Whilst we were grouped, we were given the task to improvise a small scene about each group’s journey to the hotel and during this we had to ensure we made every characters relationship extremely clear so any audience member could watch it and leave knowing precisely what each relationship was like. Once again this greatly helped in understanding our characters deeper and so we knew exactly what level of energy and emotion we would need to enter the stage with during our first scene.
The focus is strong! A clapping version of Zip Zap Boing. Photo Credit: Full Frontal Theatre Company, (2016).
Analysis of The Magpie and the Yorkshireman
The Magpie and the Yorkshireman! We formulated a plan. We wrote it. We performed it to the best of our abilities and I would not change any of it for the world. We all exceeded every expectation we had for ourselves and this is definitely the most proud I have ever been after a performance. Although I am extremely proud there are still a few aspects I think I would try and improve on if we were to go on and perform again. In my first scene I slightly stumbled on one of my lines which ended up putting me off and lead to me forgetting my next couple, although I composed myself rather quickly and moved on as if nothing had happened I was very self-conscious of what had happened and ended up giving myself a bit of a pep talk after the scene had ended to get myself raring to act my absolute best in the scenes that were yet to come. Alongside this, I thought there was room for improvement in the amount of freedom we had with the script. Even though we all wrote the script ourselves, during the rehearsal progress we all felt like we had a lot more freedom to ad lib some lines which we all found hilarious, yet not many found their way in to the permanent script. I would have enjoyed a lot more of these ad libs to make their way in to the script or even to be given the opportunity to try things during the marked performance and I am sure other members of the company would have enjoyed this too. Aside from this, it was by far the best performance I have ever been a part of and could not be happier with how our creation of The Magpie and the Yorkshireman came from nothing, to a very funny something.
Our final bow..our final farewell..Photo credit: (P, Crow, 2016)
Works Cited
Abbott, J. (2012) The Acting Book. London: Nick Hern Books Limited.
Photo Credit:
Crow, P. (2016)
Beresford, K. (2016)
Full Frontal Theatre Company, (2016).
The show day. Our final Day – 20th May 2016
On Thursday the 19th of May, me and my colleagues of Full Frontal Theatre Company finally performed The Magpie and the Yorkshireman at the Lincoln Performing Arts Centre! We could not have hoped for it to go any better than it did and we have been absolutely flabbergasted by the amount of positive responses we have all received from people who managed to attend and watch the project we have been working on since January. On the day, along with the nerves, came excitement to be able to finally showcase a play that we had all given the utmost of our efforts and ideas to craft what we believed to be the most well written, funniest piece of theatre we hoped to achieve.
Acting. Photo Credit: (P, Crow, 2016)
Photo Credit: Crow, P. (2016)
Not long until the performance now! Our characters are coming along nicely! – 7th May 2016
So with the performance on the horizon, Jess decided in one of rehearsals to refresh our minds with some character work. We split into small groups, one three and two pairs. Me, Will and Sam were in the same group and were given the task of improvising a short scene about how we arrived to the hotel in Brighton. We sat next to each other as if we were in the van and needed to ensure we remembered all of our previous character work so we could get the relationships, energy and physicality exactly right. We managed to do it pretty well as we all contributed to the scene and even rehearsed it a few times to make sure the energy levels and relationships our characters had on the journey to the hotel stuck in our minds. Jess wanted us to ensure we remembered the states of energy we were in so we could enter the stage in our first scene exactly right.
Character Improvisation. Photo Credit: (K, Beresford, 2016)
Photo Credit: Beresford, K. (2016).
We have a story! We have a play! We have lift off! – 8th April 2016
We have now finalised all of our contributed ideas into script form and I can reveal the production we will be putting on is called…The Magpie and the Yorkshireman! It is indeed based on the assassination attempt on Margaret Thatcher in a Brighton hotel that I mentioned before. The play is a comedy, we have decided not to label it as a farce as there are many aspects of the play that are not farcical, although there are many that are. I won’t babble on about the whole story and about every single character involved but essentially, it is about a man from Sheffield named Brian who wrongly hires two plasterers, thinking they are assassins to help him kill the prime minister. Along the way, there are peoples wives and two hotel owners who continuously get in the way of Brian’s goal. You’ll have to come watch to find out everything else!
Our poster for The Magpie and the Yorkshireman. Photo Credit: Full Frontal Theatre Company, (2016).
Photo Credit: Full Frontal Theatre Company. (2016).
We met up with no ideas and came out with slightly more than none! – 27th February 2016
The most recent movement of our theatre company is the development of the script. After a long discussion about whether to choose an existing script and stage it ourselves or attempt to write our own, Danny, Will and I were given the chance to form our own ideas and create a small part of a script that will be critiqued by the rest of the group once we are done with it. We have already met up once and spoke about doing some sort of one room play closely linked to the style of Samuel Beckett with the idea that it could be set in a bunker during the war and have dark humour peppered throughout.
We met up again and spoke to a mutual friend of ours who told us about the Brighton hotel bombings in 1984 and how the IRA tried to assassinate Margaret Thatcher yet they failed miserably. We managed to find humour in this story and have decided to take this further and develop it into something we can show the rest of the group. Hopefully it goes well!
Who is in our theatre company and what are we all doing?! – 8th February 2016
We recently ended our first couple of weeks of meeting and sorting out how to take this module further. The first session we had consisted of establishing and deciding all the members of our theatre company, and as soon as we finalised who we would be working with over the coming months, we cracked on with talking about the roles that the theatre company would entail and who would be doing what. Every person had a clear idea of what primary role they would like to take on throughout our process although a longer discussion was needed for everyone to settle on which secondary role people would take. I decided before the module started that I definitely want to have primarily an acting role within the company and told everyone I was open to any secondary roles. After a short discussion about secondary roles it was decided that I would be helping Alys, our stage manager for the company as her assistant.