Sean Micallef
Final Submission
25.05.16
In our very first meeting as a theatre company, we identified all of the roles that needed to be fulfilled, and split them among the group. I was donned with the task of being the producer, as well as acting in the performance. This is something very new to me, and not something I have really considered before, however I enjoy the challenge of the unknown. The first thing I had to do was to actually understand the role of a producer, as I wasn’t entirely sure. On doing some research I learnt that that was a large amount of ambiguity surrounding the actual definition of the producer. The clearest one I found was in an article on The Guardian by Laura Baggaley who quotes Stage One stating that the producer is “responsible for making arrangements for every aspect of the production in order to prepare it for presentation to the public on stage, subsequently managing it during the course of its production run and finally making all necessary closure arrangements” (Baggaley, 2008). I deduced from this that I would most likely be in control of the budget, and the general running of the company, ironing out any discrepancies and making sure everything was going as planned.
We also of course discussed any ideas that we had about what we could do. We discussed each of our interests and identified everyone’s strengths, as we were constantly advised to play to our strengths. We discovered that we all were interested in and had good experience in performing comedy of some kind or another and decided that this was the route we would take of some kind or another.
We made one of the first steps in our process, by identifying an idea that is based around the Brighton bombing in 1984, which was an assassination attempt on the life of the prime-minister at the time; Margaret Thatcher, however the attempt failed, although people were killed in the event. This fit our ethos perfectly, as we found comedy in the fact the assassination attempt failed, yet, for some people this is still a ‘touchy’ subject, thus testing what can be laughed at. The play will be focus on the character of Brian, played by Danny, a Yorkshire man who lost his job in the mines thanks to Thatcher, and thus decides to kill her. The comedy comes from the situations he finds himself in, the ridiculousness of these situations.
We decided on the name for the show: The Magpie & The Yorkshireman, which stemmed from the nickname that was given to Margaret Thatcher, the magpie, a single one symbolising sorrow. We wanted to show the conflict between Brian and Thatcher and thus chose that title as it almost sounded like a ‘versus’ that you might see at the cinema.
I created a Kickstarter page for us to try to raise some more funds for the project. To do this I used an image I created on Photoshop, as well as our mission statement, manifesto and the copy, to attempt to make it look as professional as possible, in order to attract possible investors for the show.
The image I created for our press release, that would identify the show.
(Full Frontal, 2016)
After a meeting with our director, Jess, we have changed my character vastly and moved away from the sexual ambiguous character that was originally created, to a more traditional and theatrical character of a stereotypical hotel owner, much like that of the legendary Basil Fawlty. He would be expecting hotel inspectors and mistakes the boys for these hotel inspectors, thus creating the mistaken identity storyline that is so often seen in farce. This certainly plays towards my strength as an actor, as I have a lot of experience performing in farces such as Alan Ayckbourne’s Bedroom Farce, Georges Feydeau’s Sauce for The Goose and Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors, as well as the farce that I co-wrote and produced for my A-Level Drama.
I wrote a scene for the play, which hopefully set the tone for the play, acting as the first scene after Brian’s monologue, between my character, whose name is now Harold, and his wife Phyllis. I have made sure to write it in a certain style that makes it obviously 80’s, using references such as Donny Osmond, and certain language habits like “Oh Lord”. This gave me a huge amount of freedom as an actor, to the extent I have no really experienced before. It gave me free will to take my character to wherever I wanted him to go, with the guidance of the writers and Jess the director. This meant that I could give him traits and mannerisms that I wanted instead of what had been written for me or instructed by a director. I was almost playing God, in creating my own character in my own image, which would ultimately be developed and moulded by Jess and the rest of the writing, but this kind of freedom is rarely seen in the industry, to my knowledge.
This was all inspired by my favourite series: Fawlty Towers, which was a genius creation of brilliant plots and fantastically stereotypical characters, and in particular the episode called The Hotel Inspectors, which John Cleese describes as “In this episode, Basil’s worried he might get a bad review. The fun comes from how greasy he is to anyone he thinks is a hotel inspector and how rude he is when he discovers he’s been wasting his energy on them.” (Cleese, 2015). However, I wanted to do this from a slightly different angle, presenting Harold as a nervous wreck, to the ridiculous extent that he turns Welsh when he speaks with the guests. This of course meant that I would need to perfect my Welsh accent, and make sure that I got used to slipping in and out of during rehearsals.
(http://www.culturedviews.com/the-customer-is-always-right-not-according-to-basil-fawlty/2008/08/04/view.htm)
I began the character and script work in the usual state of working out the units, objectives and the actions for each scene. This was fairly straightforward and the objectives were all fairly similar throughout the play; to make the ‘hotel inspectors’ feel welcome and to impress them for the most part. In my personal opinion finding your character’s objectives in each unit is the most important aspect of the scriptwork. It helps unearth the subtext, which is so vital to play, as well as some of the inner monologues that will need to come through on stage, so that performances are multi-dimensional and not ‘boring’ for use of a better word. This is then where the actioning of the text also becomes important, as you can discover new ways of saying certain lines, something that actually helped us in developing the script, and helped move my character from a sexually ambiguous hotel owner, to a nervous, bombastic wreck. This meant that we could keep some of this original script that had been written for ‘Dick’ the sexually ambiguous hotel owner, but change the objective in the unit, and more importantly the action. The actions would change from being; lust, seduce, entice and etc. to actions such as; entreat, relax and befriend. I also discovered some interesting slightly deeper truths about Harold after doing the questions from John Abbott, some of which I have inserted below:
John Abbott’s The Character Questionnaire
Your History.
-
How old are you?
I am 35.
- How does your age affect your feelings about yourself?
I am fairly young for a hotel owner, and am thus constantly worrying that we are not up to scratch. I also wish to get a hold of my nerves, something I thought would leave me when I became an adult.
- Who are your closest relatives?
I live and work with my wife, Phyllis. My parents are both still alive, however they are far more successful than I am, and we don’t speak often.
- How do they affect or influence you?
Phyllis dictates most of what I do, even though I run the hotel, she likes to think she’s in charge. Although she is much calmer than I am and is much more capable of dealing with the more difficult customers. As to my parents, I know that failure is not an option for me, which is why I often get so nervous and giddy.
-
10. How did you enjoy your childhood?
My parents were never around a huge amount, and didn’t have a fantastic relationship of their own, hence why me and Phyllis are somewhat distant. I never travelled or holidayed much, so Brighton is most of what I know and love.
11. What is the worst thing you have ever done?
I have been known to have accidents, during frightening times.
12. What is the best thing I have ever done?
Owned the hotel, which I am very proud of.
13. Have you travelled much?
No, very little outside of Brighton.
Your Present Circumstances.
14. Are you married, single divorced or separated?
Married.
15. How do you feel about your marital state?
It’s the same as all marriages, boring, routinely and little human interaction. I wish I’d listened to the saying “Don’t defecate where you eat. However, we need each other to run the hotel.
16. Do you live with someone or do you live alone?
Well I live with my wife, however, other guests obviously stay at the hotel, which is where we live, so technically I suppose new people move in and out every day!
17. Do you have any children?
Lord, no.
18. How do you feel about this?
Children are not my favourites.
19. Where do you live and what is it like?
I live in the hotel where I work, I have just said this… It’s fine, just fine.
20. How do you feel about where you live?
I’ve just bloody said! It’s fine, it’s hardly the Bahamas but it keeps well!
21. Who is your best friend?
I don’t really have one I guess.
22. What is your social life like?
Social life?! You must be balmy, I don’t have time for that. I mean I socialise with the guests though.
23. How do you feel about your social life?
Yes, it’s fine. I’d like to do more things on occasion, but I like routine.
24. What sort of people are you most comfortable with?
The upper class, they have a certain jenesequa, and are quiet and peaceful.
25. What sort of people annoy you?
My wife. And any guests that have complaints, troubles, or problems. Unless they’re hotel inspectors of course! Wait, you’re not a hotel inspector are you?! Oh Lord! Don’t put this in the review! Please! Oh, Lord.
This showed me that actually he was quite a lonely man, with few friends and people to talk to, other than his wife. He is stuck in this boring routine of working where he lives, with his wife who manipulates and controls him, yet he still needs her. He gets his joy from creating drama out of situations with customers, which is exactly what happens throughout the play.
(Full Frontal, 2016)
After getting some feedback from a rehearsal, I had been advised to show that I ‘know’ that hotel inspectors are coming much earlier, and to make his nervousness and anxiety much bigger and clearer through my body and facial expressions. This required more energy, so I had to begin the play exactly how we intended for it to continue; with a very high intensity and pace, yet with clear and distinct movements. We also decided to shorten one of the bar scenes between Harold and Jean, as some of the dialogue is superfluous and stunts the pace slightly. It does however mean that I have to try to get the same objectives across to the audience, with less dialogue and in a much shorter time frame. The main objective of this scene is to befriend Jean, and try to extract information from her about her husband Brian; who Harold is still convinced is a hotel inspector. I do this through looking out to the audience with wide eyes, rapidly moving them from left right with slightly raised eyebrows, to show that I have an ulterior motive.
(Full Frontal, 2016)
There were also some fairly new ideas that we blended into the final performance to add to the freshness of the show, in particular the opening scene for Harold, when he meets Brian for the first time, we gave it a slightly different angle that would show Harold’s wild nervousness perfectly. Instead of looking at Brian even slightly during the conversation, I would look out to the audience and focus on one particular spot that I could direct my dialogue to, as if it were the same rehearsed ‘welcome speech’ I gave to all of the guests, except this time the guest was much more important, so the fear was much greater. The looking out, made it much easier to connect with the audience, as they could find it easier to relate to the fear in Harold’s eyes and see the inner monologue of “Oh Lord! Oh Lord! Don’t screw up!”, which in turn made it much funnier.
(Full Frontal, 2016)
Bibliography
Baggaley, L. (2008) What’s the Producer’s Role? [online] The Guardian. Available from: http://www.theguardian.com/stage/theatreblog/2008/apr/04/whatstheproducersrole [Accessed 2 February 2008].
Cleese, J. (2015) John Cleese: My fab Fawlty Memories. The Mail on Sunday, 9th June.
Comstock, N.W. (2015) Mission and Vision Statements. Salem Press Encyclopaedia.
The Performance
20.05.16
Last night’s performance was a huge success and went better than any of us could’ve imagined. The audience gave us a fantastic response and were laughing from start to finish. It was this audience that we had been missing throughout rehearsals, as so much of what we did in terms of the comedy and energy of the show came from feeding off of the audience. We enlarged our characters and performances to a level that we had not come close to during rehearsals. The laughter was what excelled our performance, as we were constantly fighting for the biggest laughs throughout the show, trying to ‘one-up’ each other as performers which helped portray our characters emotions and objectives as well as their inner monologues in a much clearer state, as it was these reactions that would often get the best laughs.
There were also some fairly new ideas that we blended into the final performance to add to the freshness of the show, in particular the opening scene for Harold, when he meets Brian for the first time, we gave it a slightly different angle that would show Harold’s wild nervousness perfectly. Instead of looking at Brian even slightly during the conversation, I would look out to the audience and focus on one particular spot that I could direct my dialogue to, as if it were the same rehearsed ‘welcome speech’ I gave to all of the guests, except this time the guest was much more important, so the fear was much greater. The looking out, made it much easier to connect with the audience, as they could find it easier to relate to the fear in Harold’s eyes and see the inner monologue of “Oh Lord! Oh Lord! Don’t screw up!”, which in turn made it much funnier.
The relationships we all had with each others characters’ were also at their strongest, as nobody held anything back at all, which meant it was much easier to bounce off of each other and provoke each other for a reaction. This came from trying to predict each others responses and reactions and changing them ever so slightly, so that they were fresh and new, and they in turn would require a more vibrant and distinct reaction.
The feedback we received from the audience was overwhelming and we are all hoping that we can perform it again somewhere in the future!
Last Push
17.05.16
With 2 days left before our performance, we are now working on putting the final touches on the show. The past weekend has been focussed on assembling, painting and decorating all of the set and props. However, we are all much more excited for Thursday after Mark (our tutor) sat in on one of our runs, and gave us some great feedback and some excellent advice. He told us that the comedy and storyline was there, yet the performability and our character arcs could be improved slightly. He mentioned about making sure that we were always facing up and out to the audience, even when talking to an actor upstage of us, which is something we are now working hard on doing. This can be difficult as of course, as it is a natural response to turn to whomever you are talking to. In terms of our character arcs he told us of how we needed to make sure that were clearer and more precise, which meant punctuating our characters’ intentions and objectives as early as possible, and pushing them further and further as the play continues.
For me this meant showing the realisation that I ‘know’ that hotel inspectors are coming much earlier, and making this nervousness and anxiety much bigger and clearer through my body and facial expressions. It meant that this would require more energy, so I would have to begin the play exactly how we intended for it to continue, with a very high intensity and pace, yet with clear and distinct movements.We have also decided to shorten one of the bar scenes between Harold and Jean, as some of the dialogue is superfluous and stunts the pace slightly. It does however mean that I have to try to get the same objectives across to the audience, with less dialogue and in a much shorter time frame. The main objective of this scene is to befriend Jean, and try to extract information from her about her husband Brian; who Harold is still convinced is a hotel inspector. I do thus through looking out to the audience with wide eyes, rapidly moving them from left right with slightly raised eyebrows, to show that I have an ulterior motive.
A Week To Go
12.05.16
With a week to go, everything seems to be heading towards the right outcome, although at times it does seem to be a bit of a mad rush to organise things. As I am in control of the budget, I am trying to stay on top of what has and hasn’t been bought, however luckily I have Alys as a stage manager, who has helped me keep track of this, and we have worked together to constantly manipulate the budget to our changing needs.
In terms of our rehearsal process, we are only a week off of our performance, and are meticulously working hard to get everything to it’s slickest form, taking a firm grip on our characters. We are however finding things to become somewhat stale, as often this happens towards this stage in the rehearsal. This is where we need outside perspective, as things that we had considered comical and logical to begin with, were losing their humour and value. After asking friends and course-mates to sit in on a rehearsal and watch a run, we could deduce what was and wasn’t working. From this it became obvious that we all needed to commit to our characters and their stereotypes much more. I needed to over-exaggerate Harold’s bombastic and nervous nature, so that his intentions and objectives were clearer to the audience. This came from physicalizing the character much more, in terms of his body language and facial expressions, as I was focussing too much on the dialogue. I needed to take the nerves out of Harold’s move and show it through his expressions, as some of the diction was being lost, due to the jumpiness in my voice, especially when this was in a Welsh accent.
In the Thick of It
03.05.16
Now rehearsals are near enough every day, we are all starting to take a firm grip on our characters, and with blocking becoming firmer in each of our minds, we are starting to play with our characters more and more. We aren’t restricting ourselves to the text entirely, as we aren’t hugely precious over what we wrote, and are thus giving each other free will to explore taking everything to the next level. This includes the physical side of the play, as of course farces are highly physicalised and this is no exception. I am trying to constantly think of how to move my body, and how to show Harold’s nervousness and bombastic nature in as many different ways as possible. This is also done through facial expressions, as this is naturally the best and easiest way to portray emotion, especially when not speaking any lines, and often it is the reactions that give the audience the best clues as to what a character is thinking.
We have also been working on producing a poster for the show, and are very close to releasing this on our social media. I decided to speak to some of my friends who I knew were on relevant courses to help us out when needed. For example I asked my friend Tom to come in and take some head-shots and group photos, and I have asked a friend on Illustration to see if she could come up with something for our poster image. Working closely with the marketing team of Ellie and Danny we decided we wanted to have a colourful magpie, that had the iconic black door of Downing Street in it’s eye. She produced a fantastic image and I then turned back to my house-mate who helped create our logo to add the title and details in a similar effect that would entice audiences. This is what they have come up with, with our guidance:
Full Frontal Theatre’s debut show The Magpie & The Yorkshireman.
Final Script
28.04.16
We now have a fully completed final draft of the script, as well as just over 2 weeks of rehearsal time, to get everything in place, as well as all of the production in place. We now know how much the set will cost to create, and this is being taken out of the £200 the uni give us, so that’s one less thing to worry about now. My character is really starting to move towards the right direction now, as I am moving forward with my script work, finding the units, objectives and actions.
A brief look at some of my script work
These are the staple of an actor’s rehearsal process, and are vital to begin to develop a character. In my personal opinion finding your character’s objectives in each unit is the most importnat aspect of the scriptwork. It helps unearth the subtext, which is so vital to play, as well as some of the inneer monologues that will need to come through on stage, so that performances are multi-dimensional and not ‘boring’ for use of a better word. This is then where the actioning of the text also becomes important, as you can discover new ways of saying certain lines, something that actually helped us in developing the script, and helped move my character from a sexually ambiguous hotel owner, to a nervous, bombastic wreck. This meant that we could keep some of this original script that had been written for ‘Dick’ the sexually ambiguous hotel owner, but change the objective in the unit, and more importantly the action. The actions would change from being; lust, seduce, entice and etc. to actions such as; entreat, relax and befriend.
Changes
25.04.16
On Saturday, we held something of a crisis meeting after a rehearsal, as Jess and I were extremely worried about the disjointed nature of the script, that had come from too many people writing. There were a lot of things that weren’t making sense in the script, so Jess, Alys and I, along with Will discussed how we could move forward. It was decided that we would cut the part of Tina, Jones’ wife, as she did very little to aid the plot, and did not have a lot of depth to her character. This would now mean that Hayley, would play Phyllis, Harold’s wife and Jess would solely concentrate on directing, and the script would have to be modified as such, and we would have to pad out the role of Phyllis, and give her more depth, and a more interesting relationship with Harold.
I have also now started my independent character work, starting with some of the John Abbot questions:
John Abbott’s The Character Questionnaire
Your History.
- What is your full name?
Harold Reynolds
- Do you have a nickname?
No, although some hotel guests have been known to call me “Mr. Hotelman”
- If you have a nickname, how did you get it?
Through a lack of asking to find out my name and stupidity on their half.
- How old are you?
I am 35.
- How does your age affect your feelings about yourself?
I am fairly young for a hotel owner, and am thus constantly worrying that we are not up to scratch. I also wish to get a hold of my nerves, something I thought would leave me when I became an adult.
- Who are your closest relatives?
I live and work with my wife, Phyllis. My parents are both still alive, however they are far more successful than I am, and we don’t speak often.
- How do they affect or influence you?
Phyllis dictates most of what I do, even though I run the hotel, she likes to think she’s in charge. Although she is much calmer than I am and is much more capable of dealing with the more difficult customers. As to my parents, I know that failure is not an option for me, which is why I often get so nervous and giddy.
- What kind of education did you have?
A grammar school education.
- How did your education affect or influence you?
It has got me to where I am today, and for that I am grateful.
10. How did you enjoy your childhood?
My parents were never around a huge amount, and didn’t have a fantastic relationship of their own, hence why me and Phyllis are somewhat distant. I never travelled or holidayed much, so Brighton is most of what I know and love.
11. What is the worst thing you have ever done?
I have been known to have accidents, during frightening times.
12. What is the best thing I have ever done?
Owned the hotel, which I am very proud of.
13. Have you travelled much?
No, very little outside of Brighton.
Your Present Circumstances.
14. Are you married, single divorced or separated?
Married.
15. How do you feel about your marital state?
It’s the same as all marriages, boring, routinely and little human interaction. I wish I’d listened to the saying “Don’t defecate where you eat. However, we need each other to run the hotel.
16. Do you live with someone or do you live alone?
Well I live with my wife, however, other guests obviously stay at the hotel, which is where we live, so technically I suppose new people move in and out every day!
17. Do you have any children?
Lord, no.
18. How do you feel about this?
Children are not my favourites.
19. Where do you live and what is it like?
I live in the hotel where I work, I have just said this… It’s fine, just fine.
20. How do you feel about where you live?
I’ve just bloody said! It’s fine, it’s hardly the Bahamas but it keeps well!
21. Who is your best friend?
I don’t really have one I guess.
22. What is your social life like?
Social life?! You must be balmy, I don’t have time for that. I mean I socialise with the guests though.
23. How do you feel about your social life?
Yes, it’s fine. I’d like to do more things on occasion, but I like routine.
24. What sort of people are you most comfortable with?
The upper class, they have a certain jenesequa, and are quiet and peaceful.
25. What sort of people annoy you?
My wife. And any guests that have complaints, troubles, or problems. Unless they’re hotel inspectors of course! Wait, you’re not a hotel inspector are you?! Oh Lord! Don’t put this in the review! Please! Oh, Lord.
Focus
10.04.16
With dissertations all finished, we can dedicate near enough all of our time towards the show, which includes finalising the script, as there is a lot of work that needs to be done on it. I have written a scene for the play, which will hopefully set the tone for the play, acting as the first scene after Brian’s monologue, between my character, whose name is now Harold, and his wife Phyllis. I have made sure to write it in a certain style that makes it obviously 80’s, using references such as Donny Osmond, and certain language habits like “Oh Lord”.
This is all inspired by my favourite series: Fawlty Towers, which was a genius creation of brilliant plots and fantastically stereotypical characters, and in particular the episode called The Hotel Inspectors, which John Cleese describes as “In this episode, Basil’s worried he might get a bad review. The fun comes from how greasy he is to anyone he thinks is a hotel inspector and how rude he is when he discovers he’s been wasting his energy on them.” (Cleese, 2015). However, I wanted to do this from a slightly different angle, presenting Harold as a nervous wreck, to the ridiculous extent that he turns Welsh when he speaks with the guests. This of course meant that I would need to perfect my Welsh accent, and make sure that I got used to slipping in and out of during rehearsals.
The Kickstarter page is now fully up and running, and will finish on the 14th April, leaving us enough time to collect all of the funding in time for the show. The link to it can be found here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1419732640/full-frontals-new-show-the-magpie-and-the-yorkshir
Progress Check
22.03.16
As we are now breaking for Easter and everyone is hot on their dissertations, little progress will be made over the next 2 weeks, however I am in the process of creating a Kickstarter page for us to try to raise some more funds for the project. To do this I used an image I created on Photoshop,to send with the copy for our press release, as well as our mission statement, manifesto and the copy, to attempt to make it look as professional as possible, to attract possible investors for the show. After a meeting with our director, Jess, we have changed my character vastly and moved away from the sexual ambiguity to a more traditional and theatrical character of a stereotypical hotel owner, much like that of the legendary Basil Fawlty. He would be expecting hotel inspectors and mistakes the boys for these hotel inspectors, thus creating the mistaken identity storyline that is so often seen in farce, which seems to be the road we seem to be angling towards slightly. This certainly plays towards my strength as an actor, as I have a lot of experience performing in farces such as Alan Ayckbourne’s Bedroom Farce, Georges Feydeau’s Sauce for The Goose and Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors, as well as the farce that I co-wrote and produced for my A-Level Drama.
The image I created for our press release, that would identify the show.
Character Development
4.03.16
We have now decided on the girls’ characters, and that they will each play one of the boys’ wives; Hayley playing Tina, Jones’s wife, who is the actual assassin that Brian had intended to hire and uses her husband name as a cover, Sam playing Annie, Jack’s wife, who is extremely ditsy, young and rambles in fast speeches about almost nothing, and Ellie playing Jean, Brian’s wife. Everyone is chipping in to help write the piece, which is becoming tricky, as several different voices are coming through, so Will has been appointed as Dramaturge, to collate and edit the script. Character work has now begun on the characters that we have already decided on, and Jess is working with everyone to discover their background’s and story arc’s, however this is tricky as we still haven’t decided on any kind of ending yet. It seems that my character will be a sexually ambiguous hotel owner, who overtly flirts with the boys, however I am not sure how this will exactly work as it means he has very little depth and is rather 2D.
The Plot Thickens
23.02.16
We have now discussed the idea in more depth and have found some more characters; the ‘assassin’s’ will be a comedy duo of Jack Jones Sr. and Jack Jones Jr. played by Will and Lee, and we are toying with whether the girls (Sam, Hayley and Ellie) will play other assassins or the boys’ wives, but will most likely be the wives. It seems that I will probably playing the hotel owner alongside Jess, although our characters are very underdeveloped at the moment, so hopefully that will progress in the coming weeks.
I have also been working on producing a budget plan for the show, with a real budget, and an idea of one if we were a touring company, using percentages instead of exact figures, as they are fairly unknown at this stage.
We have also decided on a name for the show now: The Magpie & The Yorkshireman.
The First Step
14.02.16
We have now made the first step in our process, by identifying an idea and the boys have written a monologue that will probably act as a prologue. The idea is based around the Brighton bombing in 1984, which was an assassination attempt on the life of the prime-minister at the time; Margaret Thatcher, however the attempt failed, although people were killed in the event. This fit our ethos perfectly, as we found comedy in the fact the assassination attempt failed, yet, for some people this is still a ‘touchy’ subject, thus testing what can be laughed at. The play will be centred around the character of Brian, played by Danny, a Yorkshire man who lost his job in the mines thanks to Thatcher, and thus decides to kill her.
Full Frontal Theatre Company
06.02.16
We have now decided, after some debate, that the name of our theatre company will be Full Frontal Theatre Company. We discussed several ideas, and wanted to come up with a catchy, eye-grabbing name, that will portray the sort of productions we intend to perform. We started to throw some ideas around about what exactly we could do, and agreed that we all wanted to avoid physical theatre, and focus on something that was scripted and traditional, with a modern twist in some way. We talked about finding comedy in historical events or people, such as Napoleon or the Battle of Hastings, and how we could make these events or people funny. We also start to think about our mission statement and manifesto, and the importance of these, as they would ultimately be used to identify us as a theatre company. We learnt that the mission statement is “…a sentence or paragraph that declares the purpose of a business or an organization. It usually does not change significantly over time because it is designed to guide administrators and inform the public of the organization’s philosophy and reason for existing” (Comstock, 2015). This also means that we need to create a logo, which is extremely important, as it needs to look professional and aesthetically pleasing. Luckily, I have a housemate on the creative advertising course, so I asked him to see if he could draw something up for us if he had time. What he came up with, hit everything we were looking for and thus Full Frontal was born.
The Beginning
28.01.16
In our very first meeting as a theatre company, we identified all of the roles that needed to be fulfilled, and split them among the group. I was donned with the task of being the producer, as well as acting in the performance. This is something very new to me, and not something I have really considered before, however I enjoy the challenge of the unknown. The first thing I had to do was to actually understand the role of a producer, as I wasn’t entirely sure. On doing some research I learnt that that was a large amount of ambiguity surrounding the actual definition of the producer. The clearest one I found was in an article on The Guardian by Laura Baggaley who quotes Stage One stating that the producer is “responsible for making arrangements for every aspect of the production in order to prepare it for presentation to the public on stage, subsequently managing it during the course of its production run and finally making all necessary closure arrangements” (Baggaley, 2008). I deduced from this that I would most likely be in control of the budget, and the general running of the company, ironing out any discrepancies and making sure everything was going as planned.
We also of course discussed any ideas that we had about what we could do. We discussed each of our interests and identified everyone’s strengths, as we were constantly advised to play to our strengths. We discovered that we all had good experience in performing comedy of some kind or another and decided that this was the route we would take of some kind or another.