When Fallout had been edited and merged with verbatim from the Stephan Lawrence transcripts, it was then my job to choose the style of performance.  The play Fallout is, ultimately, based on predominantly black teenagers from east London. The actors, however, are not black or from east London, nor did I want them to pretend that they were. The style and aesthetics of the piece had to be carefully considered and planned in a way that would allow middle class white students to put on such a challenging play. The performance had to be more about the message that the actors were putting across than an elaborate set that would take over from the message of the play.

I decided to stylise the piece into makeshift theatre, portraying the idea that the play and performance could be picked up and moved or performed to any audience. I hoped that this would reflect the kind of theatre we wanted to create which was more about the words said than the staging; although the set would look minimalistic it would have to be very well thought out.

Upper stage right would be a large black box which would hold all props and costumes needed throughout the performance, this way the actors would be able to multirole and the characters would become symbolic. The audience would this way be able to see that the actors were just actors as they would be able to see these costume changes from the box. The box would act as a ‘back stage’ area although it would be clearly visible to the audience. This would mean that all actors would stay on stage throughout the play further proving to the audience that the actors were just characters. This would contrast the norms of theatre as when putting on a play you want the audience to suspend their beliefs and fully immerse themselves into the play. This style of theatre would differ from these characteristics as we would not want the audience to totally immerse themselves in the play (assisted by the box on stage). This enabled us to bring the audience back down to reality at anytime; this would be achieved by the interjected verbatim.

The stage would be split into specific areas; stage left would be the cafe area. This would be home too much of the scripted action such as the gang scenes. Down stage right would be a court stand where much of the verbatim would be read. The aesthetics of the two areas being so far apart represents the space between the two worlds (verbatim and script). This also meant that areas could be easily lit which made them physically seem further apart. As these areas were the only two areas of set, I decided that spaces could be transformed through lighting and, for example, a slight movement of a chair. The cafe area which will be lit and dressed to be quite a vibrant place with lots of atmosphere will suddenly be transformed to an interrogation room by lighting one table. I felt that this would add to the makeshift style of the piece, the minimalistic set also allowed us to transform such spaces.

To fit in with the style of the performance I decided that all of the actors will wear a ‘base costume’ which would be black, this would show a neutral character which would be able to multi role. Instead of having elaborate costumes I thought it would be much more effective to have pieces of costume which simply represent the character that they going to portray, for example a jacket to show a teenager and a scarf to show the actors as Doreen delivering verbatim.

In regards to delivering verbatim I wanted the actors to realise that they were not going to embody the person whom the verbatim came from, but instead act as a vehicle to give the words to the audience. Much of the verbatim is very emotional and if the actors were going to display emotion from the text it had to be genuine. The verbatim in the play needs to be about the words, bringing the audience down to reality, realising that what they are watching and hearing is based on true events.