Jessica Crosby

‘Wasting your time here, ain’t any criminals in HERE’ (WAKEUP Theatre, 2013, p.5).Characterisation of Ronnie.

Jessica Helen Crosby

Within our production of 130,000 I played the character of Ronnie, a troubled adolescent from South-East London who is a key witness to the stabbing of a character called Kwame. Throughout the rehearsal process I enjoyed developing the character of Ronnie immensely. Initially her character felt alien to me as Ronnie is not the type of character I have played before, therefore I had to think about her back story and how she feels living in a complex environment of poverty and gang culture. She has an upbeat and exciting personality along with some unpredictable behaviour, she is vulnerable and naive, she follows the crowd and looks up to her best friend Shanice, and tries to impress her constantly. Ronnie is the type of girl who failed at school and is a slight disappointment to her family, making her needy and emotional. Therefore I gave her some characteristic that I felt suited her and this description. I spoke with a fairly strong South-East London accent with a very slight Jamaican feel, as this is where I feel her family originated. I gave her a harsh vocal quality when speaking certain words, for example, when saying words like, here, though, I lowered the register to give more emphasis and to gain a comedic element to the speech, and I pronounced ‘th’ as ‘d’. Furthermore I made her speech slightly rhythmic and elongated certain phrases, I gave her physicality’s which mirrored this rhythmic quality. I had chewing gum when rehearsing and during the performance as this helped me to sustain the character throughout the production and gave attitude to her persona.

The character of Ronnie stemmed from watching Fallout on channel four, this gave me a good base to how to play Ronnie, it also gave me an insight to the relationship between Ronnie and Shanice. The character of Ronnie also developed through intensive rehearsals in which we responded to each others characters and utilised the notes provided from the director, dramaturge and other actors.

I also performed two verbatim extracts, one from Doreen Lawrence, Stephen Lawrence’s mum, and the other from Conan Taffee a whiteness who appeared at the scene when Stephen collapsed. This was to be delivered to the audience not necessarily acted, as we are not becoming a character we are speaking the real words from real people, this is not to say that there is no emotion on delivering the verbatim, it remains more about the words than the character. I found Doreen’s verbatim very emotional when speaking her own words, I felt her pain as a mother who was grieving, therefore the emotion was inevitably attached to the words. This piece of verbatim was at the end of the play and one of the most integral parts to the performance as it encompasses our company manifesto and defines the entire piece of merging fiction with verbatim. Therefore, I had an important job in making the text authentic, but at the same time, producing a compelling performance to express the seriousness and realities of the play. This was the reason behind ending the play with a piece of verbatim, as our script writer wanted to leave the audience with the realties behind 130,000.

With Fallout being inspired by the cases of Damilola Taylor and Stephen Lawrence it brings about representations of real events, even more so with our insertions of verbatim,

‘Williams is intervening in a way that may allow new meanings and new understandings to emerge. The degree of success with which he can do this depends on how readily the parties involved can accept his representation as a sound basis for renewed consideration’ (Derbyshire 2007, p.418).

We as a company had to invest in the representations of the characters and the verbatim text and so do the audience. For the concept to work and for the performance to be innovating and inspiring, we all had to completely absorb our characters and understand the subtext. At first playing the character of Ronnie made me question, how am I going to play a young black Jamaican girl? After attending a workshop by Theatre maker Andy Smith entitled, ‘What does it take to make a theatre?’, he demonstrated through his methods that an audience can achieve believability in what is being presented in front of them. Just as an audience believe that Jud Law played Hamelt and they invested in him being Hamelt, the audience will invest in our characters because we are putting it in front of them. This is also supported through the story and the emotional connection the audience make with our characters, with Ronnie being funny and slightly stupid they liken to her and therefore it is believable, furthermore I believed my character one-hundred percent which conveys itself to the audience making it easier for them to invest their belief.  The audience build a connection to the fact that Ronnie has a huge predicament of whether to tell the police that her best friends boyfriend killed Kwame, furthermore the connection to Emile goes further, the audience feel sympathy when they see him living with the guilt but also feel bad for feeling this sympathy because he is guilty of murder, but this is why the characters works so well and is why the audience invested their belief and furthermore is why it becomes irrelevant that we are not black, the emotion, intensity and realness of the story supports the believability.

Derbyshire, Harry (2007) ‘’Roy Williams’’: Representing Multicultural Britain in Fallout’, Modern Drama. pp.414-434

Smith, A, (2013). What Does it Take to Make a Theatre? Theatre Company Guest Workshop, Lincoln, LSPA

Reflection on Marketing

Leanne McKettrick

Reflecting upon the marketing we implemented during this process we also thought about what else we could have done to effectively market 130,000.

Social Media Profiles for the characters
We could have possibly made more use of the social media available to us, and made profiles for the characters involved in the play, particularly the teenagers. Social media is a big part of life of teenagers today and we could have used this to our advantage. This would not just create an awareness of our show but it would give the audience an idea of what to expect from our performance and help them to possibly create emotional connections with the character prior to the performance.
By having the actors post in character it would also play them create a sense of who their character is and play them develop their character for the performance.

Like and Share
Again making more use of our Facebook page we could have ran a ‘Like and share’ event. A photo, possibly one of our promotional photos which if people like and share one person will be picked at random to win 2 free tickets to our performance. By doing this my photo is being shared to people who we may have not reached and therefore creates more of an awareness of our theatre company and of 130,000.

Tagging
In the months prior to the performance, we could have created stickers or small posters of the show’s title ‘130,000’ with maybe the tagline of the Facebook or twitter page. We believe that doing this could help to create an interest and a buzz about our performance with potential audiences and could possibly be an effective way to increase the number of people viewing our social media pages and thus becoming aware of our theatre company and our current production.

Fundraising
At the end of our performance where was a collection for the Stephen Lawrence Trust and Damilola Taylor Trust. We could have possibly done fundraisers for these charities prior to the performance, for example a quiz night or cake sale, etc. This would not only help us to raise money for causes which are very true to our piece but would also help to promote us as a theatre company and give the public an idea of what kind of work we aim to create and also give us a chance to promote our current show to people who show an interest at the fundraisers.

Education Outreach
Our production centres of 130,000 centres around teenagers and the issues young people currently face. In the months prior to our performance, we could have possibly set up a workshop to get into schools to children aged 16+ due to the strong themes of the play and worked with the children on the issues surrounding the play, helping them become aware of the dangers and the issue that surround a young person in the U.K today.

Flyers

The flyers used were simplistic but affective and did represent what we wanted, however on reflection I think printing them on card would have potentially made them look more professional whilst at the same time maintain the simplicity of our company. The flyers would have been the first element seen by potential audience members and would give them a prejudgement of what to expect from our theatre company, therefore, ideally we would have printed them professionally to give a better impression, however, as mention in a previous post it was due to economical reasons and time restraints. Nevertheless we did not give false impressions through promoting our performance with the misuse of marketing materials or advertising linguistic.  The flyers were sufficient in that they supplied the information needed to potential audiences and gave a true representation to our performance and to our theatre company as a whole.

Posters

Again the posters provided an insight to our performance without giving too much away. On reflection I think the picture on the programme looked more effective, therefore it should have been on the poster as well. The attitude which conveyed off the programme picture encapsulated the whole feel of the play. The feedback received from people was that they had not heard much about what we were doing, they knew the information we had provided through advertisement but apart from that we seemed to gain a reputation of being the ‘secret group’. I think this assisted the interest surrounding our play and the excitement people had to come and watch.

 

Arts Marketing for 130,000.

Jessica Helen Crosby

Arts marketing is an ever evolving sphere that is diversely changing all the time, therefore Theatre Company’s alike must do the same in regards to their promotional marketing. Social networking sites are now one of the main sources to promote on a wider scale, people can get the information they want instantly by the click of button, this is why we used Twitter and Facebook to advertise our company and show.  This way we can reach a wider demographic and create an event and page to which people could like and respond. Although on Facebook the people who will be invited to our performance are mainly friends, the process of people accepting the invite then posts on their wall, therefore their friends will see it and click on to the event or page and so on, therefore there is a domino effect which spreads rapidly and promotes the show without us having to force people to take a flyer.

‘Today the world is both faster and a smaller place […] Faster, because people are working harder and having less leisure time as industries strive to compete in the global market. Smaller, because technology and travel have brought the world closer with a resulting increase in choice of cultural and entertainment activities, including both popular and world culture’ (Kolb 2000, p.1).

With people checking their Facebook and Twitter pages on a daily basis more people are likely to see something on Facebook or Twitter than they are to read a flyer or poster. However some people are not as technically conversant as others therefore having flyers and poster is also essential to appeal to people who do not have Facebook to Twitter accounts.

My role within the marketing team along with Leanne was to design and create the flyers and posters. Designing these for 130,000 was difficult as there are many considerations that must be contemplated before designing them. As a theatre company we have a simplistic style therefore it seemed justifiable for the designs on the marketing material to reflect that.  ‘We see arts marketing as being about more than money […] Rather, our concern is to connect artists with their audiences by helping to develop an understanding of marketing which is sympathetic to artistic imperatives’ (Kerrigan and O’Reilly 2010, p.2). WAKE UP resides on the same morals as this. We are not a profit making company, we are more focused on the art and the purpose of what we are trying to achieve rather than making money. Therefore it seems imperative to reflect this through our marketing in order to represent our company as a whole.

Below is the first flyer that we designed, Leanne and I decided to keep it simple by having an abstract knife in the background, I used Paint.NET to create the image of the knife then added the text on top.

Knife

I really like the knife and the simplicity of it, it does not give to much away, however I was not sure how people would respond, I think people could potentially loose interest as it does not give enough information, therefore I was unsure to whether it would entice someone to watch our show.

After a few days break from making the flyer Leanne and I came back to it with fresh eyes and made a few changes. In order to make the flyer more informative and recognisable we decided to add WAKE UP’s theatre logo on the front along with our Twitter and Facebook information. Furthermore we added more information to the back of the flyer, we did this in order to provide more information about 130,000 and to support the other theatre company shows that were also taking place, this was to help promote the final degree performances and advertise the £15 deal for all four shows. Providing more information about our show and using our unique selling point of merging verbatim and fiction, we thought would help to capture potential audience members and promote our show, ‘participation in most cultural events does require at least some predisposition toward introspection and a desire to be exposed to new ideas’ (Kolb 2000, p.157). This is why it is important to have a unique selling point, from our research as a theatre company we could not find anyone who has merged verbatim and fiction together, therefore this new idea needed to be publicised to excite potential audience’s members.

back Knife 1 

With two of his murderers finally imprisoned 20 years on after the callous and fatal stabbing of Eltham born teenager Stephen Lawrence, his family’s fight for justice continues to forefront the complexities of knife crime in Britain. Merging verbatim accounts of the harrowing inquiry with fictional representations of ‘gang related culture’
We present to you: two worlds, two stories, one conclusion….

 (This section of texts appears on the front of the flyer, see print screen below)

Flyers

When discussing the flyers and posters it was decided that we would have the posters printed professionally and the flyers printed on paper. This was purely because of economical reasons of our budget; we thought it more beneficial to spend more money on the posters. Many flyers are thrown away, I know when I am given a flyer I normally put it in the bin, therefore we felt it would be a waste of money to give out professional flyers for them to be thrown away. The flyers came out well on paper, they looked simple but effective which coincides directly with our theatre company. We printed them doubled sided with two flyers on each page, each page cost fifty pence to print in colour and ten pence to print in greyscale, therefore due to the restraints of the budget we printed thirty on colour and twenty on paper giving us one hundred flyers altogether. We placed flyers in the Lpac, the University library, the tower bar, the engine shed, the waterside shopping centre and three coffee shops in town.

To design the posters I used Vista print, I selected the design of the newspaper as this related to the verbatim aspect, as Stephen Lawrence’s case is one that appeared profoundly in the newspapers recently and twenty years ago at the time of his murder. I used the picture of the group to represent the gang culture of Fallout and 130,000. I used Photoshop to add the blurry affect, blurring the picture added a dramatic but unidentified affect as if to remain inconspicuous to interest potential audience members. The unique selling point of verbatim and fiction was placed at the top as if it where the head line of the newspaper, making it eye catching and significant to the poster. Putting the words real in capitals was to emphasise the fact that we were using the real words from the inquiry of Stephen Lawrence, and to ensure that people realised we will be using real words from real people. We placed the posters in the same places as the flyers. In Zing café at the Lpac we placed one at the box office on the wall; this was in the hope that when people were queuing for tickets or queuing at the café they would read it whilst waiting. We also placed a poster in the business and law building, as our piece centres around crime, murder, institutionalised racism and suggestion of the police being corrupt, it could potentially attract people who already have a genuine interest in these issues.

 

130,000 flyer

Kerrigan, Finola and Daragh O’Reilly (2010) ‘Marketing the Arts’ in Daragh O’Reilly and Finola Kerrigan (ed.) Marketing the Arts A Fresh Approach. London: Routledge

Kolb, Onita M (2000) Marketing Cultural Organisations, New Strategies for Attracting Audiences to Classical Music, Dance, Museum, Theatre and Opera. Dublin: Oak tree press

 

 

 

 

 

From the Beginning……

Jessica Helen Crosby

Wake up Theatre Company started in a studio at the Lincoln School of Performing Arts within a third year module ‘Theatre Company’, in the first session we were asked to get into groups and discuss the following:

-What theatre do we like?

-What theatre have we seen that we liked or disliked?

– What are you passionate about?

-What specialities do you possess from doing a drama course that could contribute to a theatre company?

Consequently this sparked a conversation about our interests and passions. Immediately we all agreed that we love musicals, however, the ones we preferred where musicals that had a real story behind them. For example, Les Miserables is based on the French revolution and Billy Elliot the Musical is based on the miners’ strike of 1984. We considered doing a musical but decided against it due to the high reliance on spectacle and strong musical ability. We were unsure whether we could successfully produce this so moved on to other ideas. The discussion then lead onto a conversation about performances we had previously seen, in which the narratives or inspiration for the piece were based on real issues in today’s society. One performance that was mentioned was DV8 ‘Can We Talk About this’, a physical theatre piece concerning multiculturalism, freedom of speech and Islam. The production uses verbatim material as its primary source of script.  Lloyd Newson, founder and director of DV8 wanted to produce a piece that would raise awareness to the issues of having Sharia Councils that operate in Britain, these councils do not allow Muslim women equal rights to Muslim men. One result of this is Muslim women are unable to divorce their husband if subjected to domestic violence. Along with many other issues such as murder, forced marriages and racism, this performance left me as an audience member, questioning the world that I live in. Consequently we started to talk about the world we live in and issues such as, terrorism, the London riots, domestic violence, knife crime, the lack of trust in the government and corrupt elements of our justice system.

Through producing our companies manifesto and mission statement we decided that we are a theatre company who are passionate about telling real stories and talking about the problems that exist in society today, we will do this through the uses of verbatim and fictitious writing. We want to create a piece of theatre that will spark a similar reaction to the one that DV8 had stimulated, and hope to do this through creating a powerful and compassionate performance which provokes the audience to question the world around them.

We decided to focus on knife crime as our primary stimulus, as this is a current and growing problem that claims on average 130,000 lives a year. The decision then had to be made whether we should devise a piece or reproduce a play. After a group discussion and the readings of several plays concerned with the subject of knife crime, we decided that we would do both. We settled on using a published play, adding our own elements of verbatim. Initially we considered using Caryl Churchill’s play, Love and Information, because the content had real situations emphasised by fictional characters. However after our production and creative team had read the play, it was decided that Love and information was not specific enough for what we wanted to portray with regards to knife crime.  Therefore we are taking Roy Williams play, Fallout inspired by the case of Damilola Taylor and Stephen Lawrence, real stories about innocent victims who died from a knife attacked.   Along with verbatim interviews,  Fallout will be adapted and edited as our script, quoting directly from the official trial transcript of the Stephen Lawrence inquiry, we will merge fiction and reality.

Another aspect which was a point of discussion was to use dark comedy as a component to our piece, similar to Brecht’s A-effect or Verfremdung affect. The A-effect is based on the audience being alienated in order for them to engage critically, ‘to provoke critical engagement the audience must be moved beyond detached speculation’( Reinelt 1994, p.8). Using Brecht’s A-effect will allow us to have a more effective impact on the audience, ‘what is ‘natural’ must have the force of what is startling’ ( Brecht 1964, p.70). We will create the starling aspect of the natural by contrasting fictional humour against emotional verbatim; therefore by placing the incongruous with the sympathetic will potentially alienated the audience into critically analysing the issues of knife crime today.  We do not market ourselves as a political theatre company as we do not directly talk about politics, however, we are exploring and commenting on current issues and real life events and therefore are indirectly political. Our primary motivation is informing people to what is happening around them, not to give them a lesson on politics.

When deciding on a name for our company, we thought to call it ‘Bliss’. This came from the idea of the common saying ‘ignorance is bliss’, blissful ignorance is defined as ‘complete unawareness of something important or unpleasant’ (OED) However,  on reflection and with help from a focus group, we decided that Bliss was not the right name for our company. The name Bliss is more connected to piece we are currently focusing on rather than our Theatre Company as a whole.  We then decided on ‘WAKE UP’, as this was clear and concise to our purpose as company. We want our audiences to wake up the realities of the world around them.  This name allows us, as a company, to approach other current issues within society and use them as a basis for future performances.

 

Brecht, Bertold (1964) ‘Interview with Luth Otto’, in John Willett, Hill and Wang (ed) Brecht on Theatre: the Development of an Aesthetic, New York, pp. 70-71.

Oxford English Dictionary Online : onlinehttp://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/blissful (accessed 21st March 2013).

Reinelt, Janelle (1994) After Brecht British Epic Theatre, Michiga: University Press.