Performing verbatim material is difficult enough on stage, putting yourself into the character of a real person and repeating dialogue that came from someone spontaneously. In a way it is the ultimate in reality drama and a good way of achieving dialogue that is as naturalistic as possible. What was more challenging was performing verbatim knowing that it was only going to be the voice that was heard and not being able to act with your body as well. Recording verbatim with a microphone can feel artificial and you are neither surrounded by other characters or audience to work off. In addition, you are not clothed to suit your character, another helpful tool in getting into character which can hinder your performance. In order to rise to this challenge, I found it useful to gesture with my hands whilst speaking, physically acting even though I couldn’t be seen, hoping that it would add another dimension to the realistic sound of the speech. It was also helpful to close my eyes an imagine reliving the story that I was recounting so that I felt closer to the experience and was able to think about the emotions of the person I was acting as. In this way, I was able to change the dynamics throughout the verbatim extract to make it more realistic and engaging for the audience to listen to. I was not entirely happy with the final result and felt that it lacked some clear phrasing and dynamic variation, but I understand that it is one of the most difficult ways to present this type of material on the stage.
Rob Smith
Using the Stage Space
Unaccustomed as our company was to having the use of a professional theatre space, there were some challenges when it came to suiting our performance to the space available. As we are used to performing in smaller, more intimate studio spaces, it was important that we adapt our performance to a much larger space, without it appearing stretched or too sparse. We aimed to use the space as a visual spectrum of society, with the café set on one side of the stage and the court stand on the other. One side of the stage represented the law, its formalities and systems and the other side represented chaos and the randomness with which the crime was committed. We felt that it was important to use all of the space available so that the scenes could flick from one space to another, keeping the audience interested and never remaining in one place for too long. Another way we achieved this was with the use of lighting, designed to isolate the areas of performance and direct the audiences gaze. In this way, the large stage space became several smaller locations, sometimes constant and at other times changeable. This also enabled the scene changes to occur more quickly as the various sets were already set up. With such a minimal set, it was easier to transform spaces from one location to another, with the simple movement or arrangement of chairs and tables we were able to achieve several different places.
Using Facebook in marketing
As manager of the Facebook page, I had full control of the content that was available to the public on that page. I consulted the group with regards to the profile picture and the cover photo and we had already had some logo design ideas. I felt that it was important to settle on a logo for our company before making the page live so that there was no confusion about the branding of the company and that there was a consistent image behind our production. Once we had settled on the image, which was an alarm clock reflecting the Wake Up brand. I created the page, added a short bio about our company and a shortened manifesto to give the public a clear and concise understanding about the project. Once the page had gone live, I began to invite friends to ‘like’ the page enabling any content published to appear on their walls and giving them the permission to react and interact with that content. The company each liked the page and began inviting their friends as well so we were able to reach more people quickly. I began to upload relevant content to the page, including news stories involving knife crime, murders and other shocking stories involving crime and injustice. This content set the tone for the performance and whilst was not all directly about our production, did offer an insight into the sort of information Wake Up was interested in and taking influence from. The company was interested in getting to know the audience in order to best suit their performance and so I set up a vote post on the site which asked the audience whether they had been a victim of knife crime, also offering the options of ‘no’ and ‘I know someone that has’. This gave the company information about the relevance of the subject to our target audience, which were students of the university and adults. As it happened, none of the voters said that they had personally been involved in knife crime but many know someone who has which then made us confident that we could present our performance that would inform and stimulate concern for the topic without upsetting those that have been affected. With the case of Stephen Lawrence causing such a long lasting effect on the legal landscape of Britain, there are still stories emerging relating to the case and its effects thereafter throughout our rehearsal process, we were able to post about the case, and on-going developments to keep our audience up to date with the story that was so central to the influence of our performance.
The Facebook site also acted as part of our publicity and marketing program. We were able to advertise our performance, make our audience aware of where and when the performance was going to take place and offer links to the LPAC website where they could purchase tickets and read further information. By creating an event on Facebook, we were also able to get an idea of how many people were planning to attend, as we knew that ticket sales were likely to occur much later in the process. Having that information enabled us to consider how we wanted to interact with the audience based on the potential size of it. Uploading pictures to the site was another way in which the audience could get an insight into what we were doing, get a feel for the tone of the piece using costume, location and light. Pictures were much more interactive than text based posts because people could see the actors that they knew personally and this caused some discussion and excitement for the performance.
Characterisation and development of the character Joe
Joe is one of the most challenging characters to portray for several reasons. Firstly, his ethnicity is a challenge because it differs significantly to that of the actor. Joe is a middle aged, black police officer who has returned to serve the estate in which he was raised. It is not just Joe’s ethnicity which poses a challenge for the actor but also his age and his social position, including the professional and personal relationships he shares with other characters in the play. This character description is more than daunting to a young, white, middle class student from the midlands.
What I felt most important about playing Joe is to avoid stereotyping. It was essential for the tone of the play that the entire company remained on the right side of this line in order to avoid creating undesired comedy through the creation of caricatures. In order to avoid stereotyping, it was important to be subtle and maintain ambiguity regarding his ethnicity, as I felt it was one of the less important features of his character profile. It was important to prioritise elements of Joe’s character in order of relevance to the narrative. In this way, Joe was reinvented in order to serve as a functional character in the play acting often as the voice of the audience, teasing out information from the guilty characters about their criminal activity.
With the play having been based on Roy Williams’ play Fallout, and a subsequent television adaptation, I took influence and reference from them both with regards to playing my character, seeking to find inspiration in mannerisms and physical stance, as well as the subtle ways in which the actor uses his voice, both dynamically and in tone. In this way I was able to take the traits that suited my portrayal of Joe and leave the more inappropriately authentic traits out.
Joe’s characterisation changed a couple of times throughout the process. This was largely due to the professional relationship he had with his colleague and superior, Emma. What is most interesting about these characters is their different approaches to the case, Emma taking a very systematic approach, noting down every detail she can find to find some sense in the something that is so nonsensical. Joe on the other hand prefers to take a practical approach; he is opportunistic and takes a great deal of initiative in his work. He is not always as respectful as he should be towards his superiors, largely I believe due to his frustration towards the miscommunications occurring between the authorities and those they serve. This relationship was interesting to develop as I wanted to find the line between being unconventional and being insubordinate. Initially, we tried having Joe being disrespectful to his superior officer by pushing in front of her through a doorway or giving her dirty looks, rolling his eyes at her etc in an attempt to show his contempt for her. Whilst this achieved a strong contrast between the two characters, we decided ultimately that it was too strong a contrast to be considered realistic and that sort of behaviour would have got him into trouble. Once we reined those behaviours in to an acceptable and realistic level, the complexities of the relationship were able to reveal themselves. The relationship became one of mutual respect, despite the obvious differences in personality and professional style. It was important for these characters to respect one another as the have a shared goal and need to work together and this comes through in Joe’s timidity and reluctance to take over from Emma in the presentation scene.
Joe had been drafted in to work on the case because of his familiarity with the area and the gang culture, having grown up on the estate himself. This position of importance affected the way that I portrayed him. For me, Joe would have a complacency about him having been called up for his skills and unique expertise and it is for this reason that he was able to bend the rules somewhat and get away with more than he would under any other circumstances. Although I wanted to achieve this air of complacency with his role, what was more important was his personal attachment to the case. Having been born and raised on the estate, I saw him as an older version of Kwame, an outstanding individual who had managed to break out from the vicious circle of crime and poverty and for this reason, felt that he had returned to make a difference. It was this personal relationship to the place and the people that fuelled his desperation, frustration and anger towards the failing system.