Theatre Company Research

Purple - my analysis other peoples research

Theatre Company Research: Tangled Feet

          “Is a theatre ensemble and a charity”

How they devise?

Tangled feet have developed a trademark style of experimental performance. It begins from a process of physical improvisation and play. The company work collaboratively and believe that their performances aren’t finished until completed by the audience’s imagination. Their devising team consists of: ensemble of performers, designers and technical team. Their work is often researched and developed over long periods of time. Their performances take lots of different forms, driven by the theme, content and the relationship as they wanted to create with their audience and the space. The companies devising work recognises the audience is there and responds to them

It is important that we use physical improvisation and play when devising because then we won’t be standing around and just talking about different ideas and not making any decisions. Not only this if we improvise we may come up with performance possibilities that we may not have thought of and if we film our rehearsals then we can look back on videos and recall the movement that we created.

As a company we struggle to generate movement when responding to a stimuli and spend too much time talking. If we adopted Tangled Feet’s “experimental performance” technique it can work to our advantage as we can generate many improvised rough motifs to then later on polish and refine. This way we will have sufficient movement and monologue created quicker leaving time to then refine the work afterwards instead of trying to create a finished performance to each stimuli.

Also similarly by researching and developing our work over a long time will be useful as we will have secure knowledge on the context, stimuli, message we wish to portray etc. all of which will make it easier to have our intended impact on the audience.

What is the companies vision/aim? - “Our core beliefs underpin everything we do”

·      We believe that art has the power to transform lives 

·      We believe art succeeds most effectively when people are put before profit.

·      We believe art must be available and accessible to all

·      We believe that collaborative creativity can achieve things that a single artist working alone cannot.

It’s good to generate work as a team and question and expand on other people’s ideas because this will allow us to be more creative and generate more ideas. This means we can come up with more performance possibilities to help us enhance our performance.

·      We believe in shared decision making, in equal creative stake, in fair and equal pay.

·      We believe that sharing stories and narratives in public spaces builds our empathetic connection with each other and brings us closer together.

·      We want to entertain, to challenge and to delight; to create lasting memories and to inspire other artistic journeys.

The companies first point about “transforming lives” is a point our company can adopt. When deciding on our performance genre and style and practitioner influence we can decide how we will impact our audience. Furthermore, we can decide if we want to either entertain or educate our audience.

To add to the aesthetics of the performance including sounds, music and lighting can be considered in order to enhance our performance.

 Similarly we will choose to work as an ensemble, so that all company members are involved however aspects of the performance can have solo’s, duets etc. to give everyone an opportunity to showcase their skillset.

Something different to our company is location, we always perform in our school’s theatre / drama studio. However, like Tangled Feet we can choose a public location such as university, shopping centre etc. in order to build a connection with the audience and have a bigger impact by changing a seemingly regular routine of theirs.

Complicite Theatre Company

Complicite Theatre Company is an international touring theatre company, based in London. Founded in 1983 by Annabel Arden, Fiona Gordon, Marcello Magni and Simon McBurney, the company is now lead by Artistic Director McBurney OBE and Producer Judith Dimant MBE.

They have been described as “…the most influential and consistently interesting theatre company working in Britain.”

When we are devising our own work, being influential is a good aim to have because if the performance doesn’t have some influence on the audience then it won’t be a very effective performance which could lead to the audience getting bored which is something that we don’t want to aim towards when devising our work. We want it to be effective and influential.

Complicite began life as a collective and this spirit of collective enquiry, of collaborative curiosity, has driven the work throughout its history. The company is famous for making its work through extensive periods of research and development which brings together performers, designers, writers, artists, and specialists from diverse fields to create the works – a process now known simply as ‘devising’.

The main body of their work has been of devised theatre pieces and adaptations and revivals of classic texts which they have used to produce a range of theatre pieces.

In 2015 the company began a new annual programme: Complicite Associates. Each year, Complicite will work with an emerging or mid-career artist, providing production and artistic support and producing a new show that pushes both the artist’s own work and style, as well as stretching Complicite’s theatrical boundaries.

Learning and engagement are central to its work and its award-winning creative learning programme includes professional development, work in schools and colleges and participatory projects for a range of groups.

Within our performance it is important that we engage the audience with our work and it is also a good idea to try and involve them within the performance. This makes the performance more effective and not only this it will help us get our message across to the audience because there is a chance that they may be able to understand the message that we are trying to communicate more if they are involved in the piece rather than if they were just sitting there watching the performance from the seats

The Paper Birds.

They use real life events to show the audience a current issue or moral that they think is important at the time. Their performance ‘blind’ is a great example of this, the company have strong feminist beliefs that they like to include in all of their performances.

Using real life morals would be something that would be good for our group to use when devising if we decide that we want to focus our performance that is based around current issues. Even if our group doesn't go with this idea we can still use their ideas of showing a moral to our performance because it is really important that our performance has a meaning to it because it will make it thought provoking for the audience and it will make the piece as a whole more effective because there will be a purpose to the whole piece.

The company like to focus on women’s stories/ stories told from a women’s perspective. This could be something that our group could potentially consider as a majority of the group are females. However if we did this I think it should only be for a small section of the piece as we do have a male role in the group and we need to make sure that the performances caters for each cast member and their abilities. 

Red Ladder Theatre Company

Red Ladder Theatre Company began in 1968 as a group called The Agitprop Street Players, they have always carried a message of “power to the people,” aiming to give voice to dissent towards the status quo in (primarily) English society. They express feminist, anti-racist, equal opportunity values that allow for people of all genders, sexualities, ethnicities and abilities to have a voice in their performances.

They also aim to create artistic and exciting theatre for young people with little experience of the theatre.

This aim is something that we should use within our own work because it is important that when we are creating our work we make is easy for the audience to understand what is going on, but we need to be careful that we don’t make it too basic as the audience will get bored and the performance won’t be effective.

A key element of their performances are after show “Chat Backs” where the audience can discuss the concepts of the performance with the members of the company, we could implement these in our performance to assess whether our intended messages were communicated effectively to the audience.

I think that this would be good to use during a dress rehearsal or a rehearsal that takes place after the performance has been fully devised. This way we can get feedback from the audience about what went well and what we can improve on so when it comes to the final performance we can have these improvements made to give an even better performance.

Our performance could also address important youth issues, as we will likely be performing it to an audience of young secondary school students. Satirical elements could also be involved, such as using allegory to criticise current events such as the Panama Papers revelations.

Red Ladder Theatre company constantly adapt their performance style and the issues they address with the times, maintaining a finger on the pulse of current youth events. We could set our performance in the current day, to address modern issues, however modern issues can also be addressed through a performance set in the past that uses modern values to highlight injustices that have persisted for many years.

By using cross cutting to show two different time periods within the performance would be good if we were to focus on current issues, especially if the focus was for young adults because we can emphasise on the idea that these issues have been around for years and even if we can’t change them, there are things we can do to deal/cope with them. This would communicate a clear intention and purpose to the audience, however this would only work if we make the issues and the different time periods obvious because if we kept it too basic then the audience would get confused about what is going on and this would affect the overall flow of the performance.

KNEE-HIGH THEATRE

Purple - My analysis of Hannah's Research 

•   Located in Cornwall

•   Creates vigorous and popular theatre

•   One of Britain’s most exciting touring theatre companies

•   Have a spontaneous sense of risk and adventure produces extraordinary dramatic results

Taking risks is something the group should consider because it can make the overall performance more interesting and not only this it could create more performance possibilities.

 DEVISING

•  Take inspiration from their surroundings

•  ‘The Barn’ is where they get creative ideas

•  Work practically (generate movement)

This is a target for our group as we have a tendency to stand around and talk about the ideas rather than getting up and generating movement so we can take this devising technique and use it as an aim for the group when devising.

•  Some of their performances are taken from novels

It is a good idea to take a stimulus of any sort and use this within the devising process as it helps generate ideas and we can expand and gain more ideas from the stimulus which will help us create the performance.

•  Use art forms and media to create their theatre

AIMS

•   To entertain families through serious yet humorous theatre

•   To entertain them in their location whether that be village halls, marquees, harbour sides and even less convenient places

IDEAS FROM THIS

•   When devising, think of our surroundings and take inspiration from that

•   Add in aspects of humour even if the main objective is to create a serious piece

•   Create entertainment theatre

•   Could look at novels, books, newspapers etc. to get inspiration

We find inspiration for our work all around us, in our personal lives, in the news, politics and in relationships we have with our friends and family. We work with human nature as a starting point, real complex human emotion and situations.

This is good for us to use when devising our work. The more we take inspiration from around us, the more relatable it will be for the audience and this will help make the performance more effective and though provoking for the audience.

A Gecko show is visual, visceral, ambitious theatre crafted to inspire, move and entertain. The audience is right at the heart of the narrative.

This is something that we could consider within devising our own performance. By creating a performance that involves the audience and this could be done by audience interaction or it could be something as simple as basing the performance on something that the audience are familiar with or something they can relate to so they feel involved with the performance.

You cannot make the work that you want to make, you cannot perform at the level that you want to perform, if you don’t prepare yourself. I mean prepare yourself physically, emotionally and imaginatively - very specifically those three things. So you have to spend the time, and as soon as you’ve spent the time invested in that then you’ll be ready to make work.

This is something that we need to make sure we do. If we are not prepared then we are going to waste time and we won’t get the work done in the amount of time that we need to so by being prepared it ensures that we get all of the work completed in time.

Purple - my analysis of Charlottes Research

Forced Entertainment

·         Group of six artists based in Sheffield that perform to different audiences around the world.

·         Contemporary life portrayed in the form of conversations or negotiation.

·         Aim to challenge, question and excite and entertain the audience, whilst being interested in confusion and laughter.

This is a good aim for us to follow because we want to make sure our performance effective for the audience and we want to make it thought provoking so the audience feel involved within the performance

·         Forced Entertainment see creating their work almost like working in a laboratory, in which they discover unexpected and inspiring answers to the questions presented throughout life

·         They focus on sharing the input and the responsibilities when creating work

This is very important for us to follow while devising our own work to ensure we are using every members strengths to create an effective performance. By following this focus then we are no catering to certain individuals strengths and this will help create a more successful performance.

·         Introduce help from other collaborators, and also include the input of less established artists to help them to improve their skills

·         They avoid working with ready-made texts when devising a performance and they always start in a rehearsal room.

·         Some of the key things they do when beginning to devise is discuss ideas as a group, look for costume or musical inspiration, or improvise with dialogue to get the process starting.

Our group do this when we are looking at different stimuli and we use this because it helps us come up with more performance possibilities and not only this it gives us a starting point as we have ideas that we can work with and then from that we can expand the ideas and use them to create the rest of the performance.

·         After they have come up with an original idea, they experiment with it through debate, video evidence and then editing it.

·         Once they have made amendments, they usually perform it to an audience of some sort, which then encourages them to deal with questions presented by the rest of the audience.

This is something that our group could consider once the performance has been completed because not only would it help the cast ‘perform’ the movement and scenes but it enables us to get feedback on the performance so we can make improvements before the final performance.

·         As with all of their work, they work through improvisation,recording everything, transcribing “good” bits and re-improvising again.

·       In general they tend not to begin with an idea of what a piece is about. They like material to grow organically- for meaning to be discovered in the making process After researching their company, I decided that they used some factors that would be important in our own performance. Firstly, the aims that the company focus their work on are values that we could incorporate when devising our performance. Whilst aiming to excite and entertain the audience through their performance which we could portray through different Medias and practitioners to ensure that we vary our working style and entice all members of the audience. The important aims are to challenge and make the audience question what they see on stage. This would be a good aim for us to adopt as it would allow the audience to see something that they would then think about after leaving. This is similar to the practitioner Brecht as he encourages the audience to think about what they’ve seen, rather than create an emotional attachment to the work.

Also, I think their devising technique would be good for us to reflect on in order to explore all of the possibilities to our stimulus. Similar to Forced Entertainment, by using different elements in the Mise-en-scene in the actual rehearsal process, this would allow us to explore different elements we could use in our performance and therefore enable us to explore divergent thinking throughout the process.

After reflecting on our attempt at devising at the beginning of the process, one of the techniques Forced Entertainment use would be helpful for us to incorporate. They focused on improvisation and re-improvising until finding something that they are happy with, which would enable us as a group to develop ideas much quicker. By exploring practically straight away, it would mean that all our original ideas could be implemented into the performance if we wish, as they have been physically explored and everyone would be involved in the creative process.

I have also emailed their company to ask about extra details, however they have not yet got back to me.