Depicting real stories in an alternative light, refracting your view

“New Show at LPAC?”

Thomas Hitchen / May 18, 2015May 25, 2015 / Tom H

Managing the marketing of our theatre company has been a challenging yet rewarding experience. It has highlighted just how difficult it is for new, emerging work and companies to connect with their audience. The way I approached this was to not succumb to the worry of having every seat sold out but, instead, go into the city – our community – and have fun with residents and tourists.

Recently, I fashioned an over-sized polaroid frame which Yasmin and I took into the city to use as a discussion point between ourselves and our potential audience members. The polaroid worked. Not only did this frame act as a discussion point, it was completely in-keeping with our brand, directly linked to the show and it was used for these people to have their photo taken in. This kind of ‘customer’/audience based approach allowed us to quickly engage with our community, as well as share any information or answer any questions that were not available on any of our other external materials. In addition, this acted as a way to build and form relationships with businesses and organisations across the city; as an arts organisation ourselves these relationships are fundamental to the success of a company. Quoting her own book, Ruth Rentschler et al tell us, “Relationship marketing in the arts is defined as having ‘the dual focus of catching and keeping customers and developing long-term relationships between organisations'” (2001, 124). If our company were to continue, it is evident that we have already started to build a client base; that is, groups of people that will recognise our company and what we represent.

Please see photos below.

We would like to thank all the businesses and people we spoke to: House of Cards, Little Red Gallery, Tourist Information Centre, Debutante, Critters Pet Store, Forefront Theatre Company, Topshop, Topman, H&M, Odeon, Student’s Union, Zing Cafe Bar, Lincoln Performing Arts Centre Staff.

Works Cited

Rentschler, R., Radbourne, J., Carr, R. and Rickard, J. (2001) Relationship Marketing, Audience Retention and Performing Arts Organisation Viability. International Journal of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Marketing, 7 (2) 118-130.

Technical Rehearsal

Morgan Wills / May 15, 2015May 25, 2015 / Morgan W

When I agreed to be lighting designer for when you see it, I was aware that I was going to be putting myself under a huge amount of pressure and taking on a big challenge. I had never experienced anything to do with lighting previously in my 3 years of university and the reason I wanted to be lighting designer is because I really regret not having a better understanding of the way theatre lighting and sound works. ‘It is the lighting designer’s job to interpret the concept through the medium of light’ (Morgan, 2003, 10).

I wanted to be as prepared as possible for our technical rehearsal because we only have 4 hours and Tec rehearsals can rapidly become incredibly stressful. I had created a draft of the lighting rig to help visualise and to show the technicians my vision.

Our lighting wasn’t too confusing as we wanted to keep it relatively simple as there were so many sound and projections and other technical elements happening throughout the performance.

When I arrived I spoke about the few special lighting requirements which included a diagonal panel of light and front lights that created a blinding flash as well as a backlight. Alex: LPAC technician, Anthony: Stage Manager and I then went programmed the lights. This ran very smoothly as I had created the Focus Chart with the spots and then the washes that were needed. We added some different colours to show contrast as they created a great affect on the bodies when on stage.

Morgan, N 2003. Stage Lighting for Theatre Designers. Entertainment Technology Press: Cambridge.

Behind the scenes

Whitfield / May 11, 2015May 25, 2015 / Sophie W, Uncategorized

My role as the Production Manager of Refract included many responsibilities, such as the scheduling of meetings and rehearsals, overseeing the all departments of the Company and monitoring the budget of the production. As Seabright suggest my role therefore “defin[ed] what is ‘on time’ and ‘in budget’ for the show” (Seabright, 2010, 5). Communication with departments such as props and costumes was therefore fundamental in maintaining a realistic outlook on the budget. I also kept a Budget Balance Sheet to closely monitor the exact amount of money left in the budget.

Due to the large amount of props and costume used in When you see it communication with the full company to make sure the budget was used in the most effective way was essential, many of the props and costumes we used were sourced from inside the Company. The second largest source of props and costume was borrowed from the Lincoln Performing Arts Centre, the Venue in which we performed, under the proviso that they were returned on show night under the supervision of our Props Manager and Costume Designer. Lastly, we were lucky enough to have established a relationship with Chapterhouse Theatre Company, an international open-air touring company, who were kind enough to lend us a couple of items that would have been very costly to us.

A particular aspect of my role that I did find challenging was researching the UK copyright legislation and finding who owned the copyright for the images used during our production. Most of the specific images we used had an unknown photographer and no official copyright mark so this meant countless image searches were necessary as not to infringe on anyone’s artistic rights. After detailed research the majority of images we used were believed to be in the ‘public domain’ and therefore free to use without infringing any copyright. The only other image used fell out of copyright due to the artist’s, George Seurat, date of death falling over 70 years ago. Although most these images have an unknown photographer we felt it was important not to claim any rights over them and included this disclaimer in our Show Information and Programme:

“We do not intend to infringe any intellectual, artistic rights or copyrights with the use of projected images in this production. All images used are believed to be in the public domain.”

Works Cited

Seabright, J. (2010) So you want to be a Theatre Producer? Nick Hern Books Limited: London.

Bibliography

Intellectual Property Office. (2014) Copyright Notice: digital images, photographs and the internet. [online] Available from: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/305165/c-notice-201401.pdf [Accessed 15 April 2015].

The UK Copyright Service. (2015) Fact sheet P-01. [online] Available from: https://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/copyright/p01_uk_copyright_law. [Accessed 15 April 2015].

Confessions of a Sound Designer: 5 months as Refract

Samantha Milne / May 10, 2015May 25, 2015 / Sam M

“The designer’s skill lies in being able to understand what is required from a production and then using both technical knowledge and artistic interpretation to create a sound world that fits the show” (Leonard, 2001, 177)

I have thoroughly enjoyed my secondary role as Sound Designer in Refract for the past five months; however this experience became more intense as we got nearer to our performance date. Despite working with Laura previously, the devising process of When You See It made me realise that sound was a significant factor in the creation of devised material, directed and envisioned by Laura. For every scene created for When You See It, a piece of music would be attached to it and from there it became evident that Laura used music as a tool to structure the creative process.

As our fragmented process started becoming one solid piece, the intensity for me as Sound Designer rocketed. Many sound choices had to be changed or altered, however a very clear musical style was my savior!

The characters of Billy and Dolly were not created in a specific time or place to adhere to our ‘universal’ concept, if we did not have a musical style, finding music would have been extremely challenging. I was able to monitor this slow, acoustic, slightly jazzy style through the creation of a playlist, where any suggestions, definite tracks or similar style music features.

This made it easier for me to find last minute music changes if needed and create the house music playlist, all which complement our chosen style for When You See It.

Works Cited

Leonard, J (2001) Theatre Sound. London: Psychology Press

Work In Progress

Yasmin Chamberlain / May 8, 2015May 25, 2015 / Yasmin C

So Refract pretty much went for it with triple effort and got an amazing response, our peers pointed out things that we didn’t realise we were doing such as the heavy breathing during 9/11 and various facial expressions during different moments. They were also able to advise us on areas that could become more clear, but overall they understood the images and ideas that we were trying to portray.

Having this work in progress made it clear that we were creating something that was going in the right direction and something that stuck with the aim of what our theatre company was about. As this confirmed that the work we had created was going to be a keeper, we were then able to start thinking of the through line that was going to put our piece together.

This is Billy and Dolly.

Work In Progress Two!

It has been a few weeks since our last work in progress but a lot has happened in a few weeks and we could not wait to show Forefront Theatre Company what we had put together as well as getting some feedback to work into our piece. We had created the majority of the scenes for the piece and connected each scene with the story of Billy and Dolly. The idea of Billy and Dolly came from the images of the couple who take a photo in the same place every season and by the last image the man is stood by himself.

Elderly Couple One(2014) — Elderly Couple One (2014)

I liked the fact that there are these images of this elderly couple taken every season but the back story to this couple could be anything! As a company we were able to use this couple in all of the scenes as if they could have possibly been around and part of the events we were portraying. This through line laced all of our scenes together to give our work the flow it needed.

The feedback given by Forefront was excellent once again, they loved how we had connected the scenes with Billy and Dolly and were really helpful when advising on scenes that still didn’t seem clear in the story. We had finally created a whole piece (apart from a scene or two) and the next step was to give it the flow it needed with transitions as well as tightening and polishing the stuff we have. Overall at this stage, Refract is feeling professional and successful with their overall creation.

Crowe, P (2015)

Elderly Couple One (2014) [online] http://imgur.com/gallery/XyA2s

Elderly Couple Two (2014) [online] http://imgur.com/gallery/XyA2s

Elderly Couple Three (2014) [online] http://imgur.com/gallery/XyA2s