The play 'Remote' was written by Stef Smith as part of the national theatre onnections scheme. Where 12 plays are commisioned, and then performed by lots of different theatre groups, ranging abilities. The play 'Remote' focuses on how protest, power and making a stand changes people. It tells the story of a young girl how she climbs the biggest tree in the park, to protest about what she believes in. Her friends, family and enemies all react in different ways to the girls protest. This play was written in 2014, so all of the cultural context is very similar to today, One of the features of Smiths play is that is can be updated to the current time and area, where words can be changed to fit local slang. We have set our production in the current time so all the context would be what it is nowadays. Such as the election being at a high and there being so much controversy in who has the right views. And how technology is at a rise and is slowly growing more and more common to everyday life. These things are motives that we have used to spur on the protest and the tension rise in the play.
As this play is a newly write, and comes under the contemporary theatre genre. This it has never been performed professionally before, and has only been put on by theatre groups in the early months of 2015. The playwright Stef Smith is a Scottish writer and has written award winning plays that explore current pop-culture and problems.
My character in this performance is a narrator, I am part of a narration group, which gives it a different edge as there are other narrators on the stage with me that I can respond off of. I have been using these other narrators in two ways. One way that we have interpreted them is speaking to each other as if we are in a friendship group, and are all talking and gossiping together. Where as in some scenes, we break away from the naturalistic styles and speak directly to the audience and tell them what is happening. This play is very similar to 'The Wonderful World of Dissocia' where they both are very non-naturalistic, other than the second act of Dissocia, where the scenes are very naturalistic, and they look as if they would in real life. Where in the first act of Dissocia there is no naturalism, which is shown through our use of brightly coloured random clothing, talking animals and fast paced comedy. Where as in our production of 'Remote' we have highlighted the non-naturalistic theme our costumes. We all wear clothes made out of newspaper print fabric. This makes us all look as one and really shows that us as narrators were placed into this situation, and wouldn't be seen there in real life. Another element of our production that highlights the non-naturalistic style is the narrators. We speak directly to the audience, as we break the fourth wall and direct our thoughts to the audience to convey the story across. The two contemporary plays have similarity's in the way they show the non-naturalistic style. However 'Remote' contrasts hugely to the second act of 'Dissocia'.
Our set is all covered in news print, as are the characters costumes. This is a big statement and comes as a shock to a audience, and really has a powerful effect to show that amount of newsprint. This is used to symbolise the media and how it is so powerful and is everywhere and really influences everyday life.
When we first got the given the play script we did our first read through as a cast before we got our roles. When we first read it through I did not fully understand what all of the narration bits were as they were not clearly marked and I couldn't see what help they really brought to the story of the main character and the development of the play. When I got the part as a narrator I saw it as a challenge and realised that we would have to do a lot to give our parts worth and make the audience see why we were there. To give my part some characterisation I named it Obie. This name meant nothing to the play but it meant to me that it was a different character that I could add some traits to and make him his own person. One of the main traits that comes off of my character is that he is very bubbly and speaks with enthusiasm and always brings up the pace in the scene and shows excitement in each section. As a group we named each of our scenes, to give them a different theme and tension level. These scenes differed from slow paced, very relaxed scenes to fast paced scenes where we would race through the lines and bring the tension of the scene right up. This really added depth to all of our scenes and it meant in terms of my character development throughout the play I could show changes between my character in different scenes. For example in the first scene it is very fast paced and moves very fast, so my character speaks with high enthusiasm and really shows interest in what the characters are doing during this scene, where in contrast the slower paced scene I show my character lack of interest, by not adding many levels to my voice and how I speak. This is a very similar approach to my characters development in the play as I did in 'Wonderful World of Dissocia' where I would different my characters enthusiasm in the scene using my voice and interest to what is happening.
For production my interpretation of my character came very independently, and I made most of the decisions about my delivery myself, with some help from my narration group on how we would link all of our lines together. We all got most of our direction from the director about the blocking and what our path would be in each scene, and some to do with my lines, particularly on which lines should be directed out to the audience. I found this very different in process to the one from 'Wonderful World of Dissocia' where most of the production was directed in where to stand and what to do in each scene. And then our own input and interpretation was brought through in our own characterisation.
I feel that in this production I have shown a big capability in my performance, as it is very different from the parts that I would normally play, where I would use a lot more character interaction to make my character bigger in a scene, like for example in 'WWoD' my character of the goat I would play off of Lisa in the scene to know where to raise the tension between the two characters, depending on how far she would have gone with things, where in this production it becomes very different as I haven't always got someone else to work off of, other than the occasional narration lines.
When it came to researching for my character in Remote I didn't much research for my part to do with the context as a narrator but I used my own experiences of living in the modern day with my phone and technology and how that effects my life and how often I am on my phone. I then used this to add in how often my character would be using his phone in the scenes, as the whole play starts with the main character smashing her phone as it starts to take over her life. I feel that I brought a positive manner to rehearsals, as I gave a lot of input to my group on all of the physical theatre sections that we included, I also feel that I was a driving force to my group, when we went off to do our own devising sections. Within our narration group our we are all there to help each other and on occasions I have helped people by giving some movement suggestions on what to do one some lines. I think that my character as the narrator is very different to all of the other narrators, and an audience could see a difference between all of the narrators and can see some characterisation between me and everyone else.
As this play is a newly write, and comes under the contemporary theatre genre. This it has never been performed professionally before, and has only been put on by theatre groups in the early months of 2015. The playwright Stef Smith is a Scottish writer and has written award winning plays that explore current pop-culture and problems.
My character in this performance is a narrator, I am part of a narration group, which gives it a different edge as there are other narrators on the stage with me that I can respond off of. I have been using these other narrators in two ways. One way that we have interpreted them is speaking to each other as if we are in a friendship group, and are all talking and gossiping together. Where as in some scenes, we break away from the naturalistic styles and speak directly to the audience and tell them what is happening. This play is very similar to 'The Wonderful World of Dissocia' where they both are very non-naturalistic, other than the second act of Dissocia, where the scenes are very naturalistic, and they look as if they would in real life. Where in the first act of Dissocia there is no naturalism, which is shown through our use of brightly coloured random clothing, talking animals and fast paced comedy. Where as in our production of 'Remote' we have highlighted the non-naturalistic theme our costumes. We all wear clothes made out of newspaper print fabric. This makes us all look as one and really shows that us as narrators were placed into this situation, and wouldn't be seen there in real life. Another element of our production that highlights the non-naturalistic style is the narrators. We speak directly to the audience, as we break the fourth wall and direct our thoughts to the audience to convey the story across. The two contemporary plays have similarity's in the way they show the non-naturalistic style. However 'Remote' contrasts hugely to the second act of 'Dissocia'.
Our set is all covered in news print, as are the characters costumes. This is a big statement and comes as a shock to a audience, and really has a powerful effect to show that amount of newsprint. This is used to symbolise the media and how it is so powerful and is everywhere and really influences everyday life.
When we first got the given the play script we did our first read through as a cast before we got our roles. When we first read it through I did not fully understand what all of the narration bits were as they were not clearly marked and I couldn't see what help they really brought to the story of the main character and the development of the play. When I got the part as a narrator I saw it as a challenge and realised that we would have to do a lot to give our parts worth and make the audience see why we were there. To give my part some characterisation I named it Obie. This name meant nothing to the play but it meant to me that it was a different character that I could add some traits to and make him his own person. One of the main traits that comes off of my character is that he is very bubbly and speaks with enthusiasm and always brings up the pace in the scene and shows excitement in each section. As a group we named each of our scenes, to give them a different theme and tension level. These scenes differed from slow paced, very relaxed scenes to fast paced scenes where we would race through the lines and bring the tension of the scene right up. This really added depth to all of our scenes and it meant in terms of my character development throughout the play I could show changes between my character in different scenes. For example in the first scene it is very fast paced and moves very fast, so my character speaks with high enthusiasm and really shows interest in what the characters are doing during this scene, where in contrast the slower paced scene I show my character lack of interest, by not adding many levels to my voice and how I speak. This is a very similar approach to my characters development in the play as I did in 'Wonderful World of Dissocia' where I would different my characters enthusiasm in the scene using my voice and interest to what is happening.
For production my interpretation of my character came very independently, and I made most of the decisions about my delivery myself, with some help from my narration group on how we would link all of our lines together. We all got most of our direction from the director about the blocking and what our path would be in each scene, and some to do with my lines, particularly on which lines should be directed out to the audience. I found this very different in process to the one from 'Wonderful World of Dissocia' where most of the production was directed in where to stand and what to do in each scene. And then our own input and interpretation was brought through in our own characterisation.
I feel that in this production I have shown a big capability in my performance, as it is very different from the parts that I would normally play, where I would use a lot more character interaction to make my character bigger in a scene, like for example in 'WWoD' my character of the goat I would play off of Lisa in the scene to know where to raise the tension between the two characters, depending on how far she would have gone with things, where in this production it becomes very different as I haven't always got someone else to work off of, other than the occasional narration lines.
When it came to researching for my character in Remote I didn't much research for my part to do with the context as a narrator but I used my own experiences of living in the modern day with my phone and technology and how that effects my life and how often I am on my phone. I then used this to add in how often my character would be using his phone in the scenes, as the whole play starts with the main character smashing her phone as it starts to take over her life. I feel that I brought a positive manner to rehearsals, as I gave a lot of input to my group on all of the physical theatre sections that we included, I also feel that I was a driving force to my group, when we went off to do our own devising sections. Within our narration group our we are all there to help each other and on occasions I have helped people by giving some movement suggestions on what to do one some lines. I think that my character as the narrator is very different to all of the other narrators, and an audience could see a difference between all of the narrators and can see some characterisation between me and everyone else.
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