SOLECA TEATRO COMPANY
ABOUT ME
Dramaturg (Director/Writer)/ Media / Actress
My name is Ivana Shopova, I am from Bulgaria and I'm about to graduate from Performing Arts undergraduate degree at Canterbury Christ Church University.
My interests are multidisciplinary - drama, dance, theatre-making, scenography, however, I am particularly focused on drama.
In this production I'm in charge of co-writing the script, directing, editing our videos, and maintaining the website. I also play the role of Yvonne.
Our air group research question is How can we create immersive theatre while being isolated?
I personally am interested in answering the question How can I create dramaturgy collaboratively for an immersive theatre performance, while being isolated?
On this page of the website I am going to show the process of researching, I went through in an attempt of answering the questions mentioned above. I have also analyzed and attached exercises, additional inspirations found in this process. You can also find and some of my work in this project.
Follow the process of creating.
How my question evolved?
The company’s main research question is How can we explore isolation with ideas of immersive theatre in a digital setting?. This question originated from our previous research question How can we use immersive theatre to explore isolation?.
As the current situation around the world was established and everything changed with great speed, we as a company had to adapt and make fast decisions. One of the important decisions I faced as a writer/dramaturg was that we had a duty to transform and adapt most of the ideas we had and create something entirely new but yet keep the originality within. Our company was set on having am immersive site-specific performance - How could I as a dramaturg create such piece completely remotely? .As the physical part of our immersive performance was not able to be created, we decided to move our stage online to platforms such as Instagram, WIX, and Skype. Here is when I decided to dig deeper into the definition of immersive theatre and find new ways of creating an immersive experience. As I went through the different stages and levers of immersion there is, I understood that there is no concrete line that defines if a performance is immersive or not. In addition, Machon suggests :
''To draw together the concepts surveyed in this chapter, it is clear that ‘immersive’ as a term used to define work (rather than describe it) has to be understood under the very specific contexts in which it is used.''
(Machon, 2013)
So after some research, my individual question became - How can I create dramaturgy collaboratively in immersive theatre performance in digital settings? and How do I create dramaturgy collaboratively while being isolated?. To begin answering this question I dived into more broaden research.
Inspiration and research
The Great Gatsby Immersive theatre
A few months before Covid-19 took place, our company made a trip to London to see The Great Gatsby Immersive Theatre.
We had the opportunity to see how immersive theatre performance functions and develops from inside. We saw how the story was amended to be immersive for the audience. Having participated in immersive theatre performance from inside I witnessed how the division of the audience and including them in different parts of the story can make a serious difference to the development of the storyline.
This experience made our company certain that we want to create an immersive theatre performance in the old Canterbury prison. Even though, we can't make an immersive site-specific theatre performance in the prison anymore due to the worldwide quarantine, we are still going to commit to making immersive performance with the help of technology and digital theatre ideas. As a dramaturg, The Great Gatsby gave me enough insight into how exactly amended text for immersive performance sounds.
The Wooster group
In The Wooster Group's Hamlet, Shakespeare's classic tragedy is re-imagined by mixing and repurposing Richard Burton's 1964 Broadway production, directed by John Gielgud. The Burton production was recorded in a live performance from 17 camera angles and edited into a film that was shown as a special event for only two days in nearly 1,000 movie houses across the U.S. The Wooster Group attempts to reverse the process, reconstructing a hypothetical theater piece from the fragmentary evidence of the edited film.
They channel the ghost of the legendary 1964 performance, descending into a kind of madness, intentionally replacing our own spirit with the spirit of another. The actors act out the scenes in unison with the projected Burton's production. The company has intertwined classic theatre with modern technology. I found this to be a useful source of inspiration.
Even though we're performing in a digital setting, through our web cameras, from the comfort of our homes, The Wooster group inspired me to think about how our performance would look in person. Not only we took inspiration from the Wooster group to include digital theatre in creating a digital setting for an immersive theatre performance, but we also got inspired to think about how our performance would look like on an actual stage with people immersed.
The idea for live, in-person performance: Inspired from the Wooster Group, project our recorded calls and isolation exercises while the actors act them out in unison with the projections. The immersed audience needs to feel isolated to some extent, which can be done by certain choreography for the actors and added set design. The participants in the performance would have to stay 6ft apart at all times, no matter seated or standing. This idea is hypothetical, as it cannot be tested out, however, if our performance reaches a stage this would be the base of it.
Josephine Machon
To gain the necessary knowledge on immersive theatre, to create it, I turned to Josephine Machon's book Immersive theatres. I needed to understand exactly what classifies as immersive theatre, and is it possible to be immersive while everyone is separated and isolated. Machon is revealing that there is a scale of immersion, which can gauge a performance's level of immersion. However, Machon states that no matter so much the setting of the performance there is always one feature that is present in every immersive theatre.
“Although context and forms may change from one immersive performance experience to another, a constant feature of the audience involvement that remains and defines the experience as totally immersive is the fact that the audience are integral to the experiential heart of the work and central to the form and aesthetic of the event:
Immersive theatre... marks a piece of theatre experienced from within rather than as an outside observer.... You are part of it, rather than looking on fundamentally distinct. (Trueman, 2011: n.pag., emphasis added)”
(Machon, 2013)
Stanislavski's Toolkit
Six fundamental questions - Who? When? Where? Why? For what reason? Why?
Looking at Stanislavski’s toolkit for actors the methods that stood out as useful in my project are the six fundamental questions and the three scenic truths.
Firstly, looking at the six fundamental questions which are aimed at helping actors embody a role, and develop a character. After preparing our inner creative state, Stanislavsky follows up with his “Three level research”(Merlin,2007), these levels are – “Detailed work on the text[…] Research of the realm of the play and playwright […] Research on the self (this will help me find the LURE or bait to connect my own imagination, body, emotional repertoire and creative juices with the world opened up to me by the playwright). ”(Merlin, 2007)
Konstantin Stanislavski
Bella Merlin
I included the full description of the third and last lever of research because it states how exactly Stanislavsky encourages the actors to develop and understand their characters. Personally, as I am one of the scriptwriters, I already had a clear vision and ideas of how I would like to develop my character in the process. However, this proved extremely useful for the rest of the group, when they had to pick up their character development where the dramaturgs left off. Researching oneself and making connections, emotional and physical, to the character brings a lot of authenticity to the performance. And as I mentioned before, our project theme suddenly became our reality, and as an actress being isolated and frustrated, similar to my character’s. I found that finding those connections between the role and ‘real’ was a highly beneficial practice in making the performance believable, which links to the three scenic truths Stanislavsky teaches further on in the book.
The six fundamental questions – Who? When? Where? Why? For what reason? How? The first three questions connect to the first level of research that I mentioned above, are mainly focused on analyzing the text and gaining a deeper knowledge of the given circumstances of a scene, the atmosphere, tempo-rhythm of the text. As a dramaturg, I have done this unintentionally while writing and editing the script. With the fourth question (Why?) Stanislavsky encourages us to find the objectives and super-objectives in the role. The fifth question (For what reason?) is an important one because it stimulates the imagination to think of reasons behind the character’s actions and also to “…make a lively connection with the play, a connection that ignites my desire to embody the character;”(Merlin,2007)
The three scenic truths
"Stanislavsky was hot on TRUTH. He believed that a sense of TRUTH marked the difference between a craftsman and an artist. And he pinpointed three different kinds of TRUTH which he saw arising in acting practice:
1.‘make-believe truth’⁸⁶ (which draws on clichés and short-cuts);
2.‘actual fact’⁸⁷ (which is life as we know it);
3.‘scenic truth’⁸⁸ (which is ‘actual fact’ distilled into a creative form)." (Merlin,2007)
The quote above stated exactly which are the tree scenic truths that Stanislavski focuses on. These truths are a tool for embodying the role of a character. Merlin concludes that "The key to this sense of TRUTH is the ongoing sequence of Action-Reaction – Decision, described earlier in reference to MOMENTS OF DECISION." (Merlin,2007) .
Using this method when preparing for embodying the role is connected to the six fundamental questions I mentioned earlier. However, the difference is that there three truths are aimed to aid an actor to travel to the world of the play and believe in it. If practicing this method then answering the fifth question For what reason? should be an easy task.
The fact that the theme of our performance turned into our reality contributes to our attempts of believing in the world we have created in the script.
Armed with those Stanislavski's methods, developing of my character, through acting and writing was much more efficient and on an improved level.
Isolation exercise
This I call the isolation exercise because it has not been approved from the majority in the group, however, I liked the idea and decided to at least use it in my character development and deeper analysis of the message our project has. This was an original idea presented from one of the dramaturgs - Georgina, and as it did not get accepted at first, we decided to make the most of it. The exercise is to record ourselves while we're isolated at home.
This way we wanted to portray what stays hidden behind the video calls between our characters, what the real face of isolation looks like. Or just record us to gain a deeper and different perspective of isolation. That way the very first time I attempted to record myself.
After I went back and watched the exercise above, I realized it’s not enough just to see and feel isolation, I had to research different methods of creating and embodying a character. For this information, I dived further into Stanislavski’s Toolkit, mentioned above.
Non-academic inspirations
Yungblud
Yungblud is an inspiring young artist from Doncaster, UK, even though he is more music involved, we all have one in common right now - we have to stay home. For some that turned out to be an easy task, some are left stranded way long from home. Dominic Harrison, Yungblud, has traveled to LA for a project, and then due to the current circumstances cannot return home. He decides to document his time spent in isolation.
Armed with a camera he decides to take his followers around and just have fun; he even released a whole music video from his house while under lockdown. He and his two friends can produce something entirely from home, that ensured me that our idea of performance is relatable.
Miley Cyrus
Miley Cyrus is another artist who has been affected by the worldwide lockdown and she like most decided to make a show in order to keep connected to the audience have friends and keep entertaining people. She has taken upon herself to make an Instagram based show called Bright Minded. Miley Cyrus was one of the first artists online that announced the start of her show in the meaning behind it.
In her Instagram show she uploads every week one episode in which she does lives in an interview-style with different celebrities and they discuss interesting life topics and tips on how to deal with the lockdown. The base of her show is to entertain and connect people in this difficult time, and from this, we took inspiration and encouraged ourselves to continue with our developing our idea of a performance.
Writing process
Collaborative dramaturgy
My main role in this production is a dramaturg, our company has three dramaturgs in total. Creating dramaturgy collaboratively was also challenged by the sudden change of circumstances. We had to find new means of connecting and creating. That’s where my individual research question was formed – How can I create dramaturgy collaboratively in immersive theatre performance in digital setting?
To write collaboratively a script for immersive performance while isolated turned out to be quite challenging. The first attempts to write new and adapt the old were not successful enough. Most times a writer would have an idea, present the idea, the idea gets accepted, the writer created a draft of the scrip on the idea, and then the script gets denied by the majority of the group. Shortly, our group was stuck creatively after the sudden change of our daily routines. As a scriptwriter, I needed to find a way to adapt quickly to the world events that set place but also to co-writing and creating efficiently through Skype. We were stripped of the opportunity to see our ideas embodied in-person, which was an obstacle when we tried to polish and finalize scenes. We not only had no chance of rehearsing the finalized script for a few days before filming, but we also had a really tight schedule, which usually meant the scripted scenes for the day got finalized early in the morning, after which explained in detail to the rest of the actors, filmed, edited usually by me or Georgina and posted online in the afternoon.
With such a schedule to follow, I realized that I need to do research on collaborative dramaturgy. Even if my situation was more complicated than usual I needed to gain a better understanding of the role of a dramaturg in a collaborative theatre-making.
First I started with Sarah Sigal's book on Writing in Collaborative Theatre Making.
Old draft scrip. Names not assigned yet.
Example of an old draft of scrip, the idea of the first day of our performance. Names were not invited yet, at that point, instead, we had numbers. (1- Yvonne, 4- Colin, 2- Lily)
The idea of this scene was a few days after our characters were under quarantine, where Yvonne and Lily were stuck in the same apartment after their breakup. This scene was a call between Yvonne and her best friend Colin, while Yvonne is hiding in the bathroom from Lily. This was scrapped as there was an idea later on which worked better with the plot of our story.
However, the process of writing this piece of the script had a few flaws which pushed me into researching how to write collaboratively. The flaws were - even after all 3 of us, dramaturgs, focused on the same idea, our vision was different, different vision resulted in a different interpretation of motivation behind the lines, three people writing at the same time created miscommunication and unnecessary feuds. Moreover, since we have never created a script for immersive performance, we had to attempt to predict different ways of the story to develop based on the audience's interactions. After analyzing this process, I began the research in an aim to improve my creative process.
Sarah Sigal
My research on collaborative dramaturgy began with Sarah Sigal's book in Writing in collaborative theatre-making. In her book, Sigal draws from her experience as a writer. She breaks down the process of creating collaboratively and analyses it.
Firstly, I looked at her definition of creating collaboration. Sigal uses the term collaborative creation which she defines as an "...as umbrella term used to signify a method of working designed to create material, not simply written work but also physical scenes, methods of staging and sometimes design. For Shared Experience, 'collaborative creation' can be taken to mean the process of creating the script, the physical sequences devised by the movement director with the performers or the staging created with the performers and directors. [...] In the case of Filter, the term is slightly different and will be used to signify a process whereby original material is created (by actors, writers, directors or designers) without regard as to whether or not it will be kept in the final production; the act of collaborative creation is the basis for the entire collaborative process in that the script is being created roughly at the same time as the staging and soundscape."(Sigal, 2017)
From this, it is clear that the term collaborative creation can be interpreted in a wide variety by different companies, and the term collaborative gives us the freedom of co-creating the script with the rest of the performers in the company. Our company structure is different from those mentioned in Sigal's book. When we established our company and I took the role of one of the dramaturgs I knew I was in charge of co-writing the script, however later on in the process I had the opportunity to dive in some of the other company roles. For example, I had to write, devise, and direct a fair amount of scenes and on top of that edit them alongside Georgina and Diana. Having access and leading so many different aspects around my work, looked like it was going to be even easier, however, I turned out to be wrong. Having to do the role of a writer, dramaturg, and director all at once put quite a toll or my creative idea development. Luckily, after trying out a few different ways of working between me, Georgina and Luna we found a way that proved to be the most effective one. For example, we would brainstorm with the whole group, refine the best ideas, divide them between us and each of us will be in charge or writing, devising and directing the scene. This proved to be a more effective way for us since we managed to avoid most misinterpretations and use our time efficiently.
Creating and developing my character
Firstly, as dramaturgs, we came up with basic character traits for the characters, on which we voted and mutually agreed. Secondly, we started developing those traits into personalities, each dramaturg developed the character that they were playing alongside developing the rest of the characters collaboratively with the other two dramaturgs. Thirdly after all that was done I thought of how we can show their personalities more clearly on Instagram, then we assigned a signature colour to each character, matching their personality. I picked Yvonne's colour to be purple as she is quite a dark person, but at the same time has a very big heart. Purple is a deep cold tone colour, however, it has mystery in its base. I did some further research on the meaning of the colour purple in theatre and it turned out it fits the personality of my character, Yvonne.
"Purple/Violet – Used to show royalty, erotic, nobility, ceremony, spirituality, transformation, enlightenment, arrogance, sensitive, power, intimacy, mourning, and mysterious."(A Quick Guide to Symbolism in Theatre | International College of Musical Theatre, 2016)
From this, it becomes clear that I could clearly communicate and present Yvonne's sensitive, mysterious, and dark personality traits.
These colours that we assigned to the characters became their signature. Everything involving them had to be on the scale of their colour. For example, the Instagram aesthetic had to be their color. Yvonnes Instagram photos are edited and filtered to create a consistent harmonious colour aesthetic.
As I was under lockdown when I chose the colour purple, I quickly then realize that I do not own anything purple, and at that point, I couldn't even buy anything from the shops.
On every recorded video call, our characters had to wear the colour and/or have it as a background. Unfortunately, I did not own any purple piece of clothing, and I couldn't get any, so after speaking with the scenographer we decided black outfits would be close enough to purple and still neutral. However, the problem with the background remained, as I had very limited options between white, blue, and gray. I could sometimes have a white background, but I remembered that you are able to put backgrounds while on a call on Skype. Technically all I had to do is choose a photo and Skype would montage it to look as if it is my background.
However, after trying it out, we ended going back to using white as the reading of the call looked very badly edited with the photo as a background and also limited me in my acting. I was unable to move around a lot because my arm for example would disappear behind the purple picture.
#WhatHappensInQuarantineStaysIn
#WhatHappensInQuarantineStaysIn
Both pictures used as a background in a scene
#WhatHappensInQuarantineStaysIn
That is an example video where one of the backgrounds were used. After this video, I decided to stick to the white background, to avoid the over-edited look.
It is also worth mentioning that the glitching was not completed yet by our vocal artist, however, the audio glitch appears later in the performance.
The visual glitch however has been present from the very beginning - with the trailer.
I created the trailer, from my perspective and vision on our performance. After our group moved the meetings online, the digital platforms would crash quite often and that would result in us experiencing glitches, delays, distortions, and even disconnecting. These experiences were behind my idea for the trailer I created. In there you would be able to hear Anna's soundscape - idea before the glitch.
Official Trailer
At the beginning of our performance, I was in charge of editing and uploading the scenes (video calls and direct messages) on Instagram. Shortly after the first few days, Georgina was assigned to help me with editing and uploading, and, later on, Diana took over the job. During the whole performance, I worked collaboratively with our vocal artist Anna, to create and montage the glitches created with her voice to our videos. We also had to plan them ahead, meaning before every beginning of the recording we reminded the group to remember to act out that they are experiencing a glitch. Usually, they would happen in the begging or around the middle of the scenes when the plot thickens and technology starts breaking us apart.
Audience interactions
Carolina went missing for a few days and the group of friends got worried.
We scripted a few live videos and Instagram stories of our character asking the audience to help them find out what happened.
In this video, Yvonne is asking if anyone has seen Carolina, uploaded on her story.
This way of interacting with our audience proved successful - a follower replied to Yvonne with information about Carolina.
A few other interactions by our audience.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
International College of Musical Theatre. 2016. A Quick Guide To Symbolism In Theatre | International College Of Musical Theatre. [online] Available at: <https://theicmt.com/gb/a-quick-guide-to-symbolism-in-theatre/> [Accessed 14 May 2020].
Machon, J., 2013. Immersive Theatres Intimacy and Immediacy in Contemporary Performance. 1st ed. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp.67,72.
Merlin, B., 2007. The Complete Stanislavsky Toolkit. Nick Hern Books Limited, pp.12,145,146.
Sigal, S., 2017. Writing In Collaborative Theatre-Making. 1st ed. [ebook] Palgrave Macmillan, p.12. Available at: <https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=Nb9lDQAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=Writing+in+Collaborative+Theatre-Making+pdf&ots=FMppEh9ahj&sig=j7y9-kC6Xsb8dBNM4elRjrfEqa8#v=onepage&q&f=false> [Accessed 6 May 2020].