SOLECA TEATRO COMPANY
ABOUT LUNA
Dramaturg (Writer & Director ) / Designer/ Actress
In this production, as a dramaturg, I co-write the script, edit it and adapt it. As a designer, I created a logo. As an actress, I play the role of Lily.
I chose this project of the module Practice As Research over the written dissertation because I know that my skills as an artist are related to performance and creative process.
This project is particularly exciting since one of my main aims after the Master is to have a theatre company or join one. During this project, I learned different ways of devising and staging my ideas, which was challenging and a fulfilling process.
I am a Spanish actress about to graduate
in my Drama Ba (Hons).
After I discovered my vocation, in performing
arts while living in the United States, I came to
England to study Drama at Canterbury Christ Church University.
I’ve always practice extracurricular activities related
to the arts; from sewing, painting, practising ballet or rhythm
gymnastics to playing the piano. After the MA Acting will perform
Elizabethan plays, act in Auteur films & tv series and in a not
too far future join or create a theatre company.
INDIVIDIAL
Question
How can I use Instagram as a dramaturgical tool for an online immersive theatre performance?
Immersive theatre
Mental health
Isolation
Immigration
Femininity
Research question
Research
28 days by Olga Shilyaeva
Stanislavsky’s active analysis
“here, today and now”
- Workshop
Helen Paris & Lois Weaver
Written work
Ideas for the script
The idea live videos between two characters
The idea of the diaries
The idea of isolation videos
Development
Why each character has a colour
Making the characters immersive
Sarah Kane
Wooster Group's
The Frantic Assembly Book of Devising Theatre
Paper Birds, Ask Me Anything
Web therapy
Bright Minded
Rosas Danst Rosas
The Glitch
- Logos
- Minimalism
- Group question
INDEX
RESEARCH THEME
We wanted to research the theme of mental health, the location in which we were going to perform (Jail) was going to transform into an asylum.
Here is some work that we developed.
For every rehearsal, I kept a record of everything: I made sure that everything that we developed and all of the ideas that we came up with, and worked for our performance, were written down.
By doing this I was always able to remember our process evolution and remember to bring some research for every rehearsal.
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Initial plot: Character relationship development
Initial research: About the prison
As part of the research, I wanted to incorporate the play 4.48 Psychosis of Sarah Kane, which portraits depression from a subjective point of view, since Kane, was suffering from it and a year later she would commit suicide, which left critics like Michael Billington referring to her play as her “75-minute suicide note?” (Dickson, 2020). Reading and analysing this play, we realized how this theme did not work, as some people in the group were not able to chime with this subject, so we discussed if we should broaden the range of themes to research.
In our second phase
New themes such as isolation, immigration and femininity arise like topics that we wanted to research.
We were going to research the subject of mental health still, and use the jail as our stage, but the location was not going to be used as an asylum as we agreed in the early beginning.
The 27th of February we had a rehearsal where I brought this research about feminity and mental health issues, and Anna brought the script of 28 days by Olga Shilyaeva. Before the rehearsal, I analysed the text, later when conducting the exercise we used it to create improvisations. This play narrates “a woman's story of menstruation experienced as her private and the state’s experience at the same time” (Bradecki, Nyczek and Morawski, 2020) and which is probably “one of the boldest female statements in the Russian theatre of recent years” (Bradecki, Nyczek and Morawski, 2020).
The research that I brought (LINK IT) was dismissed by the former colleagues of the group Annie and Finley since in there opinion it did not fit the exercise.
We applied Stanislavsky’s active analysis, in which “you read the scene, you discuss the scene, you improvise the scene without further reference to the script; you discuss the improvisation, before returning to the script; you compare whatever happened in your improvisation with the words and incidents of the actual text” (Merlin, n.d., pg. 197).
In this rehearsal we also used objects in our improvisations, as Stanislavsky describes it, by using the “here, today and now” (Merlin, n.d., pg. 311) we let our imagination flow, without overthinking the situation and interesting dynamics appeared out of these improvisations. This process led to see what texts worked and which ones did not. One of the findings from the exercise was when our male colleague read a monologue about being a wife who does not want to shave.
Workshop
We had a workshop with the dramaturg Helen Paris, where she taught us how to do a practice research-based performance. She guided us through a Lois Weaver masterclass.
Dramaturgical approach
Our group experienced two phases before adapting to the digital setting.
In our first phase
Our devising process, we abstracted that we wanted the performance to be a site-specific and immersive.
Site-Specific
In the first meetings, our "devising processes tend to reflect the particular places, spaces and people involved and the immediate contexts of the work tend to be woven into the performance" (Turner and Behrndt, 2016, 174) One of our initial reflections was on the site-specific performance. After brainstorming about establishments where we wanted to perform, we were eager to perform in the Canterbury jail.
Immersive performance
One of the theatre companies that influenced my work the most is Punchdrunk. It is a theatre company based in London, UK. It is known for its mask productions; however, this only represents one of the numerous types of shows. It is named Punchdrunk since this name “represents the company’s ongoing ambition to make their audiences feel ‘punch drunk’. This state represents feeling alive, alert, emotionally and viscerally impacted; all your senses firing and tapping into the core human instinct of fight or flight” (Wright, 2014) the idea of having an active audience when performing an immerse theatre production, becomes essential. From their show Sleep No More (London 2003, Boston 2009, New York 2011 - present, Shanghai 2016 - present) (Wright, 2014, pg. 4) a three-hour performance, the audience wore white masks, which led by the company could go through “six floors and over a hundred rooms” (Wright, 2014). The fact that physically they used different levels, was a guide which we could follow on how to use the different floors that we had available in the jail and give it the best use possible.
Another relevant approach that I wanted to use for our performance was that the “experiences are designed to focus on the individual journey of an audience member which is not reliant on the presence of others (either performers or fellow audience members) as well as communal moments of sharing where everyone comes together in one space for the finale” (Duncan and Higgin, 2020, pg. 7). This idea of focusing on the individual journey of each audience member was something that I wanted our performance to achieve. By watching closely parts of their production Sleep no more, I additionally learned how the “audiences are given the autonomy to create their own journey no two audience members experiences will be alike. Some people may choose to follow a particular character, some decide to linger in a specific area, and even with an audience capacity of over 500 people, there are some experiences that are designed for only one audience member at a time” (Duncan and Higgin, 2020, pg. 7). It was obvious that we could not have such an extensive audience, but we wanted to implement this idea of giving some autonomy to the member of the audience.
One way of achieving this Individual journey was by allowing the audience to explore the jail while we performed. As I mentioned before, we would be acting all around them, therefore the typical space and division that exists between the audience member and the performer would be non-existent. “This lack of separation can cause anxiety. If an audience member is not expecting to become part of the performance or is uncomfortable with that idea, it can be very off-putting so there must be some form of consent between the performer and the audience, a constant to guide them. There must still exist some form of separation and boundaries between performance and audience for the benefit of everyone involved” (Hemming, 2020). This is how we all agree on developing an introductory message for the audience in the description of the performance, explaining these new guides and boundaries that should exist in our performance.
Since this would allow them to choose what to see and what to skip, we needed to determine when to guide them around the space and when to let them free, this way they get to experience the crucial scenes for the performance. Thanks to watching the Immersive Great Gatsby (Wright, 2020) I got inspired and learned that we had to decide when to let the audience free in the space. I wanted to use the idea of separating the audience member in groups, but unlike Punchdrunk, this division of the audience would have a purpose and would be guided by the actors. I also learned different ways of guiding them around the performing space, to the scenes and how as actors we could interact with them.
Lois Weaver
We had a workshop with the dramaturg Helen Paris, where she taught us how to do a practice research-based performance. She guided us through a Lois Weaver masterclass.
The first step was to write the main question, which in the case of my group was: “How can we use immersive theatre to explore the theme of isolation?” (Weaver, 2020). The second step was to think of three sub-questions. For this sub-question, I focused on the point of view of the scriptwriter and dramaturge. The questions were the following: “How do we explore the theme of isolation whilst being isolated? Can immersive theatre achieve to portrait the feeling of isolation while interacting with the audience?” (Weaver, 2020). From these questions, she asks you to pick one of them, the one that you chime more with, and the one you think is going to be more complex to answer. I chose: “How do we explore the theme of isolation whilst being isolated?” (Weaver, 2020).
This process not only helped me personally to understand better how we could conduct the research, but it also helped the group to focus on one theme or subject that we would focus on. Thus, from having as themes to research femininity, immigrants, mental health and isolation; we focused on the last one.
That is how we found our aim, and we centred all of our energy to research on isolation.
RESEARCH DESIGN
Dream Think Speak was another theatre company that I got inspired from. They are pioneers when it comes to “site-responsive” performance, “this UK-based company creates immersive and site-specific works in a variety of provocative locations, placing audio-visual technology” (Duncan and Higgin, 2020). Their work initially inspired me to explore how audio-visual technology could affect our performance. Thus, discovering that by using a projector, we could communicate the message more alluringly. Soon after, when we had to adapt the performance to a digital setting, thanks to this company I started to research the audio-visual technology which they used.
Following the research of using audiovisual technology on stage, I came across Wooster Group's (Wyver, 2020) production of Hamlet. The idea of using a projector became more feasible when I saw their use of a projector on stage, by playing in the background a projection of John Gielgud’s 1964 production of hamlet in the live performance.
dramaturgical approach
RESEARCH
When we had to adapt to the Corona Virus, we decided to adapt our performance to a digital setting. Since this new approach was so different I decided to look at the project as if it was a new project (keeping the previous research as it could be useful later on).
My main inspiration to devise theatre was The Frantic Assembly Book of Devising Theatre. Linked to the writer role, I learned from the Frantic Assembly how bringing exercises for the rehearsals and develop improvisation is essential in the devising process. And if you approach the devising process “as a series of tasks” (Hoggett, Graham and Middleton, 2020), the process will stop seeming overwhelming and it will flow gently, with every piece of the research falling into place. I apply this approach to both times where I had to develop ideas: the first (Compass Productions) and the last company (Soleca Teatro Company).
For this part of the process, I brought back one of the ideas from the initial devising process, which was using audio-visual technology on stage when we saw the theatre company of Paper Birds. From their play Ask Me Anything (McDonnell, 2020) they use video cameras live and they project the images and videos live on the performance. I got inspired by their use of a live camera and transmitting it as if it was a show.
This reminded me of the TV show Web therapy, where the actors are separated from each other, and this inspired me to research how could we do the performance of isolation whilst being isolated.
Another tv show that inspired me in this process is SKAM Spain. The episodes have additional short clips which are posted on its official website daily (more or less), at a few hours that viewers are unaware of, and which are complemented by WhatsApp conversations and activity on the profiles of Instagram of each of the characters. https://fueradeseries.com/skam-espana-redes-sociales-como-parte-de-la-historia-e69580517f89
In their website, you can see the episodes (capitulos) and a menu.
this menu shows the different pages with the different seasons (temporada), the episodes and the profiles.
the part of the website that is dedicated to the profiles just has the link to the Instagram profiles.
This show was the main inspiration to show how we could create fake personas aka characters on Instagram to complement our main performance, which would be on a different profile from the characters one.
At the same time that we were adapting to the new circumstances, the actress and singer Miley Cyrus created Bright Minded (Cyrus, 2020), an Instagram show. This helped me to realize how achievable was to have Instagram as our stage, and formats we could use (video, live streams, stories). Thanks to finding her show, I discovered a feature (TV videos) on Instagram where you can organise the videos already uploaded into different groups, that is how I was able to organise the videos (video calls) by days thus being easier follow and understand our performance.
Since in this digital setting we lacked the sense of touch, I wanted to introduce some voice stimuli. When I saw the dance Choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and her work, the choreography that struck out the most was Rosas Danst Rosas (Teresa De Keersmaeker, 2020) inspired me with her use of the repetition and overlapping of movements. I wanted to translate this idea applied to the movement, to the voice. I wanted to use this since it can express the decadence of the relationship between the characters. My aim was to apply it in the video calls, by abstracting the sentence which reflects more their objective of the character through the performance. This sentence would have been used as the trigger for the repetition to begin, which initially can seem like a technical issue. The conversation between characters would continue, even though the repetition of the rest of the characters would follow and progressively overlapping each other until reverberation transforms into noise.
Conducting more research in the are of noise, I came across Rosa Menkman’s definition of such: “However complex or inclusive noise appears as a signifier, it is always a kind of negativity: it stands for unaccepted sound, not music, invalid information, or the absence of a message. Noise is unwanted, other and unordered.” (Menkman, 2020). As a group, we wanted to portrait this sentiment of confusion, and researching found the digital agent of The Glitch, which “comes hand in hand with a feeling of shock, with being lost and in awe. The glitch is a powerful interruption that shifts an object away from its flow and ordinary discourse, towards the ruins of destructed meaning. This concept of flow I emphasize as both a trait within the machine as well as a feature of society as a whole” (Menkman, 2020, pg. 30).
SCRIPTWRITER
Current theme
Our piece explores the theme of isolation, explored by immersive theatre, using tools from realism and digital theatre. One of the tools used by digital theatre is The Glitching. As Patrik Lonergan expressed the "Social media is a space for a performance of identities" (Lonergan 2016, p.3). Thus, using Instagram as our stage. Taking advantage of the global lockdown, trying to reverse the negativity caused by the world’s current events, we tried to create art out of this unpleasant situation. We did this by taking our initial theme, isolation, and adapting it to the situation of confinement in which we are living currently.
When thinking if we could use Instagram as our stage, we had to think about the audience and it's "preparation; immersive rituals (...) take their audience-participants through in order to acclimatise them to the world they are about to enter." (Machon, 2013) Since Instagram is a well-known platform, the interaction between the audience and the spectator would be easy to achieve since the spectator is already acclimatised to the platform.
One of the key struggles that I had to overcome was the use of technology.
In my specific situation, I went through various issues where for more than a week my computer broke down and therefore, I lost a lot of work that I had. Another inconvenience was the quality of my phone: I couldn’t download any videos thus I was not able to edit any of them and I couldn’t help my fellow dramaturges creating the video manifesto or the trailer, which I would have loved to since I love editing videos and I am very much fond of posting and editing stories on Instagram. In retrospective, if I would have had a better computer, I would have been able to help them is those two subjects. Not being able caused me a lot of stress and feeling of guilt, knowing that they needed help, I knew how to help and I wanted to but I was not physically able to since I didn’t have the means to do it, it was certainly frustrating. Since I was aware that the three of us (Ivana, Georgina and I) were the ones dragging the performance forward, consequently we had no time to edit the videos and conversations to post them on Instagram, but we also had to edit the videos of the manifesto.
Collaborative Dramaturgy / Writing
For the Soleca Teatro Company, we chose to have a Collaborative dramaturgy team. In the beginning, we instinctively divided the scenes writing and chose different characters to create and give shape. But since this model of working was abstract and we did not divide these roles officially, the lines of who had to write what were blurred. I learned in this process how “This final model is designed to consider a way of working wherein a company has commissioned multiple writers to create a script for a production that will involve a significant amount of devising, workshopping and discussion, in addition to the writing itself.” (Sigal, n.d., Pg. 153).
One thing that worked well was the communication that we had among the dramaturg team. Thanks to being in the same page most of the times we were able to divide the play “among the three writers largely by character; each of us was responsible for a number of characters, and sometimes we shared scenes.” (Sigal, n.d., pg.159) one thing that also did work well was writing scenes with your character in it since you would know better how your character would talk or react. Another process that worked really well was when two dramaturges wrote the same scene, one being each character: it was a really efficient process.
One of the key issues that I learned to overcome was the lack of support.
I felt (and I think that the other dramaturges felt too) that it was too much work for just three people and that was added to the lack of support and the lack of the job of the director, which would have made a great difference to the work division and supervision. In the begging process, we had to devise the outline of the play, write the script, and perform it. The sum of the little time we had, all the work for just the three of us and the lack of help and support from our fellow colleagues resulted in the outline ending up ambiguous. Since “the vaguer the outline is, the more decisions will have to be made later on during the script and devising process” (Sigal, n.d., pg. 180) and that is how the project instead of getting smoother once we started recording the scenes, got even more intricate and trying.
It was extremely difficult for the dramaturgs to write the entire script and the characters without any help or support from the director, since “in collaboration with the director, the writer can come up with a comprehensive outline for the entire play. (...) This outline should be as throughout and detailed as possible” (Sigal, n.d., pg. 180).
I also learned how bringing exercises for the rehearsals and develop improvisation is essential in the devising process. And if you approach the devising process as In the Frantic Assembly, “as a series of tasks” (Hoggett, Graham and Middleton, 2020), the process will stop seeming overwhelming and it will flow gently, with every piece of the research falling into place. I too realised how beneficial can be when dramaturges write together, they feed off each other’s ideas, and how productive that process can be.
Individual writing
Written work
As an example of my written work as a dramaturg, I have linked this word document which has an example of a part of the script which I wrote (right PDF Document)
Ideas for the script
Here there are some examples of ideas I conceived for the script development as a dramaturg, I have linked this word document (left PDF Document)
Co-ownership and autonomy of the audience
When writing the script, we decided to give the audience the choice to be active or passive (in both options they are still immersed). Since we applied the literary tool of dramatic irony (the situation in which the audience of a play knows something that the characters do not know) https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/dramatic-irony in our script, the audience could have a bigger impact on the performance if they chose to be active.
I found to be better when the spectators were active, this way “audience-participants become 'co-authors' of the work, using their bodies as the source and site of sensual material for the narrative. [...] immersive practice requires risk and investment from audience-participants and complicity between these 'guest-performers'.” (Machon, 2013. pg.150) The fact that we allowed the audience this autonomy thus acquiring a co-ownership over the performance, the immersion was deeper, therefore more effective.
As an example, one audience member changed the course of the script when he told this to Lily:
When he sent that to Lili I had the idea to introduce that to the script, and be that the reason why Lily breaks up with Yvonne. When they were given this autonomy, “Enables agency for the audience-participant within the work.” (Machon, 2013) thus they were able to shape their's, the characters experience, and the script.
Live videos between two characters
This idea consists of a video call between two characters, where they perform a regular and normal scene, but instead of doing it on a skype and record it, the scene would be performed on a live video, that after it is finished it would be saved and post on the company’s account as a regular video.
The aim of doing some scenes live is to promote audience participation, where it is extremely easy for them to comment on the scene and speculate. The audience members would have an easy route to communicate with other audience members and talk about the performance.
One of the negatives aspects of it is that the actors can read the audience comments at the same time as they are performing and that could distract them. But even if that happens, which it could be plausible, reading the comments and having instant feedback could also be used in a good way by the actors: if you read the comments you can implement this feedback live in the performance we see how that worked.
The diaries
I had a couple of ideas that I would have like to develop and perform in the project but given the circumstances, we did not have the time to perform them, since the performance alone already took most of our day every day, in specific for the dramaturgs, and half of the group did not want to invest more time in the performing part of the project.
One of the ideas that I wanted to perform was the daily log or the character’s diary. The log or diary would consist of a daily short video about what happened that day from the character’s point of view and how do those events make the character feel. The video would be a maximum of five minutes long. The purpose of this would not just be for character development thus forcing the actors to define their character, nor for the actor to know how the script was developing what was happening at the time with their own character’s storyline or with other characters (which was a recurrent issue), it would mainly help the audience to follow the plot and the different storylines, thus empathising more with the characters and making the audience-character interaction easier to happen.
To differentiate the scenes (video calls, text messages) we would upload the Diary log in the stories section, instead of the posts section. The name of the highlight would be “the character’s name diary” and we would have six different highlights, each one for every character.
Something that could be considered an issue from some people’s point of view, might be the feeling of this diary/ daily log creating an extensive amount of information in the company’s account and thus seeming overwhelming.
To overcome that issue, I would structure the diary videos, so it is clear and interesting. I would do so by pre-writing a brief list of bullet points with the issues and as a conclusion of this list in which the character is reflecting about their issues, I would have two options, actions to choose from, so the audience can comment which one they would do or which one they want to happen next. We writers would be able to use this information to perfection the script: adapt it to what the audience wants or write an unexpected outcome.
The isolation videos
The idea of recording the characters in isolation came after a dramaturg brainstorming where the aim of this idea was to show the isolation experienced by the characters. I wanted to portrait the isolation by recording the character with a time-lapse video. This time-lapse tool gives the sensation of the time passing slowly as many movements happened in a brief amount of time, and since I wasn´t doing many things (reading, writing, stretching or staring at the sunset) it gave the illusion of time passing and things not happening. Another key thing that I wanted to record in my video was the sun was going down, since this helped with the illusion that time passed swiftly while the character was isolated alone, just with her thoughts and issues.
An unedited part of the video the portraits the isolation of Lily.
Characters
Creation and Development
We decided to give each character a colour that would match each personality. We gave suggestions for a colour for each character, but the actor had the ultimate say in the choice of the colour.
What inspired me in this process was the use of colour in the advertisement. This was my inspiration because what I wanted to achieve is to arouse the attention of the audience so they interact, and since “The aim of every advertisement is to get people’s attention”(Fossati, 2018) I saw this inspiration really helpful.
We used the character colours in the company’s Instagram as a specific aesthetic to follow. One of my primary inspirations for this aesthetic was this web design: http://bubblerevolution.com/, in which bright colours are predominant. In my opinion, it works very well the use of bright colours like green, blue, pink, orange, violet, etc. I wanted to apply this visual design to our own company design. When the actors chose their colour, I decided that for the company’s Instagram page, we should use these colours in this order: brown, orange, pink, purple and green.
Why each character has a colour
Based on research that I conducted for the previous company, I found that the use of analogous colours is visually very harmonizing. These colours can “be chosen, a second to support and a third along with blacks, whites, and shades of grey to accentuate, we have as an example the movie The Godfather where “the analogous scheme of brown tones, not only helps to grant a classic style from a bygone era, as the plot describes, but also highlights the exquisite use of contrasts between light and shadow”. With my character (Lily), I wanted to use the colours in the set design to achieve the portrayal of my character's persona.
Moving on from character design to character development, The “Six fundamental questions” is a tool that worked remarkably for me as a writer to develop the character was the Stanislavski tool of the “Six fundamental questions” (Merlin, n.d., pg. 100), which are “Who? When? Where? Why? For what reason? How?” (Merlin, n.d., pg. 101) I found this tool rudimentary to create and develop the characters. Since we develop basic ideas that we wanted to portrait in the script/performance before fully developing the characters, this tool was significantly useful to adapt these character’s personalities to chime with a written script.
Examples of characters developed were the creation of the basic traits to develop the personality: I gave the basic trait to some of the characters such as Yvonne being romantic, Lily hippie, Mariana sexy, Colin is simple, Carolina as the crazy outgoing and Anastasia an influencer. Between the dramaturgs, we developed the personalities. As actresses and actors, we then defined the personality of our characters.
Making the characters immersive
In one way or another, the characters had to interact with the audience, and I thought that the text message interaction was not enough. An obvious character that could easily interact with the audience was Anastasia since we wrote her as an influencer, so it was planned for her to do at least three live videos, and post stories every day. I also chose for lily to use the interactive stickers that Instagram provides when you upload a story. I tried to use one at least each week, to give the audience the change to interact with my character in different ways.
Minimalism
I decided that for our logo to have the minimalist style since I firmly believe that when it comes to designing less is more. It was created around 1950- 1970(Higueras, 2016, pg 82). The influences are consumer production system. Kitsch pop artists like Andy Warhol and Roy Liechtenstein. The authors are Peter Murdoch, Verner Panton, Gaetano Pesci.
“Influencias: sistema consumista de producción. Kitsch. Artistas pop como Andy Warhol and Roy Liechtenstein. Autores: Peter Murdoch, Verner Panton, Gaetano Pesci” (Higueras, 2016, pg 82).
It has as main characters the geometricity and austerity of the Modern Movement and avant-garde movements such as De Stijl and K. Malevich's Suprematism (Higueras, 2016, Pg 91). It is too influenced by the traditional Japanese architecture (Higueras, 2016, Pg 91).
“Minimalismo. Tiene como precedentes la geometricidad y austeridad del Movimiento Moderno y de vanguardias como De Stijl y el Suprematismo de K.Malevich. También se ve influenciado por la austera arquitectura tradicional japonesa. A partir de los años 60 destaca la obra de Donald Judd, Yves Klein, Richard Serra y Tadao Ando entre otros”. (Higueras, 2016, Pg 91).
Another reason why I opted for the Minimalistic style is that the technology environment is designing their products applying this style. “In the last twenty years, minimalism has been a strong influence on Technology Design, being especially evident in Apple products designed by Jonathan Ive” (Higueras, 2016, Pg 91). Since our performance is going to happen in a digital setting, I saw this style as the most appropriate.
“En los últimos veinte años el minimalismo ha sido una fuerte influencia en el Diseño de tecnología, siendo especialmente evidente en los productos de Apple diseñados por Jonathan Ive”. (Higueras, 2016, Pg 91)
In the field of Industrial Design, High Tech led to functionalist products. Very often they have used matte black finishes, which is why this style has been called Matt Black (Higueras, 2016, Pg 89). In the 90s it drifted towards the minimalist style in technological products in brands like Apple (Higueras, 2016, Pg 89).
“En el terreno del Diseño industrial el High Tech derivó en productos funcionalistas. Muy a menudo han utilizado acabados en negro mate, por lo que se ha denominado a este estilo Matt Black. En los años 90 deriva hacia el estilo minimalista en los productos tecnológicos en marcas como Apple”. (Higueras, 2016, Pg 89).
Website design
At the beginning of the website devising process, we didn't know how we wanted to organize it. We came up with some ideas, mines are this one (in the picture on the right).
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As an actress, I found essential the following three tools from the Stanislavsky Toolkit.
The merger
In the beginning, when I had to get into character and keep developing, I was not sure in what direction to go, since the personality could variate a lot depending on different personality traits that I chose to adopt.
What helped me in this process was when I did the exercise where I look for the lure of the character, after that I converted the “lure” into an objective (Merlin, n.d., pg. 40). This objective was present in the characters development throughout the entire performance.
Knowing the objective of the character helped me wonders to know how this person thought, and therefore I could develop her personality around this specific trait.
"The magic If"
Our acting style follows the Stanislavsky toolkit. We wanted to achieve the psycho-physicality, which will allow you to ”experience internally is immediately translated into an outer expression, and (conversely) what your body manifests physically has a direct and acknowledged effect on your psychological landscape” (Merlin, n.d., pg. 18). In my role of an actress, I applied the Stanislavsky tool of The Magic “If” (Merlin, n.d., pg. 127).
I wanted to apply this tool not only for me in my role as an actress but also for the other actors, since most of them didn’t fully connect this the character. Reflecting now, after the process that we went through, this tool would have only been useful to them if they were in the same tempo as the dramaturgs were; meaning, that they should’ve reading the scripts daily and knowing all of the facts about their storyline. Then with this tool the actors would have been able to fill the gap between them and the actions of the script, as “The magic if the springboard from your imagination into the given Circumstances of the script, and in effect it works by appearing to your sense of action: What would I do if…?” (Merlin, n.d., pg. 127) this tool combines the action with the psychology. With this tool my aim was not to re-enact the actual experiences but to find the stimulants to my imagination which will fill the gap between me and what happened in the plot.
Receptivity and listening
I realised that when I was performing the scene,s I needed to focus a lot on the script that we wrote, and that caused some artificial reactions to the actions of my scene partner. When I acknowledge this issue I realized that I need to listen two different parts; I need to listen to myself (what you are feeling) and you also need to listen to your environment (fellow actors in the scene). For you to be able to listen to both and be able to successfully apply it to the scene, you need to be ins a “particular state of receptivity” pg 19 this helped me to embody the character and perform the scene feeling more natural and less acted.
I was able to achieve this by preparing before the scene, reading the script multiple times and rehearsing with my scene partner, so we ,could both achieve this state of receptivity.
As an example there is the scene between lily and Anastasia in the Soleca Teatro Instagram (@solecateatro2020) in the colour orange with the date of 08/05/2020.
Character Colour
My character, Lily, the main trait was a hippie-like personality,
nature and meditation was something instantly linked with
the personality choice, consequently, I chose the colour
green. I portraited this colour in my Instagram feed by
posting pictures of green landscapes or adding filters that
made the picture seem greener. Other colours that I wanted
to portrait were the green and the white since the colour
white is linked to peace and meditation (mindfulness) and
the colour green is very much present in nature since it is
an earthy shade.
The colour GREEN has the connotation of being associated with Nature, Ecology (Higueras, 2016, Pg.31)
As an example, you can see above these three pictures: The logo that Google created for the Earth day of 2020, the logo of the Organic Food Federation and the logo of the official stamp of the Europan Union of Organic food.
Directing
I had to direct the scenes in which I was involved
I am aware that dramaturgs work with the directors and in some times the lines of the roles are blurred and hard to differentiate, but in our specific situation, we totally lacked a director: our director didn't give any instructions or any type of directions to follow.
I was able to do this since I wrote these scenes and I knew the intentions and objectives of the characters involved in it.
In the left column, there is a video as an example of one of the many scenes that I directed. Is a scene between Mariana and Lily where I wanted to establish the relationship that they had and how they feel about each other.
Improvisation
As a director, I had to decide when the improvisation was a good tool available for us to use/perform.
Carolina and Lily
Since we had that lack of time. For the scripts of the actors that were dramaturges, we allow ourselves to devise the scenes by stating the min issue that was going to take place and then improvise it. This process worked amazingly since we talked about more relevant issues that involved other characters and the scenes looked more natural overall. As an example, there is the scene between Lily and Carolina the 11/06/2020, in the Soleca Teatro Instagram.
Colin & Mariana, Mariana & Anastasia
I gave them instructions of what the aim of the conversation was, what emotions they had to portrait as their characters and finally what the result if the conversation had to be. I will attach below a screenshot of the instructions given t the actors (Oliver, Diana and Anna).
Group
question
How can we use Immersive Theatre to explore the theme of isolation?
Sub-question
How can we create Immersive theatre using digital tools?
INDIVIDIAL
Question
How can I use Instagram as a dramaturgical tool for an online immersive theatre performance?
After conducting the research and finishing the project I have learned several new means in social media to develop and immersive performance. As an example, I can say that if I were to perform again, I would write for all the characters to post interactives stories every day and post the diary video in the performance account. I would also have live videos between different characters.
But after concluding the performance and learning from our mistakes; planning all the performance: knowing the availability of the actors at all times, having the digital means figured out (how to edit videos and how to compact them), what I really wanted to know was: Can immersive theatre in a digital setting be more effective in the immersive aspect that immersive theatre in person?
As Machon says “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 is integral to the experiential heart of the work and central to the form and aesthetic of the event” (Machon, 2013). Since we discovered that in a digital setting, we can develop an immersive performance where the audience is the epicentre of it, a new door was open.
This can lead us to a solution that we actors and directors and workers of the theatre industry can use in these circumstances where the social distance is mandatory. This new circumstance meaning that until farther notice the theatres are close, and when they reopen, they can have a maximum half of the audience, leaving an empty chair between audience member. Sonia Friedman, the British West End and Broadway theatre producer, explains that “Theatre is incompatible with social distancing” and that "British theatre is on the brink of total collapse" (Sonia, 2020) https://www.londontheatredirect.com/news/how-much-longer-until-uk-theatres-reopen
What I mean with this is: even though in digital performances we lack the sense of touch, the other senses, like the visual or the auditory, can be enhanced and improved.
We sis this exact thing by applying the effect of the glitch, inspired by the work of Rosa Menkman. We used this as a double immersive tool: to provoke the feeling of immersion in the characters environment (enhancing the sounds) and to glitch the call (bringing awareness of the digital connection). Choosing to adopt the digital performance, if well planned and added the improvements that I have learned by committing mistakes, in my opinion is a plausible solution for the theatre industry.
As an example of company that adapted to this new circumstances we have the National Theatre, where they are showing for free their recorded performances like the brilliant performance of A Streetcar named desire, and they have a fundraiser to “support the Young Vic” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJEpYaD3yTw and the National Theatre.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUDq1XzCY0NIOYVJvEMQjqw
Since we live in this uncertain circumstance, digital performances can be performed. If we decide to bet on this type of performance, it will be improved. I am sure that if this type of performance is improved, it will reach a point where it can be as successful and popular as Netflix tv show.
Bringing back the question: Can immersive theatre in a digital setting be more effective in the immersive aspect that immersive theatre in person? I firmly think that it will depend on the audience. The other generations, where they do not use social media on a daily basis thus they are not familiarised with it, they might just rather watch performances on tv (bigger screens) I believe that performances would not succeed in that environment. However, my generation and the ones after are so used to using social media on their daily life that performances developed in this platform can be very successful since they fully chime with the platform.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works Cited
Merlin, B., n.d. The Complete Stanislavsky Toolkit. pg. 19, 40, 127.
Turner, C. and Behrndt, S. (2016) Dramaturgy and Performance. Rev. ed. London: Palgrave.
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Higueras, M., 2016. LIBRO DE TEORÍA Y EJERCICIOS. Colegio ESTUDIO ©. [online] Manuelhigueras.files.wordpress.com. Available at: <https://manuelhigueras.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/apuntes-disec3b1o-2016-17.pdf> [Accessed 3 May 2020].
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Duncan, F. and Higgin, P., 2020. [online] Punchdrunk.org.uk. Available at: <https://www.punchdrunk.org.uk/content/uploads/2019/10/Punchdrunk-Teacher-Resource-Pack-v7.pdf?fbclid=IwAR3oxjCxEK0BKRLII3RJl233XHGvkDb9Ru7q4qczIOtE5c-CO_FNcwF-NwA> [Accessed 18 April 2020]. pg7
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Dickson, A., 2020. 'The Strange Thing Is We Howled With Laughter': Sarah Kane's Enigmatic Last Play. [online] the Guardian. Available at: <https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/may/11/448-psychosis-sarah-kane-new-opera-philip-venables-royal-opera-house> [Accessed 21 April 2020].
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Kaplan, Andreas M, and Michael Haenlein. “Users of the World, Unite! The Challenges and Opportunities of Social Media.” Business Horizons, vol. 53, 2010, pp. 59-68
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Lonergan, Patrick. Theatre & Social Media. Palgrave, 2016.
MLA (Modern Language Assoc.)
Fossati, Giovanna. The Colour Fantastic : Chromatic Worlds of Silent Cinema. Amsterdam University Press, 2018.
APA (American Psychological Assoc.)
Fossati, G. (2018). The Colour Fantastic : Chromatic Worlds of Silent Cinema. Amsterdam University Press.
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https://thewoostergroup.org/hamlet
https://www.dreamthinkspeak.com/
https://dreamthinkspeak.com/productions
https://www.punchdrunk.org.uk/project/sleep-no-more/
https://www.google.com/doodles/earth-day-2020