1.Could you tell us how you would identify yourself as a practitioner and the context in which you’d like to make work including who your audience or target market would be?
I am a theatre maker, that makes performances to be toured to local communities as well as to larger venues. I also enjoy performing in both plays and musical theatre in my spare time, this is something that I am open to continuing as a hobby alongside making my own performances. By performing in both my peers work as well as that of local theatre companies I have learnt techniques from their facilitation that have influenced my own facilitation methods as a theatre maker. This has meant that I am continuing to develop my own facilitation techniques by being in other people’s work.
I am a practitioner who enjoys making work that investigates our relationship with events in world history, telling the stories behind the main headlines. The performances that I create are made in a collaborative manner, combining skills and knowledge of myself and my cast. I work in a way that allows themes and storylines to be developed in a safe environment, exploring the range of human emotions that are most suited to the performance. A large amount of the exploration that I do as a practitioner explores how comedy/scenes of a light-hearted nature can be interjected into a more serious storyline. From this I have created a style of performance that uses both comedy and poignancy to tell the stories.
Since High School I have been interested in the ways that historical events can be portrayed within theatrical productions. I have both written about, and performed in, productions such as ‘Be My Baby’ and ‘Our Countries Good’, which tell stories that are rarely told in 21st Century society. Combining this with the work that I have been a part of at University, my interest has sparked into creating performances around unheard stories.
I have been inspired by the performances such as ‘Six’ that shift the focus of the traditional storytelling which traditionally in history has focused around men’s victories and not the women’s stories. My work aligns with the continuing emancipation of women and the #MeToo Movement; I do not at any point wish to devalue any of the positive things that men have achieved, I simply wish to bring the work that women and minorities have done up to the same level of recognition.
My target audience is primarily the various communities that the work is based around, each performance is centred around a different event within history and therefore affects a different community. Through this I aim to work with and give back to the communities that have experienced these events. I also have the desire to take this work to larger venues, meaning that there would be a greater target audience. In this circumstance my target audience would widen to involve the general public and not just the specific audiences that I have chosen. The common link between these audiences is that they are people who wish to be entertained and educated through the stories of history.
2. How is your identity as a practitioner both reflected in the portfolio; and produced by the portfolio?
This portfolio produces an overview of the projects and performances that best showcase my identity as a practitioner. By displaying these on a sliding presentation on the home page of my WordPress Site the viewer can quickly grasp the diversity of work that I have both created and performed in. I have also combined with further options to view these individually as well as additional blog posts about further projects in which I have been involved.
I have selected the three pieces of previous work, that throughout my University degree have influenced and formed my current practice, and that best reflect my identity as a practitioner. Dear Me… showcases the first time that as a practitioner I collaborated with another artist to create a 30-minute show that had a strong comedic drive throughout. Truth Be Truth portrays the more poignant style of performance that I have been involved in creating, also showing the way that I can work well with a large ensemble and sensitive subject material. Finally, Make do and Mend combines the skill sets from both previous performances into one show, I also created this show independently which as stated within my video pitch is something that I will be continuing to develop in the future.
Additionally, through these posts, I have been able to evidence the ways that I have identified myself as a practitioner on the About Me page. The way that I have used unheard stories to create performances can be seen throughout all the work that I have showcased, particularly within the Catalogue Document attached to the page about the project Truth be Truth where we were told personal stories from Auschwitz Birkenau.
As a practitioner I ensure that any community or cast that I work with are always safeguarded, especially when making work which includes moments of intimacy. This is reflected in my portfolio page A Reflection on Intimacy within the Arts in which I have discussed the ways in which the workshop that I participated in has influenced my practice and facilitation. By including this reflection, in this level of detail, I have evidenced how important it is to me as a practitioner that I have had this training. The level of intimacy that has been included within performances that I have presented in this portfolio, has adhered to the Intimacy Directors International UK’s protocols.
A lot of the work that I have produced interlinks and through the ability to showcase these within this WordPress site I have been able to make the links for the reader visible by using hyper-links within the pages. Furthermore, my identity has been able to be further expressed by the ability to include my professional theatre Instagram account (the link accessible on the right side bar). This has allowed me to present my past and current work in an accessible manner which can both be seen by fellow theatre makers and potential audiences alike.
3.Drawing on evidence from your portfolio, what would you identify as the most significant moments of insights to your learning as a practitioner?
There have been many points of learning that have had an impact on me and my practice, however, there have been two that particularly stand out. The first moment was during the rehearsal process for Truth Be Truth where I learnt that it is important to understand the inner workings of the ensemble. As stated within the page of my portfolio, as well as on the attached Catalogue Document, as an ensemble we initially struggled to trust and work effectively with each other. I believe this to be because we were all expecting each other to behave in a certain way and to create work in a particular manner, because this then did not happen, the group started to divide.
Having had chance to reflect on this and then work with other ensemble groups post this performance, I have learnt that it is okay for groups to work in extremely different ways. By trying to force a group to work in a specific manner it is only going to push members, who do not work in this way, further away. I have found that there are ways to overcome it; by establishing a level of trust within the room and developing a common goal, the ensemble begins to work as one. I have put this into practice in both modules within University such as Make do and Mend as well as being the choreographer for YSJ MPS. The cast/ensemble understand that once you are in the rehearsal room, we are all equal, we are honest, there are no pre-determined expectations and we are in charge of our own bodies and minds. This has enabled rehearsals to be run in a calm environment where the cast are unified, all this learning has stemmed from the initial ‘dysfunctional family’ feeling within Truth be Truth.
The second significant moment of learning that has influenced me as a practitioner is the importance of creating a relatable character. Given that the work that I make tells stories of real events, the characters that are featured within them need to be believable within the event. Furthermore, because these stories are often of a historical nature there is a huge importance for the audience to be able to buy into their lives by making the characters relatable either through their storyline and/or their personality.
I first learnt that the relatability of a character is highly effective within the performance Dear Me… when the audience commented to both myself and Hannah how they saw aspects of themselves within our characters. We had found that because of this, audiences bought into the storyline and the comedy of the piece. Having learnt this, I put it into practice within Make do and Mend with the cast creating aspects of their own character. Because the cast members were so different they each chose attributes that both contrasted and complimented each other which in turn covered a variety of personality types that the audience could relate to. I have found that when actors put aspects of themselves into a character that they create, their engagement and sub-textual development is significantly stronger. This moment of learning was incredibly significant within my practice, through this I have been able to successfully draw in audiences through the use of strong, relatable characters.
4. What do you want to do next and how do you think your portfolio evidence and helps this ambition?
As stated within my About Me page on my portfolio, once I have finished University I am going to apply for a full time job that both allows to me interact and help the general public, as well as putting my drama training to use. This would be in a role such as the Guest Experience Assistant at Chester Zoo, a cover letter and CV are provided within this portfolio. Alongside this I aim to be running my own theatre company which will continue to develop the performance that featured as part of the Independent Practice as Research Project, ‘Make do and Mend’.
I discussed within my Video Pitch about my plans to apply for the National Lottery Project Grant to enable me to develop, and tour, this performance. Initially the performances would be set to tour women’s organisations such as the Women’s Institution and the Trefoil Guild. As of 2019 there were 6,300 WI groups in the UK which supports 220,000 members and this would mean that by performing to groups within the same postcode, I/we could reach a large audience within the local community. These performances would be charged at a small fee, the money would be used to both pay the cast as well as build on the bank of costumes and set.
As seen within the documentation of the project ‘Make do and Mend’ as well as my blog post about my role on the committee of York St John’s Musical Production Society, I have successfully dealt with challenges within the different stages of producing a show and having done this I am confident that I can do it again. I am at a significantly more developed point in the process now, having assembled a strong cast as well as having a clear direction for the show to move in. I would structure the touring show in the following manner: the audience would arrive to see the cast already interacting with the set; one of the characters would give a pre-show talk about the process of making the show and how we have dealt with the material; the 30-minute show would follow, and then post-show there would be a tea and cakes event where the cast and creative team would mingle and gather stories and material to develop the show further. Following this, we would then take the show into rehearsals once again to produce an hour show which would be able to tour larger theatrical venues.
The work that I make as a practitioner allows unheard stories to take their place on the stage, educating audiences through various means such as comedy and poignancy. I have produced work throughout my degree that has taught me the means to be able to create work in this manner, within productions such as Dear Me… and Truth be Truth. These two pieces of work are completely different in their styles; however, this evidences the way that different unheard stories can be told.
After I have taken this project to larger venues, I intend on starting a new production which is also based on historical events that have affected people of different ages, races and cultures. It is vital that the stories do not just focus on a specific group, I want to make work that is relatable to different communities. I will continue to tell the stories behind the stories.