Tuesday 21 July 2015
My Own Attempt at Verbatim
I notice little things about Claire's speech patterns each time I listen to or read parts of her interview, which I found really interesting. I started picking up on the way she talks; the rhythm of what was spoken; her accent; the verbal ticks she uses, so much so, that each time I re-listened to a certain sentence, I found that I was becoming more and more familiar with it and was almost able to join in, copying what she was saying and how she was saying it. This got me thinking, that maybe it wasn't as difficult as i'd imagined, I wanted to give it a go myself. So I picked out a few memorable lines from the interview and began repeating it a few seconds after the recording of her speaking. I continued to do this until I found I was able to say it at the same time. It took a considerable amount of practice to get it right but it wasn't as difficult as I first thought it would be. However, I cannot imagine being able to learn 2 hours and 10 minutes worth of speech with that much precision, some of which is set to music, AND have the pressure of performing in front of an audience. I really admire the cast for being able to retain that level of performance.
JOHN- DV8: Review
Lloyd Newson's DV8 physical theatre play, JOHN, showing at the National Theatre from the 30th October 2014 to the 13th January 2015, follows the incredible life of one man, John. Based on interviews from the drug use helpline, Frank, Lloyd Newson, DV8's Artistic Director, combined movement and verbatim spoken work to create a moving theatrical experience.The play follows themes of home abuse, compulsion, addiction, loneliness, HIV and sexuality. With all of this very deep and personal subject matter, you'd expect a rather bleak, depressing experience. However Newson's innovative take on the material, allowed you the emotion, yet, very cleverly, offered moments of much needed comic relief.
I asked a friend, who I went to see the play with, what he thought of it:
"It was a really great example of narrative interpretation. The minimalistic set complimented the abstract movements to really bring to life the humorous, yet dark life of John. I liked the matter of fact style depiction of Johns struggle with the stigma surrounding homosexuality, whilst trying to fulfill his own sexual urges in the 80s. All of this expertly communicated through incredibly creative, yet technically and physically challenging dance pieces really made full impact of ever nuance of the interview."
Why was going to see this play useful for my research?
Why was going to see this play useful for my research?
Press Reviews:
- "Engrossing, elegant. Astonishing physicality"- Time Out
- ''Lloyd Newson tells us John's story through interwined passages or verbatim speech and fluently choreographed movement"- Observer
- "Outstandingly effective and gripping dance theatre. A brilliant performance by Hannes Langolf"-Dagens Nyheter, Sweden
- "You can't leave this performance without being touched by John's life"- Deutschlandfunk, Germany
Recorded Delivery
ABOUT:
Recorded Delivery was founded in 2003 by Alecky Blythe. Having been inspired by Mark Wing Davy's teaching of the verbatim technique at his Drama Without Paper workshop, she quickly fell in love with the style and wrote and put on her first verbatim show, Come Out Eli, which she also performed in, herself. The play was about the Hackney siege and was presented the Time Out Live Awards Best Production on the Fringe in 2004. Having a successful experience with her first play, Alecky continued to experiment with and explore the verbatim technique, finding new ways of approaching material and performance.
PAST PRODUCTIONS:
COME OUT ELI
Come Out Eli was a play following the residents of Hackney during the longest siege in British history. The event brought a the community together, regardless of the difference in background, race, age or culture of the people, and they were united with the phrase 'Come out Eli'.
Two of the people who had characters made of them in the play expressed their views on the show:
"We thought Recorded Delivery's portrayal of us was brilliant. It was authentic and caught the immediacy and spontaneity perfectly. We thoroughly enjoyed watching is and were able to laugh at ourselves."
STRAWBERRY FIELDS
The stage drama Strawberry fields in 2005 raised political issues surrounding the use of migrant labour on industrial scale strawberry farms. The script was constructed by first hand testimonies from various people effected by the topic.
THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE
The Girlfriend Experience is a comedic, yet eye-opening play about prostitutes working in a brothel. The show reveals the opposite to the stereotyped lables most people
DO WE LOOK LIKE REFUGEES?
Do We Look Like Refugees?
LONDON ROAD
London Road
Recorded Delivery was founded in 2003 by Alecky Blythe. Having been inspired by Mark Wing Davy's teaching of the verbatim technique at his Drama Without Paper workshop, she quickly fell in love with the style and wrote and put on her first verbatim show, Come Out Eli, which she also performed in, herself. The play was about the Hackney siege and was presented the Time Out Live Awards Best Production on the Fringe in 2004. Having a successful experience with her first play, Alecky continued to experiment with and explore the verbatim technique, finding new ways of approaching material and performance.
PAST PRODUCTIONS:
COME OUT ELI
Come Out Eli was a play following the residents of Hackney during the longest siege in British history. The event brought a the community together, regardless of the difference in background, race, age or culture of the people, and they were united with the phrase 'Come out Eli'.
Two of the people who had characters made of them in the play expressed their views on the show:
"We thought Recorded Delivery's portrayal of us was brilliant. It was authentic and caught the immediacy and spontaneity perfectly. We thoroughly enjoyed watching is and were able to laugh at ourselves."
STRAWBERRY FIELDS
The stage drama Strawberry fields in 2005 raised political issues surrounding the use of migrant labour on industrial scale strawberry farms. The script was constructed by first hand testimonies from various people effected by the topic.
THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE
The Girlfriend Experience is a comedic, yet eye-opening play about prostitutes working in a brothel. The show reveals the opposite to the stereotyped lables most people
DO WE LOOK LIKE REFUGEES?
Do We Look Like Refugees?
LONDON ROAD
London Road
Resource Log
VERBATIM THEATRE:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verbatim_theatre
The playwright interviews people that are connected to the topic that the play is focused on and uses their testimony to construct the piece. In this way they seek to achieve a degree of authority akin to that represented by the news. Such plays may be focused on politics, disasters or even sporting events.
LONDON ROAD
http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/shows/london-road?play=3
-This video was incredibly insightful into the way the writer, composer and director, devised the show. It gave me a chance to hear their actual reasons for making the musical, how it was done, and the struggles and obstacles that faced along the way, which was incredibly helpful.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3573598/
-I only used this website for information on when the feature film of London Road is coming out in cinemas.
http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/shows/london-road?play=2
http://oxfordstudent.com/2014/10/16/interview-alecky-blythe-im-interested-in-ordinary-people-in-extraordinary-situations/
-I didn't use any information from this interview, as such, however, it was a good interesting read helped me to understand Aleckey's method in more depth.
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/features/adam-cork-the-man-behind-theatrelands-oddest-musical-7973254.html
Does he regret the outcry that initially greeted London Road? "The problem with the word 'musical' is that it's so loaded with implications of dancing, spectacle and fun. Some people, quite rightly, found the notion of making entertainment out of what had happened disgusting," he says. "We didn't want to be seen as doing it for sensational reasons or as doing the Chris Morris thing of indulging in extreme bad taste in order to mock it."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verbatim_theatre
The playwright interviews people that are connected to the topic that the play is focused on and uses their testimony to construct the piece. In this way they seek to achieve a degree of authority akin to that represented by the news. Such plays may be focused on politics, disasters or even sporting events.
-Because I already knew quite a lot about verbatim theatre as a whole, and what it is, I didn't feel I needed to use much information from this website for a definition. However, it was useful for refreshing my mind and it confirmed my thought.
-This video was very interesting and contributed hugely to my research on the verbatim style. It was very helpful because it gave me multiple practitioners' opinions on the topic and information on how they approach a verbatim show.
LONDON ROAD
http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/shows/london-road?play=3
-This video was incredibly insightful into the way the writer, composer and director, devised the show. It gave me a chance to hear their actual reasons for making the musical, how it was done, and the struggles and obstacles that faced along the way, which was incredibly helpful.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3573598/
-I only used this website for information on when the feature film of London Road is coming out in cinemas.
http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/shows/london-road?play=2
-It was interesting to hear some other people's reviews on the show, however, because it was a promotional video for the musical, it only showed good reviews to draw people in and persuade them to buy tickets. Theatre is a very opinionated industry, meaning there must have been some negative thoughts of the play, however, this video was very one sided, on the positive side.
http://oxfordstudent.com/2014/10/16/interview-alecky-blythe-im-interested-in-ordinary-people-in-extraordinary-situations/
-I didn't use any information from this interview, as such, however, it was a good interesting read helped me to understand Aleckey's method in more depth.
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/features/adam-cork-the-man-behind-theatrelands-oddest-musical-7973254.html
Does he regret the outcry that initially greeted London Road? "The problem with the word 'musical' is that it's so loaded with implications of dancing, spectacle and fun. Some people, quite rightly, found the notion of making entertainment out of what had happened disgusting," he says. "We didn't want to be seen as doing it for sensational reasons or as doing the Chris Morris thing of indulging in extreme bad taste in order to mock it."
-It was useful to get a quote from Adam Cork about London Road, and was interesting to read about some of the concerns they had about the musical.
https://soundcloud.com/nationaltheatre/london-road-platform
-This audio recording of an interview with Aleckey Blythe, Adam Cork and Rufus Norris was extremely helpful and informative on the subject of verbatim theatre and London Road.
JOHN:
http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/shows/john
-I only used this website to find out what dates the play was running from and until. This information was clear and easy to find.
-My only other research source for information on John, was going to see the actual show itself. This was obviously the best kind of research you can do on a play, and was very insightful into verbatim theatre.
RECORDED DELIVERY:
http://www.recordeddelivery.net/about.html
In 2003 Alecky Blythe founded Recorded Delivery and created her debut show Come Out Eli. She had been inspired to make it having learnt the verbatim technique from Mark Wing Davey in his innovative workshop Drama Without Paper. The show premiered at the Arcola winning the Time Out Award for Best Production on the Fringe and later transferred to the BAC for the Critics Choice Season.
After its success, she has continued to explore the verbatim method in various mediums. The term 'recorded delivery' has now become synonymous with the verbatim technique she employs.
-This information was very useful for my research into Recorded Delivery. It was a useful source of information for finding out the background information on the theatre company and how it started up.
http://www.recordeddelivery.net/come_out_eli.html
http://www.recordeddelivery.net/strawberry_fields.html
-I used this information in my research on past productions from Record Delivery. I found this information helpful for giving me an over view of this specific play, and explaining the synopsis. It was also helpful as it gave me a cast list so I didn't have to search elsewhere for this piece of information.
-Again I used this information for my research into past productions from Recorded Delivery. This synopsis of The Girlfriend Experience was very helpful for my research as it gave me a clear understanding of what the play was about and who was involved.
https://soundcloud.com/nationaltheatre/london-road-platform
-This audio recording of an interview with Aleckey Blythe, Adam Cork and Rufus Norris was extremely helpful and informative on the subject of verbatim theatre and London Road.
JOHN:
http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/shows/john
-I only used this website to find out what dates the play was running from and until. This information was clear and easy to find.
-My only other research source for information on John, was going to see the actual show itself. This was obviously the best kind of research you can do on a play, and was very insightful into verbatim theatre.
RECORDED DELIVERY:
http://www.recordeddelivery.net/about.html
In 2003 Alecky Blythe founded Recorded Delivery and created her debut show Come Out Eli. She had been inspired to make it having learnt the verbatim technique from Mark Wing Davey in his innovative workshop Drama Without Paper. The show premiered at the Arcola winning the Time Out Award for Best Production on the Fringe and later transferred to the BAC for the Critics Choice Season.
After its success, she has continued to explore the verbatim method in various mediums. The term 'recorded delivery' has now become synonymous with the verbatim technique she employs.
-This information was very useful for my research into Recorded Delivery. It was a useful source of information for finding out the background information on the theatre company and how it started up.
http://www.recordeddelivery.net/come_out_eli.html
http://www.recordeddelivery.net/strawberry_fields.html
-I used this information in my research on past productions from Record Delivery. I found this information helpful for giving me an over view of this specific play, and explaining the synopsis. It was also helpful as it gave me a cast list so I didn't have to search elsewhere for this piece of information.
-Again I used this information for my research into past productions from Recorded Delivery. This synopsis of The Girlfriend Experience was very helpful for my research as it gave me a clear understanding of what the play was about and who was involved.
Thursday 7 May 2015
Timeline
WEEK 1:
During week one, I plan to investigate into verbatim theatre as a whole, finding out about the practitioners who use the technique, and how they approach it. I want to find out why writers decide to create verbatim performances and how they come to the decision of what topic or event to focus on. It would be interesting to find out how the actors rehearse a verbatim performance, because I hope to go into acting after school, and would be very interested in being involved in a verbatim show. Therefore it is important for me to find out about the performers, to give me an insight into the rehearsal and performance technique. I also plan to refine my definition of of the style of theatre.
I will try to find this information using interviews on youtube and internet blogs. I will also, try to find some informative books in the library.
WEEK 2:
On week two, I will write a short review on a verbatim play I went to see recently, called John, by the theatre company DV8. I will need to do this on week 2 because it will still be fresh in my mind, where as, if I write it a few weeks down the line, my memory of it will be faded. I will also ask my friend, who came to see the show with me, what he thought of it; it is important for my research to have a second opinion, as it enables me to think of new ideas about the play that I perhaps hadn't thought of before. I will then try to find some other, short public reviews on the play, to improve my understanding of the play and further my own opinions. Obviously, most of this information will be from my own mind and recollection of the play. I will find out what my friends's view of the play were, by word of mouth, and the public reviews I will look for on the internet, using youtube videos and perhaps blogs.
WEEK 3:
During this week, I hope to research into a verbatim musical called London Road, which I went to see a few years ago and thoroughly enjoyed. The show was incredible and i'd love to find out more about the creators and how they came up with the idea. I would also like to find out what issues or problems they had to face in the creative process, as the devising of verbatim theatre is something that really interests me. I will look for this information on the internet, on the national theatre official website and hopefully i will find some interviews with the writers and directors.
WEEK 4:
In this week, I hope to find out more about how the music director for London Road composed the music for the show. I want to find this out because the music for this particular show was incredibly unique and I've never heard of anything like it before. I think that it must have been very difficult to translate the verbatim speech into music and it is something that I find deeply interesting. Again, I hope to find an interview with the music director for the musical to find out some reliable, first hand information.
WEEK 5:
On week 4, I plan to find other people's reviews on London Road, including public reviews and press reviews. It's important for me to get a number of different opinions to mine, to expand my horizans and open my mind to new ideas that other people thought of. Press reviews are interesting because usually, the people writing them are professional critics and know what they are talking about; they can comment on the style in much more detail than someone who doesn't know much about verbatim. This will greater my understanding of the show as a whole, and the verbatim technique. I will look for this information on the national theatre's official website and on online blogs and newspapers like the Evening Standard etc...
WEEK 6:
I would like to find out some information on Recorded Delivery, which was the theatre company who put on London Road. I would be interested in finding out about their previous productions and how they went down with their audiences, because it will give me an incite into how verbatim has previously been received and how it is received now. This information will hopefully be sourced on Recorded Delivery's official website, and I might look for blog reviews on their past plays.
WEEK 7:
This is the week when I will arrange an over-the-phone interview with Claire Moore who was an original cast member of London Road's stage production. I'm excited to hear about what she has to say about her personal experience with being a performer in a verbatim show, because I hope to, some day, be involved in one too, so It will give me an incite into what the experience is like. I Want to ask her about the rehearsal and audition process because verbatim theatre is ver unconventional and new so I don't know much about these things.
WEEK 8:
Because I will be recording the interview with Clair Moore, I plan to attempt a bit of my own verbatim using the recordings of Claire's voice. This will be a very perceptive experience because it will give me a chance to have a go at the technique for myself and find out how difficult or easy it is.
During week one, I plan to investigate into verbatim theatre as a whole, finding out about the practitioners who use the technique, and how they approach it. I want to find out why writers decide to create verbatim performances and how they come to the decision of what topic or event to focus on. It would be interesting to find out how the actors rehearse a verbatim performance, because I hope to go into acting after school, and would be very interested in being involved in a verbatim show. Therefore it is important for me to find out about the performers, to give me an insight into the rehearsal and performance technique. I also plan to refine my definition of of the style of theatre.
I will try to find this information using interviews on youtube and internet blogs. I will also, try to find some informative books in the library.
WEEK 2:
On week two, I will write a short review on a verbatim play I went to see recently, called John, by the theatre company DV8. I will need to do this on week 2 because it will still be fresh in my mind, where as, if I write it a few weeks down the line, my memory of it will be faded. I will also ask my friend, who came to see the show with me, what he thought of it; it is important for my research to have a second opinion, as it enables me to think of new ideas about the play that I perhaps hadn't thought of before. I will then try to find some other, short public reviews on the play, to improve my understanding of the play and further my own opinions. Obviously, most of this information will be from my own mind and recollection of the play. I will find out what my friends's view of the play were, by word of mouth, and the public reviews I will look for on the internet, using youtube videos and perhaps blogs.
WEEK 3:
During this week, I hope to research into a verbatim musical called London Road, which I went to see a few years ago and thoroughly enjoyed. The show was incredible and i'd love to find out more about the creators and how they came up with the idea. I would also like to find out what issues or problems they had to face in the creative process, as the devising of verbatim theatre is something that really interests me. I will look for this information on the internet, on the national theatre official website and hopefully i will find some interviews with the writers and directors.
WEEK 4:
In this week, I hope to find out more about how the music director for London Road composed the music for the show. I want to find this out because the music for this particular show was incredibly unique and I've never heard of anything like it before. I think that it must have been very difficult to translate the verbatim speech into music and it is something that I find deeply interesting. Again, I hope to find an interview with the music director for the musical to find out some reliable, first hand information.
WEEK 5:
On week 4, I plan to find other people's reviews on London Road, including public reviews and press reviews. It's important for me to get a number of different opinions to mine, to expand my horizans and open my mind to new ideas that other people thought of. Press reviews are interesting because usually, the people writing them are professional critics and know what they are talking about; they can comment on the style in much more detail than someone who doesn't know much about verbatim. This will greater my understanding of the show as a whole, and the verbatim technique. I will look for this information on the national theatre's official website and on online blogs and newspapers like the Evening Standard etc...
WEEK 6:
I would like to find out some information on Recorded Delivery, which was the theatre company who put on London Road. I would be interested in finding out about their previous productions and how they went down with their audiences, because it will give me an incite into how verbatim has previously been received and how it is received now. This information will hopefully be sourced on Recorded Delivery's official website, and I might look for blog reviews on their past plays.
WEEK 7:
This is the week when I will arrange an over-the-phone interview with Claire Moore who was an original cast member of London Road's stage production. I'm excited to hear about what she has to say about her personal experience with being a performer in a verbatim show, because I hope to, some day, be involved in one too, so It will give me an incite into what the experience is like. I Want to ask her about the rehearsal and audition process because verbatim theatre is ver unconventional and new so I don't know much about these things.
WEEK 8:
Because I will be recording the interview with Clair Moore, I plan to attempt a bit of my own verbatim using the recordings of Claire's voice. This will be a very perceptive experience because it will give me a chance to have a go at the technique for myself and find out how difficult or easy it is.
Verbatim Theatre
DEFINITION: Verbatim theatre is a style of documentary theatre, composed of the exact words spoken by people interviewed about a certain topic or event. It is theatre created from interviews collected with real life people about an event or subject. Those real life people are then portrayed on the stage, by actors.
The playwright will usually talk to people who are effected by or connected to the subject matter of the play, creating audio recordings of the interviews as they go along. The writer will then use these testimonies to construct a piece of theatre about the chosen topic. The recordings used by the actors to create the most believable characterization possible; they copy, not only what the person has said, but also, how they have said it with coughs and stutters and all the 'imperfections' left in. This helps the portrayal of the character feel much stronger. During reheasals, the actors will listen to the recordings and repeat exactly what they hear, a few seconds after they hear it. They will repeat this technique until they have become completely familiar with the speech. In the performance, the actors will, generally, wear earpieces or headphones, and will be listening to the recordings as they perform, to ensure they keep as true to the original speech and do not fall into their own speech patterns.
If you write from your imagination, then you are writing from your own recolection of people's way of life. Whereas, with verbatim theatre, if you go out and collect evidence about peoples way of life, things are revealed to you which are completely extraordinary and unexpected.
Because verbatim as about the spoken word, it can become quite dull for an audience to just watch people talking for an hour or so, which is the reason why it is necessary for verbatim practitioners to be very creative with the way they are presenting the information and the characters on stage. The question 'how are we going to bring this to life in an interesting way' is often a question asked by writers and directors. This is either done by incorporating dance, or music or complex staging.
The playwright will usually talk to people who are effected by or connected to the subject matter of the play, creating audio recordings of the interviews as they go along. The writer will then use these testimonies to construct a piece of theatre about the chosen topic. The recordings used by the actors to create the most believable characterization possible; they copy, not only what the person has said, but also, how they have said it with coughs and stutters and all the 'imperfections' left in. This helps the portrayal of the character feel much stronger. During reheasals, the actors will listen to the recordings and repeat exactly what they hear, a few seconds after they hear it. They will repeat this technique until they have become completely familiar with the speech. In the performance, the actors will, generally, wear earpieces or headphones, and will be listening to the recordings as they perform, to ensure they keep as true to the original speech and do not fall into their own speech patterns.
If you write from your imagination, then you are writing from your own recolection of people's way of life. Whereas, with verbatim theatre, if you go out and collect evidence about peoples way of life, things are revealed to you which are completely extraordinary and unexpected.
Because verbatim as about the spoken word, it can become quite dull for an audience to just watch people talking for an hour or so, which is the reason why it is necessary for verbatim practitioners to be very creative with the way they are presenting the information and the characters on stage. The question 'how are we going to bring this to life in an interesting way' is often a question asked by writers and directors. This is either done by incorporating dance, or music or complex staging.
Wednesday 6 May 2015
London Road- Reviews
Public Reviews:
- "Everyone who's seen it has said such good things, so I was like, I've got to, I've to to be a part of this, I've got to see what everyone's talking about. The music is so surprising and it adds such an incredible layer that you just, you're not expecting."
- "It's so inventive. It's like nothing you'll ever see again. It's one of those pieces of musicals I've heard about, you've got to go and see it, because it kind of breaks the floor, and we're going I get that, I get that now. It is beautiful"
- "It is something new. Absolutely new. I've never seen anything like this before."
- "It was a very powerful show, um, and respectful of the events"
- "I wasn't sure how they were going to deal with the subject matter. And I wasn't really sure how it was going to translate very well into a musical to be honest, but exceeded all expectations."
Press Reviews:
- "A quietly stunning achievement"- Sunday Times
- "Captivating... a startling, magically original success"- Evening Standard
- "Extraordinary... an astonishingly daring and original piece of theatre"- Financial Times
- "One of the most exciting experimental pieces the National has ever presented"- Independent
- "Excitingly innovative... don't miss"- Independent on Sunday
- "Glaringly original... a quietly revolutionary night of theatre"- Metro
- "This is something very new for the musical form... Raw humanity capture in music"- Time Out
London Road- The Creative Process
ABOUT THE SHOW:
London Road is a verbatim musical which documents the events of a shattered community in Ipswich by the discovery of 5 women's bodies in 2006. Soliciting had been a struggle on their streets for the residents of London Road for years. The show focuses on the residents of the street, rather than the victims or suspects close the the crime itself, and highlights how they managed to create a supporting community, where there had originally been none. The London Road in Bloom Competition was a way for them to come together after the awful events that had occurred and create something joyous, by working hard on their gardens. The show won Best Musical at the Critics' Circle Awards, was awarded 5-star reviews from multiple papers and magazines and has been adapted into a feature film which will premier in June 2015.
WRITING:
The writer, Alecky Blythe, set up her verbatim theatre company, Recorded Delivery, in 2003, and has been writing verbatim plays for many years. She was working on a play for the Royal Court called The Girlfriend Experience which was set in a working brothel. At the time of the murders on London Road, the girls working in the brothel explained how business was lacking because every customer would have been a suspect for the killings. Although what was happening in Ipswich was dealing with a different level of prostitution, Alecky was led by curiosity to discover anything she could about what was happening there, that she could then lead back to her current project, The Girlfriend Experience. However, when she started uncovering the extraordinary situations of the people living on London Road, Alecky realized that it had nothing to do with her current play, but was a completely different subject matter all together. So she kept all the information she had gathered and later went on to find out more and write London Road. She works in a rather precise way, entering communities, recording interviews with people and following a story. In the past, during rehearsals and in performances, the actors have listened to these recordings and copied exactly what they heared. The actors in her productions are not just copying what the interviewees have said, but also accent, intonation, coughs and stutters with incredible detail. It is common that in verbatim performances, the actors will have ear pieces in and will be listening to the recording at the same time as they perform, which is done to stop them from falling into their own speech patterns. However, London Road, being a the first ever verbatim musical, set out to abolish this trend as it would have been too much of a struggle to set it to music. Adam Cork, who wrote the music, believes that there is an issue with the word 'musical', as it has many implications of dancing, extravagance and amusement. Therefore, some people find the notion of using issues, much like those raised in London Road, as a means of entertainment, quite rightly, disgusting and unjust. For this reason, himself, Alecky Blythe and Rufus Norris, the director, had to be very careful to ensure they presented the matter respectfully and tastefully.
MUSIC:
Adam Cork, the music director for London Road, had the difficult, yet exciting task to translate the recorded speech into something musical. Cork explained to the Independent that he "wanted every line in every song to have the quality of a memorable tune" and "it to embed itself in the brain, almost like a commercial show-tune." This was done as a successful attempt to give the residents on London Road a voice and highlight the importance of what they had said. The composing of the music was an incredible challenge as Adam Cork had to follow the natural speech patterns and tone of the interviewees. If you listen to someone talking and your own speech, you'll notice how your voice naturally changes in pitch. This is what Cork had to translate into a melody, also notating each cough and stutter into the music. You can hear the way the person must have been talking in the way the actors are singing. The tone of voice can be, at times, very regimented, as though the character is trying to find the right way of saying what they're thinking, which is what gives the melody a very speech-like quality.
Listen to these two songs 'London Road in Bloom' and 'Everyone is Very, Very Nervous':
What resulted from composing London Road's music, was that Adam was forced into using his whole imagination to create something that would work musically. He experimented a lot with ideas and techniques in the first week of production, refining his way of tackling it. Adam started off by simplifying it down to where there was very little melody, setting the material as it presented itself, without imposing any repetition, and restricting himself by not allowing himself to change any of the notes of the speech. He discovered that this was not the most effective way of composing something intriguing and powerful, and therefore allowed himself some freedom with the material he was given. Adam did, however, stay very close the the natural rhythm of the speaker's voice, ensuring not to alter that or stray from it. He also retained the 'up and the down' of what was being spoken, although, he would allow himself to change the notes in the speech slightly to fit the harmonic material which made the most sense in the context of the song. This freedom he gave himself enabled him to create choruses and verses with the material.
London Road is a verbatim musical which documents the events of a shattered community in Ipswich by the discovery of 5 women's bodies in 2006. Soliciting had been a struggle on their streets for the residents of London Road for years. The show focuses on the residents of the street, rather than the victims or suspects close the the crime itself, and highlights how they managed to create a supporting community, where there had originally been none. The London Road in Bloom Competition was a way for them to come together after the awful events that had occurred and create something joyous, by working hard on their gardens. The show won Best Musical at the Critics' Circle Awards, was awarded 5-star reviews from multiple papers and magazines and has been adapted into a feature film which will premier in June 2015.
WRITING:
The writer, Alecky Blythe, set up her verbatim theatre company, Recorded Delivery, in 2003, and has been writing verbatim plays for many years. She was working on a play for the Royal Court called The Girlfriend Experience which was set in a working brothel. At the time of the murders on London Road, the girls working in the brothel explained how business was lacking because every customer would have been a suspect for the killings. Although what was happening in Ipswich was dealing with a different level of prostitution, Alecky was led by curiosity to discover anything she could about what was happening there, that she could then lead back to her current project, The Girlfriend Experience. However, when she started uncovering the extraordinary situations of the people living on London Road, Alecky realized that it had nothing to do with her current play, but was a completely different subject matter all together. So she kept all the information she had gathered and later went on to find out more and write London Road. She works in a rather precise way, entering communities, recording interviews with people and following a story. In the past, during rehearsals and in performances, the actors have listened to these recordings and copied exactly what they heared. The actors in her productions are not just copying what the interviewees have said, but also accent, intonation, coughs and stutters with incredible detail. It is common that in verbatim performances, the actors will have ear pieces in and will be listening to the recording at the same time as they perform, which is done to stop them from falling into their own speech patterns. However, London Road, being a the first ever verbatim musical, set out to abolish this trend as it would have been too much of a struggle to set it to music. Adam Cork, who wrote the music, believes that there is an issue with the word 'musical', as it has many implications of dancing, extravagance and amusement. Therefore, some people find the notion of using issues, much like those raised in London Road, as a means of entertainment, quite rightly, disgusting and unjust. For this reason, himself, Alecky Blythe and Rufus Norris, the director, had to be very careful to ensure they presented the matter respectfully and tastefully.
MUSIC:
Adam Cork, the music director for London Road, had the difficult, yet exciting task to translate the recorded speech into something musical. Cork explained to the Independent that he "wanted every line in every song to have the quality of a memorable tune" and "it to embed itself in the brain, almost like a commercial show-tune." This was done as a successful attempt to give the residents on London Road a voice and highlight the importance of what they had said. The composing of the music was an incredible challenge as Adam Cork had to follow the natural speech patterns and tone of the interviewees. If you listen to someone talking and your own speech, you'll notice how your voice naturally changes in pitch. This is what Cork had to translate into a melody, also notating each cough and stutter into the music. You can hear the way the person must have been talking in the way the actors are singing. The tone of voice can be, at times, very regimented, as though the character is trying to find the right way of saying what they're thinking, which is what gives the melody a very speech-like quality.
Listen to these two songs 'London Road in Bloom' and 'Everyone is Very, Very Nervous':
- Notice how on the line 'I've got a couple of um... baskets' at 51 seconds into the song, the melodic line lowers in pitch on 'baskets'. This is interesting as it follows the way people naturally move down in pitch towards the end of a sentence.
- At 1:52 in the song, the change in pitch of the character's laugh is incorporated and notated into the melody. It's fascinating how something like that can sound so natural in a song, yet really stands out and brings you back to the reality that what you are listening to are the exact words of a real person.
- At 1:24 on this song the policewoman is singing. By the way her voice goes up in at the end of a phrase, you can hear and compare this to the tendencies of Police men and women's speech patterns, and how they are stereotypically known to talk.
- At the end of the song, Adam Cork has highlighted the pitch of a police siren in the way the performers sing the word 'very', which builds it up to a dramatic climax and creates a tense atmosphere, reflecting what is being discussed in the lyrics 'everyone is very, very nervous'.
What resulted from composing London Road's music, was that Adam was forced into using his whole imagination to create something that would work musically. He experimented a lot with ideas and techniques in the first week of production, refining his way of tackling it. Adam started off by simplifying it down to where there was very little melody, setting the material as it presented itself, without imposing any repetition, and restricting himself by not allowing himself to change any of the notes of the speech. He discovered that this was not the most effective way of composing something intriguing and powerful, and therefore allowed himself some freedom with the material he was given. Adam did, however, stay very close the the natural rhythm of the speaker's voice, ensuring not to alter that or stray from it. He also retained the 'up and the down' of what was being spoken, although, he would allow himself to change the notes in the speech slightly to fit the harmonic material which made the most sense in the context of the song. This freedom he gave himself enabled him to create choruses and verses with the material.
Sunday 3 May 2015
Interview on London Road- Claire Moore
Claire Moore was a performer in the verbatim musical London Road. She played several characters in the the original cast including Carol who she went on to play in the film production, premiering in June this year. I wanted to find out about her personal experience of performing in a verbatim show, especially because of the discoveries London Road revealed in verbatim performance, being the first ever verbatim musical. In true verbatim form, I have transcribed the interview word for word and left in all the stutters.
I'm interested in hearing what the auditions were like, because obviously, with verbatim, you can't just do your own thing. Can you tell me a bit about that?
"So that, um, everybody was asked to bring a simple song that wasn't showy at all, you know, because, none of us would take anything remotely appropriate because nobody knew what it was, and nothing in the world was remotely appropriate for London road, so I took a song, 'The water is wide', which is a sort of folk song, um and sand that, very simply. And then, the audition, um firstly, um, we sang our own song, and then we were given a sort of little iPod, mini disk player and some headphones to go off and have a practice of what we had to do was to listen to the recorded bits of speech that were put in the play and um, and then go off and have a little go at doing it. So we had a little practice with Alecky Blythe, who's the writer um the dialogue writer. Ur, this the and the dialogue audition, Adam Cork, the music director, he wasn't there, um and we had to, and you hear it, it's a really bizarre thing. Basically, if you hear something, you don't interpret it at all, you just repeat what you hear, but you can't, you're not allowed to memorize it so um, you're hearing it. You're sort of a second or two seconds after you've heard it. And what I didn't know was so, then we off we went and had a little practice and then came back which was bonkers and tried to do it, and I really enjoyed it. And um, what we found out afterwards was that anybody who made anything up, didn't go throughout to the next round. They tried to get themselves out of trouble by making something up and they didn't go through, whereas if I didn't get it right, or anybody else, I didn't really know, what their's was , but I just wen't 'i'm really sorry I didn't hear what that was' and um, so that's how we auditioned for the dialogue bit. It was really enjoyable. And then, um, I was given some music from the show um, then the composer, Adam Cork came in for the next audition, so we were sent away with a little bit about two pages worth, that's all and they said, learn a small amount correctly rather than u, trying to sort of wing it, so it was all about the precision of it really. And I, I'm a really good reader of music and I looked at that and thought, oh my god it made no sense. The sense of rhythm just looked so difficult. but actually once you hear how adam has written the music to rhythm, the um, the speech patterns and the, and and the um, I suppose the inflection really, he notated to match what he heard. Once you kind of realised that it started to make sense, but it was so difficult because every single syllable was notated. Not one single bit was guessed or improvised or anything. So the whole thing was an incredibly precise excersize, and yet sounded totally spontaneous. But the difference in the show, i think to any other play, certainly that Alecky's done with the technique that she uses, is that for the first time in performance we didn't use the ear pieces and the urm recordings, we had to learn everything, which is not the way it's done normally. Ordinarily, even in the performances, the performers go on with their um headphones and their machine. And that was decided it was impossible really because the music, you couldn't have done the music you see. It was hard enough to do it on the beat you were meant to. And so it was decided that it was not going to work and that we had to learn it but we used the recording techneque all the way through reheardals and no matter how we learnt it, we were constantly refering back. And Alecky uses this thing called a spectagraph. It's a bit like, you know when you record stuff on um logic or sybalious, You see the sound wave. Well it's a bit like that but for speech. And, and so, when we'd rehearse with her, we'd be saying our speeches and she'd be watching the spectograph and our speaches, um and our dialogue would be sort of on a seperate track and she's match it. So I mean it was absolutely crazy really. You get as close as we could with the, so the inflection, the um the absolute timing of the phrase, everything about it. I mean it was a brilliant thing to do. Terrifying and and wonderful all at the same time, and so, ordinarilly, they don't learn their lines because they have to remain acurate to the recordings the orriginal recordings, and they're not allowed to interpret anything or flick into their own spech patterns, and we were the same but we had to learn it. But that sets it apart from any other piecce of um, that kind of verbatim. Often, and regard to adam, I mean if you could hear the dialogue that was then notated you'd realise how astounding his you know um, well there is the bit on the soundtrack , the protitutes, the um 'we've all stopped now' and you um, you you hear a bit of that dialogue but generally speaking those bits aren't, aren't on, but that's what we had to do, so it was an, it's terrifying bit of learning to do. We learnt the last 8 bars of the hardest song in the show."
What were the rehearsals like?
"The reheasals were brilliant, absolutely brilliant, but um, all the way through, and bareing in mind we're at the National Theatre with Adam who was absolutely brilliant and everyone there, the director, um diddn't know if this work was able to be done. We didn't know if it was going to be able to be learnt, um because it had never been done before, and Alecky didn't know how to advise us to learn it because it had never been done before. So we had um a meeting about how best to learn it and it was decided that we would learn the proper script, sort of away from the recordings but constantly refer back to the recordings , and then when we were familiar with it um we'd abandon the recordings. But in the rehearsals we went from being a second behind to then trying to absolutely mirror it and say it exactly the same time which was, had not been done before either . That was to sort of see if we were starting to know it. So um, you there was one point when um the director Rufus Norris who was now runs the national theatre, um said look, stop worrying about it, if it can't be learnt we'll find a way of incorporating music stands on the stage. We'll make it work. We had no idea, it was a totally new type of theatre completely experimental, and all we wanted to do as a company, was to try and learn it and do the best we could for alecky and Adam. You know, to make the work the best it could be. We had no idea what, how it was going to be recieved. We just wanted to get from a to z you know. So it was a very ensamble um company, right from the word go and that included the composer, the writer, um the director, the choreographer, because nobody had ever done anything like that before so it was an absolute fist for everybody, which made it so special."
How long to it take to perfect your characterization?
"The characterization is funally enough, came, came quite quickly, it's amazing what you can learn just by using your ears and um we had a couple of photographs to see what our characters loked like. Um, but not really very much. the the chap who played my husband and I ur, we saw one photograph of our two characters holding hand um during the judging of the competition at the end. And we used that as a basis um for out relationship really. But it seemed like it just some of what was said and how it was said, they were a very loving couple. Infact, they haddn't been together all that long um so they werew still very lovy dovy. And howard and I used to sit on our sofa in a particular way and all we'd always be sortof quite touchy feely. And when we met our real people who, because they all cam eto see the show, and um when we met them it was really funny because June, who was the charactwer I played, one of the characters I played, said to me 'we sit on the sofa exactly like that. How did you know, how did you know to sit on the sofa like that?' So really bizar. And I sort of thought I think I thought she'd wear a pearlized nail varnish, and she did wear a pearlized nail varnish. I think, it it was really bizzar. You you'd hear things in the voice anf they were just amazed of cource that hearing what theyd said, said so accuratly and saying what they'd said set to music and it still sounded like them. So that was a real um sort of high praise indeed, you know."
So you only got to meet them at then end? You didn't get to meet them before?
"We met them half, we didn't get to meet them in rehearsal at all but we met them at the end. During the run rather, they came both to cotteslow and the olivie and they were also in the film. All of them, Ruffus Norris, brought everyone, all the london road people or had been involved, had their characters used in the play. They're all in the party scene at the end, as extras. So we had a whole day with them at the party. So that was absolutely brilliant. Loved that, so yeah that was that was quite incredible and they all really joined in. They really lovedthe project because they felt that it gave them a voice, you know, that they had lived on this street where all these awful things had happened, and um, just ordinarry people and the invasion of the media and and what this dreadful man had done, just made their lives just, it was just even worse. And they did something really remarkable. To create a community where the, where there had been none. And um, and they still do their, london road in bloom competition. Um so yeah that's still an annual event."
Which was your favourite character to play in London Road?
"My favourite character, oh thats a tough one, because we all played about oh a dozen different people I loved June, who was my proper Ipswitch Lady, but I absolutely adored my character Carol at the end who, the welsh lady who gave out the prizes. She's the councler, and that's the role I play in the film. And so I loved her. She was kind of, she comes in at the end and it's all, it's all about the joy of it, so I loved playiing her. And also because I had a really fantastic and tricky solo in the sort of speech of giving out the prizes, which was a real challenge, so I absolutely adored Carol. She was my favourite, really. But June, oh I don't know it's hard. She has to be my favourite because I played her in the film, but June was very special."
Do you know anything about the devising of the show? How did the writer and director take it from just interviews to a full piece of theatre?
"Yeah well its Aleky who does that, she gets all of the matterial. Oh god there's thousands and thousands and thousands of bits of recording. I have no idea how she collates it all. All I can imagine is that she must have folders of Terry, June, Julie, all the characters and they'll all be dated, because in the film, Ruffus had suddenly said we need a line here, and of course you can't just make it up, so she delved through all of her stuff and came up with something. But she is the lady, she did all the interviews and then she did all the editing to make it into the play, to get that kind of coherant line through it. And during rehearsals it changed, you know quite a bit, but the basic story and the basic journey for want of a better word, through the story was there and although it changed during rehearsals and orders were changed round and um lots of lines were taken away and some lines were put in. Aleky Blythe who constructed the whole thing, and she and Adam Cork didn';t know eachother at all they met, um, they both went along to some kind of workshop at the national theatre studio um because they try and develope new writing . And so they all got in this room, apparently, and Alecky and Adam went and paired up because she had a tape recorder and he had some other type of technical equipment. so they went 'oh should we pair up because we've both got sort of technical stuff' and they started, and alecky said 'I've go thtis idea that um, you know the murders that happened in Ipswich? and Adam's thinking 'oh my god she's mad' um but she said you know 'I've got an idea about that' and they started and then took it from there. And it was not comitioned for ages. They came up with a few things and then the um natiuonal theatre did a little workshop and then they developed it from there. So it was really by chance that they ended up together because they weren't put together, so they were, you know, they could have paired up with somebody else and it would never have happened."
Would you ever want to be involved in another verbatim show?
"Definitely, definitely. I absolutely love it. I found it really liberating. And I was so surprized because I thought that we'd all feel very sort of shackled because of the technique. And I absolutely loved it. And I'd love to do, um, something that involved performing with the ear pieces in, because I can't imagine what that must be like in a performing situation, and I would absolutely love to yeah, definitely."
I'm interested in hearing what the auditions were like, because obviously, with verbatim, you can't just do your own thing. Can you tell me a bit about that?
"So that, um, everybody was asked to bring a simple song that wasn't showy at all, you know, because, none of us would take anything remotely appropriate because nobody knew what it was, and nothing in the world was remotely appropriate for London road, so I took a song, 'The water is wide', which is a sort of folk song, um and sand that, very simply. And then, the audition, um firstly, um, we sang our own song, and then we were given a sort of little iPod, mini disk player and some headphones to go off and have a practice of what we had to do was to listen to the recorded bits of speech that were put in the play and um, and then go off and have a little go at doing it. So we had a little practice with Alecky Blythe, who's the writer um the dialogue writer. Ur, this the and the dialogue audition, Adam Cork, the music director, he wasn't there, um and we had to, and you hear it, it's a really bizarre thing. Basically, if you hear something, you don't interpret it at all, you just repeat what you hear, but you can't, you're not allowed to memorize it so um, you're hearing it. You're sort of a second or two seconds after you've heard it. And what I didn't know was so, then we off we went and had a little practice and then came back which was bonkers and tried to do it, and I really enjoyed it. And um, what we found out afterwards was that anybody who made anything up, didn't go throughout to the next round. They tried to get themselves out of trouble by making something up and they didn't go through, whereas if I didn't get it right, or anybody else, I didn't really know, what their's was , but I just wen't 'i'm really sorry I didn't hear what that was' and um, so that's how we auditioned for the dialogue bit. It was really enjoyable. And then, um, I was given some music from the show um, then the composer, Adam Cork came in for the next audition, so we were sent away with a little bit about two pages worth, that's all and they said, learn a small amount correctly rather than u, trying to sort of wing it, so it was all about the precision of it really. And I, I'm a really good reader of music and I looked at that and thought, oh my god it made no sense. The sense of rhythm just looked so difficult. but actually once you hear how adam has written the music to rhythm, the um, the speech patterns and the, and and the um, I suppose the inflection really, he notated to match what he heard. Once you kind of realised that it started to make sense, but it was so difficult because every single syllable was notated. Not one single bit was guessed or improvised or anything. So the whole thing was an incredibly precise excersize, and yet sounded totally spontaneous. But the difference in the show, i think to any other play, certainly that Alecky's done with the technique that she uses, is that for the first time in performance we didn't use the ear pieces and the urm recordings, we had to learn everything, which is not the way it's done normally. Ordinarily, even in the performances, the performers go on with their um headphones and their machine. And that was decided it was impossible really because the music, you couldn't have done the music you see. It was hard enough to do it on the beat you were meant to. And so it was decided that it was not going to work and that we had to learn it but we used the recording techneque all the way through reheardals and no matter how we learnt it, we were constantly refering back. And Alecky uses this thing called a spectagraph. It's a bit like, you know when you record stuff on um logic or sybalious, You see the sound wave. Well it's a bit like that but for speech. And, and so, when we'd rehearse with her, we'd be saying our speeches and she'd be watching the spectograph and our speaches, um and our dialogue would be sort of on a seperate track and she's match it. So I mean it was absolutely crazy really. You get as close as we could with the, so the inflection, the um the absolute timing of the phrase, everything about it. I mean it was a brilliant thing to do. Terrifying and and wonderful all at the same time, and so, ordinarilly, they don't learn their lines because they have to remain acurate to the recordings the orriginal recordings, and they're not allowed to interpret anything or flick into their own spech patterns, and we were the same but we had to learn it. But that sets it apart from any other piecce of um, that kind of verbatim. Often, and regard to adam, I mean if you could hear the dialogue that was then notated you'd realise how astounding his you know um, well there is the bit on the soundtrack , the protitutes, the um 'we've all stopped now' and you um, you you hear a bit of that dialogue but generally speaking those bits aren't, aren't on, but that's what we had to do, so it was an, it's terrifying bit of learning to do. We learnt the last 8 bars of the hardest song in the show."
What were the rehearsals like?
"The reheasals were brilliant, absolutely brilliant, but um, all the way through, and bareing in mind we're at the National Theatre with Adam who was absolutely brilliant and everyone there, the director, um diddn't know if this work was able to be done. We didn't know if it was going to be able to be learnt, um because it had never been done before, and Alecky didn't know how to advise us to learn it because it had never been done before. So we had um a meeting about how best to learn it and it was decided that we would learn the proper script, sort of away from the recordings but constantly refer back to the recordings , and then when we were familiar with it um we'd abandon the recordings. But in the rehearsals we went from being a second behind to then trying to absolutely mirror it and say it exactly the same time which was, had not been done before either . That was to sort of see if we were starting to know it. So um, you there was one point when um the director Rufus Norris who was now runs the national theatre, um said look, stop worrying about it, if it can't be learnt we'll find a way of incorporating music stands on the stage. We'll make it work. We had no idea, it was a totally new type of theatre completely experimental, and all we wanted to do as a company, was to try and learn it and do the best we could for alecky and Adam. You know, to make the work the best it could be. We had no idea what, how it was going to be recieved. We just wanted to get from a to z you know. So it was a very ensamble um company, right from the word go and that included the composer, the writer, um the director, the choreographer, because nobody had ever done anything like that before so it was an absolute fist for everybody, which made it so special."
How long to it take to perfect your characterization?
"The characterization is funally enough, came, came quite quickly, it's amazing what you can learn just by using your ears and um we had a couple of photographs to see what our characters loked like. Um, but not really very much. the the chap who played my husband and I ur, we saw one photograph of our two characters holding hand um during the judging of the competition at the end. And we used that as a basis um for out relationship really. But it seemed like it just some of what was said and how it was said, they were a very loving couple. Infact, they haddn't been together all that long um so they werew still very lovy dovy. And howard and I used to sit on our sofa in a particular way and all we'd always be sortof quite touchy feely. And when we met our real people who, because they all cam eto see the show, and um when we met them it was really funny because June, who was the charactwer I played, one of the characters I played, said to me 'we sit on the sofa exactly like that. How did you know, how did you know to sit on the sofa like that?' So really bizar. And I sort of thought I think I thought she'd wear a pearlized nail varnish, and she did wear a pearlized nail varnish. I think, it it was really bizzar. You you'd hear things in the voice anf they were just amazed of cource that hearing what theyd said, said so accuratly and saying what they'd said set to music and it still sounded like them. So that was a real um sort of high praise indeed, you know."
So you only got to meet them at then end? You didn't get to meet them before?
"We met them half, we didn't get to meet them in rehearsal at all but we met them at the end. During the run rather, they came both to cotteslow and the olivie and they were also in the film. All of them, Ruffus Norris, brought everyone, all the london road people or had been involved, had their characters used in the play. They're all in the party scene at the end, as extras. So we had a whole day with them at the party. So that was absolutely brilliant. Loved that, so yeah that was that was quite incredible and they all really joined in. They really lovedthe project because they felt that it gave them a voice, you know, that they had lived on this street where all these awful things had happened, and um, just ordinarry people and the invasion of the media and and what this dreadful man had done, just made their lives just, it was just even worse. And they did something really remarkable. To create a community where the, where there had been none. And um, and they still do their, london road in bloom competition. Um so yeah that's still an annual event."
Which was your favourite character to play in London Road?
"My favourite character, oh thats a tough one, because we all played about oh a dozen different people I loved June, who was my proper Ipswitch Lady, but I absolutely adored my character Carol at the end who, the welsh lady who gave out the prizes. She's the councler, and that's the role I play in the film. And so I loved her. She was kind of, she comes in at the end and it's all, it's all about the joy of it, so I loved playiing her. And also because I had a really fantastic and tricky solo in the sort of speech of giving out the prizes, which was a real challenge, so I absolutely adored Carol. She was my favourite, really. But June, oh I don't know it's hard. She has to be my favourite because I played her in the film, but June was very special."
Do you know anything about the devising of the show? How did the writer and director take it from just interviews to a full piece of theatre?
"Yeah well its Aleky who does that, she gets all of the matterial. Oh god there's thousands and thousands and thousands of bits of recording. I have no idea how she collates it all. All I can imagine is that she must have folders of Terry, June, Julie, all the characters and they'll all be dated, because in the film, Ruffus had suddenly said we need a line here, and of course you can't just make it up, so she delved through all of her stuff and came up with something. But she is the lady, she did all the interviews and then she did all the editing to make it into the play, to get that kind of coherant line through it. And during rehearsals it changed, you know quite a bit, but the basic story and the basic journey for want of a better word, through the story was there and although it changed during rehearsals and orders were changed round and um lots of lines were taken away and some lines were put in. Aleky Blythe who constructed the whole thing, and she and Adam Cork didn';t know eachother at all they met, um, they both went along to some kind of workshop at the national theatre studio um because they try and develope new writing . And so they all got in this room, apparently, and Alecky and Adam went and paired up because she had a tape recorder and he had some other type of technical equipment. so they went 'oh should we pair up because we've both got sort of technical stuff' and they started, and alecky said 'I've go thtis idea that um, you know the murders that happened in Ipswich? and Adam's thinking 'oh my god she's mad' um but she said you know 'I've got an idea about that' and they started and then took it from there. And it was not comitioned for ages. They came up with a few things and then the um natiuonal theatre did a little workshop and then they developed it from there. So it was really by chance that they ended up together because they weren't put together, so they were, you know, they could have paired up with somebody else and it would never have happened."
Would you ever want to be involved in another verbatim show?
"Definitely, definitely. I absolutely love it. I found it really liberating. And I was so surprized because I thought that we'd all feel very sort of shackled because of the technique. And I absolutely loved it. And I'd love to do, um, something that involved performing with the ear pieces in, because I can't imagine what that must be like in a performing situation, and I would absolutely love to yeah, definitely."
Thursday 30 April 2015
Research Proposal
Unit 43 -Research Proposal
A
few years ago, I went to see a musical called London Road about how the
residents of London Road in Ipswich reacted to the murders of girls in their
area. The musical was in the style of verbatim theatre; ever since seeing this
musical, I have been very interested in this style of theatre, and for that
reason, am basing my research around verbatim theatre. I am also hoping to go
into acting after school, and I would really love to be a cast member of a
verbatim style play or musical in the future, because I think it would be a
extremely fascinating experience to play a character who is a real person. I
think it would be a challenge because you’d have to get the character spot on,
in order to actually convey the feelings and emotions of the interviewee.
Verbatim
theatre is a style of documentary theatre where a play or musical is
constructed from the exact words spoken by people interviewed about a
particular event or topic. The characters in the play/ musical copy the rhythm
and tone of the interviewees’ voices, which gives a realistic quality to the
piece of theatre and also makes the audience think more, especially if the
topic is emotive; knowing the characters are real people, allows you to empathize with them
much more. I will consider research into other people’s opinions and reviews of
different verbatim plays and musicals to find out what audiences think of the
style and compare it to my own opinions.
For
this unit I am going to look into what it is like to create a piece of verbatim
theatre for a play write or director; I’d imagine it would be incredibly
interesting to learn about the creative process and how interviews with people
turn from just audio recordings into a whole script of dialogue and sometimes
songs. I’d also like to find out what it’s like to be a cast member of a
verbatim play or musical because, like I said, I’d love to be a part of one in
the future. To do this, I will set up an interview with a member of the cast of
the verbatim musical London Road, as I know her through my family. It would be
interesting to find out what it was like to be a part of the production. I’d
like to do this because it will give me an insider’s view into being involved
in a verbatim show, and she might be able to give me some advise for being cast
in a verbatim piece and what casting directors look for in actors.
I
am considering writing a short review of a resent verbatim play I went to see
at the national theatre called John. The dialogue in the script was taken from
interviews from Frank, and the play followed the life of one man and how he
turned to drugs and alcohol because of depression. Writing a review of the
play, will help me to evaluate and expand my knowledge on the director and
actors’ approach to verbatim theatre, which will, in turn, greater my understanding
of the style. I will also ask for the opinion of another person who saw the
play to compare mine and their thoughts and opinions of the play. Getting
another person’s view might enable me to consider ideas I hadn’t thought of
yet, which will again, expand my knowledge and understanding of verbatim
theatre.
I
would like to research into the theatre companies Record Delivery and DV8
because these are the companies which put on the two verbatim productions that
I have seen, London Road and John; I really enjoyed them and would be
interested to find out if they have put on any other verbatim plays in the
past, and if so, what they were. I’d like to know this because it will help me
to expand my knowledge of the theatre companies and what their style is.
******
After researching a little into the theatre company DV8, I decided to go no further, as they are not a verbatim theatre company, but physical theatre, and therefore, do not link to my research of verbatim theatre. However, I will continue to look into reviews of the verbatim play, John, as I said I would.
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