Live Performance - The Last Stage

After weeks of preparing all of these ideas and ordering props and costumes it had finally come to the point in which we felt as a group we were now able to start rehearsing the performance. We were inducted on the lighting desk and the sound desk as well as the software used for audial and visual queues.

At first, the rehearsals seemed to be quite challenging and we seemed to be bumping into a lot of problems that we felt were going to end up letting us down. However, Jacob always had fun warm-up exercises that he would use to boost the group's spirit. Nearer to the end of the rehearsing period, Jacob asked us for any feedback we had on the rehearsals, to quote myself I wrote, "The warm-up activities were fun and they brought out fond memories of when I've done things similar to that in the past, they were very effecting with getting me warmed up. I was also very happy with the fact that we got to test the radio mic with live effects as this was something I was hoping to do from the start so I was pleasantly surprised to see it work." There were some rehearsals in which my attendance was slightly late and I do very much blame myself for that. As we started approaching the end of rehearsals I could feel my motivation starting to slip but Jacob was always extremely helpful in finding new ways of motivating us.

After days and days of rehearsing quite non-stop we finally felt as though our performance was ready, it had hit the standard that we wanted it to be at. We were all feeling quite anxious yet ready to show Sarah and Christina what he had prepared for both them and the audience that would be viewing the performance. It finally got to dress rehearsal and we were eagerly waiting for our turn to perform, going through all the props and costumes and ensuring everybody had everything ready for the performance. However, Sarah and Christina informed us that they wanted to have a chat with everyone before we started dress rehearsals. We were told that due to the global pandemic that seemed to be getting worse daily we would be unable to get an audience to view our performances which meant we had to switch the performances to be online livestreams, ours being an escape room there was no real way that we could turn this performance into a livestream. We were distraught, everything that we had worked so hard to create just seemed to crumble into dust. We were given a break to discuss the possibilities of our performances and at first we came up with the idea of a Bandersnatch type of performance in which the audience would be a new scientist who would have to escape the SCP Foundation through a number of choices that would be presented to them. After finally deciding on all of the choices that the audience would be given we were faced with another problem, this was that the University may close which meant we would not actually be able to film any of the choices that the audience would choose, we were once again at a crossroads until Jacob suggested the idea of a Skype performance, we finally were set on a performance that would take place over Skype and it would consist of 2 new council members being invited into the 05 Council of the SCP Universe which would throughout the performance get infiltrated and result in everybody except the 2 new members dying. We very quickly prepared a script for this idea and got to work straight away. Now we were just waiting on the day of the performance.

Live Performance - Performance Day

We did what we could, we performed our recently written script for Sarah and Christina in which they were the 2 new council members, overall, we were just glad that the performance was finally over, after all of the hardships that we went through, it felt very nice that it was done and that we could relax.

The performance itself actually went better than we expected it to go, there were some slight hiccups, at one point the wrong link was posted for something which meant a small part of dialogue got skipped but we didn't let that stop us, we kept going as if nothing went wrong.

If I was to change any one thing about this entire experience, I wouldn't change a thing. Despite us going through the most awful time of experiencing a global pandemic on the rise, there were so many things that I learnt from this module in the way that after all those weeks of preparation we still had to completely change the performance right at the end, and even though it wasn't the final product that I was hoping it would be, I'm still over the moon with how it all went.

Live Performance - Practicality and Accessibility

After thinking through all of the creative processes for our performance we were faced with some questions that took up by surprise upon first glance.
These included:

• How practical is our performance?
• What is the accessibility of our performance?
• What is the audience's journey from start to finish?

We couldn't believe it, but for some reason we were quite shocked that we hadn't even put these into consideration as of yet, however after some thinking over the week, I presented Jacob with the reason that I felt our performance was as practical as it could possibly be. There was concern that the audience wouldn't understand the plot of the performance due to the SCP universe not being massive, however it was reassured by the fact that even though our performance would be set within this universe it didn't mean it wasn't practical, escape rooms are something that are very common within this day and age, a lot of completely different people will partake in escape rooms and no matter the person they will always be able to find enjoyment within it, going by this standard it meant that our performance was very practical within the demographic that it was set in.

Accessibility was a bit of a harder question to think about, we had to think about people who possibly had dyslexia, dyspraxia, were hard of hearing, hard of sight, and all of these things started to make us panic slightly as these were basic things that we hadn't thought about. But we planned our escape room so that it wasn't incredibly heavy within terms of reading and writing, it wasn't even all that dependent on having perfect vision or hearing, we had it set so that the tasks were things that everyone would be able to perform whilst still enjoying the experience around them. These tasks were a multitude of things, some of the audience would be searching for ingredients as a way to hopefully find a solution for a cure whilst others would be searching for access cards and looking at different QR codes as a way to hopefully find a way of escaping the room itself. Despite not massively thinking about accessibility from the start we were still able to produce a performance that we were all still very happy with.

The audiences journey was pretty simple for us, it consisted of the audience having to perform tasks (as stated above) within the space so that they could eventually escape the room and leave not befalling any problems.

Live Performance - Creative Processes

From the start of the live performance creating we were all put into groups that we chose ourselves, I was unfortunately unable to make the session in which this happened so I got asked to be in a group as they felt I had skills within areas that would really benefit the performance.

I was assigned the role of Audio Manager, this meant that all things sound would be within my field of work, this was a role that I was more than happy to work in as I've always enjoyed working with sound, whether it's recording or producing, sound is something that I'm very comfortable with. I was tasked with thinking of ideas for sound and the way it could be used within the performance, Jacob, the Production Manager, even gave me the possibility of creating a piece of music for the start of the performance that could be used as the audience were walking into the room. I was quite intrigued by the idea of this and started to work on themes that I felt would suit the mood of the performance but wasn't too complicated so that it'd be a distraction to the audience. I did end up creating this piece of music but as it got closer to the performance it was scrapped (I will move onto the reasoning behind this in a later post).

Tom was put in charge of all things visual so him and I worked closely together throughout the process of trying to think of technical ideas that would benefit the performance. We had to ensure that the performance space had everything that we wanted to be able to use for our performance and upon discovering that it did we got to work on some ideas. From the beginning we were all very much set on an idea that we all really liked. Our performance was going to be a horror-based escape room, to be specific it was set within the SCP universe with SCP-049 and SCP-079 being the main antagonists of the performance, it would be up to the audience to try to escape within the 20 minutes they were given. After deciding on an idea that we were happy with, a company contract was created and we all signed it so that we were all aware of what was expected of each other.

Tom and I started to think of things that would technologically advance the performance and make it more than average, Tom said that he was hoping to apply a live sort of echo effect to his voice, at first I was somewhat baffled by this and was trying my best to think of ways that we could create this. However, I had a brainwave and realised that by plugging a radio microphone receiver into a live desk, I could add effects such as reverb, echo, delay etc. to the live performance. I explained this idea to Tom and he said it worked perfectly with what he wanted to do. When we started to discuss the way we could interpret SCP-079 as a character in the performance we weren't completely sure of how to present it, until Bill came through with an idea of having 079 as a projection on the back of the room that the audience would be able to see whenever he appeared, 079 was there to communicate with the audience directly via pre-recorded messages that would be said.

The creativity of our performance really started to gain its shape and started to make a lot more sense within our heads which really sparked our excitement for what we could possibly produce.

Performance Labs

During the lead up to the live performance we were presented with a set of different Performance Labs, these took place once a week on Thursdays between 17:30-20:30, it was interesting to look at theatre practitioners in so many different ways. These labs included things from the likes of InstaStan and FaceBrook.

InstaStan
Within InstaStan we looked at the techniques of Konstantin Stanislavski and the way he utilised these techniques to promote a convincing performance, there was a fun twist that was added in which we'd use social media as a way of making the techniques adhere to a group of younger adults such as ourselves. I've always loved Stanislavski's work as I'm someone who really finds realism performance breath-taking, especially when it's done convincingly, so getting the chance to learn about Stanislavski in such an interesting way really benefited me.

FaceBrook
For FaceBrook we took a different route from the previously mentioned Stanislavki, we looked at the ways of Peter Brook who has once been considered to be "our greatest living theatre director", it was nice to learn about someone that I haven't put much time into learning about before, I have since reviewed quite a few of the pieces that Peter Brook has directed and it's safe to say that he more than definitely lives up to being the "greatest living theatre director" as his performances really are a work of art, they're breath-taking in so many ways.

Summary
Although these two practitioners are so different, it is inevitable to see that there is something that they both have in common, and that would be their passion for the arts, they may do things differently but whether it's Peter Brook or Konstantin Stanislavski I still find myself being moved by the pieces that they create.

Group Workshop

When working in a group to create a workshop it can be quite easy to over-complicate things, this happened within our group and it led to us creating a 20 minute interactive workshop which was more interactive than it actually was educational, there are many ways in which it could've been changed to make it so that it was more educational to the audience. For example, rather than focusing on the performance side of the workshop we could've focused more on the presenting side of it and ensured that the audience were gaining information. Although, there was a brief introduction before the performance within the workshop began, within this introduction we explained the ways of 'Blast Theory' which was the group that we were given as inspiration to create a workshop from.

Although the workshop didn't exactly go the way we were hoping it to go, it was still a process that I massively enjoyed partaking in and I was glad that I got to experience it, creating a workshop is so much more difficult than it seems as there are so many elements that you have to think about, it's pretty impossible to just come up with one after 5 minutes. We had several group meetings about what our workshop would entail, and it took us a lot of preparation before we felt like the workshop was ready to be presented.

If I was to make any changes, it would mostly be to the way we presented it, we focused too much on creating an enticing performance instead of having an informative presentation with a possible 5-minute performance that the audience could get themselves involved with. If I was to create a group workshop again, I would go about it in a completely different way and I would try to find more personal interest within the subject that I was creating a workshop from.

The way the Internet has challenged the notion of liveness in performance

With the ever growing platforms of technology it was not long before the conventions of performance were challenged through the amount of new ways to carry across a performance. Something that was used years ago known as a ‘Deus Ex Machina’ was used for lifting performers during that of a performance and at the time it was considered quite mind-blowing but now with the age of the internet it has brought on all these new ways of performing, some of these include Cyberformance, Cyberdrama, Cybertheatre(s), Telematic Performance (Streaming) and Hyperperformance (Hypertext). Each of these can be used in very different ways that in some ways link them all back to each other, some of the more common uses for  these are:

Virtual Worlds – This can be created in many different ways including the use of simulation games online, games like this include ‘Second Life’ amongst a lot of others, you could even perform something within a game such as ‘World of Warcraft’ as it allows for players to communicate with each other through the game. There was once live performance of ‘Waiting for Godot’ by Samuel Beckett that was performed online through a game like ‘Second Life’ in which one of the audience members claimed to be Godot which made it so the performers had to adapt their performance to suit it.

Streaming Media – This includes the likes of websites such as Twitch, Mixer or even streaming services such as Netflix or Amazon Prime Video which enable the performer to create a performance and present it to a vast amount of people from around the world similar to that of Virtual Worlds.

Social Media – This is quite self-explanatory but allows for the use of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc. within a performance. This was done before in the form of a performance of Romeo and Juliet which was shown over Twitter with the use of tweets over a select amount of weeks as well as the use of YouTube vlogs so the audience knew about any character changes. This was a very successful performance and the tweets still exist to this day.

As much as all of these new ways of performance led to much more collaboration and many new ways of viewing a performance you have to think about the ways that it changes the idea of a live performance. For a lot of people a live performance is that of something that you experience first-hand in person without it being behind a screen therefore even though some of these performances are live when they are broadcast online it is easy to see the way that they can be considered to not be live as there is suddenly a lack of physical experience. I also feel as though broadcasted performances are easier to control than that of a live stage performance within a theatre but that’s something that’s up for debate.

What advantages are there to a transmedia approach to theatre-making over the more conventional approach?

When using a transmedia approach to creating a piece of theatre it allows you to look at a lot of different aspects that conventional theatre-making wouldn’t usually allow for. One of the main differences is the idea that you have the ability to use multiple different types of media which include the likes of Theatre, Television, Audio (Radio), Newspapers and Real World (RW), which includes the use of QR codes that would then take the audience to a certain social media page that gives them updates on the story. By using all of these different pieces of media it helps to make a more engaging performance by constantly keeping the audience on their toes by giving them more and more things to search for. A good example of the use of transmedia was the Swedish TV Show ‘The Truth About Marika’ in which the producers used a lot of different media to keep the audience engaged to a point where a lot of the show was deemed as being real. There have also been many more examples of these types of things as of recently that have been introduced through the internet platform ‘YouTube’ in which we’ve followed YouTubers trying to unmask stories of kidnap that they thought were genuinely real. Another thing that transmedia performance introduces is the idea of world building which lets us see the stories of characters that we may not necessarily always get to see and it allows us to see how things would differ in the performance from the introduction of these character stories.

To summarise, I feel as though transmedia is something that will only get bigger and I believe that it gives a massive advantage to theatre based work as it allows for the audience to be involved in completely new ways that keeps them fixated on the performance.