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Last but Not Least- Bibliography

Change and Eng and Me (and Me) Tobi Poster-Su

Corden, A. and Sainsbury, R., 2006. Using verbatim quotations in reporting qualitative social research: researchers' views (pp. 11-14). York: University of York. (Roberts, Bergstrom, Rooy, 2007)

Friday Night Love Poem, Crossline Theatre

https://www.crosslinetheatre.com/friday-night-love-poem

Gibson, J., 2011. Saying it right: Creating ethical verbatim theatre. NEO: journal for higher degree research students in the social sciences and humanities, 4, pp.1-18.

Lovesong, Abi Morgan in collaboration with Frantic Assembly

Negative Space, Reckless Sleepers

Prostitution in the UK, politics.co.uk

https://www.politics.co.uk/reference/prostitution/

Roberts, Ron, Sandra Bergström, and David La Rooy. "UK students and sex work: Current knowledge and research issues." Journal of community & applied social psychology 17, no. 2 (2007): 141-146.

Selling Sex, Louis Theroux, BBC iPlayer

Sex In Strange Places, Stacey Dooley, BBC Three iPlayer

SLUT: The Play, The Arts Effect All-Girl Theatre Company

https://www.theartseffecthistory.com/about

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The Show Of Delights, Keyword Map

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Week 7 Flipgrid- Space Frame

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Trust The Process- Flipgrid Video Reflection

Our flipgrid materials have always focused on the more fun and girly side of our performance. It was very important to us as a group to establish a strong dynamic between the girls, both in marketing and on stage, and as a result I believe it makes our performance lean even more into the verbatim genre as it really is a group of friends hanging out and (somewhat) working. The flipgrids allowed us to explore how to convey the women’s control in our performance. From their business to their personal lives, having only female characters featured in the flipgrids, ad in our teaser trailer tells our audience from the offset that this is women based, women led, and women focused. It was important that whilst the scenes between the clients are funny and are key to their jobs, we didn’t want it to be all that defines these women. It was, also, important to highlight in our flipgrids that these women do what they do for themselves, which is again why they aren’t shown in any of these flipgrids as getting ready for a client, but to make themselves feel good. And if they don’t want to, they’ll put on their slippers and dressing gown and carry on all the same. This was something we enjoyed filming and presenting so we have continued pushing the feminist theme throughout our performance, ensuring the women are always in charge.

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Week 6 Flipgrid-Ensemble

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Week 5 Flipgrid-Trailer

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Who, What, and Why? Performances that Influenced our Piece

One particular show that resonated artistically with me was Negative Space by Reckless Sleepers. The use of a simple, plaster boarded set, reminds of how less can sometimes be more, as we focus solely on every movement of the characters without distraction. This is important when considering there is no dialogue throughout Negative Space. The influence this had on our own performance is the use of movement to portray a moment. It made us remember the effectiveness of using our body language to say the unspoken, and how to physically portray our characters with presence alone. This was important with the male roles, for example with ‘God’s Gift’ we use body language to show how contradictory all the characters feel in the scene -with the girls sounding professional and flirty in what they say but physically recoiling and distancing themselves out of disgust for this particular client. By using body language and movement to convey a message, it adds to the message we are trying to express in our piece. Often, women feel the need to play along to men’s advances out of fear or forced politeness, and those men will focus on that as them being interested; whereas if they took a step back and considered that they are being physically distant or lacking in affection, it is because they are uncomfortable. However, this is a sign that men will even notice but disregard for their own selfishness. The interpretation is up to the audience and was intriguing for us to include to see the difference in reaction between men and women.

Another performance that as a group we thought was artistically relevant is Change and Eng and Me (and Me) by Tobi Poster-Su. The use of props in this performance to signify characters and manipulating said props tom convey a message is an element we explored and have attempted to input in our own performance. Particularly with the phone, which is our key motif, we explored how we wanted to draw attention to it to make it obvious to our audience that it is an integral part of the piece. To do so a loud, obnoxious ringing tone will play to immediately detract attention from the characters and to the phone. When a phone rings in day-to-day life, most people will usually start looking around for the source, so by having the ringing be too loud and it obviously being the source but leaving a long pause before it being answered, we hope the awkwardness allows insight into how the phone is a key part of these women’s job as it’s their entire business, but how it is also daunting to answer it that it seems they’re psyching themselves up to answer.

Lovesong by Abi Morgan and in collaboration with Frantic Assembly) used movement sequences and stylistic approaches throughout the performance to break away from the otherwise naturalistic play. This was another key element we wanted to implement in our piece too, as although we wanted to stick to the verbatim nature of The Girlfriend Experience, we also wanted to use stylistic approaches to reiterate key points. For example, our biggest use of stylistic movement, like Lovesong, is during phone calls where the women are explained to customers, or when client knocks at the door. At these points, whichever woman is involved in the scene performs a ritual-like movement sequence, almost dance like, which shows the robotic nature of what these women do. And, also, is a subtle way of trying to get the audience to empathise with the ladies. Like those who work in supermarkets, or offices, repeating the same thing over and over, it encourages the audience to see sex work as work like any other job. The movement sequences change throughout the performance to match the upcoming scene, such as when Amber is about to perform ‘watersports’ to a client, as she had been chugging water and cider, she performs her ritual bloated and sick, again showing our audience that no matter what their situation, the women are consistently doing the same thing over and over.

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Influences Behind our Piece

When considering artistic influences of our piece, there was a lot we wanted to focus on as a group. From feminism, to the 00’s theme to all female casting, we wanted to ensure that we drew inspiration from similarly minded theatre companies and artists. One company which stood out to us is Crossline Theatre Company, an all-female theatre company created by Kara Chamberlain and Natalia Knowlton as a platform for them to ‘tell female-led stories…inspired by our ancestry, our bodies, and our social experiences’. In 2019, Crossline premiered Friday Night Love Poem a show set in the early 00’s which focuses on the sexual exploration of 3 young girls, and their embracement of female pleasure. This was an important influence for us, from set design to the interaction between the characters, as it allowed us to have a visual comparison to draw inspiration from. In terms of how it affected our staging and acting, from clips of the show we see a strong bond between the girls through their proximity, use of levels to show power, and the general supportive and positive dynamic between the girls despite the issues they face. To implement these influences in our own piece we used the same techniques, particularly using proximity between Tessa and Poppy to show how much closer they are compared to the other girls as they have known each other for longer. Similarly, with the ‘punter’ roles, who are clients, we interchange between a larger distance to show they are of little status to the women or uncomfortably close to depict the lack of respect for the women’s space and body. Another influential company comes from the American The Arts Effect All-Girl Theatre Company and their play SLUT: The Play which focuses on slut-shaming and the impact on women. This allowed us to have a deeper understanding of how to respectfully approach the sex scenes and dialogue between male and female characters, and how, in comparison to Crossline which use bright colours and overstimulating lights to overload the audience, the simplicity of white lighting and spotlights can be in meaningful scenes as to avoid taking away focus from what is trying to be said or shown in a scene. We use a mixture of these two devices in our performance, as we found the contrast in the fun, girly set for light-hearted scenes only made intense scenes even more intense and helped to mark the moment.

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The Work in Sex Worker-What is The Girlfriend Experience About?

The Girlfriend Experience focuses on a brothel business owned and managed by 4 older, mature women who offer a more ‘sympathetic, intimate service’ to their clients, who also tend to be more mature in age as well. The play offers an insight into the relationships between the 4 women, as well as that with clients, family life and also their own dreams and desires. Whilst The Girlfriend Experience’s predominant theme is sex, you quickly see themes of feminism and self-love being the biggest influences throughout. They aren’t just women who are having sex to make money (as the stereotypical view of sex workers is) but they care for and understand their clients in a more personal way and want to ensure each client feels their needs are met. As this is based on a real business and on real women, as a group we decided to look more into brothels and sex workers, particularly focusing on their personal lives -looking at their day to day lives, their other interests, rather than just focusing on their sex work as media outlets and clients usually do. Prostitution is described as offering and provisioning sexual services with a financial gain (Roberts, Bergstrom, Rooy, 2007); in the UK prostitution itself is legal, however certain practices associated with it are criminal offences, such as owning or managing a brothel (politics.co.uk). As brothels are illegal, and the brothel featured in The Girlfriend Experience is not named it was difficult to research into said specific topic, so instead my research focused on the sex worker industry of the UK as a broader spectrum, however it’s important to note that The Girlfriend Experience was written in 2006, whereas a lot of the research is from the last few years or so which has seen an increase in support for sex workers, instead of shaming them like in the early 2000’s which was important to consider whilst staging our play. I personally watched Sex in Strange Places (Stacey Dooley) and Selling Sex (Louis Theroux) in which both visit sex workers in a multitude of different working environments, and lifestyles. This was important to consider, as in comparison to those featured in these documentaries, the women in The Girlfriend Experience are a lot more privileged and protected, so we had to be careful we didn’t try and victimise them in ways which are offensive to those actually in that position.

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Genre Research- What is Verbatim Theatre?

Verbatim theatre, by definition, is a ‘form of documentary theatre which is based on the spoken words of real people’. Verbatim theatre does not alter or change the way the words are spoken, they are a direct imitation of the original speaker (J., Gibson, 2011). Alecky Blythe is a playwright whose theatre company ‘Recorded Delivery’ uses verbatim theatre in the extreme. Blythe’s techniques to ensuring her plays are as true as possible is by recording the original speakers during interviews and interactions and then playing said audio through earpieces to those acting on stage are what create one of the truest forms of verbatim theatre. The Girlfriend Experience is just one of Blythe’s works which so rigorously uses verbatim techniques to create focus on a social issue (i.e., feminism in The Girlfriend Experience or race and class in Little Revolution). The skill of verbatim is not just used for theatre but is used in many other forms to deliver the whole truth simply as it is. History documentaries, TV documentaries are just other examples in which we can see verbatim being used. People like Louis Theroux or Stacey Dooley who interview and film people limit editing and cutting scenes to allow for the most accurate depiction to be broadcasted.

When looking at the use of verbatim in other areas and its significance, there is distinctive proof that verbatim quoting is key in aiding the explanation and exploration of ideas. For example, a paper written by A., Corden, and R., Sainsbury which looked at ‘using verbatim quotations in reporting qualitative social research: researchers’ views’ found that when using qualitative methods of data collection, rather than short handing or abbreviating the answers of participants, having their full, verbatim answer allows for more accurate and precise data forming. It allows for there to be ‘a good balance between their narrative and the spoken word’ suggesting the use of verbatim quotations added further depth into the researchers understanding of the participants answers and allows for the wider audience to have a deeper understanding in turn.

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Reflection- Performance Evaluation

I believe that our final performance was the best we’d performed. My group had met up to rehearse from 9am and had met the night before as well. We’d all tried to really elevate our characters and put our all into the piece, which I definitely feel we did. I think the biggest success was that we all managed to embody our characters after we all struggled for so long, which was the best breakthrough we could’ve hoped to have. I felt as though I was able to use subtle actions to convey my interest, and finally managed to keep eye contact with the camera rather than looking at the small screen. We were unsure how our tech would run as we had some issues with our final tech run, but they luckily ran smoothly along with the piece. One unsuccessful part of our performance was that there was no clear or specific genre of our performance. Although we had enough materials to create our performance, we struggled a little bit to have a clear sense of direction as we didn’t have enough of a certain genre to have a particular focus. This made me find it difficult to talk about above as our performance was a collection of all different materials of different types. In comparison to other groups, such as group 1 and group 2 from my class, who had a clear sense of either a testimonial performance or biographical, it was easier to follow the story and really feel like we were being directly spoken to in a personal manner as they were using real emotional stories from real people who had been through these emotions. Although I am proud that ours was different, I feel as though those other groups utilised the screen obstacle better than us as it felt more direct like you were there in person, whereas ours was just incorporating the screen which may alienate our audience. Overall, I am proud of our performance, I believe we’ve taken influence from the semester and handled the obstacle of being behind a computer quite well. However, if we were to perform again in this way I would definitely explore making it seem as though there is no screen between us and the audience, in order to make a deeper connection with them the way you would on stage.

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Reflection- Rehearsal Diary

Rehearsal Diary 4

Running through our performance as though it is the real performance day has highlighted some key issues that when resolved will help make our piece be more professional and polished. We found some issues with the tech, in which the music that we wanted to use to add intensity to when Charlie comes on as Holmes was taking the focus away from his character. This changed the atmosphere we wanted to create but we found it beneficial as we wanted the audience to be focused on Charlie more than the music, and so we understood that is was best. We wanted Charlie to be as close tot the camera as possible when saying Holmes’ quotes to make the audience feel like they were being personally targeted, and give the sense that Holmes targeted anyone. We found that our performance felt too scripted as we performed, I felt as though I personally wasn’t acting like a news reporter enough but just as myself asking questions. We collectively decided that we would individually aim to incorporate small actions to establish our characters more. I again found this difficult, as normally news reporters stay stoic when talking to people. However, to overcome this I used hand gestures like pointing or using my hand to signal a response to subtly characterize as a news reporter. I also used more facial expressions whilst listening to each respective expert talk. I think that by doing this I was able to show my interest in what was being said, something news reporters do in order to show they’re paying attention to the guest.

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Reflection- Rehearsal Diary

Rehearsal Diary 3

Whilst writing the script, we found it best to write the expert parts first, and then the news reporter question after. Because we didn’t have any solid material or an actual TV news report to use as a basis, we had to use a lot of the contextual information from the Rolling Stone article about the exhumation, and other books and articles on Holmes to create the content for our piece. We took direct quotes from the interview and used them for our own characters and experts. Jordan took responsibility to write up a basic script, so we had structure, and we took it upon ourselves to individually write and edit our own parts. This worked well as it meant no one had the entire responsibility to themselves, and we could also make the character more personal and feel more in tune with them. So far we have had no challenges and are working on learning our lines and making sure there is not too much information at once so that we don’t bore our audience. The most difficult issue so far has been making sure we make it look as conversational as possible and not look too scripted to give off a more natural sense. To do this, we’ve been working on keeping eye contact with the camera as opposed to looking at each other in the corner of the screen, and incorporating more hand gestures to make it loo less stiff. This has so far worked well, I feel more relaxed when using hand gestures as it helps take away the feeling of this being a performance and makes it feel more like a conversation, however I need to remember to keep a professional tone of voice, by having better diction on my words to make myself seem older and experienced.

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Reflection- Rehearsal Diaries

Rehearsal Diary 2

Whilst meeting with Silva we discussed our issue of not knowing how to accurately depict the 19th century through our screens, and also the issue of little material to create a substantial and engaging performance. Although we had names and information on a few of Holmes’ victims we did have enough about how they were exactly murdered or lured by Holmes as many bodies were never recovered, due to Holmes refusing to disclose any information on their whereabouts. I then suggested ditching the court trial direction and instead explore a documentary style performance, which would allow us to use a modern setting, but still look back at his crimes using professionals to talk about Holmes and his crimes. This was a major breakthrough for us, as we were once again confident and excited about our performance. I felt as though by being able to move away from the 19th century setting, we could implement more techniques and influences from the semester in our piece as it wouldn’t create too much distraction from the topic of conversation. Creatively, we felt as though we now had more freedom in the direction of our piece and characters as it was easier to embody a modern day character than someone of a time we never experienced. As we further explored the use of a documentary style, we found the aforementioned Rolling Stone article about the exhumation and decided on a news report instead. The material in the article was enough for us to gather context for how the interview may be conducted. We found this creatively successful as a documentary would’ve meant we would be interacting with one another or being in different places to depict what we were talking about, however the news report style enabled us to overcome the challenges of performing over screen, as we could use mediums like pictures to show what we wanted to and still keep the integrity of a traditional news report. We settled on having a news reporter, a historian to cover the context of Holmes’ crimes, and a scientist to cover the exhumation itself. Then, as we still wanted to involve Holmes to create a more intense atmosphere, we decided that we would use quotes wed previously gathered to interject throughout the piece as we said important things to mark the moment, and we decided he should be the only one with their camera on to place complete attention on him.

Rolling Stone Magazine (accessed on 07/02/21) https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/serial-killer-h-h-holmes-body-exhumed-what-we-know-126699/

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Reflection-Rehearsal Diaries

Rehearsal Diary 1

We discussed focusing our performance on Martin Luther King Jr. as he is a very influential and important figure and wanted to create a biographical performance. We wanted to do a walkthrough of his life, exploring different ages and moments in his life, however we were concerned that we would not be able to accurately and respectfully convey his upbringing, and successes in his life as though it’s something we understood, it was not something we could really relate to and so we wanted to avoid devaluing such an important person and issue. This left us struggling to decide on a topic we all felt strongly about; we were tired of talking and hearing about Covid, we found different things too sensitive to talk about, and we were worried that we may produce something that was ignorant or insensitive to someone else. We eventually started talking about our interest in serial killers and true crime, leaving us with two serial killers we were interested in and who were from very far back in history. We were then stuck on which killer to focus on, so we decided to research individually who we were interested in more, settling on H. H. Holmes. We decided then that we wanted to focus on his victims and have Holmes be largely present in the performance, and we would set it in a court room, as the trial for Holmes. However, we soon found that it would be difficult to do this, as there was little material from the original trial, and because we struggled to figure out how to implement other characters into the scene to detail the crimes. There were no witnesses for any of Holmes’ crimes, and no alive victims that could be used. We were also struggling on how we would portray to the audience that we were in the 19th century and not present day, as we had little costuming available and was difficult to make our screens or rooms look dated. This left us all stressed and behind, as we found ourselves back to square one. I felt deflated because we had finally come so far and figured out an idea we found really interesting but the challenge of conveying it through screen was too difficult for us to overcome in a short amount of time, as well as we were all busy with other assignments to be solely dedicated to this performance. This made it challenging to meet up outside of class, and even harder to make decisions and solutions as we were all balancing other things. We decided to meet with Silva to try and figure out the best way to move forward and to motivate our next steps.

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Reflection- Influences

One major influence from this semester that helped to inspire our work was Love Letters (From Home). The use of testimonies in this performance, aided with music, was something that myself and others in my group felt very strongly about, and we wanted to use similar techniques in our performance. The issue was we weren’t able to gather testimonies and the use of music seemed inappropriate for the nature and setting of our performance. We knew we still wanted to use the music to help invoke a response from our audience, so we instead used it to mark a moment, at the end of our piece as we finished and Holmes is being hanged. We used jolly sounding music from the 19th century to express the lack of remorse Holmes felt, as It created a juxtaposition of his awful crimes and yet he never felt sorry for what he did, in fact he enjoyed the fame he gained. The testimonies we did have were from the article on Holmes’ exhumation. They were from experts in their respective fields, and Jeff Mudgett (Holmes’ great-grandson) so we used this material to form dialogue for our characters. We had a historian and a scientist, so using the interviews from them we used direct quotes and also wrote ourselves what we believed made the most sense to fill in any contextual blanks using our research into he case and how exhumations are carried out in order to make to as factual and real as possible.