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princealbertsjester · 8 years ago

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The Future Of Prince Albert’s Jester

Hello Blog, for the final time.

For this post, all three of us have come together in discussion to review the project as a whole, our experiences, what could have been better and what went perfectly, and what we want from the future.

So here we are, the end of an era and the end of a project. All sitting cramped around the same tiny monitor with the blank word document spanning before us. From the start of Professional Directions to this point the journey has been long, arduous and a little bit really frustrating. But now we sit and discuss the future. The idea was that this project was just the beginning for Prince Albert's Jester, it gave us the drive and tools to actual build a foundation of a real professional company.

We stand proud now with an official website, a documenting blog, one show already under our belt and a new booking for the immediate future. But where do we go from this point? We're glad you asked.

As we just mentioned we have a new booking, it happens to be with our interviewees Bonnie and the 'Bonnettes', in the shape of a cabaret show taking place in May this year. The theme for the cabaret is 'If Our Mum's Ran the Country.' and so our studio time from here on out will be dedicated to returning to square one. New material will need to be created for the show and we are excited to start working again on a new fresh project... Aside from this of course we are all continuing to write material and characters. These characters are being pocketed for use at any time, we may come back to Exactly What You'd Expect our signature sketch show to give them a platform but they may also be in a feature length show or adapted to be standalone improvisations...

Lets take this opportunity very quickly to look back at our objectives and aims!

Gain an in-depth insight into the theatrical industry in the North East.

NATHAN

This was always going to be a hard objective to achieve in its completion. Balancing a degree at University and attempting to set ourselves up in a fast paced industry is like wandering around with your eyes closed on a cliff edge. We would say we achieved this in the most minimal manor. Whilst basic outreach to companies such as Northern Stage was a failure that with more time and focus we could have achieved, we gained an in depth insight through our fantastic interview with “Bonnie and the Bonnettes”. We gained knowledge of key events such as Venues North, Meet the Programmers and the important of scratch night culture when you are starting out as a new company to make links and reach out to potential audience. If we were to improve upon anything, instead of attempting to blindly reach out with pestering emails to theatres, we would contact events such as the previously mentioned and attempt to get slots on scratch nights such as Northern Stage’s First In Three.

TIM

So in-depth is not the word I'd use for this. We had some set-backs when it came to getting replies from industry professionals or sending emails in the first place. However, despite these setbacks we did get some insight from our interview with Bonnie and the Bonettes, they are essentially us as a company but a year in the future (not in the sense of work but in the sense of where they came from and want to do). They gave us great information about events like 'Meet the Programmers' and 'Venues North' and how they company have paved their way so far. They even threw us a bone and gave us a gig. It has become clear that reaching out to the wider community is better done once we have ourselves set up as a brand and as a professional company rather than when we are just starting out and trying to complete a project alongside being annoying students asking for interviews just to get a first.

LUKE

Personally, I feel that we definitely gained an insight into the theatrical industry in the north east, however, I would argue that we still have much to learn. We tried our bests to put in extensive effort to reach out and contact industry professionals in the area. As they failed to reply to our efforts, this process was set back. We did manage to learn and gain information from Bonnie and the Bonette’s with regards to local scratch nights and theatre spaces that are always looking for new acts in and around Newcastle. They also gave us advise on establishing our company and were kind enough to talk us through their own process. I feel that this goal was partially achieved but in the future, we may wish to put more time and consideration into making industry connections.

Experience setting up a theatre based company with fellow writers and performers

NATHAN

This is a very personal one, and all three of us believe we have accomplished this. The experience of rebranding, devising, constructing and being the masterminds of this company and the sketch show was one that benefited us. These early days are the ones that matter, that define our style an work ethics for potentially years to come. We strengthened our professional and personal relationships with one another and have vastly seen improvements in our performance.

TIM

This has definitely been achieved, I'm very proud of where we have come from and to. Prince Albert's Jester feels like a project that has built from the ground up and only continue to grow. It seems the foundation is laid down by us, for us now all we have to do is keep is our momentum. I wouldn't say this objective is completely fulfilled due to the fact our work together is just beginning but the initial start up we have managed has gone swimmingly.

LUKE

As this has been a goal of mine for many years now, the experience I have gained over those years benefitted me prior to the beginning of this module. However, attending university has exposed me to an environment of likeminded people. Comedy has always been a genre that I have excelled in and being given the chance to meet Nathan and Tim, only broadened my love for the subject. I feel that we have grown has writers throughout this module, taking into account the mistakes we may have made in the past and used them in order to fully develop our style of writing. Not only has this process given us to tools to write collaboratively but has also to work on writing solo projects. As performers, the progress we have made with regards to extending our knowledge of the comedy genre, allowed us to write and devise a successful sketch show. Sketch theatre was a style that we were already familiar with, although, being able to take influence from silent comedy and other styles that we may not have attempted before, has given us a drive to explore more contemporary theatre. I feel that we have grown professionally through this process, allowing us to excel in the creation of new theatre.

Improve my writing skills and abilities based in script work

NATHAN

This was my personal goal for the project. As a writer as well as a performer, from the beginning I knew I wanted to contribute in text form to the project. This is overwhelmingly positive for me, as I feel I couldn’t have achieved this more. Through use of research I have developed my writing style from one of basic script and jokes to understanding and being able to plan out and write a sketch. With the knowledge of inner mechanics of humour writing from Melvin Helitzer’s Comedy Writing Secrets, sketches such as Le Petit Canard were able to come into existence. It was also very gratifying as a writer to be able to take out old work such as “The Symptoms” and revamp it and to bring it to life on stage.

Improve my web design skills and abilities to create an online platform company

TIM

This was the area that was particularly personal to me. I'm incredibly pleased with how our website has turned out, taking what little experience I had previously and working it into a working website. I now feel confident with the software and can continue to adapt and develop. The website serves as a great platform for our company giving booking information, history of our group and an updatable newsfeed to give our interested parties insight into us as a group and our work. As time goes by we can only expand and grow but I feel as though the journey from start to now has resulted in great growth in my skills and abilities.

Improve my managerial skills with regards to the process of devising theatre

LUKE

The process of devising theatre has always been a subject that has fascinated me. The understanding that each performer has a particular process in which they adhere to, in order to progress as theatre makers, I would argue is very important. For us, the process of devising theatre can often be a sloppy and fragmented task. However, for the creation of Exactly What You’d Expect we ensured that we broke down the creation of the show into sequences. Starting with the writing of the show, we spent much of our time drinking tea and brainstorming characters and ideas. These ideas eventually led us to the writing of different sketches that we then proceeded to morph into as full, working script. Then came the process of devising the sketches. As we enjoy improvising around a lot of our ideas, we tried to keep the script free from overbearing stage directions. In replacement for these stage directions, we would devise the sketches collaborative and then one of us would stand out and ask as director. This process proved very useful for us and it gave us the chance to not only manage our time and progress but also, improved our directorial skills. Throughout our process, I also collected photo documentation, to back up our process and also to be used for commercial purposes on social media outlets and our website. Learning to manage our time and break down our rehearsal process became a trait that I will highly benefit from in the future. I feel that this new process will be carried with us into the creation of our future shows.

Gain an understanding of time keeping and organisation in a work environment

NATHAN

In undertaking the project, this was obviously one of the least exciting aspects. Nobodies heart skips a beat for timetables and schedules. However, this aspect was always important as it provides a professional work ethic and sets a precedent for us. I would say we achieved this in a sense. We had good planning and a set schedule from January onwards, but we didn’t always stick to it due to prior commitments, work or university modules. In future, to improve we would have to demonstrate the ability to plan much further ahead.

TIM

We achieved this by drawing up a work schedule that we used for writing, devising and rehearsing and sticking to it. The second side of this would be our dedicated work ethic in rehearsal. The fact that we never fix anything means that really we can never go wrong, we aim to turn mistakes into gains and use a script only as a loose structure for our scenes picking and choosing the funniest versions after running the sketch a few times.

LUKE

I feel that I elaborated on the importance of time keeping and my process of learning to manage it, in the previous post. However, my learning and understanding of organisation has definitely progressed through the process and study of this module. From the very beginning, I made it one of my goals to learn how to adapt myself into a more managerial role. I feel that I have successfully gained the knowledge needed to manage, not only mine but my companies work. This is evident through my initiative to keep all of our work backed up via different formats. Not only did I ensure that each member of the company has copies of everything we had done but I also kept our progress saved to external memory sticks and locked them away so that, should anything fail to go to plan, we had our work saved. I learned this very early on, as Nathan was unfortunately a victim of theft. His laptop, that possessed all of our work, was stolen. At that moment, I took on the role of ensuring that this could not happen again, thus keeping the companies important work and progress, saved to different external drives.

Perform successfully as part of Launch Festival

NATHAN

This is obvious to me. We have not only achieved this, we have knocked it out the park. As you can see from posts previous, we have received outstanding feedback from our audience and on a personal not feel a great sense of achievement. For our first performance in a festival, we came prepared, rehearsed and ready to work professionally with the team to create the best show possible.

TIM

This is our greatest success in my opinion, we got great reviews from people who saw our show and we felt amazing about it as well. Considering we had to create the majority of the material from scratch and prepare the already written material for stage without being able to test it on audiences previously it went down brilliantly. Although there were some mistakes on stage (I claim responsibility for the majority of them) they seemed to only work in our favour more and more with audiences laughing along at every sketch.

LUKE

As I believe that our performance at launch festival couldn’t have been more perfect, I feel that we have succeeded in creating and performing a new show, that could also be carried on further from our performance at Launch Festival. Starting out rather fragmented, in terms of how we planned on setting up our theatre company, deciding to create a new show was a very important decision to make. It allowed us to fulfil many of our goals, some of which I don’t think we would have achieved if we hadn’t decided to create the show. Being able to write, devise and perform an entirely original sketch show, that after audience review was successful, funny and engaging, allowed us to grow and develop as a theatre company. Next time, we may wish to consider experimenting with different style of old and contemporary theatre.

And so it is, we are finished this project! For the future, we are eagerly looking forward to the open nature of our company. The ability to experiment with more contemporary styles of comedy mixed with our staple to late 60s early 70s comedy, focusing on future shows, writing, producing and being a company of theatre makers.

Thank you for reading!

Nathan, Tim & Luke 😊

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princealbertsjester · 8 years ago

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The Performance!

Here we are!

The Performance post!

It’s been a long time coming. From the start of the bare bones of this project in October, to the actual starting of the work in January, it has all led to the performance.

And personally? I couldn’t be happier with it.

As a company, we did ourselves proud. For our debut of Prince Albert’s Jester, it was vital to communicate with the audience our rationale, our agenda and our passion for comedy in an theatrical environment with relaxed atmosphere to encourage laughter.

There was roars of laughter. We stuck to the script and performed better than in any rehearsal. The jokes landed, the characters were accepted and taken in and the audience felt very much so open to every idea, twist, turn and gag we threw at them.

However, the shining star of the night was most clearly “Le Petit Canard”.

The script was still pretty fresh, being less than two weeks old. We ourselves were still learning it, but we knew the layout of the scene. Tim however, had tendency to corpse (laugh on stage, breaking character) during this scene due to the fallacy of the French scene.

Tim was disheartened by this, and didn’t want to laugh on stage, for fear it would ruin the scene and alienate the audience. However, myself and Luke found this quality of corpsing irresistible.

- Tim corpsing on stage during “Le Petit Canard”.

We would improvise lines, do things out of the blue and probe at Tim until he laughed. Corpsing has always been held marginally taboo in theatrical culture, but I now believe it can totally work under the right circumstances. If you on stage are in on the joke along with the audience, it becomes less of a performance, but more of a shared experience of sheer joy.

Famous comedy duo Ade Edmondson and Rik Mayall were corpsers whilst touring live shows, and it always went down a treat. Sometimes it’s nice to be reminded what you’re watching is designed to make people laugh, even the people in it.

- Corpsing on stage during Bottom Live 3: Hooligans Island.

I will attach all the photos from our performance of Exactly What You’d Expect at the end of this post, all of which are credit to Olivia Booth.

Overall, from a performance perspective, we really achieved what we wanted from this Sketch Comedy. We demonstrated our ability to create, write, produce, design and perform our own material that was fit for purpose to a 21st Century audience and held true to it’s roots.

Nathan.

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princealbertsjester · 8 years ago

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Not What I Expected!

So we've finished Exactly What You'd Expect! We performed at Launch and are really thrilled with how it all went. I'm just going to give a post about my personal experience of the show and how it all went!

The introduction section we were unsure would make it into the show went down extremely well. By the time the performance came around we had refined it into the perfect blend of in jokes for a playful nod to those who know us but also broad enough so that a full audience could also get in on the jokes that were satirising Launch festival to warm everyone up to our style before properly introducing the piece.

First of all I'm thrilled to say that The Symptoms Part 1 went extremely well despite the fact that we realised minutes before that we couldn't pour a full glass of juice all over the stage, but we jumped the hurdle by adapting the show to make Nathan pour the drink down himself rather than onstage near the lights. We made no mistake during Symptoms 1 and it flowed well got laughs and set up its followers that come later.

Within Wulfgang Confesses we began our usual script but in true Prince Albert's Jester style we began to play around with the loose structure, I improvised a repeated line to add onto the satirising of religion. The combined effort of Luke's physicality and my monologue blended together perfectly to get the audience laughing along.

- Wulfgang Confesses

I didn't perform in Claire Voyant but I could see from my seat in the audience that people were engaging with Nathan's performance, holding hands, clapping along and when we did the audience cue of shouting REALM when Nathan says "power of the astral what?" people joined in and said it along with us.

Symptoms part 2 went great the audience got that the symptoms had carried over from the first part and enjoyed the irony within the sketch.

The main event of the night was Le Petit Canard, the one I'd been dreading. As I have said in a previous post this scene is one I was least confident on. This (now) infamous scene had always been one that I would crack up laughing in and be unable to keep a straight face. This time was no different. Unfortunately. We got midway through the sketch and it was all going brilliantly but then it came to the line "Service takes a while in this place" and I completely corpsed again. The memories of the hilarity of the awful rehearsal session came back and I couldn't hold it together. Although this may not seem very professional it made the scene much more enjoyable for the audience they could see us having fun with it and they were joining in too. Nathan and Luke managed to hold their sides up improvising around the mess that was me on stage. After the performance night the only thing anyone could talk about was Le Petit Canard and how funny it was to see me crack and the others hold everything up. Again this comes back to performing for ourselves as a company rather than to check boxes for a mark scheme, yes our work needs to be at professional quality and it was. But just because it needs to be professional doesn't mean it has to be strict and uptight. Clearly people enjoyed themselves more because they knew we were enjoying ourselves so much and we held together a great show even with mistakes.

- Corpsing captured on camera during “Le Petit Canard”

Within The Janitors ballet, the top came off my prop the cleaning squeegee bottle. This made the audience laugh even more at my misfortune from earlier carrying on over to this scene. After a little acknowledgement to the disaster, I began to just improvise and make the bottle work as it was. It turned out that this was the best course of action as the incorrect use got recurring laughs every time I had to use it. Then later, when Nathan pulled the knife out, instead of being able to hold my squeegee defensively I had to hold it out and improvised in squeezing water out of the top instead of spraying it and I accidentally squeezed too hard and hit Nathan with the water. This made the audience laugh even more and improved the scene greatly.

- Looking at a broken bottle during “The Janitors Ballet”

Essentially the performance went amazing in the places where things went to plan and even better in the places where things didn't go well and we had to improvise. We took our ethos into the performance with us and when things didn't go to plan we rolled with it and improvised more and better jokes. Now from a professional standard, yes we messed up and maybe that would or wouldn't work in our favour in a true professional environment, but from the feedback we got from our audience on the night it worked for us. Personally i believe our ability to carry on without worrying about what had gone wrong showed more promise than not making the mistakes in the first place. Many times when we made mistakes you wouldn't be able to tell as we improvised lines in to cover for anything. An example of which is where we couldn't find the second wine bottle so instead brought whiskey back and made it out to be part of the sketch's hilarity. In comparison when we fell apart in rehearsals we'd have to stop and restart a scene from the beginning but during the performance we kept momentum and kept the audience laughing. We reeled of our script in the sections where is was required to get the subtle jokes across and if we started getting off the rails we soon reconnected with script through adaptability and improvisation.

Tim.

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princealbertsjester · 8 years ago

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We Rocked Launch

Our performance at Launch Festival could not have gone better! After many months of rehearsing and writing, I felt that all of our hard work finally paid off. During the tech rehearsals of our shows, we encountered problems that left us feeling rather discouraged. However, we pushed through and the show was perfect. So far, we have received nothing but positive comments from audience members and even managed to secure a few quotes for our website, with regards to the show. After the show, we had a meeting to evaluate how the performance went. We all agreed that we gave a successful performance and we’re very pleased with the audience response. Personally, I believe that our performance at Launch Festival taught me one very important lesson. So far, studying a performance course has had its ups and down, its stressful moments and its incredibly enjoyable moments. However, I never fully understood how very different performing for your studies and performing for fun, was. Usually, when I perform in university, I’m performing with the understanding of securing a grade. On top of that, comes the stress of learning and understanding the practical work and the coursework that follows. The difference is, for Launch Festival, we weren’t being graded on our performance. Therefore, in my experience, ensured that I was able to have more fun with the performance and in turn enjoyed the performance more than I would If I was handling the stress of being graded. Also, for the first time in 2 years, I really felt like I was performing for the audience. As our shows are intended to be silly, fun and entertaining for the audience, I felt that I was able to fully commit to giving myself to the audience without the repercussions of feeling worried about my university work, or simply impressing my lecturers. This was a really important learning experience for me as I felt like this performance was easily one of the best performances that the three of us have ever given, in our 2 years of performing together so far. Don’t get me wrong, I love performing at university and you better believe that I want a good grade, but being free enough to just enjoy ourselves and perform whatever we wanted, without worrying too much, made Exactly What You’d Expect one of my favourite shows that I’ve ever performed.

Luke

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princealbertsjester · 8 years ago

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Teching It Out!

On Wednesday 1st of March, we had our Tech Rehearsal!

It was our first chance to take a look at the space we would be performing in, and as you can see in the attached picture, it is a spectacle! Such an amazing space would only enhance and improve our performances.

- The theatre space. Credit to Olivia Booth.

For our tech rehearsal, the script I had been writing was completed and printed in preparation. This ensured that during our tech, all of our sound cue’s were clearly marked out in the script and made the job of our sound technician much easier. This was important in our professional practise, as it allowed our tech rehearsal to appear more streamlined and communication between ourselves and the tech team was improved.

- Highlighted SFX cues.

As for lighting design and cue’s, I took the lead. One voice is key for these situations as conflicting voices and ideas in this process can be time consuming.

The lighting design was simple and thematic, with most scenes having a general wash across the stage in keeping true with our fringe DIY style. Low level of lighting covered the transition scenes, as we wanted the audience to see us manoeuvring the set, and to dismiss the artifice of the theatre. We want them to know we are consciously aware it is a performance the entire time.

The exceptions we made to this was our opening scene, “Fanfare of Space” in which we used a huge backlight to create spaceman like silhouettes, and for “Claire Voyant” in which we slowly turned harsh white light red over a long period of time to suggest the subtle shift in the tone of the scene from witty to dark.

The Tech rehearsal overall went really well, and established a good system within the company, with myself at the forefront of lights and sound as the writer of the script knows best. Luke and Tim worked hard to ensure props and costume were set in the right place either side backstage and to keep the performance alive even in a stop/start environment.

Show time soon!

Nathan.

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princealbertsjester · 8 years ago

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Dreadful Dress Rehearsal

This is where good thoughts come to die. Or it would be if we let setbacks hold us down. So on the 3rd of March we had our Dress run (yes that's the same day as the show was) and it went absolutely awfully.

Our first sketch came up and I completely fell apart; forgot lines, had the wrong accent, couldn't respond to jokes or make anything on the stop and basically just tanked, due to all this no-one understood . This then me and the others off for the entire rest of the show and set us on a path to awfuldom. After this escapade the session just went from bad to worse as we were all put off by how the first sketch had gone so badly and it showed within the rest of the sketches, the audience lost interest and so didn't understand most of the references we made in symptoms part 2 and 3. By the time we got to the janitors ballet the session had gone terribly. Then it came to the finale were we threw the pizza but because there was nothing inside the box it flew off with the force of the throw and ended up in the audience meaning we couldn't run out and jump onto the box which made the final tech cue impossible to follow.

Professional development has taken place though, as I've said before we turn our losses into gains and the fact that everything went so wrong for our dress we felt like the mistake were out of the way for the actual performance. We had to just take this loss on the chin and not let it shake us down, me and Nathan re-ran through our scene together to get us polished and prevent any other mistakes from happening on the night and it definitely showed. Sometimes we have to accept that along the path we fall over but as Alfred Pennyworth said "Why do we fall Master Bruce? So we can learn to pick ourselves up.". Our outlook had to be pick up and move on as we were performing live in front of our actual audience a few hours later and we handled the blow as a learning process ensuring it wouldn't happen again.

Tim

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princealbertsjester · 8 years ago

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My Website, My Child

So finally after many painstaking weeks of web development I have finished the Prince Albert's Jester official website, of course the site will need to continuously update to keep up with our news, current projects an finished uploads of rehearsal and performance photographs.

Needless to say my web making skills have grown exponentially I have finally set up links to our alternate social media pages such as Twitter Facebook and YouTube. We can now start spinning our web of social media to get publicity, hopefully a small following and multiple platforms for advertisement.

-These are on every page giving clear links to other sites with different/more information, videos, photos or posts from us.

As well as this I now feel confident with web design, I've implemented a dynamic header that moves into the site when it loads just adding a small bit of movement and making the site more aesthetically pleasing and interesting. This is repeated for all pages but only the header is affected to avoid overloading the page with random movements.

Issues: First off there was the 'Phantom Blue Box That Wouldn't Leave'. For a long time there was an issue with a strip from the Wix software designed to highlight background information or hold headers. But instead it was about two thirds of the way down the page and un-clickable, I tried to edit it from the header or footer or main page but there was no getting rid of it. This was a major issue as it looked terrible and was all over every page. There was an option to repeatedly press undo to try and figure out when it occurred but this would lose me the majority of my work. In the end after stressing it turned out it was wedged mid way between the main page and the footer so I had to extend the page to be able to access it and then delete it.

The second issue was that I've spent a lot of time creating the Launch festival website and linking it up to the Launch Website itself and before I could publish everything Launch was over. The left me with the issue of the Launch pages being irrelevant now. To deal with this I decided to leave the pages up but use them as a recording of Launch 17 was. I created a section about what we performed at Launch with image evidence and information about all the event details with reference to Launch 18.

At the other side of this website I'm incredibly happy with how it's turned out, I think it looks professional and if we keep up with it, it can definitely keep evolving as we do to become our permanent official website. Moving on from this project it is clear that our website will be our first port of call for updates on work we're doing, it will now serve as our publicity hub, booking mechanism and all around information page for the company. I will undoubtedly be continuously updating the site keeping it professional and making sure the news feed is always accurate and adding new pages for more work.

You'll find a link below to our site so you can check it out yourself. Just a quick note: the software we used to develop charges for domain names, so for now we are using the free version. Perhaps in future with funding, we will look towards getting domain space.

https://timmathewson.wixsite.com/princealbertsjester

Tim.

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princealbertsjester · 8 years ago

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Props & Costume

Hey Blog!

Just a quick one today as we’re knee deep in rehearsal for Launch Festival 2017. Exactly What You’d Expect is looking amazing! Really excited to perform it.

For our Props and Costume, the group has committed to an aesthetic. Although in our opening sequence we are attempting to look like space men with our ridiculous helmets made from water bottles (more on those later), we have decided on all black clothing with a juxtaposed white clown face. This is for several reasons:

1. We will fit in to the “clown”/”circus” aesthetic of Launch.

2. We are paying tribute to mime, silent comedy of old.

3. Suggests clowning, our personal exploitation for entertainment.

For the changes between character, we will be taking a leaf from the Sketch Comedy handbook of the greats such as League of Gentleman’s early days of live performance and using small interchangeable props. These include:

An eyepatch for Professor Nope

A hat for Wulfgang

An ugly wig for Claire Voyant

And a minimal use of props also, including:

A toy gun for Agent Stone

Cheese and Wine bottles for Le Petit Canard

The only exception to this is for The Janitor’s Ballet, for which we will be doing a quick change into overalls and using a pizza, a broom, mop and a spray bottle. This is to pay homage to old silent comedy’s use of prop’s and costume to communicate what they couldn’t say.

The only prop we have so far struggled to source was space helmets for our opening sequence. However, yesterday inspiration struck! These heavy duty water cooler bottles are the perfect shape and size. With permission from Yvonne Boyle, we met up with Keith from Woodwork and organised to have them cut to shape for use as our helmets!

Props and Costume all sourced and ready to go! This is an important step in the end of the process of preparation to ensure everything is right and nothing can go missing/forgotten on the night of performance.

Bye!

Nathan.

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princealbertsjester · 8 years ago

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A Sit Down with Bonnie and the Bonnettes!

Ah! Hey Blog

I finally managed to get around to writing up our interview with Bonnie and Bonnettes. As Luke mentioned in an earlier post, we were met with disappointment upon our professional connection aspect of the project, but were overjoyed to meet with postgraduate students and fresh faced members of Bonnie and Bonettes’, Cameron Sharp, Hattie Eason & Becky Glendenning Laycock.

- Bonnie and Bonnettes promotional imagery for “Drag Me To Love”

They are a “Drag Theatre” performance group who much like us developed their original show on the Professional Directions module and have continued on with the project after university! We hope to learn from them some insights about the industry, and to follow in their footsteps. Below is the transcript of our interview!

NATHAN

Righty tighty! This is Prince Albert’s Jester, why am I acting like I’m on the radio, I’m the only one that’s going to listen to this, we’re sitting down with Bonnie and Bonnettes! That is the official name now isn’t it, rather than Drag Me to Love. For a little interview about their practise, what they get up to, how they got to this stage from last year, they’re very professional, very exciting! Tim what’s the first question?

TIM

How did you all each come into the performing arts to begin with?

CAMERON

What just in life?

NATHAN

Just in life.

HATTIE

Not together.

NATHAN

No.

HATTIE

Go on Cam.

CAMERON

Me? So I started doing plays when I were younger. I always auditioned for the female parts but I didn’t get them because it was a catholic school. So I played a drag queen from the age of 14, and when I was 18 I decided I didn’t want to be a drag queen anymore, I wanted to be a serious actor. And look where that ended up? Drag.

HATTIE

So, my Mum did musicals in our little village. My sister started them as well. When I came of age I was like, “I want to do them!” But I was so shy so I didn’t really go for any big parts. The day came though when I thought I want to go for a part, and I went for Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz! And I got it!

CAMERON

I did that. I played Toto. I had one line and it was woof.

HATTIE

And then I decided I wanted to be a star and go to London and be on the West End, and be a star! … and then I came to Northumbria.

BECKY

My sister started dance school when we were younger. I didn’t want to do it. We went to one of her shows and I thought “Oh god I’m going to hate this”, and I LOVED it, I was up on my feet dancing in the aisles. I joined this dance group and turned out I couldn’t dance! But there was an acting side, and I found a comedy group, we’d write out little skits and act them out. I found out I’m quite funny, and enjoyed writing. I came to Uni and met these guys, and at first I wanted to be a serious writer, but then I enjoyed performing again with these guys.

TIM

What kind of companies are you guys into or inspired by?

CAMERON

Hmm… companies we like…

HATTIE

Rash dash.

BECKY

Phenomenal.

HATTIE

You need to go and see them.

CAMERON

Shit Theatre. They’re coming to Northern Stage. They do cabaret, but in a non cabaret style.

BECKY

They make their own rules and you just kind of go with it. You love it. Jonny and the Baptists. They’re coming up and they are doing a show called “Eat the Poor” about the housing crisis and poverty. It’s brilliant.

CAMERON

We’re very in to people who use smaller stages, smaller spaces, but talk about huge issues.

BECKY

Like Figs in Wigs. They have a show where the beginning of the show is the end of another show. They are all dead, lights go down and they got up, bow and went off. Came back onstage and started the next show.

NATHAN

Brilliant.

HATTIE

Honestly, go see it. We’re very into theatre that can be seen as DIY. I really respect theatre when it’s not all about the money they’ve put into the set. And it is a bit shit. But it’s their love and passion, they’ve thought outside the box. They put their heart and soul into it.

BECKY

When it’s in their bones. When that’s everything they are doing right now.

HATTIE

Companies don’t need set and costume designers. You can put the time and effort in yourselves.

CAMERON

I don’t trust anyone else. It’s ours, it’s our baby. It’s our everything.

TIM

How long have you been working together, and what is your current project like?

CAMERON

What you see of the company now is not how it started. It was on the same module you were on, Professional Directions. It was me and another girl, Abbey. I was walking down Northumberland Street telling her stories, and we just realised it should be a show. We pitched it to Drama society but they said it should be on the drag scene… I disagreed.

HATTIE

But since that pitch, my god the show has changed. It was originally going to be like a conventional play with like, 12 drag queens.

NATHAN

That’s interesting, I remember coming to your stall at the fair last year and you’d coined it as a new thing, as “Drag Theatre” rather than a drag show.

CAMERON

I knew I wanted to lip sync to someone live, and Hattie can sing, so we brought her in for a cameo role almost but during rehearsals it became a collaboration. So you came on board as a full timer. Whoever was the third one it was going to be the third person, it was always going to be difficult. Abbey moved to Canada, so we needed somebody to balance mine and Hattie’s things, so I lip sync, she sings. And we both said we wanted Becky. And she was just perfect. Lovely and balanced. Beckie is our Dawn French esque character. Making a tit of herself on stage.

NATHAN

So Abbey is still a part of the group?

CAMERON

Yeah she’s the outside eye, like the Dramaturg. It’s great to have her on board.

BECKY

Yeah because she comes in and she knows the show inside and out because she cowrote it. And we’ve been devising and rehearsing and creating so she’s a great outside eye.

HATTIE

So overall, the company must have been together in different iterations for about two years?

CAMERON

But it’s been so many different iterations, we only formed together like this in…

HATTIE

May?

BECKY

It was at the cabaret. The end of year cabaret.

HATTIE

So officially for about a year now.

NATHAN

So you guys are obviously balancing being Masters students, being part of a professional company, and rehearsing in the lead up to your first every gig at Northern Stage, how does it feel?

BECKY

It’s awesome. I mean obviously we’re supposed to be in the library 24/7 reading and writing but we’re like, nah! Let’s do a show! A lot of the time we do have a panic about getting our work done, but if we do this for years and years to come I’d be very happy.

CAMERON

We’ve never really put the pressure on the show to be good. The reason we do the show the way it is now is due to scratch nights and audience feedback, and we were offered gigs and all sorts. It kind of just evolved from there.

HATTIE

It’s the best thing we’ve ever done. I genuinely feel like I’ve learned more about the industry in this past year as a three with these guys than I did in my entire time at uni. Like about a producers role. Applying for funding. Going to the Fringe. Doing your budgeting. Planning a tour. Extending your tour! Making a show. Writing a show. It’s so much more than saying “I’ve got a show, let’s do it!”.

CAMERON

With the amount of shit going on, it’s the time for young people to have a lot to say. Especially edgy, new kind of shows. It’s the time for it. We sat down and said, lets do the MA, and tour in Spring. Apparently. It’s a bit of a balancing act. For this next month, this is our priority.

HATTIE

The university has been really good about it. They’ve been very supportive and allowed us time to go to pitches.

CAMERON

Events such as Meet the Programmers and Venue’s North. Meet the Programmers you do a three minute pitch. Venue’s North is fifteen...

BECKY

You’re doing it for all the programmers and theatre people and people who do festivals go to those events. You stand up and say this is who I am! You meet so many people in a matter of minutes, because everybody has seen you and heard from you. It’s a bit disheartening, you think people will come up and talk to you but it’s not like that.

HATTIE

But, through that even we got the Durham scratch night, which was brilliant, and from that we got another one. You meet other artists as well at these events.

CAMERON

It’s good to scout out the competition too, as the people pitching will be performing at the same time as you.

BECKY

But it’s healthy competition up here. It’s all in good means. It’s a great community.

HATTIE

Since we’ve been doing Meet the Programmers, Venues North, working as a company away from a student and university setting, I’ve learned so much more about the theatre scene up here. I’ve met so many people. I can put a name to a company, and I can make connections. I know about different peoples companies and their work, and now I’m so aware. I’m so eager to get into it.

CAMERON

Are Prince Albert’s Jester wanting to stay up North?

NATHAN

There has been discussions of it. Myself and Tim are, but Luke is not so sure yet. As soon as the official plan is made we can start those arrangements.

HATTIE

Is there just three of you?

TIM

Yes

CAMERON

I like a three.

HATTIE

Sometimes a three can not be a great thing, because one can feel quite left out, but in our group and I’m sure in yours, the dynamic works.

CAMERON

Originally people said at scratch nights, that I should do it as a solo show, and so many people are doing solo shows and I personally find it boring.

HATTIE

Why does autobiographical theatre have to be a solo?

CAMERON

It’s cool more three’s are coming! People say, don’t form companies with your friends, but I don’t want to start it with anybody else!

HATTIE

We all became close, because of the show. It started out in a more professional capacity, we were interested in working together. And we became friends through that.

CAMERON

As far as being a professional goes, just say you are. If you say you are people will start treating you that way.

HATTIE

It’s all very well saying “Oh, we are a new upcoming theatre company”, we put that on all of our applications. We don’t class ourselves as amateur, we don’t class ourselves as semi-professional, you don’t say, “Oh, we’ll be professional after our first tour,” No. You won’t get it done. It just won’t be. Don’t fanny about. Make decisions. This is who we are and this is what we want to do.

BECKY

Tell everybody you are professional.

CAMERON

As a company, of course we want it to be a job, but we have to work outside of it to have money to live.

BECKY

If we got our own rehearsal space, that would be the dream.

NATHAN

I know that feeling.

BECKY

I’d love to be able to go to a theatre and say “Oh I’ve toured here”.

CAMERON

It’s not about being famous. It’s about being successful.

BECKY

And what is successful to us!

HATTIE

I already feel successful. I would say we are succeeding.

NATHAN

Go on ask a nice one to finish on.

TIM

Tell us the funniest joke you know?

CAMERON

Oh god.

HATTIE

Oh go on, tell it.

CAMERON

There’s a woman in a park. She’s walking a dog. And a man comes up to her and says, “What a lovely dog!” And she says “Oh thank you, he’s interbred,”… and a duck comes out the bushes and says, “I’ll tell you who else is into bread,”

Our meeting with Cameron, Hattie and Becky was a raging success. Despite struggling with our professional connections in this project, this interview provided a font of knowledge we would have otherwise never have accessed. The importance of DIY, small space theatre companies in the current social and political climate provides a hole in the market our group can fill. And the events such as Events North and Meet the Programmers are important dates to put in our calendar for Prince Albert’s future!

We are also proud to announce that shortly after the interview finished, Bonnie and the Bonnette’s invited Prince Albert’s Jester to participate in a cabaret night! All very exciting! Thanks for reading!

Nathan.

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princealbertsjester · 8 years ago

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Embrace Your Mistakes

We're gathered here today to document the death of productivity within Prince Albert's Jesters most recent rehearsal session. In seriousness we gathered together for our usual rehearsal after not meeting for a while and needless to say it did not go entirely to plan. Nathan had written a brand new sketch scene that was to go into our performance the Le Petit Canard cafe sketch which we had read through once or twice with script in hand but had never done of script without breaks in the flow. So when we came to try and rehearse it none of us knew what we were doing, saying or where we were supposed to be. This resulted in a hilarious (to us) encounter of straying entirely from the script improvising and generally falling about laughing. One such moment was where Luke (playing the waiter) left the stage to pick up props and just forgot to return to stage entirely, leaving me and Nathan in an incredibly awkward silence for a good while. From this point Nathan came out with the line "Service takes a while in this place" and I cracked up laughing. From then on I couldn't stop myself bursting into laughter every time something went wrong for the rest of the scene. This led to the whole thing falling apart and me and Luke just blaming Nathan for not sending us the script.

However from the ashes of this diabolical rehearsal rose a phoenix like enjoyment for all of us involved. Yes our practice had just gone completely terribly but we'd all had such a good time doing it that it didn't matter, our ethic has always been if it isn't fun then there's no point in doing it and if we don't find it funny then it doesn't go into our final piece. This has been the way since even before we reformed to Prince Albert's Jester from NOLTT. It was a great session for morale despite the awful rendition we just gave, it also led to many improvements on the scene, the improvised lines we had come up with eventually made it into the performance. However it was now impossible for me to perform this scene without having flashbacks to this time when all we did was fall about the place laughing at how terribly we were all doing. Because of the fact we are now working for ourselves rather than working for a marking criteria it wasn't necessarily a terrible thing that we (particularly me) had begun to corpse mid performance. Previously looming deadlines and strict criteria have driven why we devise and develop piece, however now that we do not have a criteria to hit for this sketch show project we need to worry less about trivial things such as breaking character and can freely enjoy doing so and work with it more without fear of some faceless mark scheme condemning us for it.

All in all we embrace our mistakes, instead of beating ourselves up about things that go wrong we enjoy it and roll with it attempting to spool it into a thread of productivity and success. This is a integral part of our ethos as a company, we never stay down for long and believe that in any failure there will be a success. Despite how badly this session went we have new material to work from and retain our love of this scene due to how it will always remind us of the fun we generate in our rehearsal process.

Tim

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princealbertsjester · 8 years ago

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Market Research

Well hello again! This post right here is going to be discussing some market research we did for our show Exactly What You'd Expect. After a few weeks of deciding we wanted to do sketch comedy we needed to come up with material to go into said sketch show. We figured the best way and most professional way to decide this was to engage in some market research in which we ask the public (more specifically our student audience) a little about what they might want to see. Whilst we took advantage of this opportunity it became clear that market research would also help us in deciding where the market was for live sketch comedy and whether it would make it out in the 'real' world. So I drew up a plan of ten simple questions that we could take to people and ask them. I tried to cover a broad range with the questions covering specifics about what to and what not to cover in comedy and also the availability and will to see sketch comedy. I primarily focused my research in the Student's Union seeing as though our debut would take place in a university environment it seemed a good place to collate information. I asked several people around the building if they wouldn't mind answering a few questions for an upcoming theatre company about sketch comedy, asked them what their year of study and course was and then recorded their responses on my phone to later type up. What shows below are three of the responses I've selected to share with you.

First, a female mature student named Hannah studying Childhood and Youth Studies. She was very friendly and approachable, she had great responses to all the questions and was eager to learn more about the group Prince Albert's Jester.

What’s your favourite type of comedy/comedian?

"Dry and sarcastic or like, taking the mick out of people like those 'mean tweets'. Real life or relatable comedy."

Do you have a particular subject you find the funniest?

"Anything relatable really, anything you can think "oh yeah that's so me!"

Do you enjoy/are you into sketch comedy at all? Groups such as Monty Python?

"Only the clips my younger brother shows me, I'm pretty uncultured when it comes to all of that!

How often do you go to live comedy?

"Not as often as I'd like to. I've been to a few in the past overseas but don't really know where to go to find it."

What would draw you to go see a live comedy performance more/at all?

"A good recommendation from someone who had been or if it was someone I knew of such as Russell Peters or Peter Kay."

Have you ever seen/ would you be interested in seeing a live comedy sketch group?

"I haven't seen one but yes absolutely."

What kind of sketches would you want to see in a live comedy performance?

"Real-life scenarios, even if it's in abstract contexts - anything relatable."

What would make a new sketch group stand out from the crowd/be as great as the old groups?

"Maybe a new twist on things? Original ideas of comedy but done using popular contexts like vampires who care about anaemic people?"

Anything you think isn’t funny or comedians should avoid?

"It's hard to pinpoint it but I hate it when comedians just make you cringe. I don't really like extremely crude humour."

Tell us the funniest joke you know?

"Well I love a good "yo momma" joke and anything out of Jimmy Fallon's mouth but I can't think of any on the spot, sorry!"

Second up was a first year student Jamie studying Electrical and Electronic Engineering. A little more reluctant than previous interviewees but still gave some good responses to questions, especially answering about what to and not to do in comedy.

What’s your favourite type of comedy/comedian?

"Dark stuff? I don't know what you mean by type really. Satire? Absurdity? I particularly like David Mitchell, Frankie Boyle"

Do you have a particular subject you find the funniest?

"Politics is often funny. Topical issues. Death is funny too. "

Do you enjoy/are you into sketch comedy at all? Groups such as Monty Python?

"Yeah, Mitchell + Webb, Armstrong + Miller, Monty Python as you say."

How often do you go to live comedy?

"Never if I'm honest"

What would draw you to go see a live comedy performance more/at all?

"If I knew it was on and it was nearby"

Have you ever seen/ would you be interested in seeing a live comedy sketch group?

"Probably yeah"

What kind of sketches would you want to see in a live comedy performance?

"Dunno really. As long as it's funny. Perhaps it should be topical."

What would make a new sketch group stand out from the crowd/be as great as the old groups?

"Addressing the clichés that come with comedy. "

Anything you think isn’t funny or comedians should avoid?

"Gender differences. Overdone and just gives rise and boring debate. Actually comedians who just milk their gimmick (hur hur I'm American but I live in London now) get on my nerves"

Tell us the funniest joke you know?

"No"

Finally, the last interview I'm posting is one I shared with a Master's student named Megan who was on the Health and Wellbeing MA course.

What’s your favourite type of comedy/comedian?

A group called Foil, Arms and Hog are pretty up there. They're a trio of Irish comedians, they have stuff on facebook and Youtube but they're live stuff is legit.

Do you have a particular subject you find the funniest?

I don't know really, I find everything funny. I don't know.

Do you enjoy/are you into sketch comedy at all? Groups such as Monty Python?

Aye definitely.

How often do you go to live comedy?

About 4 times a year maybe? Quarterly.

What would draw you to go see a live comedy performance more/at all?

If I'd seen promotional stuff, stuff like clips of work.

Have you ever seen/ would you be interested in seeing a live comedy sketch group?

Yes, Foil, Arms and Hog do that kind of thing

What kind of sketches would you want to see in a live comedy performance?

Does slapstick count? Sort of like physical stuff, like mime things as well.

What would make a new sketch group stand out from the crowd/be as great as the old groups?

I don't know...

Anything you think isn’t funny or comedians should avoid?

What gets on my nerves is when people just capitalise on what they are, like only make jokes about them and their race/sexuality/religion. Or people who swear for the sake of swearing.

Tell us the funniest joke you know?

What do you do if a bird shits on your car? Don't ask her out again.

I asked the other two members to email me over three example responses from their market research and will likely attach all the responses into a folder that can go on this blog.

All in all the exercise was incredibly useful to us as a group, it enabled us to see that there was indeed a market in the professional world for sketch comedy and now that we knew people would come to see it we could work on what they were going to see. A professional company always has to stay relevant and at the end of the day give their target market what they desire, so this is what we decided to do, show some professional acumen and insight into our industry and audience.

The research provided some simple answers to our questions, it was clear what a few people wanted to see from our research, a lot that came up was religion, relatable comedy and the classics. We most tried to take as much of this on board as we could, applying the character of Wulfgang that we already had to a religious situation etc. The more we found that people loved old sketch comedy as much as we did the more we wanted to put into our show we'd never seen anyone do that in the university context and it was clear that others hadn't either and that this was a big subject we could capitalise on, hence 'The Janitor's Ballet' to end the show.

Cheers!

Tim

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princealbertsjester · 8 years ago

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Pulling the Strings Together

Oh my god it’s another post!

In this post I will be documenting our process moving on from the devising process and into actually putting it together into a proper performance. Our debut show! Exciting times.

We have constructed the transitions in between scenes, and have begun sourcing tracks to cover the transitions and visualising the props, costume, lighting and sound. For our sound cues, I downloaded all the tracks as MP3 format and reformatted them to .wav files as the tech team behind Launch Festival have specified. To show public recordings of the performance however we would have to seek the copyright for all tracks, and we will be looking in to that.

- The list of music tracks to be downloaded.

As for the rehearsals themselves, the show is solid except for the missing Cheese and Wine Man scene which I am still in the process of writing for tomorrow’s rehearsal. It’s a full sketch featuring all three of us entitled “Le Petit Canard”. I look forward to introducing this to the group.

As for the structure of the show, we have merged elements together to form a cohesive performance. The format of the scrapped “Wulfgang War” sketch, involving imagery involving holding somebody near death, was transferred to the finale of “the Symptoms”.

“Janitor’s Ballet” has become the finale of the performance. This is due to it’s comical style and tone. In comparison to out other sketches, it is lighthearted and basic in it’s concept, and will leave the audience on a laugh rather than the bittersweet ending of the scene previous.

The show is really coming together! The next step is to source all of our props and costume.

Until then!

Nathan.

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princealbertsjester · 8 years ago

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Launch Festival Audition

The big event of February 2017! The Launch Festival Audition. Festival directors Emily and Georgina wanted 5-10 minutes from each act that wished to be in the festival. The setting required a professional outlook despite the fact that we knew we'd already have a place in the show and that we were on personal terms with the directors already. Despite this we came at the event with professionalism, we agreed to perform the sketch we were most comfortable with at the time which was The Janitor's Ballet because we had put a copious amount of rehearsal time into this sketch scene recently trying to get physicality, timing and reactions sharpened as much as possible. We also decided to perform our introduction as this was most controversial idea we had at the time and wanted to screen it in case is wasn't going to go down well in the tech/dress.

The introduction as I mentioned early was our controversial idea, not for the wider public but for the Launch Festival setting it was performed in. During our introduction we alluded to the dis-organisation of Launch by claiming we had no idea what the theme for this year was, that we hadn't been properly informed and that the ties between the word Launch and the theme of Circus was tenuous at best. We basically wanted to trial this material in case our directors had a problem with it, we knew that the girls would take it in jest and probably even find the section funny but if we had been in a professional environment where we didn't know our directors personally the jokes could be taken in a much worse way and have to be cut from our show. This was the main reason we chose to perform it, to emulate the professional world and allow the directors to have the final say. We did in fact discuss this apprehension with Festival Directors Emily and Georgina and informed them that we wanted to run it by them in case they had any qualms about it but as we suspected they really enjoyed it and found the material funny and thanked us for running it by them first.

The actual performance for the audition went genuinely well the only issue we faced during the audition was sound management. Due to the fact all of us were had to be onstage when the music started playing for both sections we performed it became a little awkward when the music system was in a separate room. Both sections we performed required one of us to run out of the room press play on the track and then run back into the space and immediately resume performing. We handled this issue quite well however as Nathan was the first to be onstage in both scenes so we simply left it to me or Luke to play the tracks meaning we were never too find behind on our music tracks whilst performing. Thus the opening monologue started and ended at the right times, then the opening section which had our signature structured improvisation went well without any awkward gaps or rambling and came across quite effective. We got some laughs from our two audience members that spurred us on. As for The Janitor's Ballet it was difficult to do entirely as we obviously didn't have the integral prop for the piece (a cooked pizza the janitors fight for) so we had to use a stand in and explain to the girls what it represented beforehand. Some of the gestures in the piece had to become badly mimed seeing as though we didn't have actual slices of pizza to put in pockets or mouths or under cones, but I think the general idea got across to the two audience members.

To summarise our audition process went particularly well, we received great feedback from our Festival Directors, performed to a high standard despite the few drawbacks we faced and engaged with the occasion in a professional manner. The session gave us great confidence for the performance to come and we enjoyed it for what it was.

Cheers!

Tim

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