At the beginning of last semester we were told what our project was for the summer semester this year; The Interprogramme Project. The College form a team of students from various years and various programmes to collaborate in the creation of a 30 minute performance extracted from a piece of modern british writing in one of the studios on campus. The team is currently formed of a directing student from the ETA (European Theatre Arts) course, two TD’s (Theatre Designer) students (myself and Hannah) and one LD (Lighting Design) student. We were given the text months ago to start looking at and bouncing ideas off each other, our director Ed has chosen The Skriker by Caryl Churchill.
‘It is the story of an ancient fairy who, during the course of the play, transforms into a plethora of objects and people as it pursues Lily and Josie, two teenage mothers whom it befriends, manipulates, seduces and entraps. Whilst speaking English in its human incarnations, the Skriker’s own language consists of broken and fragmented word play. Blending naturalism, horror and magical realism, it explores the themes of post-natal psychosis and possession.’
Joining us later on this term will be students from the first year ETA performance course (we have been allocated an all female cast of 15), first year SA (Scenic Art), first year SM (Stage Management) and first year CLC (Creative Lighting Control)
Last week we were given our timetable and currently Hannah and I have exactly 6 weeks until our final presentations to the entire cast and crew where we have to show our model box, costume drawings, technical drawings and costings including a proposal of how this will all be made within an £150 budget. Happy Days!
We did created a Facebook group as soon as we got the text and were sent the final draft of the script last week by Ed and so have been planning ideas and sharing things for months now. However as we have had other projects on at the same time this has been sort of pushed into the back burner to simmer away but time has rushed by and the metaphorical pot is dangerously close to boiling over if it is not looked at soon. In my last week of term I took over a table in the library for a day and dug into hundreds of books sourcing various photographs, paintings, sculptures etc etc etc.
The ideas that have been thrown around on Facebook have involved using warped mirrors and transformation of the skriker. Using Puppetry for a scene where Josie will talk toads, or maybe silhouettes? We are deliberating about weather to have it promenade or not, that will mainly be down to practicality.
One hurdle the team will have to overcome is that of compromise. We have already hit our first conflict weeks ago where I see the Skriker as being a group of people, i envisaged a sort of monster-esque vibe using a collection of people who all move/dance around each other and as the Skriker becomes one of the people she transforms into the others mould on of the people into that character however Hannah saw this; ‘For the skriker herself, as she kind of narrates the piece, I was thinking, I know you thought of a number of people playing her, how about it being one person, as she sends the audience around, and she finds aspects of different costumes for the different people she plays within the different sets then goes into that scene?’
Our director wants to ‘make the audience feel quite literally mentally disturbed. when people faint or black out, one minute they are fine, the next they are laying on the floor with people standing over them, i want to give the audience that sensation. So, there is a scene going on then all of a sudden the scene suspends, there is a fast fade to black which after a second fades back up and the scene is still going, in fact it never stopped, the audience has missed something just as if they had fainted’
This is our first realised project and i am in a state of excitable terrified anticipation. We all want to make this great.
rosiemotion 