FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE
When I am no longer, even a memory – just a name.

ROSA PARKS
The other passengers there reluctantly gave up their seats.

F. NIGHTINGALE
Florence Nightingale.

EMMELINE PANKHURST
You have to make more noise than anybody else, you have to be more obtrusive than anybody else.

R. PARKS
But I refused to do so.

E. PANKHURST
Where they have to choose between giving us freedom, or giving us death.

SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR
[Translated] I didn’t lead the life of a housewife – the most oppressive for women – and so avoided the servitude of their condition.

E. PANKHURST
That is the whole history of politics.

S. DE BEAUVOIR
[Translated] Later, when I began to look around me, I saw the truth of the feminine condition.

MARILYN MONROE
But please don’t make me look like a joke. (she laughs)

GLORIA STEINHAM
I keep meeting women who I’ve heard all my life are bitchy and pushy and so on and so forth. I meet them and they are nice compassionate people.

MARGARET THATCHER
No… No… No!

BETTY FRIEDAN
For those of us who started it, for you who will carry it on. The women and the men.

G. STEINHAM
But it’s hard for me to remember that.

MADONNA
She seemed very in charge of what she was doing and she also had a sort of wittiness about her.

M. THATCHER
What is the point in trying to get elected to parliament.

PRINCESS DIANA
It takes just a brief glance at the television or the newspapers to realise that much of the news is sad news.

MOTHER TERESA
I was sick and in prison and you visited me.

MADONNA
She was a role model.

EMMA WATSON
Today we care launching a campaign called HeForShe

PRINCESS DIANA
Tonight we have some good news to celebrate.

E. WATSON
For the record, feminism by definition is the belief that men and women should have equal rights.

J.K ROWLING
A woman can do magic just as powerfully as a man can do magic.

E. WATSON
If not me, who? If not now, when?

ELLEN PAGE
Because loving other people starts with loving ourselves and accepting ourselves.

MALALA YOUSAFZAI
And I’m proud that I’m the first pakistani and the first young woman or the first young person who is getting this award. It’s a great honour for me.

OPRAH WINFREY
My wish for you is that you continue.

E. WATSON
Men, I would like to this opportunity to extend your formal invitation. Gender equality is your issue too.

O. WINFREY
Continue to let humour lighting the burden of a tender heart in a society known for cruelty.

M. YOUSAFZAI
A girl has the power to go forward in her life.

O. WINFREY
Continue to remind the people that each is as good as the other, and that no-one is beneath you or above you.

PATRICIA ARQUETTE
We have fought for everybody else’s equal rights.

M. YOUSAFZAI
She’s not only a mother, she’s not only a sister, she’s not only a wife. But a girl has the – she should have an identity.

O. WINFREY
Continue, and by doing so, you and your work will be able to continue eternally.

P. ARQUETTE
It’s our time to have wage equality once and for all.

E. WATSON
I’m here to ask you, what is the impact you can have? How? What? Where? When? And with who? We want to help. We want to know, and we want to hear from you. Thank you very much.

It is incredibly rare “for any designer to spend this much time in rehearsal with actors.” (Collins, 2011, 23) Given that in this module I chose to make sure I was at every rehearsal, regardless of whether I was called in or not, I was able to get a real feel for what the performance called for, and I was able to bring sound in from an early stage. In a production of Titus Andronicus, sound designer Collins took a similar approach. In his writing he talks of being able to understand the performance the entire way through the process, much like I did, and he talks about an “opportunity in this to perform – albeit from just off-stage… I had found that I could make my relatively crude playback devices work in perfect sync with their performances.” (Collins, 2011, 23) This was something I found I was able to do too, and was able to match sounds to the performances that took place, like making sound change slightly when people entered or left the room.

I chose to use a program called ‘Sound plant’ which we explored use with earlier in the module. The program allowed me to load sounds in, and play them along with a click of a button of my keyboard. I was able to loop, overlay and match the sounds to the exact second that needed to occur. This was helpful in every rehearsal and the plan is to use it in the performance live too with the audience being able to see what I’m doing at all times on a TV screen connected to my laptop.

A screenshot of soundplant, with my sounds loaded in.

I started to refer to myself as a historical DJ. Taking moments of history or using other sounds to reconstruct or add to moments from time. “The DJ activates the history of music by copying and pasting together loops of sound, placing recorded products in relation with each other.” (Bourriaud, 2002, 18) Whether or not it actual music or sound effects, I managed to play sound files and edit them live, along with layering to create the exact sound that needed to happen. I was able to fade in and fade out tracks live along with the action, add reverb or low pass filter when needed and overall create a live and interactive feeling to the sound.

For some time, I was also to play piano for one scene too. Yet this was decided against to strip the scene back to its core. The piano playing distracted and it was better for me to focus on using soundplant. However the Hitler scene, once made, required some kind of ‘substance’ behind it. When looking at a lot of the speeches he made online, a lot had that kind of old time recording noise just underneath them. I wanted to replicate this, but every sound file I could find didn’t sound real enough. Luckily I owned a Vinyl player, so I chose to have that live, I just let it loop on the end of the vinyl so what was played was the crackling noise of a vinyl player. This led me to be able to create a sound in an unorthodox manor, and by having a camera on the player for the audience to see, they are also able to tell what is going on.

Overall sound is incredibly important for making a show meatier and more emotional, and I feel by using the programs and live creations I did, I was able to give a more enjoyable and entertaining element to what would have otherwise just been queued up in Cue-Lab.

Works Cited

Collins, J. (2011) Performing Sound/Sounding Space. In: Kendrick, L. and Roesner, D. (eds.) Theatre noise: the sound of performance. London: Newcastle Cambridge Scholars.

Bourriaud, N. (2002) Postproduction. New York: Lukas & Sternberg.

Music has the ability to make someone smile, cry, laugh or feel every emotion under the sun. It can take a simple movement to a fully orchestrated artwork. It is a vital part of cinema and TV, and when implemented to theatre can act as an emotional underscore to set a mood for the whole production.

When it comes to this production, a lot of what was wanted was asked for by the directors, which I always followed and achieved exactly what they envisioned but I did have a little bit of creative freedom when it came to how certain things sounded.

When designing the sound and music, it was incredibly important for me to remember, “Sound tells an audience what they cannot see. What is invisible to the audience, but near enough to be heard, becomes the domain of the sound designer… The sound we heard lied to us but still managed to create its own perfectly plausible reality.” (Collins, 2011, 29) This was not only applicable to sound effects like crowd sounds, to make it clear to an audience that there is a crowd just out of eyesight in the given scene, or a clock tick to fill the empty monotonous space, but it also applies to that of music that can create a mood or tension that an audience cannot otherwise pick up on. A monologue said to no sound would sound however the actor portrayed it, may that be angry, happy, sad, but with a low hum underneath, for example, adds a tension or uneasiness that an audience would have otherwise missed out on.

This has been demonstrated with this scene from Jaws, where music can add tension and excitement followed by triumphant victory, not seen without the music.

Works Cited
Collins, J. (2011) Performing Sound/Sounding Space. In: Kendrick, L. and Roesner, D. (eds.) Theatre noise: the sound of performance. London: Newcastle Cambridge Scholars.

Although after doing a lot of work for it, I was not allowed to be on the marketing team, but I still went ahead and carried on when it was evident that nothing was being done. I said I would wait to see if anything appeared, and if not, I would carry on doing social media marketing (as this did not step on toes of people who would get angry if I went ahead and printed posters. I had to tread a very thin line with the ‘marketing’ people. Not fun).

Either way, I was proud of what I achieved in this field, and I got to use my skills I learned through after effects to create trailers that eventually circulated Facebook among the drama student community. It’s a shame I wasn’t allowed to just do the marketing for them as I can guarantee I would have got a lot done. I have contacts in the radio stations, knew where to get things printed quickly, and just how to get the word out in interesting ways. But alas, directors and other members of the group did not allow me. So it’s a shame, but here’s what I did.

(My images did however end up in the Lincoln programme and on the website (Seen here!), this is because I was the only one who actually emailed them when the deadline was due.)

Poster!

A lot of the idea for the poster came from a need for a simple and clear design. Something memorable that would carry. I opted for the sniper rifle imagery. We have scenes where people are assassinated, and although it doesn’t say much about the performance, it says enough. All the poster needs to do is tantalise an audience into coming, and I felt my poster did that. The poster they went with in the end that appeared on leaflets (which appeared in circulation the day before the show) was also simple, but I never fully understood it, I also wish it appeared in circulation sooner. Marketing is important to me, I wish it was taken seriously.

Trailers!

Following the creation of the poster, I made a trailer following the similar art style. It featured the voice of John F. Kennedy talking about history in his moon speech. Again this is not giving a lot away, but the audience realise we’re going to be dealing with the past.

After a comment from my father (yup, this is where I usually go for advice) about it not being clear enough and he still has no idea what it was about – I opted for this much clearer and more fun trailer with actual clips from some of the scenes we are doing. It is clear we are dealing with specific moments of history and with the popular song; the trailer attracts an audience, especially those of our age group, which, given that it is a university performance, will be the main body of the audience.

The camera. A piece of technology that is so inherent to the modern way we live our lives day after day. Every person who owns a mobile phone has a camera attached to his or her body at all times of the day. So where is it’s place in theatre? “Theatre is not virtual, it is real. It is exactly this quality that cannot be replaced by any other medium.” (Freiburg, 2010, 79) Which is all well and true but that doesn’t stop it combining with media to create something new. Why can’t theatre become more cinematic?

During this module and during the show we have to adopt a language that is not inherent to theatre, but instead theatre. Close-up, wide angle, post-production and so on… The function of the camera is to pick a part of an image and present it on a screen. Combine with theatre and “the material body and its subjectivity are extended, challenged and reconfigured through technology.” (Causey, 2009, 16) You can see things you otherwise wouldn’t see. A subtle hand move, the shaking of someone’s nerves, a quick eye dash. This was important when creating our show; we wanted to present things in new ways so why not close-up on the moments of history to show the subtle sides of it. We can see the queens nerves before she gets crowned, and we can see the subtle workings of a murderer.

It also called for a different style of acting. Theatre asks for big personalities, big gestures, and big characters so that the people all over the auditorium are able to see and understand what is going on. Bring a camera into the equation, which can be an extra eye for an audience and the acting can become far subtler. No need for big gestures when the audiences get a slight finger twitch blown into a massive projection onto the screen. The choice on how this is done is down to the directors, but a slightly abstract style of performing where people move slowly and precise would lead for a style that meets the theatre and film elements of acting.

Works Cited
Freiburg, J. (eds.) (2010) Gob Squad Reader. London: Gob Squad.
Causey, M. (2009) Theatre and Performance in Digital Culture. London: Routledge.