Kick A Pigeon Theatre on Performance Day (Noble, 2017)

Before our debut performance of Record ’97, I was aware that the piece was very comedic, however, having never performed it in front of an audience, I was not sure how much of it would be comical for an audience witnessing it for the first time, and how the audience would react to the different elements of comedy within the piece. During the performance, the audience had amazing reactions to the physical and verbal comedy throughout the piece, and even laughed at elements of the show that we as a company did think would get as big a reaction as it received on the night. This reaction from an audience was amazing for our first show, and gave a renewed energy to the performers and the  performance as a whole.

In addition to this, all of the production elements within the piece blended together very well and created a smooth and seamless performance. Nothing felt out of place or unnecessary, and all of these elements contributed to an even better performance. The set, sound and light used within the piece created the nostalgic effect of the 1990’s whilst informing the audience of the time period. The news broadcasts worked very well as a way of showing that, whilst the play is displaying the stories of the characters within the record store, the world around them is still moving, and is still imposing itself upon them, and I feel that during the performance this was displayed in a very effective manner and was translated to the audience very effectively.

During my time as director, I have learnt a lot, but I would say that one of the main comments that stuck by me during the entire process was “never underestimate the intelligence of your audience. I believe that the audience like to work for their laughter” (Cooney, 2014). Whilst this comment is about farcical comedies, I believe that this can be applied to any genre of performance, and can also be useful for both performers and directors. With a comedy, it is very easy to create generic humour through some of the physical movements overused lines and gags and I believe we managed to effectively stay away from these, using the characters that we had created and developed to create the comical elements within the show.

In addition, I feel that everyone’s character was very well developed and portrayed on stage. As director, I had individual meetings with each member of the cast to develop their characters beyond what was stated within the writing. I worked with each cast member to ensure the intentions of the character during each scene was clear for the actor, and I feel that this development meant that the piece was given more life, and the characters really became three-dimensional.

If Kick a Pigeon were to continue in the future, our first steps would be to apply for Arts Council England funding, and also to scale down the set of the show in order to both lower the cost of the production, but also to make it easier to transport between venues whilst on tour.

Works Cited:  Cooney, R. (2014) Ray Cooney’s Six Rules of Farce. London: Telegraph. Available from:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/10688416/Ray-Cooneys-six-rules-of-farce.html [accessed 26th May 2017]

Noble, R. (2017)

With the creation of our piece, I have decided to have a look at different farces as well as the different conventions that are commonly used within a farcical piece. When researching I found that farce’s, whilst being comedic in nature, actually have tragedy at the core of the piece as Ray Cooney explains “I’m searching for something potentially tragic. Farce is more akin to tragedy than it is to comedy” (Cooney, 2014), with this knowledge in mind, it can definitely be applied to the situation at the core of our piece as the characters have just received news that their property is going to be demolished, and so need to sort out what is occurring within their own lives. However, what makes a farce a farce is the fact that it’s pure aim is to make the audience laugh, and we intend to do this through the use of physical comedy and deliberately absurd scenarios that are both conventions of a farcical comedy. The characters themselves also create comedy through the way in which they interact as we have very large and at times, unbelievable characters, such as the character of Alex, who is a struggling musician who frequents the record store and inflicts her songs upon the employees and those who live above the store in the flat. In addition to this, we also had the character of Daisy, who was the straight man character of the play who will create comedy due to the fact that she can realise and comment on the absurd scenarios that occur within the piece.

In addition to the use of farce, we also had elements relating to the theatre of the absurd within our work. The theatre of the absurd, however, also displays elements of a farcical nature as Waiting for Godot is one of the most well known plays to include farcical elements. Including elements of the Theatre of the Absurd, I feel, adds depth to our work, and helps us to structure the piece better as one of the main elements used within our piece that relates to the Theatre of Absurd was the use of the transitions to make the piece disjointed. During the transitions, the lights will change to a red wash from the natural wash, and news broadcasts describing the major events from the year of 1997 will play. During these transitions, the characters will change their costumes, and set up the space ready for the next scene whilst the audience are still able to see and observe them.

Cooney, R. (2014) Ray Cooney’s Six Rules of Farce. London: Telegraph. Avaliable from: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/10688416/Ray-Cooneys-six-rules-of-farce.html [Accessed 22nd April 2017]

Having the opportunity to do absolutely anything for our first piece of theatre was both daunting and exciting, and so we spent one of the meetings as a company discussing what we wanted to do. As we were already agreed upon the idea of a farcical straight play, but was unsure of where we wanted to go with it, we decided to explore the different decades and see if we were drawn to any of them. As we wanted to focus on the issues within the world, we wanted to try and find correlations between the issues within these decades, and the issues within the world of today, and we found that the 1990’s was the best era for this. Within this, we found that 1997 was the best year. We conducted this research during the first few meetings as a group, we adopted a method that we learnt during a workshop with Flickbook Theatre Company in which we were given a specific topic such as ‘technology’ and researched it before feeding back what we had learnt to the group. With the ages of the cast, and the target audience of those 16 and up who enjoy comedy, the piece would also be a very nostalgic piece for those who grew up in the 90’s. During 1997, the world was experiencing ever-advancing technology and battling with terror in the form of the IRA (UPDATE: there has also been a snap election called by a Conservative government), and these are issues that are being experienced within the world today with the new technology emerging as well as the war on terror. Due to the fact that I did not wish to have any blackouts within the piece, we would use original broadcasts within the piece to both show the passing of time throughout the play, but would also use these broadcasts as transitional periods, and have the characters interact and prepare for the next scene on stage in front of the audience.

Research method adapted from the workshop with Flickbook Theatre Company

With the piece taking shape, we now have to begin funding the company in order to transfer the ideas onto the stage. We have been able to begin within the loan from the University of £166; however, we are putting on some fundraisers between now and our performance date on the 24^th of May. We have decided to put on a 90’s themed quiz in order to maintain a theme between our work and the fundraising events for it. In addition to this we will hold a film night in the platform and play a 90’s classic film, however this film has yet to be decided upon. In addition to our own fundraising, we had to think about applying for funding from the Arts Council England (ACE) due to the fact that we were setting up our own theatre company, but also if we want to proceed with the company in the future we will have to do so. We found that if we were to apply for money for our company, we would do so through the Grants For Arts Programme as this is specified as “ a single group of people working towards a shared or common goal” (Arts Council, 2016).

Works Cited: Arts Council (2017) Arts Council England. London: Arts Council England. Available from http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/sites/default/files/download-file/Grants_for_the_Arts_How_to_apply15k_and_under_September2016_0.pdf [accessed 9th March 2017]

Kick A Pigeon Theatre was initially created within the Theatre Company module seminars. We quickly assembled as a company and became a focused group, working on a name and our individual production roles in order to become a functioning theatre company as quickly as possible. During the discussion of production roles, I realised that no one had shown interest in the directing role. As I have always had an interest in the role, but was unable to do the directing module on the course, I thought this would be an amazing opportunity to try my hand at being the director of the company. In addition to this, we established a code of conduct straight away, and began meeting regularly to establish initial ideas and begin to develop our final piece of work for the module.

Kick A Pigeon Production Roles (Kick A Pigeon, 2017)

After deciding on the roles, we began brainstorming the name of our company in order to create our branding. One of the most important elements of choosing a name is to ensure that the name of your company reflects your company and the people in it. This branding took some time and some trials. We went through a lot of other names, all equally representative of our theatre company, before settling on the name Kick a Pigeon Theatre. Our name, I feel, really represents our company as it shows our playfulness, and in addition, as our manifesto explains “They steal your food, use your car/head/whatever they can find as a toilet and just make a general nuisance of themselves. Like most of life’s problems, they’re unavoidable and can be found pretty much everywhere. And when dealing with life’s problems, you often find there’s only so much you can handle before you need to take action” (Kick A Pigeon, 2017). In addition to the description of Pigeon’s and problems, the name also represents the farcical comedy that we as a company will produce. I feel that so far as a company we have succeeded in linking all of our work in order to make it clear for our audience who we are as a company. We aim to be a fun company, producing comedy, but also highlighting the issues within the present day and displaying to the audience the fact that these events have occurred in the past, and that we will continue despite these events.

Kick A Pigeon Theatre Logo (Kick A Pigeon, 2017)

We have decided as a group that a straight play would be the best way in which to convey our ideas and present them to an audience. The farcical nature of the pieces of work that we wish to produce is also indicative of this style.In addition, this also plays to the strengths of many of the members of our group, and allows us to develop the characters and ideas within our time limit for the final performance. From today, we will begin to write the piece, and develop the ideas that everyone in the group has contributed so far into creating our final piece of work.

As director of the company, I feel that I will take on two different roles during the devising of our final performance. I feel that during the initial stages of the piece, I will be the facilitator of devising the scenes that will be refined with our writing team. I will need to work closely with the writing team in order to translate the piece from the page onto the stage. Later on within the process, once everything begins to come together and the script is complete, I will take on a much more authoritative role in order to ensure that the piece is refined and running smoothly in preparation for our final performance.

Works Cited: Kick A Pigeon Theatre (2017) Kick A Pigeon Theatre. Lincoln: Available from: https://kickapigeon.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/ [Accessed 28th February 2017 ]