Record ’97 was written very much as a collective, thanks to the experimentation and playing we did in the rehearsals before and during the writing process, somewhat akin to the method Timberlake Wertenbaker used to create Our Country’s Good: “The two weeks were set up to put a group of actors at the disposal of a writer to research any aspect of anything that might eventually relate to the play” (1996, viii). For Wertenbaker this was an opportunity to experiment with the world of The Playmaker, but for us it was an opportunity to take the characters and provide a stimulus for the actors to play with and generate material for the writers to go away and work on. For something as difficult to create as comedy can be this was the best approach and it allowed for a blending of humours presented by each member of the company. Whether it was something written that was brought in, or an improvisation activity based on a stimulus, the company was constantly receptive to what they were seeing. The company would either laugh at the joke and leave it as it is, or find a way of enhancing it, or even replacing it with something else entirely. Trial and error was a big part of creating the show and finding a balance in humour.

“He will rapidly discover if something he has written will work. If not, he and the artists can try out alternatives that will. Much rewriting can be done during rehearsals” (Stuart Griffiths, 1989, 106)

The separate comedic stylings of the cast also presented opportunities to create this absurd world, as some could be more exaggerated and weird than others in their performance, and yet the clash of styles added to the relationships and humour of the situation (Figure 1). The ability of the straight characters to look at the strange characters and acknowledge their absurdity made the absurdity that much funnier. There is something quite real to the characters exaggerated situations that the audience can empathise with, be it relationship struggles, or ambition, or concerns with finance and where to take their lives (Figure 2).

Figure 1: Daisy and Alex arguing. Daisy as the more down to Earth character clashes with Alex’s out of this world personality (Rebecca Noble, 2017)

Figure 2: Tiff and Violet and their exaggerated response to Daisy drinking. (Rebecca Noble, 2017)

We set out to create a comedy that explored this notion of nothing changing, and we achieved this through the story we created and the cast’s comedic ability. So much of the dialogue and humour came from spontaneous improvisations and approaches to delivery, and the ability of the cast to bounce off of each other to build upon the relationships of the characters and produce comedy from the situations. There was also a lot of humour that was created through the cast’s ability to invite the audience into the world of Record ’97 and let them in on the joke. An example would be the real world, post-1997 events involving the closure of Woolworths, the scandals involving Tony Blair, and the changes in culture (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Alex and Jasmine making references to Hipsters (Rebecca Noble, 2017)

The play was well received by the audience, which was very overwhelming and proof that the play was a success in the end, and that we as a collective had achieved what we had set out to do back when we had begun.

Works Cited:

Griffiths, S. (1989) How Plays Are Made. Oxford: Heinemann Educational Books Ltd.

Noble, R. (2017) Record ’97. [image] Lincoln Performing Arts Centre: Kick a Pigeon Theatre.

Wertenbaker, T. (1996) Timberlake Wertenbaker: Plays. London: Faber and Faber Limited.

“Story is a sequence of a certain kind of events, occurring in a special relationship with each other. Some plays have no story or only a vestige of one” (Sam Smiley, 2005, 101)

The world of Record ’97 has at times been described by members of our company and our tutor Mark as a Beckettian farce. Waiting for Godot was an early inspiration that was maintained throughout due to its cyclical and non-progressive plot, and it helped us to develop our own story and an approach to telling it until we were able to do our own thing and create our own style of storytelling. To say that nothing happens would be inaccurate, as the focus of the story is on the ensemble and their response to the situation rather than the situation itself. The situation is more of a catalyst for the characters to realise what they might lose, and it brings them closer together by the end.

“The subject of a play amounts to the total activity of the characters as they respond to their surroundings. A subject also involves social, professional, and personal relationships” (Sam Smiley, 2005, 11)

The themes of home and prison that added to the nature of our play and its structure are woven throughout and added to characters actions and choices. My previous concerns regarding exposition prevented us from exploring this theme in more depth, but where it was featured it did add depth to the characters and their relationships with each other and the store, which in its own way was a character both visually and symbolically. In no character was this more prominent than Daisy, who held the strongest attachment to the store and it came to represent a prison for the memories it held, and a home for what she wanted it to be and was making it with her maternal responsibility over the other characters (Figure 1).

“TIFF. Why did you stay here?

DAISY. Because this place is the only thing I’ve got left of him. Memories. Same with these (Indicates vinyls). And because I had nowhere else to go. (Beat) Like you don’t have anywhere else.”

(Jack Briggs, 2017)

Figure 1: Daisy (Rebecca Noble, 2017)

“Characters don’t exist in a vacuum. They’re a product of their environment” (Linda Seger, 1990, 5)

Beyond Beckett, the play also takes inspiration from the average episode of most sitcoms; in the sense that the events of the plot are self-contained and by the end the equilibrium is restored, even if something has changed for the characters. Some examples would be Sebastian entering another unrequited love triangle, Alex still serving as a terrible musician looked down on by everybody, and Daisy still stuck with her adopted family of misfits in a place she had only just come to terms with losing. Even characters that have made a progression in their lives enter a new stage that lends a different opportunity for comedy. David and Sherice would be the best example of this; starting as a stereotypical will-they-won’t-they relationship that generated humour through their awkward attraction and attempts to do something about it (added to by Sebastian’s disruption), to comedy that flows from their awkwardness as a couple and the effects of their relationship on those around them and themselves (Figure 2).

Figure 2: David & Sherice during their time as part of the love triangle (Rebecca Noble, 2017)

Even the ending draws parallels to a typical sitcom episode, as the story isn’t resolved until the very last minute, and suddenly the events of the play are almost irrelevant to most of the characters (Figure 3). This circles back to the concept of nothing ever changing that we as a company had at the beginning of the process, and I believe we were successful in this through the characters behaviours and responses to the world around them.

Figure 3: The Ending (Rebecca Noble, 2017)

Works Cited:

Briggs, J. (2017) Record ’97. Lincoln.

Noble, R. (2017) Record ’97. [image] Lincoln Performing Arts Centre: Kick a Pigeon Theatre.

Seger, L. (1990) Creating Unforgettable Characters. New York: Henry Holt and Company, LLC.

Smiley, S., Bert, N.A. (2005) Playwriting: The Structure of Action. Expanded Edition. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Right now the script is in a rough draft form with quite a bit of work left to go into it. It is still very much a testing ground for what material works and what doesn’t, and there’s still plenty of work left to go into refining the dialogue and making both the humour and the drama better. During our last rehearsal/workshop our dramaturge Elif led us in the development of one of our characters actions and lines within scenes to expand on their arc and characterisation, which was very successful and a good example of the progress being made towards the next draft.

One of the benefits of the cast designing their own characters is that they each have an approach to their character’s speech patterns and dialogue that is easy to integrate into the script and create distinctions between each, as noted by Rib Davis: “Some characteristics of speech are specific to the individual, but others are the result of their place of origin, class, educations, and occupation” (2016, 12). Because our characters are so individualised there are plenty of opportunities for comedy to come from their language and identity, and during readings the actors will often alter a line to best fit their character, such as changing the wording of a joke, or even inserting comedy into a line that was previously not intended to be funny. There’s also a lot of improvisation going on which is immediately added if successful, and in some cases if an actor is unavailable for a rehearsal another will take their place and inject something new to the character that we then practice with the actual actor.

One of the biggest challenges at the moment is ensuring that the dialogue reflects the period. A particular example would be the use of slang terms, because each require research into their first usage and where. As we have both a chav character and an Australian character, I have had to research any particular term to find its origin, which is made harder by the era in which our piece is set. It’s also much harder researching terms used in the 90’s that are no longer in use and quite possibly will be meaningless to our audience. There have been instances where I have found terms and phrases that have separate meanings to what the audience would expect, and I have had to avoid them because they won’t be understood without unnecessary explanation. Likewise, some modern terminology that I didn’t think of was not present in the year of the play, and therefore also has to be removed. This is a problem with tackling the era in which we have set the play in general, as we have had to be mindful of what they had, what was going on, and what their lives would be like, whilst also being mindful of our audience and their own understanding.

Another prominent challenge has been how much exposition into the characters’ lives can be given. Because each character has a rich backstory thanks to the early writing sessions, it can be hard to judge how much we can give and when given the limitations in time we must operate under. Rib Davis states; “Some of the information could be omitted altogether, while other pieces might remain, but only because the characters are given credible motivation for mentioning them” (2016, 66). For one or two characters the backstory is a necessary part of expanding on their motivations and a tool for adding dramatic weight. In others their backstory could become another joke. An example of this would be Violet’s backstory, which is revealed through her outlook on life that is presented to the audience as a series of jokes.

“Good dialogue conveys conflict, attitudes, and intentions. Rather than telling about the character, it reveals character” (Linda Seger, 1990, 147)

 

Works Cited:

Davis, R. (2016) Writing Dialogue for Scripts. 4^th Edition. London: Bloomsbury.

Seger, L. (1990) Creating Unforgettable Characters. New York: Henry Holt and Company, LLC.

During one of our last sessions we began to plot the structure of the play; the events our characters must tackle, and how and when to insert humour. This was a difficult task because we needed to do this in order to start writing and generating material, but we only had the basis of our plot and sub-plots. The focus instead shifted to the characters for the purpose of finding what they wanted to achieve, and what qualities we could touch upon to create drama and comedy. This is a notion discussed by Rib Davis:

“Perhaps the starting point is a story idea, and it immediately becomes clear that for the story to work it will have to have a particular sort of character at its centre; then as that character is developed, an element of it suggests a new direction for the plot” (2016, 69).

In order to generate the sequence of events that would unfold, we had to first build upon our characters to develop a sense of direction for them and their own plots that ultimately impacted the central plot. We expanded on each character; their backgrounds, their behaviours, and their sense of identity, to what they wanted to achieve. From here we discussed possible scenario’s and plotlines involving each character that could be put into the script, and now it is a case of testing out these scenario’s in workshops to see what happens. From here we should start to see the basis of our script.

Works Cited:

Davis, R. (2016) Creating Compelling Characters for Film, TV, Theatre and Radio. 2^nd Edition. London: Bloomsbury.

“Why does Beckett put in the detail he does? Could we cut with impunity? Why did he put in so much? Come to that, why did he not put in more? And why should he have stopped when he did?” (Paul Lawley, 2008, 3)

During recent sessions our Dramaturg Elif has had us discussing the nature of the world our characters inhabit and what it means to them.

It has been agreed that our play should have a Waiting for Godot-esque vibe to it, in the sense that our characters don’t exactly achieve anything. Part of the conundrum with achieving this was figuring out why our characters cannot leave.

This led Elif to asking what the record store represents; a home, or a prison. From this we were able to determine that for each character it was ultimately both, as for some there is something tethering those to the building, and to an extent this same tether makes them want to leave. In future sessions we intend to continue exploring this theme to develop the plot.

Lawley, P. (2008) Waiting for Godot: Character Studies. London: Continuum.