Kate Lucy Brooks

Chatting Up Chatty Karen!

Kate Lucy Brooks

Well, well, well… Chatty Karen, what can I say? What an awful woman she is! A bigoted, opinionated guard with no respect for anyone. Out of the eleven characters I play in ‘The Bogus Woman’, this one has been by far the most challenging. Acting out such a racist character seemed so unnatural due to the language used and, as you can see by the video below, the first script in hand run through of this scene was awkward and somewhat uncomfortable.

 

23.5.14 rehearsals
23.5.14 rehearsals

Action Shot of me as ‘Chatty Karen’ (Daniella Scimeca, 2014)

Chatty Karen First Script Run Through (Daniella Scimeca, 2014)

Having someone film scenes was an extremely useful tool for myself, as personally, it enabled me to see my performance from an audience perspective. This meant that something I thought might have looked good such as a wink or a direct point to the audience, may not have necessarily worked as well from the outside looking in. From watching this first script in hand run through, it was evident that a lot of work needed to be done before Chatty Karen took to the stage. One of the most important tools that I had picked up from my last drama module, Advanced Scene Study was to produce a character profile. This would enable me to create a rounded picture for my characters, aiding differentiation between them and picking out individual  traits that each character would embody. Similarly through creating character profiles, the objective of the scenes and super-objectives of the play can be found. James Thomas asserts that, “According to Stanislavski, all the individual minor objectives in a play should come together under the command under a single, controlling objective called the super-objective.” (2013, p.65)

I created a couple of drafts of a character profile for each of the charactrers I play in ‘The Bogus Woman’ with the drafts being amended after each rehearsal when specific characteristics were established. Below is my final Character profile for ‘Chatty Karen’.

Chatty Karen Character Profile

 

Definition of a Guard: Watch over in order to protect or control

Occupation: Group 4 guard – been in the job since the age of 21 and it is all she knows. Because of this she thinks she knows everything about everyone and is the cream of the crop out of the guards who work there. She does not care who she offends and is a bigot. Campsfield Detention Centre is a real life, privately run immigration detention centre near Oxford. Protests at conditions at the centre have sparked a number of hunger strikes and protests.

Age: 35

Ethnicity: White British

Background History: Did not do well at school. Is not the brightest woman around, because of this she became a guard who wanted to intimidate. Was a bully at school and therefore takes pleasure in belittling people in order to make herself feel good about herself.

Marital Status: Married to a bigot husband who has a one track mind and black and white view on situations. Because of him, she has the views she has on immigration. She’s in an unhappy marriage and because of this takes it out on the immigrants. She has no children.

Does she respect the beliefs of others?: Chatty Karen has no respect for anyone and is quite happy to offend and criticise the detainees to anyone who will listen. Anything that is different from her is wrong and therefore she disregards and disrespects them.

A trait of Admiration?: Her knowledge on the differences on the detainees and where they originate from.

Super-objective: To watch over the detainees and make sure everything stays in order – All of the characters in the play apart from the Young Woman act as obstructions from her freedom and get in the way of her truly being happy – Chatty Karen being the one who wants to make sure the Young Woman remains a detainee for as long as possible.

Scene Objective: To belittle the detainees as she ‘apparently’ knows everything there is about them. Wants the detainees to hear what she says about them as it makes her feel superior and more important than they are.

On Stage Characteristics:

  • Treats the audience like they are another guard on the break with her.
  • Head nods and laughs at lines she finds funny. For example: “Takes a plate of curried eggs to prise a paki out his gaff to have a dust about”
  • Racist language does not phase Chatty Karen in the slightest as it is everyday language to her.
  • Choice of language on stage is colloquial and laid back.
  • Glottal stops instead of pronouncing the letter ‘t’ in words.
  • Stern faces, emotionless expressions.
  • Slouched on chait with a cup of tea.

 

Creating character profiles for each of the 11 characters meant that it was a lot easier to manage who I was playing and what specific traits they had. For instance, with Chatty Karen as you can see from the profile above, She slouches on the chair with an emotionless expressions on her face.

 

 

 

 

 

Works Cited: Thomas, James, (2013) Script Analysis for Actors, Directors and Designers, CRC Press

 

 

The Technical Actor!

Kate Lucy Brooks

As well as being an Actor within the company, my second role is of Assistant Theatre Technician. This means that I will produce technical elements that will be in the performance. Obviously, because of having a main acting role in the production, I will not physically be able to run lights or sound on the night, therefore the work I assisted with would need to be preparatory. It was decided between myself and the Head of Tech, Charlie, that I would be in charge of producing the projections included in the show. I have never been one for using technology and computer equipment much, but thought that this would be a good opportunity to try my hand at it. The software I used in order to create the projections was Windows Movie Maker, which is a freeware video editing software that enables the user to create and edit videos as well as sharing them. So, first things first was to read through the play along with the Director and Theatre Technician, in order to see where sounds, lights and projections were needed and why they were needed. So, it was decided that projections would be used at the beginning, for a preset, with facts and figures being presented to the audience in order to paint a picture for them on immigration and how it affects the country and the immigrants themselves.

Firstly, I created the preset video using real pictures from newspapers, but, after attempting to publish these on our private Facebook group, for the rest of the company to see I was not able to due to copyright restrictions, therefore it was decided that the video would need to be changed and adapted in order to be allowed to be shown to the audience. Here is are the Picture stills of the first opening projection, again due to copyright restrictions, the actual video could not be uploaded. Original opening video still. A cross fade effect was put on each picture on the video so as each new picture came up, the last one would slowly fade behind it meaning that one picture would flow nicely into the next one.This acted as a learning curve, and from this it was established that instead of using real pictures of newspapers, facts would be typed up and referenced using the company colours, orange and black, creating a simple yet effective message for the audience as they sat down at the beginning of the show. Here are the picture stills for the final opening Projection.

As a company, we collectively did not want too many projections as we wanted to take a minimalist approach. On the scenes where the Young Woman describes how much money she has left, I immediately sought information from the television show ‘Two Broke Girls’ whereby, whenever money is made, a picture appears on the screen with the amount they had, cross fading into the new amount of money they had made. The only difference  being in ‘The Bogus Woman’ The Young Woman loses money rather than makes money, so the money she has is on the screen and cross fades into the money she finishes with. Here is an example of one of the money videos.

 

On the technical run day, my job was to plot the sound created by the theatre technician so that she could focus on the lighting. Plotting the sound means to, use the cue lines  from the script to place the sounds into the software. After this it then needs to be determined how long the sound is going to play for and whether it needs to be looped on repeat, faded in and out, or simply snapping on and off.This was done using the software Q Lab which looks like this.

Q Lab

(Courtesy of Google Images, 2014)

Q Lab is a multimedia playback cue-based software designed for theatre and live entertainment by the company Figure 53. (Figure 53, 2007) It enables users to include sounds from different sources, merge them into the same format and create cross fades and snap outs from one sound to another. It is particularly useful in theatre as it means that once the sounds have been plotted, they can then be initiated on the night simply by pressing the enter button. This means that on the performance night, the Stage Manager as well as calling the show, can work the sounds simply and easily.

 

 

Works Cited: Figure 53, 2007 Company.

Reading, Research and Revision!

Kate Lucy Brooks

So, ‘The Bogus Woman’ is our company’s play of choice, but in order to not come across as ignorant to the topic we are portraying, researching around the topic and the real life institutes mentioned in the play are key. Firstly, Campsfield Detention Centre or ‘Campsfield House’ (ironic as it is in fact nothing like a house) is a real life detention centre based in Oxford. It is described as  “An Immigration Detention Centre at Kidlington, six miles from Oxford. It is a prison run for private profit by Group 4, supervised by Home Office immigration officials. It used to be a youth detention centre, but it re-opened as an Immigration Detention Centre in November 1993. The local parish council was opposed to it, but their wishes were overruled by the Home Office.” (closecampsfield.org, 2002) There are 200 detainees held at Campsfield house, most of whom are political refugees, like the character of the Young Woman, who are fleeing their country from harm, torture and death. Most do not know how long they will be held there for, are not given proper legal representation and are not given valid reasons for being held there. ‘Campsfield House’ is surrounded by a 20 foot high razor wire topped fence, mentioned by the Young Woman in the play, “A tangled tower of twenty foot high razor wire secretly coils all the way from oxford.” (Adshead, 2001) The word ‘secretly’ in the line from the play even suggests that the true identity of the detention centre is not clearly apparent to most. Detainees are made to live in shared cell bedrooms with family and friends being searched and made to pass through five security controlled door before being allowed to visit. ‘Campsfield House’ is still actively running, with many campaigners and detainees protesting in order to get it shut down.

 

From looking into ‘Campsfield House’, its origins and how it is run, I came across the charity organisation ‘Amnesty International’ whose manifesto and aim is “to investigate and expose abuses, educate and mobilise the public, and help transform societies to create a safer, more just world” (Amnesty International, 2014) Amnesty International reported that ‘Campsfield House’ breached internationally recognised human rights. This charity endeavors to help people who cannot help themselves and give everyone equal opportunities to be free and be treated how they deserve to be. We have invited representatives from Amnesty International to come and watch our production and are eager to hear feedback from them about the production and their views and thoughts. Also, a collection box will be placed at the door at the end of the show for audience members wishing to make a donation to the charity who are fantastically run in order to help people like the Young Woman in ‘The Bogus Woman’.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Works Cited:

Adshead, Kay, 2001, The Bogus Woman, Marston Books Services (p.23)

Amnesty International, 2014, [Online] Available here: http://www.amnesty.org.uk/issues/About-Amnesty

Closecampsfield.org, 2002 [online] Available at:  http://www.closecampsfield.org.uk/background/why.html 

The topic of Immigration in Theatre

Kate Lucy Brooks

Immigration has always been a topic that has caused controversy and mixed attitudes globally. Taking this into consideration, it was decided as a company that it was a topic that we wanted to tackle and perform as the debut show for ‘Breaking Stories Theatre Company’ Ideas presented in the media surrounding immigration are often fabricated with crucial information left out, resulting in a biased outlook. Our theatre company’s aim is to take this hard hitting topic and showcase it through the eyes of the people who immigration affects the most. This type of theatre is known as documentary or political theatre whereby performances are created to address events of topics that affect society and aim to encourage social change.

‘Matrix Theatre Company’ based in Detroit, performed and created a play called Vanished, by which the story unfolded through the experiences of the playwright Laura Sevez’s close family and friends. The father of Perez’s friend, the family’s main provider was deported as an undocumented leaving the mother left to fend for the family without a penny to her name. Perez states herself that, “you can start your day as a family , and that afternoon your parents are gone and you’re forced to fend for yourself.” (Perez, 2010) The actors had all been affected in someway by immigration, leaving their performance believable and true. As with most political performances addressing the topic of immigration, ‘Matrix Theatre Company’ used minimal set design and simple lighting in order to let the raw acting do the talking. This company is what influenced us to have a minimalist approach to set design.

A Picture from Vanished (Matrix Theatre Company, 2010)

vanished-01 (1)

As well as playwrights using drama to illustrate immigration, the use of dance and movement has also been used to show the struggles faced by people who flee their native countries in search for a better life. Protein Dance Company performed a show Border Tales, directed by Luca Silvestrini, whereby they look at multicutural lifestyles in thr UK as seen through the eyes of the characters using dance, dialogue and live music as the catalysts for the performance. This company deals with how we perceive ourselves as well as others and ‘Silvestrini turns his sharply satirical hand gaze to stereotypical thinking , tolerance and where lines are drawn between ‘them’ and ‘us” (Judy Lipsy, 2013) Although incororating a vary of stereotypes into his production, the decision was not warmly receieved by everyone as Neil Norman states that, “the work is far too generalised and employs to many stereotypes to make a lasting impact.” (Norman, 2014) I agree with Norman as after watching extracts of this performance it was hard to differentiate between the different characters and their varying struggles. After researching into this company, I realised that in order to make a bold impact on an audience, the plight and struggle of one person would be more beneficial for us as a company to portray, hence the decision to adapt the play The Bogus Woman by Kay Adshead.

 

 

 

 

 

Works Cited:

Lipsy, Judy (2013) Protein Dance Comapany, [online] www.proteindance.co.uk

Norman, Neil (2014) ‘Border Tales’ The Stage Review [online] www.thestage.co.uk/reviews

Perez, Laura (2013) Matrix Theatre Company, [online] www.matrixtheatre.blogspot.uk

Man Making the Manifesto!

Kate Lucy Brooks

Manifesto is defined in the Oxford Dictionary as:

 A declaration of principles: a public written declaration of principles, policies, and objectives, especially one issued by a political movement or candidate. (Oxford Dictionary, 2014)

 

One of the first tasks for this module was to create a manifesto for our Theatre Company. Firstly, I needed to establish what a manifesto exactly was.” ‘Manifesto’ is derived from the Latin verb Manifestare, which means “To bring into the open, to make manifest” and ‘Theatre’ from the Greek Theatran, “A piece of seeing””. Manifesto and Theatre work hand in hand, but they are not the same. A manifesto is a range of concepts and ideas upheld by a Theatre Company and establishes what type of Theatre they wish to create. Without Theatre there is no Manifesto, but without manifesto, theatre can still exist. collectively, it was decided that our visions and values for our theatre company would be to dispel myths that are presented by newspapers in order to portray an unbiased view on political issues affecting everyday society. Our Company Motto therefore, became ‘Breaking Stories, Breaking Stigma.’ We wanted our manifesto to be catchy, provocative and thought provoking with our opening statement being a question, ‘Do you believe everything the media tells you?’ The manifesto can be found here: https://breakingstories.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/about-us/  

 

 

Works Cited:

Oxford Dictionary. (2014) [online] Available at: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com