PPP Progress Showings
Today we had our PPP progress showings. To give some context, PPP stands for Professional Practice Project. PPP is the module we at TinCan are currently undertaking at university. As part of the module, we have to devise a show for the AMATA Showcase Festival. Today, everyone on the course had to show six minutes of their material, so we could receive feedback from one another and the other marking tutors.
We chose to show six minutes of our Lorry driver scene. We wanted opinions on the staging and wanted to see the general reaction to that scene. It was also the scene we felt most comfortable with performing and had the most material devised. And we got exactly what we wanted. We got lots of useful feedback that we will take with us into our next rehearsal.
Photo Credit: TinCan Theatre
Our feedback mostly focused on the staging, what people liked and what they didn't. The most important pieces of feedback we took back was based around characterisation, staging and the rhythm of the scene. Our characterisation was not up to scratch and we needed to define strong characters. Everyone seemed to like Niamh's character and that's because her character has such a strong presence on the stage. It's difficult to forget about her and she can capture and audience. As some of the words we're saying are quite provocative and sometimes offensive, the group felt it was important we have obvious characters, so an audience are aware that these are not our own opinions. This was really useful, as we felt that due to language such as 'my lorry is my life', 'I had two people climb in the back of my lorry' etc, it was obvious that we were not these people. However that did not come across, so it was really helpful to get this feedback.
In terms of staging, the group were a little divided. Some people really liked the staging. (See below)
Photo Credit: TinCan Theatre
However not everyone really got it. To be honest, in rehearsal we have been switching the staging of this scene around so much and we're still not overly happy with it. That's why we wanted the opinion of the group. As the rest of this show is physical up to this point and this is the first time we speak in the piece. We wanted this moment to be still, so the audience can absorb what we're saying and it's contrasting to the rest of the piece. We thought that placing ourselves on the box like this could be one way of representing a lorry, but there's something just not quite right. We were hoping that the response from the showing could help to point us in the right direction. Some people commented that they liked the way we were staged, but no one mentioned that they thought it represented a lorry. In fact, a few people mentioned that they thought it was meant to be a boat, as it's an image they see a lot in regards to refugees. We are already touching on this in the piece, so it was obvious to us that we needed to change the staging as it wasn't working the way we hoped it was. So now we can scrap this and start again, which will be good for us!
Photo Credit: TinCan Theatre
Finally, we were given some feedback on the rhythm of the scene. The scene consists of us each interrupting one another with snippets of our own monologues. However it is scripted, so there are certain elements of the monologues that compliment one another. We tried doing it random at first, but it often ended with one person finishing a lot earlier than anticipated and it not always making sense. A few people commented on the rhythm of the piece. Gregg (a PPP tutor) wondered if the rhythm was intentional. It stayed the same almost throughout the scene. Did we fall into that decision? The answer is yes. We didn't want it to be the same rhythm, we tried to break it up. But again, that hadn't come across. But that's what these showings are all about! We can go back into rehearsals now and work on the feedback we've been given and that's really exciting. I think sometimes as artists, when you're in a rehearsal room and you're all on a similar wavelength, you forget that although to us it makes perfect sense, it may not make sense to everyone else. This session was really good for us and will begin to make us think about the audience far more in our rehearsals and throughout the devising process.
So we have a lot of work coming up - but it's really exciting! So keep your eyes peeled for more posts. I'll be writing soon.
TinCan X
