constraints and solutions - Tempest

Within the creation of The Tempest we had to work through a lot of things that wouldn't normally be used to now having to work with an outdoor theatre. For example when doing We Will Rock You, we were assisted with things such as special effects, lighting, mics, more access for set and so on , therefore to go from all to not a lot it was a hard challenge.

Without the pics we had to work on our projection, so for this we slowly practiced saying it louder within rehearsals, reciting whilst doing all the movements as well as different movements and trying it outside, this allowed us to get used to having to perform using the projection still emanating emotion and feeling within the words, as well as diction and not just focusing on making it loud, a big part of shakespeare is the story lines, so the audience have to be able to hear what you are saying.

Lighting was a really big thing to be taken away from our techniques to adding to a scene, for example in We Will Rock You lights were used to create prisons, represent electrocutions and recently in Our House lighting was used effectively to create the illusion of a fire. Being a group of very lighting dependent people we had to work of more ways to figure it out, our main use was through props and physical theatre, being someone quite strong in movement and choreography I felt quite confident as using this as a solution and a substitution to lighting, for example within Stephano, Trincula and Caliban scenes with the magic we got the Ariels to have more dynamic movement such as jumps and rolls to give them more of the audiences attention on what they were doing so it was more obvious, as well as adding songs into it to give it a more mythical and forest like feel. Adding music also helped us creating a more contrasting and dynamic piece as it gave more understanding to the story as well as helping to create the right atmospheres within scenes such as this one and the Royals sleeping scene. Special effects were also something we lost which for things like magic would have been very handy, special effect we'd be used to would be things like a smoke machine, can be used to create a misty atmosphere, night time or like the lighting in Our House it also assisted in creating the fire spectacle within the show, we covered up where we would used special effects with found sounds, movement pieces and choral pieces using our voice as our own special effects with assistance of the musicians.

As we focussed a lot on movement and physical theatre set became less of a huge need, we decided that we would only have a tree, woodland features (logs, rocks, flowers) and stage blocks, this was for more than one reason first being the physical theatre, allowing more room for it made it so we could make it bigger and more energetic, second reason be for travel, because we were going to a different theatre further away we had to be practical with our decisions so our tree, came in two halves, the feature could be put in boxes and the staging blocks can be taken apart allowing it to fit more easily in our choice of transport for it. As our staging was already set out side and had fake grass as its base we already had quite an island and suitable look for our pieces so this really helped up tie together out set with our location. We are also used to having quite large sets allowing us to create more contrasting positions and locations within scenes therefore we worked on having more levels, angles and pace to our different scenes and well as a varied entrance and exits from random locations to keep up the travelling across an island element within the story and making it more interactive for the audience, it also created more of a flow for the performance as there would be no clog at the exits and entrances of the stage.