As Hand Me Down Theatre focus on devising and creating our own work, it was always inevitable that the texts that we chose to bring to workshops were going to be texts that spoke to us on some sort of personal level. It is unsurprising therefore, having eight female members in our company of nine, that a lot of these texts would be based around the subject of femininity and what it is to be female in modern society. While at the beginning of our process we shied away from creating what we believed to be overtly feminist scenes, through our development we have discovered that it would in fact be going against our natural performative nature to shun this feminist notion within our performance.
Having embraced this feminist view point, the last scene that Hand Me Down devised uses text that contains a message that each and every cast member can relate to or have an opinion on as a young woman living in twenty first century, westernised society.

On May 15th 2014, the popular female comedian, Sarah Millican, published an article in her weekly spot in the Radio Times. The article, titled “Don’t Judge Me On My Dress…” describes her personal experience with the public and the press via social media, following her appearance at the Bafta awards in 2013. In the article she discusses how the public, slated her for her outfit and her overall appearance on the red carpet via twitter, and how she was shocked to discover that so many people took such an offense to what she was wearing, as she believed that she was there to be celebrated for being good at her job, not to be judged and compared to other women on the red carpet.

Picture Sourced from Radio Times (May 15 2014). Available from http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2014-05-15/sarah-millican-twitter-was-a-pin-to-my-excitable-bafta-balloon.

This article, which can be found at http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2014-05-15/sarah-millican-twitter-was-a-pin-to-my-excitable-bafta-balloon, spoke to me on a personal level, as I realized that while I was outraged that people could care so much about something as trivial as the design of her dress, I too care more than I would like to admit about what other people think of my appearance. This, along with observation made on how Sarah’s husband, who also appeared on the red carpet, was not asked once what brand he was wearing and where he got it from, brought our understanding of the way society focuses on women when it comes to personal appearance to our focused attention.
While an article like this might seem trivial to some, especially when compared to more ‘hard hitting’ news circulating the media that week, such as the two hundred girls kidnapped by terrorists in Nigeria, for the company this article underlined a number of the running themes found in our performance. It also contradicts nicely with some of our sillier, more playful scenes.

This use of newspapers, magazines and the media as a stimulus for a scene is a technique that the company could continue to use in the future. This documentary style theatre has also been used in the past by companies such as the Living Newspaper and Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop. Theatre Workshop, who took inspiration from many other companies and practitioners created performances such as Oh! What a Lovely War by scripting some of the recorded words of the various people involved in Wolrd War 1, and presented them in an end of the pier show setting. This up-beat, satyrical action was then contrasted with factual information such as death tolls presented to the audience on news reels,  screens and boards. For Littlewood,

“the success of a piece is ‘all a question of juxtaposition'”

(Holdsworth, 2006, 82) as the nature of this contradiction effectively underlined the seriousness of the topic, and made the audience think. This notion of the contradiction between the two or three things happening on stage is a kin to our Sarah Millican scene where her emotive words are infiltrated with catchy television advert slogans for female ‘self improvement’ products, underlining the ridiculouness of a culture that centres around women seeking to improve their image purely for the approval of others.

The use of current affairs within a piece can often bring the topic being discussed to the audience on a more realistic level. For example, in our scene that discusses the price of fame we contrast an acoustic version of the poem I’ve got a Golden Ticket, as found in Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and adapted by our very own Libby Soper, with a video montage of a number of female celebrities, all of whom have died from drugs and alcohol. This montage finishes with a clip of journalist, television presenter and celebrity daughter Peaches Geldof, who, like her mother, died of a drug overdose in the 7th April 2014, leaving two young children behind. The moving image of happy looking Peaches along with the audiences knowledge of her recent and tragic death brings the message of the scene into the modern day context, providing the audience the time to reflect not only on the price of fame, but also on the other themes discussed in our previous scenes.

It has been said that “no play, like no newspaper article, is without bias and infliction” (Hammond and Steward, 2008, 10), and indeed this is one of our scenes that very obviously presents the bias that comes from eight image and media conscious women. While in some scenes we have offered the opportunity for the audience to draw their own conclusions and opinions from our re-contextualisation of the original text, in this scene it is very clear that we empathise with the topic discussed in the article. Having embraced a more feminist approach to the presentation of the already ‘feminine’ topics we had previously chosen to explore we have created a complex and thought provoking piece that speaks very much to the audience of today. In looking to the future I would suggest that where we see a theme or natural path appearing in our devising process it would be wise to follow it.

Works Cited

Dahl, Roald. (2010) Poetry By Roald Dahl “I’ve Got a Golden Ticket”. [online] Available from: http://roalddahlpoetry.weebly.com/poetry.html[Accessed 25 May 2014].

Hammond, W. And Steward, D. (2008) Verbatim Verbatim. London: Oberon Books.

Holdsworth, N. (2006) Joan Littlewood. London: Routldge.

Littlewood, J. (1963) Oh! What a Lovely War. London: Methuen.

Millican, S. (2014) Dont Judge Me On My Dress. Radio Times, 15th May 2014.

Oddey states that when devising a piece of theatre it is necessary to have a clear plan as to how the company will operate from the outset. “This involves choices about how working structures relate to organised roles or responsibilities of individuals within a company…” (Oddey, 1994, 42). From our first ever company meeting I have taken on the role of  producer, and, having never produced a show before, have been grappling with some of the roles and responsibilities that come with this job. Now, five days away from our first ever company performance I feel that I can reflect on what this role has become for me and how it has impacted the running of the company to date. It was apparent from quite early on that I was going to be more of a “do-it-all producer who is involved in every aspect of the show” (Seabright, 2010, 5), not just a solely administrative producer. I feel that the best way to describe my role in the company is to state that I have my fingers in all the pies. Richardson states that having “a flair for organization” is a very useful qualification for a producer to have (Richardson, 1998, 6), and indeed I have found that it is a skill that I have put to good use in the running of the company. I have been consulted by, involved in, and given the seal of approval for everything behind the scenes at Hand Me Down. I have proof read and edited press releases, pondered over poster designs and organised an acoustic night to raise awareness for our companies debut performance. I have kept tabs on the finance department who have had control over the budget for our performance and have therefore been essential in the running of the company and have held regular production meetings with our director and production manager to ensure that all performance elements are running smoothly and that our performance is logistically viable. I have also devised rehearsal time tables fitting around and keeping in mind the other work, personal and educational commitments of the eight other members of the company, kept tabs on the attendance of company members and booked appropriate space to suit the needs of each of these rehearsals.

Inspirational dramaturg and Theatre Workshop director, Joan Littlewood stated that

“It is through collaboration that this knockabout art of theatre survives and kicks” (Littlewood, 1965).

This is a quote that I strongly agree to be true. The collaborative nature of the way that Hand Me Down naturally works means that every member of the company has been involved in the creation of our performance, and with every member of the company being part of the cast for Take Me By The Tongue, it seemed appropriate that everyone should have some say in what it was they were to be performing. On reflecting on our process I feel that our piece clearly shows the “overall flexibility, versatility, and integration between the…multi-talented members” within our company (Oddey, 1994, 65). It has been fortunate for us that in most cases the cast have all agreed on the content and aesthetic of the scenes that we have devised. However, on the rare occasion that there is a disagreement on the content or nature of a scene, having listened to everyone’s opinion it has fallen to myself and our director to make the ultimate decision.

Initial Devising Process. Image by Kirsty Jakins (2014)

Of course getting feedback from members of other companies and staff has been absolutely invaluable for our company’s performance development, as we are aware that it can be hard to remove yourself from the scene and criticize it from an outsiders perspective. In order to meet our mission statement’s point of creating theatre that “is relatable for a variety of audiences” (Hand Me Down, 2014) we have had to monitor the audience demographics that we think might be more receptive to certain scenes. However, a scene that we believe might be appreciated more by one audience demographic might in fact be more appropriate for another. This is where our work in progress showings have been particularly important.

Works Cited

Hand Me Down. (2014) Our Mission Statement. Lincoln: Word Press. Available from https://handmedownth3atr3.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/our-mission-statement/ [Accessed 26/05/2014].

Littlewood, J. (1965) Goodbye Note From Joan. In: Marowitz, C., Milne, T. and Hale, O. (eds) The Encore Reader. London: Methuen.

Oddey, A. (1994) Devising Theatre: A Practical and Theoretical Handbook. London: Routledge.

Richardson, J. (1998) Careers in the Theatrer. 6th Edition. London: Kogan Page.

Seabright, J. (2010) So You Want To Be A Producer? London: Nick Hern Books.