Introduction

For this module I was a part of a group creating a new folk-pop musical called ‘Woven’.  My roles in this module were Director and also Social Media Admin. This show followed the story of the two leads building on their unexpected relationship in the era of the industrial revolution. The outlined themes in this production are love, united community and fighting for your own belief. We decided to set this production in Yorkshire based in a working-class area, as we felt it is close to our hearts and a place we all have a passion for and love. The inspiration for the plot of this production comes from Dostoevsky’s ‘White Knights’. At first as a group, we threw ideas at each other until we decided on a path to move forward on.

Concept

One of the hurdles that we faced whilst developing our musical was the change of ideas and direction in our plot and our characters. We wanted the show to be in two separate acts so we had to decide the direction of acts but think about how much we want to pursue for the sharing of our production at the end of the week. To start with the type of musical we wanted to create we decided from the first meeting we wanted to build an engaging and folk based Actor-Musician show. We discussed many ideas on how to adapt this into our show with the start of using a diegetic band on stage to interact with the actors and also be a part of the ensemble themselves.  Our original ideas between the two leads Peter [ a working-class man] and Francess [ an upper-class woman] was to have Peter come across as a shy/timid man and Francess to be very upfront and confident but very flirtatious to Peter. As our book writers were still working on the script, we read out a few scenes between the two leads and decided that it didn’t fit right in the story and also the period in terms to how Francess was behaving. Because of this we decided to Re-evaluate the characters and to present their characteristics in the script as Peter being more confident/flirtatious whilst Francess became a preacher for the bible but very stubborn to listen to others. Following on from the change of path we agreed a good setting to show a united community in Yorkshire for working class factory workers would in a pub. The pub is the musicals point to highlight togetherness in the community as it’s a small, enclosed environment which brings joy to many people and a place of relaxation for many. For our theme of fighting for own belief, we invented ‘Morris’ who is seen as the ‘Leader’ of the working-class group and Peters best friend who wants to battle against the change in the industry and the loss of many jobs. The concept of this character was decided at the beginning of the process and his own path didn’t change because the story needed a strong leader to push the characters forward into protest to move the plot. After a few months of the creative process the show leaned more towards the theme of love by using Francess in many of the large ensemble scenes to steal Peters attention from the riots. We wanted Francess to disagree with the idea as we wanted to show how she would care for him which would leave a moment of decision for Peter making audiences wonder if the community would still stay united and he if sticks with Morris or fold. By February as a group, we had created our first ‘strong’ plot and also decided that for the showing we would only be sharing the first act of the production.

Budgeting

Throughout this process as a group, we had to think more about the future of this show in the terms of budgeting. We discussed the plan for moving this show onwards to festivals in the comings years which led to the question of what size cast should we have? In our sharing and rehearsal process we had a cast size of around 12 people as we wanted the show to feature a large ensemble to outline the community and to boost the energy in the numbers. In terms of budgeting, we could either consider keeping the larger cast size, or to save costs keeping a smaller cast size but figuring out a form of staging which gives the same effect and doesn’t swerve away from the narrative. As a new musical our budget would be limited just as many up-and-coming shows do. In the discussion of having a large cast size, for example having 12 actors in our cast we discussed the fact of having to hire swings/understudies to cover the lead/ensemble tracks. For the leads we discussed that ensemble members would be able to cover these main tracks without having the need to cast more actors to understudy these rolls but then to have around 3-4 swings to cover ensemble male presenting/female presenting tracks. In regards to orchestra/band we have decided that we would prefer the show to go down the actor musician route having instruments potentially represent their character for example, we really enjoy the idea of Francess playing the harp as the loom. For our Research and development week we used live music on set as it was mainly set in the pub so the band was diegetic and performing on stage interacting with the characters. This is another structure that would cut a lot of cost having not to hire an orchestra or band in the future and just using the cast on stage. In this process we discussed the use of social media being the best point of marketing using platforms to push our show to audiences. One of my jobs being social media admin, which I really enjoyed throughout the process getting to push my creativity for ideas to boost the show, was to market our show to reach audiences using social media platforms such as Instagram. As Instagram is a free platform this is what I used to post any content that has been created to reach the public audience. To create content such as making videos/reels I downloaded another free platform called cap-cut to merge content together instead of paying subscriptions for other platforms which do the same such as premier pro which would of cost £22 a month. Moving forward to promote our musical on a larger scale to reach out to a more specific audience on top of the use of social media, which we discussed could be working class community, we could advertise by putting up posters in specific areas or handing out leaflets but we even spoke about performing musical numbers in venues such as bars/pubs or in public places to try and gain public attention. For the discussion of budget, the costs wouldn’t be major for the posters/leaflets but it is still and added cost that we didn’t spend over the period of this process.

Directing and Social Media Admin

Being involved in drama groups and classes all my life and working with many different directors has always given me the interest in directing shows myself and especially over the last couple years working with directors such as Adam Stadius and Dan Street-Phillips it has been really interesting to focus more into their own style of work and evaluating which suits myself as an actor but also a director more. This is why at the start of this process I confidently put myself forward of director for this project. I evaluated the routes of direction that I would like to follow throughout the months leading up to the RnD week, and test myself with looking at Meisner technique, focusing on character connection and story but also looking at Stanislavsky and his techniques which I worked on as an actor in a project with Dan Street-Phillips back in January 2026. Familiarising myself with different direction techniques in the months before I got to work with the cast was extremely helpful as it gave me a set idea of how I would like the Rehearsal room to work. My other role was social media admin and the reason I put myself forward for this was to test my creativity in regards to using platforms to gain public interest and also to create our logo for the show. This process was extremely fun but what I found difficult was putting together a logo to present our musical to the public. For this I used Microsoft power-point to create multiple potential logo drafts. We then decided on one to post on social media but then after feedback from people online the logo was not clear enough on what the musical represented. With that information I went back and created a clearer logo which then gained positive feedback where the audience said they ‘understood the vibe’ of the musical better.

Research and development week

At the start of this week as director I planned a readthrough with the cast for them to get a first idea of character but also to hear their thoughts on how they think their role may present themselves. This became really crucial for us creatives as we got feedback from the cast straight away on how they sometimes felt the character wasn’t coming across like we thought they were. After this it was straight to working on the scenes with the limited time we had. As director my one goal for this week was for us as a team to get a clearer understanding of the characters we created. For this week of rehearsals I took influence of using Stanislavsky techniques by outlining the importance of objectives in the scenes and having the characters try establish their own goals. To achieve this, I always started the scenes with improvisation for example, when we first got the script up on its feet, I asked the two actors to read the scene then put the script down and improvise with the thought of their objectives and trying to achieve them before then adding lines. This process usually went on 4-5 times before adding the script. Looking back this was really useful as it helped character building massively and also the actors establishing character objectives. For ensemble work I wanted to create a tight community to make the audience also feel involved and connect with the show. To establish this when first working with the ensemble we played with ‘flocking’ this entailed following one leader and moving together with an ensemble. The feedback from the cast was positive on this with some explaining they have never work shopped with this technique before but helped them establish connection with the others. In the future if we had more rehearsal time, I would explore this technique more to try and create different character connection such as friends or foe. After this we improvised a pub setting with the cast exploring what they would do in the pub before adapting that into the scene. For my role in social media, I created daily reels to promote the musical showing what has been happening in our process using a comedic aspect to set the tone of the show. This went down really well with many people complementing the reels with many saying they were gutted that they stopped! This brought in a lot of interest and boosted our following. For the performance on the final day watching, it from the side, as I didn’t involve myself so I could make notes on how some of the show came across and what could be improved, it was intriguing to watch the audience react to specific scenes such as the ‘kiss scene’ as we were uncertain how it would come across. Feedback from the audience said that they were really interested in the scene and that it was very nicely set and gave the ‘wholesome vibe’ but there was a ‘cringe worthy’ moment in when peter lifts his top off and it felt more comedic than natural, so looking back on that scene it would need re-working.

Conclusion In conclusion the process of this module as a whole has really made me improve my creativity and team working skills. Most of all it has opened a big interest and joy for me in directing as I enjoyed really looking into the script in depth and then using improvisation from the cast to build the scene and characters creating a proper Yorkshire working class vibe to bond with the audience. What I would improve would be experimenting more with the Actor-Muso aspect of the show and maybe seeing what actors could play what and see if we could bring more instruments onto the stage and working with them. Furthermore  I would look more at Meisner technique to establish a stronger connection between the characters especially our two leads this is because I felt like the connection was lost at times in the performance. Overall, this module has been a healthy challenge which I have learned a lot from and cant wait to develop more in the future.