Throughout this portfolio I aim to discuss my contribution to the creation of our musical as well as the challenges that I faced personally and as a group. My role within this project was Musical Director and Orchestrator, however near the end of the process I took on the role of Social Media Manager. Over the last few months my group created a powerful piece of contemporary theatre called ‘Off The Record’. Through this piece we really wanted to show the struggles that women face, particularly within the media. Having an all-female creative team meant that this story was something we all felt incredibly passionate about which was something that I could really feel not only with the final product but also the whole creative process.
We as a creative team spent the first few weeks of the process solely looking at the plot of the show as we felt it was important to fully understand what was going to happen before we started writing the songs as we knew how much things could change and didn’t want to waste time writing something that we wouldn’t end up needing. Whilst this method did prove effective for us I also do believe that if we had written something that ended up being changed or scrapped it wouldn’t have been a waste as playing around with material could also have been a very effective method for us. We all ended up working together to create the plot which really worked for us as it meant that everyone had a full understanding of what was going on and where we were taking the story. This also meant that we were able to fully discuss every choice made and fully flesh out the characters and their stories and intentions. We did end up having a big change to the plot about mid-way through the process when it was suggested to us that our only male character should actually be a woman, after discussing we ended up coming to the conclusion that that would be the best place to take the show, as having a show purely focused on women and the relationships between women it made sense that the main antagonist was also a woman.
One of the biggest challenges that we were presented with as a team was one of the members of our team not showing up to meetings of doing the work that they had been assigned to do. This caused our team a lot of stress as it ended up slowing down the process considerably, as we didn’t want to make group decisions without discussing it with everyone. However in the end we ultimately decided that we would keep going with the process as we were worried that we were going to run out of time. This then led me to taking over the social media account for our project. This was one of the roles that I hadn’t originally wanted to do as I didn’t think that I would be any good at it, but we decided that I would do it as I had already previously logged into the account that had been made so that we could start following other people and start promoting the show. This however was not a decision we made lightly as a group as it meant we would basically be kicking one member out as social media had been her only role, but we were getting really close to the Research and Development week and she had not done anything for the social media, despite saying multiple times that she would, or shown up to any of our meetings so we had to do what was best for the team. When I took over this role I jumped straight into creating posts as we were already incredibly behind with the promotion of our show, which I saw a big problem as without promoting we would be unable to get any investors or people interested in watching and or being a part of the show. I decided that one of the best ways for me to get people interested through our social media was to firstly try to post as regularly as possible, but to also make the post interesting and captivating to look at. I decided to design all the posts to keep with the theme of the show, as a main theme of our show was tabloids, journalism and the media I designed all of the ‘meet the team’ posts to look like a newspaper headline (see figure 1). This worked really well as it got gave people a really clear idea of the theming of the show and got a lot of really positive feed back from members of the public. I felt that something that was very important when trying to promote new work was creating and keeping good relations with other writers and creative teams, by doing this we were able to get more people interested as they would repost our posts and help put our show out to their followers.
Another thing I was in charge of as social media manager was creating the poster for our show. This was a task I found incredibly daunting as the poster is the first glimpse of the show that most people will see so I knew I needed to be eye catching that would intrigue people and make them want to come and watch the show. I ended up researching and looking at lots of examples of good, effective posters from successful shows and looking at what it was that really made them stand out. One of the posters that I found really enticing and useful to my research was the original poster for ‘Cats’ by Andrew Lloyd Webber (see figure 2). What I really liked about this poster was the simplicity of it and how even if there was no title on the poster you would be able to know exactly what that poster was for. Despite really enjoying the simplistic yet eye catching approach ‘Cats’ took I found that I needed a slightly busier look for our poster (see figure 3). My original plan for the background of the poster was to create my own headlines, newspaper articles and tabloids about the characters referencing things that happen in the show. However I unfortunately do not possess the skills to be able to create something like that especially within the time limit I was given so I had to change my plans. In an ideal world where we had the budget to commission someone to create the poster for us that is what I would want for the poster. That being said though I felt that I managed to find a good compromise as I decided that instead of creating my own headlines I would find ones that already existed that were about women and how they should look or act. I then decided to create a silhouette of two women to represent our two main characters Kerry and Nancy, I had the silhouettes be back to back facing away from each other to make it clear to the viewer that there is some kind of conflict and divide between them. I then chose to use red font for the title of the show as A. it was a goof contrast on the black and would stand out and B. because the colour red symbolises themes such as; anger, danger, passion, and power. These are all themes that run through our show and I wanted to use the colour to set a tone of the show for the viewer.
One of the big things we as group discussed when looking at the budget was the cast, specifically the size of the cast. Luckily for us, as we knew starting out we wouldn’t be working with a big budget, having a small cast with little to no ensemble is what we decided would serve our show and the story the best. Originally we talked about only having four characters, however this changed during our research and development week as we ended up adding in ensemble to a couple of the songs. In the end we ended up with a cast of six, the four main named characters and two ensemble tracks who would multi role the small unnamed characters such as the makeup artist who appears in act one scene seven. We also as a group chose to not use any external cast for our showing, with us playing all the roles. We came to this decision as it gave us a lot more freedom within the R and D week as we did not have to work with other peoples schedules, something that I had seen be an issue in previous years. It also meant that we had less strict deadlines when it came to finishing material as we did not need to teach things like songs so other people, this then gave us more of a chance to play around with things and really fine tune them, instead of just writing something so we could have something to teach. Another thing that I found I looked at when thinking about the budget was the band. Whilst for the showing we were only able to use piano tracks as we didn’t have anyone to play for us live, I still looked at orchestration and what I would want if we did have access to a full band. I came to the decision that we wouldn’t need a huge band as I don’t believe having a massive orchestra would work with the show as it has a vey contemporary sound to it. I found that what worked best would be keys, guitars, drums, and possibly strings (violins) – however this could be done with a keyboard patch to save money if necessary. Overall I found that as a show we would be quite sustainable as we were not just making decisions to keep things small and simple to save us money with the hopes of expanding and growing, we just believed that keeping things small and contained is what was right for the show and what would serve the plot the best.
Overall I found that through this process I really learnt a lot about the creative process of a show and how much really goes into it. I tried to bring my own knowledge from thing that I had learnt from past experiences with research and development week I had done before. I found I came out of this process feeling more creative and inspired, realising that a lot of the things I didn’t think I would enjoy or be good at were things that I actually really did enjoy, such as running the social media. If I could change anything from this process it would be getting on jobs quicker as one thing I did find was because I was given the music quite late I was unable to do much actual orchestrating because I had to shift my focus over to social media as it was more important at the time.
Bibliography
Cats the Musical • Official Website. (2019). Cats the Musical • Official Website. [online] Available at: https://www.catsthemusical.com/.
