For this scheme of work my group and I devised a new musical called ‘The Turning’. It’s a camp fueled comedy show filled with innuendos that is centered around vampires. It explores a supernatural alternative world where vampires secretly live alongside humans. At the beginning of the creative process we wanted this to be a serious almost horror-like piece, however early on themes of comedy made more of an appearance than we originally thought. The role I was assigned in my group was social media manager and designer. I was also cast as one of the principal performers.I will further discuss my role in the creative process throughout this portfolio. 

Musical concept

The musical was originally conceived through another member of the creative team’s love of gothic style and particularly vampires. The musical was pitched as a gothic horror piece exploring how vampires live and the family they have created for themselves in a modern world. This concept stayed in the showing but with a much more comedic edge than was originally pitched. We discussed different genres of horror we could base a musical on and decided a vampire theme was what we would stick with, as was originally pitched. The musical is centered around a young girl named Flora. She starts the show as a human but is turned into a vampire during the overture after her doctor mother finds a vampire and convinces her to turn her to a vampire to save her life as she is terminally ill. She is introduced to the world of vampires which is completely unfamiliar to her. She is initially very sceptical and misses her human life, but in time she learns to accept her new life. The story explores how she struggles to control her thirst for blood and is not able to be around humans without becoming violent. Flora finds out towards the end of the show that when she was a human her mother was drugging her to make her unwell, with the aim of getting her turned into a vampire for research purposes. Once Flora makes this discovery she confronts her mother and decides to cut all ties with her. The show ends with her fully accepting her new vampire family and for the first time in her life, she is happy and feels accepted for who she is.

My role

I was drawn towards the role of social media manager because I used to have my own TikTok where I vlogged theatre trips and talked about theatre news. This gave me the required editing and creating tools to make a social media account for the musical. I started the account on instagram and got to work collecting resources before I made any posts. I asked the composer to send over the instrumentals to me. From that I edited them into shorter teaser snippets to use on the upcoming instagram posts. I wanted the social media to have a consistent vibe so all the photos I posted were edited to be black and white and we kept all text and logos to be black, white and red. The first thing I posted was a ‘meet the team’ series of posts. I requested that all of the creatives send me a headshot style photo of themselves that they would be happy for me to post. I then gave each of the creative team an individual post with their names and role description. This was a great way to gain an initial following on the account as most of the team shared their post to their own instagram which really helped to get engagement on the account. Here is an example of this (image 1).

During the rehearsals I filmed lots of content to use for social media. I would then edit the footage together and put some music from the show in the background. The final step was to record a voice over explaining what we did in the day and promote the musical. We also filmed some videos using trending audios in costume. Whether that was a trending pop song or a comedic audio, we did it all. These videos got lots of engagement and really helped to boost our following.

I also created a ‘programme style’ cast list using headshots to post on instagram to promote the performers and the piece (image 2). I was forced to make multiple versions of this due to certain performers not showing up and uncertainty if they would actually perform in the show. This was a frustrating but good experience for if I was ever part of the creative team for a new musical where the cast could change multiple times during the process or if we ever had a cast change. I managed to gain a respectable little following for the instagram account of The Turning, with posts getting lots of comments, views and shares. This puts us in a really good position to continue to promote the show if we were to ever take it further in the future. 

Logo design

In the process I was not initially meant to be on the design team, however the person who was originally assigned that role was not doing the work in time according to our plan. This was preventing me from getting our social media started because I needed a logo to announce the show and to use as the accounts profile picture. After talks with the creative team we decided I would create a placeholder logo for us to use while we were waiting on the final version (image 3). I had little experience in the design field but I decided to take on the challenge to broaden my skill set. I took influence from favourite horror film logos such as ‘The Conjuring’ and ‘Insidious’. I also took inspiration from gothic style musicals like ‘The Phantom Of The Opera’ and ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’. The original logo was black and white but after experimentation and feedback from the creative team it was changed to dark red with white text. I thought this would be more on theme for the vampire style I wanted to go for. This had a big impact on the future aesthetic of our social media as I wanted to keep the colour scheme consistent.

Developing my role

Alongside being a member of the creative team I was also a principal performer in the show. I played the role of Yuroslav. He is the oldest vampire in the group and the leader. Our director gave us a lot of creative freedom to make the roles our own. As my character Yuroslav was the head vampire, I decided to take inspiration from ‘Count Dracula’ and make him a very classic style vampire. I initially wanted to make him a bit like ‘Frank-N-Furtur’ and take the character in a much more camp and comedic direction. However during the rehearsal process I realised a different role in the show – Igor naturally suited that style a lot better and that Yuroslav would be much more effective being more of a calm and charismatic leader. 

Budgeting

If we were to take this show to a professional level there are a few budgeting things I would have to take into consideration. For editing all my content, in an ideal world I would have access to photoshop or another similar professional standard editing programme. I would also need a professional camera to get good shots of the show. I would also have to branch out to other social media platforms like Twitter, Tiktok and Facebook to reach a wider audience. Another thing I would want to do would be to create a website for the show. This would be a place with info about the musical, show dates, links to buy tickets, details of the cast and creative team and potentially at some point if the show gained a large following we could look into the possibility of creating and selling show merchandise. I have no experience in creating a website or designing show merchandise so we would have to hire additional people to help create these things. All of these things would be quite expensive but would definitely be worth considering if we wanted to take this show to the next level. 

What I would do differently

If I was part of this process again there are a few things I would have done differently, The first of which is sticking to a more regular posting schedule for our social media. There were times where I was really on it and making daily posts but then I would go quite a few days without a post. I think what I could do to stick to a more consistent posting schedule would be to plan ahead. A good idea would be to create a lot of content all at once and have something like a week’s worth of posts ready to go for each day. I would want to make more vlogs than I did because those videos were our most successful posts and gave our audience a really good insight into what the show was going to be like,

Another thing I would want to do differently would be to make more bold offers in the space. In the beginning of the process I didn’t always come into the rehearsal space ready to give offers. This was largely because I hadn’t fully learned my lines and the songs and I wish I had sooner. This would have allowed me to come into the rehearsals feeling much more confident and able to give offers without having to worry about knowing my lines. I would also come into rehearsals wearing costumes sooner because some of the things I wore restricted my movements and I was forced to adapt certain movements in the moment.

In conclusion, this module as a whole helped me to brand myself as a performer on social media and taught me useful skills to put my own spin on a character in an original musical. Additionally it gave me experience in promoting a new piece of work. These are very valuable skills to have. The landscape of show business is shifting to a much more digital place, where we are seeing theatre performers gaining massive followings such as Hannah Lowther and Carrie Hope Fletcher. This has helped them to create not only casting opportunities for themselves but also a solid side hustle, which is really important when working in an unstable industry like musical theatre where you won’t always be performing in a show. Having experience performing in an original musical and also being part of the creative team is very valuable. There is so much work available in being part of an original musical in places like the Edinburgh fringe. Huge shows like ‘Six The Musical’ started out as small productions in the Edinburgh fringe. Getting attached to a successful musical early on in the creative process could truly change your life and hugely benefit your career.