Over the course of the last two terms, myself and a group of creatives worked to develop a new piece of Musical Theatre which we named Woven. This process would culminate in the performance of an excerpt of this new musical to our peers. My roles within the group were as a writer, admin and cellist. In this portfolio, I will detail our creative process, challenges and the many iterations that our piece had until it reached the form that we would share as well as what we would go on to improve if we were to continue this beyond the module. 

At the start of the writing process, Lara gave me and Sophie a rough draft of the plot, characters and events in the story; this was what I would work from when it came to writing the script. However, over the course of writing this musical, the plot underwent many significant changes in hopes to improve it. One such change was that in Lara’s original draft of the script, Peter would have already lost his job by the time that the musical’s events took place. During a meeting with Sophie and Lara, I suggested that having Peter already be jobless was perhaps not the best narrative choice as it didn’t make sense to have such a big event happen offstage before the audience has had a chance to get to know the character and the stakes. I also said that having Peter be on board with the rioting from the start didn’t give the opportunity for him to have a full and interesting arc across the story; having him be reluctant and conflicted at first only to have the loss of his job be the final straw that makes him protest would be much more satisfying. With this in mind, my proposal was that Peter doesn’t lose his job until the end of act one, which would leave the audience on a cliffhanger going into the interval, wondering what Peter will do now and how he will support Frances, thus allowing us to pick up with momentum at the beginning of act two. This revelation could also act as an inciting incident for Peter to become an active member of the luddites in act two, setting his downfall in motion. After this conversation, the position of Peter’s job loss in the plot was changed to be later in act one but not at the end. Instead, the love song and subsequent marriage proposal was placed before the interval, which is where it was in the sharing. In theory, I think that this could have worked if the love song was more of a powerful ballad or more upbeat but in practice, due to the understated nature of the love song that Sophie wrote, I think this killed the momentum of the plot. I think that this song would have a greater impact if it were placed earlier in act one. In summary, if I were to keep working on this script, I would look at the placements of events in the story and the function of the songs in the narrative to make sure that they have the greatest impact possible.

One thing about our artistic process that surprised me was how much of our work we ended up cutting or rewriting. Due to the narrative of our piece and the order of events being in flux for a long time before being finalised, many scenes that myself, Sophie and Lara wrote became redundant. At first, I found this very frustrating as I didn’t want to have spent time and energy on something that wasn’t going to be used. However, as the module went on, I came to understand this as a normal part of the process and that the scenes I had written weren’t useless and instead ended up informing the version of Woven that we ended up with. For example, the first scene I wrote for this project was a monologue from the perspective of Morris in which he was rallying the people to join the rebellion; however, when we decided to instead write a song to serve this function, Naima and Jono used my monologue as a stimulus. 

As part of my job as an administrator, I have had to consider the financial reality of the show having life beyond Leeds Conservatoire. The structure of this show was designed with a small budget in mind; for example, the cast is small, with the actors being required to multirole and the locations are few, mainly switching between the factory and the pub. This means that there are not many actors to pay or sets to build and transport, compared to other shows. Another factor to consider is the fact that this show is an actor-musician show and therefore requires no offstage band. Of course, any actor musicians would be paid extra for each instrument that they play on top of their actor’s fee, but this would still be significantly less than a pit band. Another way that I plan on keeping costs down would be to source all the costumes and props myself and I could alter them to fit the actors.

In terms of how I would plan to put on our show while it’s still in it’s infancy, I think that the best idea would be to take the show to small venues in different theatre festivals. Given the show’s small and quaint identity, I think that the material would land well in small venues with audiences who are excited to see new stories. In order to raise the money to take the show to a festival, we would rely on fundraising for which we would focus on the local communities in Leeds and Yorkshire as we are hoping that Woven would resonate with them.

During our research and development week, we had the opportunity to involve a group of first years in the project, bringing them on board as actors. As a writer, it was invaluable to be able to see our work put on its feet for the first time and discover which scenes/dialogue flowed well and what could be improved upon. It was also important that we asked for feedback from the actors during this week so that we could get an outside perspective. One piece of feedback that we received after the first table read of the sharing script was that the characters sometimes felt inconsistent from scene to scene and that their personalities lacked continuity throughout the show. For example, in scene one, Frances comes across as uptight and serious but then becomes more sarcastic and light hearted in scene two without having a proper motivation for this change. Upon reflection, I believe that this was due to the fact that we had multiple writers who were assigned different scenes and although we had read each other’s work, we hadn’t worked as collaboratively as we should have. If we were to continue writing this musical, I would suggest Sophie, Lara and I have a meeting to create a detailed character profile for each character including their personality traits, way of speaking and motivations so that we could all refer back to this and write more cohesively as a result going forward. Using these profiles, we would also be able rewrite the existing scenes accordingly.

Not only did we get to receive feedback from the cast but this RnD sharing gave us the opportunity to discover how an audience of unbiased people would receive the material that we had written. I learnt that this is a very pivotal moment in the process because beforehand, the creative team is operating within a bubble and is mostly guessing what the reaction of an audience would be. After the sharing, Lara sent out a feedback form so that we could assess what had gone well and what needed to be changed. One person stated that they would have liked to have seen more characters other than Frances and Peter and how the mass job losses affected them. I think that this makes sense because the current plot revolves solely around the romantic relationship and even when we see Morris and the rioting, it’s through the lens of how it will come to affect Peter and consequently his relationship. There is definitely room to add more characters and if not, to go into greater detail on Morris, his motivations and what the stakes are for him. It had also occurred to me that as it stands, the audience doesn’t get to see Frances in many scenes where Peter is not there and we, as writers, haven’t shown what kind of person she is outside of her romantic life and relationships with men. Given the fact that as a group, our mission statement is one of female empowerment, it would be remiss of us if we didn’t examine how our piece is portraying women and what it is saying about them. Going forward, I would add more moments where we get to delve deeper into Frances’ character and potentially introduce another female character to act as her friend which would give us another dynamic to explore in the show, one of female friendship. 

One piece of positive feedback that we received was that people really liked that our show was an actor musician piece which is very important because we, as creatives, felt that it was going to be a large part of the identity of the show.  We wanted the actor-musician element to feel intrinsic to the show and so heavily incorporated into the world that it couldn’t be performed any other way. The intention behind this was to immerse the audience in this pub setting with the folk music, helping them to feel part of this tight knit community of working class people that we are presenting to them. This, in turn, would increase the impact of the show as the audience feels more connected to it. With the increasing popularity of actor-musician pieces, we definitely want this element to be part of the show’s brand and a unique selling point that is exciting and dynamic for audiences. If we were to put on this show professionally, we would aim to keep the band small and mostly onstage to maintain this intimate atmosphere that we are trying to create.