- Worthing college must submit a risk assessment and proof of public Liability Insurance
- BOAT will be credited in any and all promotional works, including the logo and adress of the Brighton Open Air Theatre
- Any amendments or alterations to the agreed contract are to be discussed and agreed between both parties, and in writing.
Licencing
Due to The Tempest being a Shakespearean play, the rights to it are free. This is because when it was written, between the late 1500's to early 1600's the rights to the licencing belonged to Shakespeare, however since he has past away, they are now available at no charge, since 1616. This means we could mold the show to how we wanted, by cutting scenes or monologues that didn't fit with the contect that we were working with, that needed a high energy and an abstract approach, by including songs and physical theatre. We were also allowed to change some of the genders of the roles of the characters, as our cast is mainly female dominated, it was difficult to cast well and create a successful production, if some of the cast had to play the wrong gender. This contrasts heavily to how it would have been produced in its original performance context, as they would have had young boys playing females, but never the other way around. This lack of licensing fees allowed us to save some of the budget for the production, allowing us to up our production quality, which was really important as it was a part of the Brighton Fringe.
Looking into the Physical Theatre we embedded into the script, if would have been unlikely to see something like this in Shakespearean times, therefore our adaption was definitely modern and new. I helped to choreograph a lot of this, such as the opening shipwreck scene, the banquet scene and the movement with the spirits. I really enjoyed this as I feel renovating classical texts is a really important aspect of modern theatre, maintaining literature in society, but in a way that people understand, movement often helps this.
Looking into the Physical Theatre we embedded into the script, if would have been unlikely to see something like this in Shakespearean times, therefore our adaption was definitely modern and new. I helped to choreograph a lot of this, such as the opening shipwreck scene, the banquet scene and the movement with the spirits. I really enjoyed this as I feel renovating classical texts is a really important aspect of modern theatre, maintaining literature in society, but in a way that people understand, movement often helps this.
Venue
The venue itself is outside, and is a thrust style of staging, is has large steps for the audience to sit on, seating up to 425 people, and allows for interesting entrances and exits to the stage. This is a plan of the space-
Screenshotted from one of the emails from the BOAT Theatre
Due to the high capacity of seats available, I feel it is important that we selll as many tickets as posssible, through college, and our own familes and friends. This will help to pay for the expense of being a part of the brighton fringe, and hiring out the space. I peronally made sure to tell everyone I knew about the event and shared the promotional poster on social media, alongside rehearsal updated through my professional instagram account, making sure I am appealing to a relevant audience.
The cost to hire the theatre space out for the day of the performance was £425, taking a large chunk out of our budget, however this was definitely worth it from an actors perspective and in terms of preparation. It allowed us to adapt or improve our piece, and rehearse in the space. Jaydee and I got the opportunity to experiment with our blocking, we often stand near the audience making sly jokes and looking at the other characters together, this rehearsal time gave us a chance to try our different blocking to find what was most effective for reaching all angles of the audience and delivering lines. We also worked on coming onto the stage, for Act 2 Scene 1, we tried walking part way down the back of the audience before the end of the previous scene, to immerse the audience further, acting as if we are exploring the island. It also allowed us to see what our costumes and set looked like on such a big stage, luckily we found that each of the costumes portrayed the relationships in the complex family tree and the characters duties. Ultimately this time at the theatre helped us feel a lot more comfortable, in terms of nerves. It was a vast new space to work in when we first arrived, however when it got to show time everyone felt a lot more collected and calm. In this screenshot from emails, we can see the schedule, we arrived at 9am, and had until the doors opened to the public at 6pm to rehearse and prepare the set-
Facilities and Services that BOAT are providing
- Stewards (1 steward per 100 audience members)
- Duty manager at the venue for 10 hours
- Lighting and sound equipment & stage manager provided by the promoter
- FOH staff and dressing rooms
Another way we covered the cost of the hire was to promote ourselves at the Shoreham Shakespeare Festival. We brought small scenes from the play and other classical Monologues to directly show the audiences walking by some of the show, and to promote ourselves as actors. It was important to make sure we always had enough money as the BOAT sent a contract-
Screenshotted from an email from the BOAT Theatre
Another example of a condition that the BOAT Theatre had set was that we respected our surroundings, before the performance we had to make sure the entire space was clean and clear for the audience to enter into, without spreading it to the public parks around the venue, whilst respecting the wildlife throughout the day. When we first arrived in the morning, there was a hedgehog in part of the stage where the electrical power came from, this caused us to delay our rehearsal but we made sure the animal got home safely, after we all took pictures of it. An example of bad conduct in this way, is when some others from our cast arrived after the main minibus, they were challenged by a member of the public, This became verbally abusive towards one of the members of the band and us as a college, and she was claiming that he had been driving recklessly near her dog. Our director, Rachel, handled this well and discussed the situation with the owners of BOAT to come to a settled conclusion on the matter. These cleanliness rules also applied for our striking of the set and cleaning up, evidenced here from one of the emails-
Some things that could effect our performance was also the natural elements, the wind can effect our projection on the stage, taking away the volume from our voices in a drastic way. To prevent this we made sure to practice with people sitting in the back row of the audience, to see if our projection was strong enough to hear. The weather was also an issue, if it had rained on the day of the performance we would have been very distracted by it, and would have had to had tried a lot harder to focus. Although it didn't rain, we experienced a lot of wind and cold whether this year, backstage I gave people my jacket that were cold and we had to sit huddled on the floor to keep warm, if our costumes had more layers, or if some of us wore shoes it wouldn't have worked with the narrative of te piece. Especially last year, we experienced some rude members of the public during the performance, because it is so close to a road and backs onto an open park for the public of Brighton, it allows people to yell and be heard through the gates. Sometimes we have to act through and ignore the nasty things that people yell at us whilst performing.
As seen in the plan, the stage itself is surrounded by a trench, a few foot deep, with gravel at the bottom and wood around the edge. This is a potential risk for the show as someone could trip and fall, and although the drop isn't far, they could hurt their knee or ankle, or scrape themselves, as the wood and gravel are sharp enough to possible break the skin on someone.
Event Details
- Venue
- NO. of seats available- 425
- No seat reservations
- Date of performance- Monday 8th May
- Start time- 7pm
- Get in time- 9am
- Interval tba
- End of show tba
- Get our by 10pm latest
- Category of production- Theatre/Education
- Event open to the public
Promotions & Tickets
- No. of seats for BOAT Staff- 10
- Company/crew needing backstage access during production period- 40
- Tickets allocated to promoter for guest list- 10
- Tickets allocated to sell directly from Worthing College/Brighton Fringe- 425
- Total tickets possible- 485
Invoice from the Brighton Open Air Theatre
My opinion on these conditions and the invoice is that it is very reasonable, the BOAT have explicitly explained basic rules for the venue, they have provided us with toilet facilities, teas and coffees, a fridge and a lovely theatre for us to perform in at a very reasonable price. However we had a restricted time after the production to take apart our tree and take the set down, because of the darkness this was quite difficult, and we felt rushed, therefore I feel that a better way to decide a get our time would be to decide based on what time the production finishes. The contract itself was very clear, and easy to understand. When we arrived on the day we were welcomed warmly with a short speech about health ans safety, and medical help and facilities in and around the venue. This coincides with what was on the contract, meaning that if not all of the cast members had read this, they would be fully informed too.
Email correspondence between the Brighton open air theatre manager and our performing arts co-ordinator
"16/1/17
Hi All
I have just been to a Brighton Fringe Venue Managers meeting and wanted to pass on some updated information to you all! Apologies for this list but if you would like more details on any of the items then drop me a line … here goes!
Dates: Fringe goes on sale for ‘fringe friends scheme’ on Wednesday 22nd Feb then on to general sale on 3rd March … PLEASE go on to their website and copy the link to your own events and email them out to your friends / followers … lets get the shows sold out!
They are now taking applications for Fringe City so if you haven’t already applied please do if you think this would be good exposure for you … remember if you do Fringe City to have a person with you who can ‘leaflet’ whilst you are performing. Remember if your flyer has the Brighton Fringe Logo on it then you can flyer without a permit in the centre of town. If it doesn’t you will have to pick up a special permit from the Fringe office … (something to bear in mind if you haven’t completed your design yet!)
If you applied to be a ‘Window' event you should have heard by now … if you were successful please let me know. (Fingers crossed)
FEU - If you are coming from overseas you will need to register on the FEU form (for Tax purposes) in advance of you coming (this means it will not hold up your settlement) more info on this when they send the link through in a couple of weeks.
BOAT will be attending a ‘Meet the Press’ event on your behalf on 27th February… If you have any posters / flyers / images / copy / sample CD's you would like me to take with you or turn into a press pack ready for then … please either pop something in the post to me at
81 Dudley Road, Brighton, BN1 7GL or email something over….
Please check out the Fringe Website for a section about ‘Awards’ … there are about 18 different awards that have different criteria … please take a look at them and see if your show is a ‘fit’ and nominate yourself … it’s good exposure and there are a variety of prizes you could win including the Gemini Award for best artwork which comes with Free entry for next year plus £500 worth of print!!
Take a look around the Fringe site for other useful sections like Fringe Academy .. I think in March they will have sessions on Health and Safety (ooh!) and Insurance (ahhhh) and even Tax (yay!!!)
Do let me know if you have any more questions / comments etc.
Really looking forward to this year kicking off in style!
Best Wishes
Anne-Marie Williams
BOAT Manager
07802 299 267 "
"7/5/17
Hi Kim
I’m really looking forward to seeing you all tomorrow morning up at BOAT at 9am.
I just have a few quick questions for you:
Please could you send me through a copy of your PLI.
Please could you also send me a risk assessment covering the show.
and finally do you have any idea of ticket numbers / likely audience. I can see the tickets sold through the Fringe Office but wonder if you have sold more through the college / directly.
If you could let me know so I can set up the theatre appropriately that would be a huge help!
Best Wishes
Anne-Marie Williams
BOAT Manager
07802 299 267"
No comments:
Post a Comment