17.4.15

   We started to day by talking about the staging and location for our play. We had two options that we are considering, the One Church or Pelham. Both of them have their advantages and disadvantages. The One Church is a great space and it is known by people, so it will attract audience, which is a huge advantage. It also has its own feel to it, but it lacks in the technical side. It is harder to arrange different kind off lights and projections in that space, but also a complete black out is not possible because of the large windows. The space echoes, so using music and talking at the same time would me almost impossible to do. Pelham is easier with the technical side, since we know the space and are able to use the lights, music and sound cues more to our advantage. Here we also have the freedom to use the space as we wish, having a more creative set even, since it feels more like an empty plate for us to play on. It was also pointed out, that Pelham has a nostalgic side to it, this being our last show at City College, it would play as a tribute to our two years on this course. But, it also isn't a very known venue, which won't help with bringing more audience. I think more people are towards using Pelham as our space, which I agree with. It would give us more potential to make the space and the performance ours and make a clearer point with the show. We also talked a little about how would we then stage the show. Greta suggested we would use tables to create the cabaret feel, but they could also be a place for the actors to hang out when they are not in the scenes. This would be Brechtian, because the audience could see them all the time, and see us change, but also help to create the mood for the show. I suggested for the actual stage, to have so that from the main stage there would be stairs from the the whole width off it coming down to the floor. The problem with this is that it needs more panels to build it, since we would need some or the audience as well, but we could use some money to rent out more. Something we still need to decide is if we are doing the lighting like it should be in Brechtian style, a very bright light for example the houselights on to keep the audience awake, or decide on something else. I would personally like to use the lights to our advantage to create a cabaret like feeling, dim lights throughout, but perhaps also using lights to make it appear as if we were in a black-and-white movie.
  We then started talking about the scenes

• Prologue opens the show with introducing the play and characters. Siou really wants this scene to be done all of us playing the announcer, using chorus speech as our method of speaking the monologue. Spotlights were suggested to be used to point out individual characters or people speaking, as well as using music during it came up. We could have a certain movement we would all be doing with the music, creating a cabaret dance feel to it. People could also be coming from the audience and one person standing out at a time by coming in major, having more movement or just drawing the attention towards them by using energy and speech. Also, it was pointed that when introducing Arturo Ui, all of the Ui's should step out, to show that there will be multiple people playing him. 
• Scene one should be very fast paced with an intense atmosphere, since the vegetable dealers are worried, but also because it is placed in the Financial District, which is a busy place of people selling and buying. To show this to the audience we can make sign of dollar signs and saying 'buy' or 'sell'. 
• In scene three we could use people cheering and betting on things to show the bookie's office