21/11/11
Present: Lozz Gallagher, Jade Thompson, Rob Etheridge, Tom
Wilson, Lian Patston, Alex Bray, Joe Hart, Lydia Longman, Sophie
Grout, Jonny Baynham, Claire Gilbert, Sam Beath
Non-committee: Glynnis Morgan, Raees Mahmood, Rachel Prudden,
Jon North, Cam Bevan, Hannah Griffiths, Amy Fitzgibbon, Aoife
Thomas, Alisa Stewart, Tom Searle, Ian Palaczky, Theresa Crisham,
Olivia Whyte, Sam Jenkins Shaw, Joe Pepper, Matt Leech, Alexis
Forss, Alex Curtis, Joel Jackson, Teddy Clements, Mustafa Pathan,
Rob McGough, Nina Westby, Hannah Cutting, Lee Alexander, Sam
Dobson, Miriam Price
Summer pitches:
A Clockwork Orange:
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Direcor: Rob McGough and Tom Wilson
Assistant Director of Movement: Amy Nicholass
Producer: Theresa Crisham
Space for one more new Producer
About Alex who is going on a violent drug & alcohol rampage
& is corrected by society
About his struggle with society.
Relevant as London riots uni fees etc.
Cast of 11. Alex permenantly on stage, rest multirolling. Alex
must be male. 50/50 split male & female.
Physical theatre/styalised.
2 foot raise & 3 foot raise to make everything fully visible.
Actors moving props on their own.
Well known will sell itself. Don’t want to base it on film version
but it will help publicity. Flash mobbing & ideas for flyers &
trailers.
Music in the script but they have permission from rights
company to cut.
In pitch you say movement stylised?
 Pina very organic & flowy. Not complicated & makes the entire
performance flow.
 Physical beings not just actors. Acting at core but movement
may be just at the call back stage – acting most important.
Nuffield/Edinburgh have just done the play – what is different or
how will you get people in?
 It was very brechtian in the Nuffield. This will be a lot more
naturalistic in story way. true to original book.
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Very different from Edinburgh as they will only be ‘copying’
the bits from the book but the rest especially movement/tech
will be different.
Lead is male. 50/50 but is it actually weighty female roles?
 Literally equal. Have permission from rights company to
change genders if needs be. Girl characters are brilliant.
Deadhead:
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Writer/Director: Ian Palacsky
Assistant Director Amy Fitzgibbon, Alisa Stewart
Producers: Joe Hart, Tom Wilson
Assistant Producers: Stewart Semple, Sera Berksoy
Costumes: Aoife Thomas
Set in nowhere.
Not even the characters know where they are.
Four men, three women & all lost their memory. drop
audience right into the heart of it.
Audience is confused & intrigued at the same time. Audience
will feel part of it.
Tensions high & they lead to fights.
They begin to remember who they are
All of sudden the nowhere land becomes familiar. All
remember the word deadhead but they don’t know what it
means.
Limited set all about the acting.
One is a killer killing them off one by one.
Puzzle for the audience.
Lends itself to advertising.
How much experience? Skills?
 Ian written loads of plays. Won a performing arts festival with
it.
 Joe done lots of committees & young enterprise & advertising
& can make websites. Very organised.
 Tom Wilson learned so much already in Fresher & know what
needs to get done & delegation.
 Alisa done some directing at school & plays at am dram. Sera
was head girl & enthusiastic.
 Aoife done costumes with musicals with 100+ casts & done
hair & makeup with last drama group.
 Amy done lots of directing at school & lots of enthusiasm.
How the play will work?
 Simplistic and naturalistic.
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2 corners with 3ft raises & a raise in the middle with a screen
with a funny language on it.
Everything happens on stage.
Actors suspending disbelief.
Projection on screens on all the raises so it can be seen.
Mainly about the 7 people who want to get out of this
nowhere land.
What is the rough run time?
 2 act – 1 hour per act.
Final draft?
 Pretty much final draft unless really needed.
Vindice?
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Director: Alexander Curtis
Assistant Director: Sam Dobson and Joel Jackson
Producer: Sophie Grout
Choreographer: Tom Wilson
Looking for another producer.
Based on revenges tradgedy. Rewritten & set in met police.
Central message – people not getting angry when they don’t
understand things. Almost a farce.
Characters are charactures of evil. Vindice goes about getting
revenge.
2nd act more naturalistic after he’s killed the duke.
Why is he so angry?
Becomes a tragedy.
Wants the audience to remember Vindice’s wife as to why the
play all started.
Music and effects.
Introduce it like a romp. Play with the audience’s
expectations. Lots of comedy in there but becomes less funny
when you realise this is actually happening.
Dancers – want to open up to dance society & Show stoppers.
What is the cast?
 21 – split quite heavily towards the male.
 Script not finished but make adaptations to add more for
female development.
 Rather the dancers were female. Realistically it will be fairly
even. Some roles can be male or female.
Stage?
 Sparse because lots of dance.
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Want to signify the met police. Split back wall with exterior
setting with shutters like met police sign & graffiti. Projection
higher up to raise audiences eye line to make the stage seem
larger.
Is it being marketed as an adaptation?
 An original play based on. Its not a well known play the
original but will bring in literary people but more as a original
play.
Media?
 Friend who is studying film production – money in budget for
him to travel down to Soton. Do the filming & stuff over
Easter.
Edinburgh:
Ruthlessness:
Writers: Alexis Forss and Alexander Curtis
Directors: Claire Gilbert and Sam Jenkins Shaw
Producers: Jade Thompson, Hannah Evans, Joe Pepper, Matt Leech,
Rachel Prudden
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New to the team Joe Pepper - worked with touring company &
production assistant. Producing in terms of promotion &
gaining sponsorship in Ed for first week.
New to the team Matt – producing all the way through in
charge of financing. Done Edinburgh before.
New to the team – Rachel producing while in Edinburgh &
organising.
Gangster comedy. Comedy violence. Marketing as genre.
Matt’s looked into other venues.
Audition dates so they don’t clash.
How has the pitch changed?
 Finished the script. Changed one scene so flashback is at
beginning of the scene instead.
 Looking at different venues too.
 Got more producers.
Swearing still there?
 Looked back at the script & we don’t think it’s too OTT. All
necessary. Most swearing come from the two low lives.
Age rating?
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Still 16+ even without the swearing still a lot of violence. Still
seedy themes that can offend a younger audience. Appeals to
an older audience & they might appreciate being marketed to.
Younger audience wont get Tony Blair.
What venues you looking at how will that affect the cast?
 Zoo venues is a lot cheaper. Takes less pressure of
fundraising but will lose their C pass.
How are you going to direct violence?
 See what cast are comfortable with/able to do. Know people
that have training etc have resources. And early enough. Joe’s
uncle is a stuntman.
If don’t get C passes, but if in Zoo will that affect the people who
were going to go with promise of C passes?
 It’s in a good location. A lot of **** in C venues.
 Perhaps see better theatre with Zoo passes.
 Lots of people we spoke to won’t just be going up for C pass.
Zoo also do a lot of student productions. A lot of people in Zoo
are also volunteers so not necessarily better.
 Not set on Zoo more of an option.
After committee and non-committee feedback - RUTHLESSNESS
FOR EDINBURGH
Independent pitch:
Unseen:
Directors: Rachel Prudden, Sophie Grout and Jonathan North,
Producer: Miriam Price
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Deep in the heart of SUSU something is brewing… a group of
people known as the unseen.
Emersive theatre. Audience are new members of a cult & they
are being initiated.
The audience can be influenced without knowing it which they
hope that Unseen will demonstrate.
Abstract, theatre of cruelty.
Based in meeting room 2
Cast size of 13 roughly even split.
3 performances on Saturday
Audience of 35 – 40.
Recruiting people into the cult in order to promote and you
only see if it’s a show if you read the small print
Red ribbon around wrist to ask people what it is
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White sheet in SUSU with Unseen and logo.
Producing for independent is difficult… what is your approach?
 Miriam - haven’t had specific producing before but excited for
abstract theatre. Uber-organised. Everyone in production
team is going to help out.
Directing something in a week is hard… what are you going to do?
 Don’t want to make the cast learn a script in a week but quite
a devised approach. Whole piece is sort of devised but it will
have a plot.
 Sophie directed abstract theatre in showcase last year.
 Jonathon written and directed two shows which were low
budget
 Co-directors because it will be very intense but taking split
directing approach so they can focus on different things.
Have a plot… how much can it be devised if you have a plot & cast?
 Flexible apart from 3 principals can change them. Can be
changed as it is devised.
 Basic plot that will almost be going on in the background of
the ensemble’s experience. Plot not completely set.
Committee meeting
Do we nominate specific people on Edinburgh sub committee or do
we keep it with ordinary members / production team of Edinburgh?
 Is it better to offload jobs to do with organisation of Edinburgh
onto the ordinary members when there is 2 more people in
the society who might be well up for it?
 Rob - instead of ordinary member doing Edinburgh… they will
just be opening doors
 Ordinary members signed up for Edinburgh. Ask ordinary
members if they want to do Edinburgh & if they seem keen?
 Don’t think there’s anything wrong with getting more people
involved?
 Ordinary members used to take non-comm opinion to
committee…organising Edinburgh has took over their role.
 Fundraising seems fully on it… would it be just fundraising
assistant not trying to take over.
 Setting precedent for future Ed pitches… not just for this time.
 Would it not be better not to have a sub committee but just
people who want to be involved be involved?
 Jade ‘too many people ruin dinner… spoil the broth.’
 Stipulations meant that we had to get a strong fundraising
team… is it unfair that they lived up to the stipulations & we
may now be taking their jobs away from them?
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Make it part of Edinburgh’s officer remit to do before
Edinburgh is pitched… Krispy Kremes etc.
Vote on electing some specialist sub-committee roles this year… if
this is yes we will clarify what later.
 Committee has voted against it, keep with Ordinary members
& fundraising that is already on the Edinburgh team.
Vote on having an elected specialised sub-Committee for Edinburgh
for future years?
 Committee has voted for it, we will have specialised subcommittees from next year for Edinburgh 2013 onwards.
 Idea of shared name with Show Stoppers.
 Met with Shane & told him we didn’t like being SUSU
presents… if you’re going to make more money not being
SUSU then go for it.
 Basically names can be whatever.
TG Hoodies
 Hoodies quite specific to shows but polos/gendered shirt
seems to have been a good idea
 Good idea to feel that you belong
 More people that weren’t necessarily in shows but want a Tshirt
 Not necessarily dated so they don’t age.
 Ordinary members job
 Draw up designs & see how that goes down
General item of clothing which represents Theatre Group?
 Yes – feature on newsletter for ideas.
Summer show dates:
 Lopsoc want to swap. Showcase one week then summer show
the week after. 25th April… too early.
 Committee voted that we do not move the show
Website:
 FAQ – you have to confirm your email on the mailing list. Go
back to the old way where you just add someone’s email &
that is it.
Financial update:
 At Societies committee – when you buy through box office
you pay 50p charge on PA shows & if you buy online at
boxoffice you have to pay card charge.
 For SUSU events they have incorporated the card charge into
their prices… asking if we would like it too.
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It would mean potentially that ticket prices would have to go
up or we get less money from the ticket itself.
Makes life harder for production teams if its incorporated.
Will the charge really put people off the ticket?
If we made it easier to buy online we would have more box
office sale & we would be able to monitor how many tickets
we would get.
If we can get statistics back it will be easier to work out.
Seagull looks like it made a profit.
Need to get all receipts to Beath so he can work out monies.
Seagull:
 It was good.
 Everyone was happy.
 Lian will be looking at reviews. Get in touch with cast too
 Tell people to do reviews in Newsletter – 2 weeks time… 5th
December
 Good daily echo review
Y.C.T.I.W.Y.:
 Going well
 Issue with wrong poster on facebook… poster which didn’t
have date was on facebook but now sorted
 Polished just doing full run throughs now
Lear:
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Still haven’t quite set a rehearsal schedule
Need to clarify very soon dates for rehearsing
Rehearsal schedule hopefully going out today or tomorrow
Lear budget passed through PA
Very keen producing team
Socials:
 PA events officer looking for people in all societies to help
organise a fundraiser & summer ball so if anyone is interested
then contact Jade (put this in newsletter)
 A few PA events will be advertised over the next few weeks as
fundraisers for dance & we should go & then we might get
support back
 Email with Christmas meal order to double check it is right &
has been paid.
 Pantomime by local company 13th – 17th Decmber at the Bent
Brief – a couple of TGers are in it if society can go together.
Put it in the newsletter.
 SUSUtv drama – fundraising event on 1st December tight &
bright so perhaps TG social
 TG social to Y.C.T.I.W.Y. on the Saturday
A.O.B.:
 PA opening for secretary elections are next Friday.
 Rob – where are DVDs… they are on their way!
 Wilson – the climate forum… The Future Fest… needs onsite
performance. If anyone wants to get involved then speak to
Wilson.
 Bray – made a few contacts for cheap costumes when doing
costumes for Seagull. Add to company contacts on the
website.
 Lee – start plugging Y.C.T.I.W.Y.
 Claire – communal make-up – stagesoc will buy us a blue box
& they will keep it in the small store. Contribution to the initial
start up cost?
 Jade – Ash won’t get the money back from Meph yet, &
another £150 for Y.C.T.I.W.Y…. Beath will pay her back in
advance if she gets the receipts before the end of the show.
 Bray – get production team on list for PA house. Email Jonny.
Swearing fines:
Jonny Baynham: £1.75
Sam Jenkins-Shaw: 50p
Rob Etheridge: 75p
So far committee meetings have raised £3 for Edinburgh.