Research Portfolios

Frantic Assembly

Frantic Assembly artistic director's are Scott Graham and Steve Hoggoet who met in Swansea as students.They have 5 permanent members of staff. They were formed the company with a desire to do something different, they wanted to create a thrilling, energetic and unforgettable theatre. They were inspired by Volcano Theatre Company. All the director's work as a team and do not discourage each other's ideas as other people's ideas might lead to an even better idea.

They are one of the most exciting companies in the country. Their unique physical style combines movement, design, music and text.  They are an athletic type of theatre and use a lot of naturalism.

There are 10 practitioners who lead workshops and residencies for Frantic Assembly. They have three workshops, Devising and physicality which provides students with the skills to embark on their own devised projects. Othello uncovered with helps them discover the devices and techniques used to create Othello.Then there's Creative residencies which provides participants with a sustained creative experience, through a series of workshops culminating in a performance.

When exercising the director's like to challenge the group and go forward in small steps. They don't like to set anything complex for the first exercise but set very specific tasks. My class tried some of these exercise and I learned that the simplest movement can be very effective and show a lot to the audience. Frantic Assembly like to keep they're performance's beautiful and dynamic. The director's like to keep an open field on what they do and try not to get carried away in the art.

They stayed away from a classical line and it was all steered by gut instinct. They get inspiration from each other and sometimes base their plays on past experiences like fights and real life stories.They give the writer freedom to developing a text in response to they're ideas and conversations, but don not expect the writer to be inspired by what is created in rehearsal room. They believe the partnership with a writer should be completely collaborative. As they develop their rehearsal process they start to take advantage of the generous opportunities to try out ideas.

Frantic Assembly show a lot of dance sequence's and every single one of them show you so much, it allows you to see deeper into the emotion. For example in Stockholm they wanted to show they were a couple by creating something intimate and sexy. They just wanted to show  that they loved to dance and not have a specific style to the dance. What was is important to them is that the dance feels different each time for the characters. They needed to be aware of the tension of the moment, when the context changed so do their reasons for pulling each other tight. The moves express the characters growing passion, anger, jealousy, insecurity, desire and desperation. In early development they set their performers the task of making up some ballroom type material.They then created some lovely and joyful moves that made them look just right.

The imagine of the shows are really important to Frantic Assembly. They take the creation pf the image very personally, that they just have to get it right. To them getting it wrong not only means you are misrepresenting your show and not promoting it properly but it also means that you are going to see it a lot and be constantly reminded of your mistake. 

Greek Theatre

Greek Theatre is unknown at the specific time of practice but we know it started in B.C and has evolved since there to develop some of the famous practitioners we know today. Greek theatre was introduced as a festival which is every year in April to celebrate the God Dionysus who is the God of wine and fertility. Athens would hold great festivals and performances in honor of the god. Within the performances there would be a chorus and three actors who were men.

A chorus was originated by the ancient Greeks and consisted of 12 to 50 people. They were considered the vital role in theatre and their propose was to react to an action. They sang, danced and read lines to express the public’s opinions on cultural, political and military actions. The 3 actors that were all male would used different masks to portray different people and genders, they were also warn for religious reasons. It would be rare to see any females at an amphitheater due to the fact they had few rights in ancient Greece to the point where they weren't even aloud to watch these plays, only the men were. The mask were also used to hide their identity otherwise they would be at risk having mocked the government or very high influential people.

There is only tragedy and comedies that the Greeks performed and from thorough research there would have only been them two and nothing more because of the God Dionysus. Wine, representing liquefying poison and temptation and fertility showing laughter, happiness and peaceful giving.  

Greek tragedy show the suffering of people and human tragedy it's self. We live in a flaw world full of suffering from our actions and that's what they show in their plays. All their actions were big and you saw the tense relationships between the characters.