𝚍𝚎𝚜𝚙𝚒𝚝𝚎 𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚢𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐, 𝚒𝚝'𝚜 𝚜𝚝𝚒𝚕𝚕 𝚢𝚘𝚞

Mobile achieves the goals of The Paper Bird’s theatre making in many ways. For one, the audience is on the stage for the whole performance since the show is set inside a mobile home. There are also numerous examples of verbatim: tv interviews, personal interviews broadcasted through household items, an astronomy book, and others. Each of the personal interviews also connects to one of the show’s clearest uses of symbolism where people assign themselves as household objects. It allows each person to develop as a unique character with functions such as microwave beeping to censor swears, the choice of words to appear on the alarm clock and more. All of these items, though, eventually become “novelties” to people from the outside, members of the audience included. Catherine as well is drawn to these items and has her own moments where the vehicle’s projector helps display her scattered thoughts with a series of quickly flashing images. Even the song she chooses to play, Hotel California, ...

The Paper Birds is a UK-based theatre company, much like Frantic Assembly, that focuses their work on deeply realistic Social Justice plays. One of their most well-known practices is verbatim interviews, wherein they take direct text from research of an event and words from the people involved to create a script. They also utilize different items and symbols for motifs, which serve as a consistent reminder of the  theme that has been narrowed down from the original umbrella theme. Although the idea of verbatim theatre is not entirely new to me, I found it very interesting that The Paper Birds take a very direct approach to sourcing information and how carefully they copy people. Not only will they take words exactly as they are said, but even a person’s posture and mannerisms will be replicated as accurately as possible. Personally, I am very drawn to this practice because of how involved it requires an actor to be within their character. While there is always a level of performanc...

Over the past two weeks, our IB Theatre Class has been designing movement sequences related to and in the style of Frantic Assembly’s Things I Know To Be True. The work started with a search for song lyrics that could be used in a monologue and would inspire emotions similarly to the play. I chose to use the lyrics from a Mitski song called “First Love / Late Spring”, specifically the chorus and second verse. When thinking over all of the monologues from TIKTBT, I felt that this song fit incredibly well for Rosie’s familial empathy and  confusion that she expresses at the start of the play. I came into class the first day feeling excited but also somewhat unprepared to  create the movement aspect of the assignment. Although I didn’t really mind being picked first for directing, it was difficult to convey some of my ideas verbally. I didn’t use clear language at the start and was anxious about giving directions. I’m not a naturally assertive person, so I mostly confused the cla...