For our FMP, we chose to perform a comedy piece based on a bank robbery. We started off struggling, until we were happy with the script that we found. And then, we used our time wisely. We changed, added, subtracted scenes, developed ideas, thought about accents , sounds, lighting, props etc all in our own time. We used our 3 hour breaks every Wednesdays to sit down, go through the script, and do what needed to b e done. So that when we went into the class we were ready to start using the space and getting practical with our piece. This helped us a lot because we were already so behind everyone else in the class, this helped us get back on track and at the same level that everyone else was at.
We came up with the idea of having a two woman show, and the main comedy aspect of it would be that the rest of the cast ( the class) hadn't turned up for the performance so, the audience was stuck with us two playing as a cast of 11 different people.
We could already start to see, that within a few days, our piece had started to develop. This was the one for us. And ideas were starting to come very naturally for us.
After coming up with the skeleton for us piece, we started thinking of ways to bring in props and subtly change into each different character. We thought about, posture and accents to show clear differences.
 Once knowing how many characters there were, we were ready to give each other the roles of different characters.
We then started to think that we didn't want to use too many props as it would then make it a lot more confusing and tacky for the audience to watch, so we kept it very minimal but obvious.
Our next step was to then start tech on our piece. We didn't have much time to do this before our actually performance. So to insure this was a quick process, we took the time to write everything down in order, so that the tech team knew their cues. We then found the links to all the sounds we needed for us piece, and once again put them in order of the show and sent to Alex, so he had an easy understanding of when he needed to play them.
We did decided to have minimal lighting, but to have big, bright, bold lighting set off when least expected. So unexpected that we left it in their hands and let them actually go wrong and we had to carry on improvising not knowing when a wrong light was going to go off or a smoke machine/ sound.
We did make some lighting reasonable, for example when the police scenes came, we insured we had red and blue flashing lights to clearly represent them for the audience. This is also because we didn't want to over do it, because it it was too over done, it wouldn't have the full potential of being as funny as it could.
We told the tech team, that they had the wild card, and could press the wrong lights or smoke machine at any time they wanted or felt it was going to be odd and funny, to make it more random so we could then improvise, which came naturally and kept the piece fresh. We were also able to experience the craziness that was going on with the audience as we ourselves didn't know when a flash or sound was randomly going to pop off.
Finally, we spoke to the rest of the class, and they agreed to walk through the front of the theatre to show that they were the rest of the cast and had turned up late. This ending is very important, because the audience would believe that everyone actually didn't turn up for the show.

UNIT 12 - PLANNING & PRODUCTION