The Westworld Sountrack

The finding of the westworld soundtrack was a pivotal moment in the making of the play. The music was perfect in unlocking a whole new way of creating Laramie and the people within it. It added that extra layer we needed to create this thick gripping atmosphere that occurred on stage that potentially the words only wouldn't have done. The music seemed to open us all up to new feelings and connections we could have to the play and the script, adding new dynamics and taking scenes places I had never thought they would go. Personally, I found the westworld songs incredibly helpful in enabling the a larger variety of emotions to flow through me in my monologues and also when on stage as part of the ensemble. It allowed me to find a deeper connection with the play as the music alone would invoke a strong reaction from me, therefore combined with my reaction to the text and theme I was able to get a far more complicated and detailed performance.

'Matthew Shepard Was A Friend Of Mine'

I found the documentary absolutely soul destroying. The way in which it was made meant it feel so human, it was if there was only a thin piece of glass between me and the people taking as I was able to feel all these emotions coming from the speakers so intensely. Watching this documentary was so helpful for me. I think you can do all the reading you like on the topic, but you might never feel the tragedy as much as if you were watching that documentary. To watch these people speak about what they've been through and they're experiences just broke me. It brought it into perspective and the events became a lot more real and less distant. It enabled me to connect with the topics in the play a lot more deeply and therefore understand these issues more. This was incredibly helpful for playing my character Shadow, as she is someone who lived through it and had a real life relationship with Matthew. Therefore understanding the grief, shock and brutality of this is for someone who is involved is important so that I can understand Shadows point of view in his/her monologue.

The way the media portrays things like this is often in a desensitized way, and as a view you watch it and although you can appreicate & acknowledge that its 'sad' I think that you will never understand it fully unless you were living through it. However, I felt watching this documentary gave me the closest understanding I could get given that I had never lived through it and thus the closest me as Alabama was able to get to Shadow & his experiences.

Amazing Grace

This scene is probably one of my favorites in the whole play. It possesses such beauty and hope within a very dark story. This moment taught me a lot about finding the varying shades within a production and how important that is to have. Without these moments of light, the play runs the risk of becoming too harrowing and from my experience audience members tend to shut off when this happens. In order to have the maxium impace the play needs to show the dark and the light so the audience are able to engage with it and not feel like they need to turn away and ignore the horror. A lot of the feedback I heard after our first show was how influential this scene was, being the defining moment where a lot of audience members started crying. I heard many people saying that the reason this scene was so powerful was because they knew that it was real, and someone somewhere decided to actively protest against the hatred filled words of Fred Phelps by dressing up as angels.

The layering of the scene is beautiful, there are key moments where I always feel a huge rush of happiness and hope during the singing. I think the contrast of seeing someone preach such horrible views alongside a group of people emitting nothing but love is immensely powerful and effective. The difference in these two ways of life becomes clearly outlined on stage, and it takes us on a journey of love trumping hate. Singing in that scene is a experience that brought me joy and happiness, I hope those feelings were felt by the audience as well.

Truth & Facts of the Moment

A key aspect in making this play work is the communication of information. Being a play based on true events and therefore fact, its essential that the audience understand what is going on. If this doesn't happen then the effect of the play is lost because the constant journey of the play & unraveling of this crime isn't made clear. As a cast member I think its really easy to forget that because we all know exactly what is going on and have done our research on the crime, therefore to us its really obvious. I had even realized that the words murder or hate crime aren't mentioned until the end of act 1. When this was pointed out to me it changed my whole perspective of the play, and I was able to appreciate that the way this play has been put together in terms of the text is extremely clever and effective. How the journey of meeting this 'great' town, exploring Matthew as a person slowly turns into a dark tale as bit by bit details of this brutal & merciless beating are unraveled.

This knowledge had a large effect on my scene as Leigh at the beginning. Now knowing that at this point the audience don't know anything about the murder, all they know is that a theatre company has come to Laramie to interview people, I was able to focus a lot more on communicating the key points of that monologue. This meant not trying to find too much emotional depth but instead detail in each piece of information. I have often thought that its a lot harder to act a simple, average piece of text than it is to perform something that full of extreme feelings and possesses an incredible emotional journey. Therefore I left that type of acting to my Shadow monologue and tried to speak calmly and slowly with each word so that nothing was missed. However, I think its important to remember that this doesn't mean I'm not acting, I still need to find the truth within the text but this may be a much more normal & simpler truth than it would be for a character who's mum had just died or something heavier like that.

Final Evaluation

Evaluating my own growth 

Doing this production has been one of the most incredible journeys. Looking back to where I was

when we started and we i am now I feel like this has had such a massive influence in myself as both an actor and a person. The most significant thing for me that I have taken away from this and re-learnt is my love & appreciation for theatre. I hadn't realised it but i think that i had forgotten why i wanted to embrace this performing art in the first place. Being on stage in that show reminded me what its like to become immersed in this world and feel all of the emotions throughout the play running through your entire body. Those moments are what I live for, where there is nothing else apart from you and those people on stage in that space of time in that world, and I was starting to forget how amazing that could be because I hadn't been fully immersed in a production for a long time. This could be due to the fact everything is real life text and events, but in each show everything felt so real and tangiable. It was almost like I could have reached out and touched a thick fog full of what we all had created. I feel quite privileged to have experienced such an honest piece of theatre that taught me so much about acting as well as truths and concepts beyond that.

The main aspect that really stuck with me was the constant reminder that we have to work with the truth, whether that be the actual truth or the truth we find within ourselves. Honesty within my work is incredibly important because I find that is when the emotions are able to flow through you. A moment that sticks in my head is from my monologue as Shadow in the first show. It came as such a surprise to me, the intensity and realness of what I was saying took hold of me and I almost lost control of being 'the actor'. Instead I was inside this world feeling this grief and anger, so much so that when exiting the stage I bumped into Rooben and Joe coming on stage and we couldn't get past each other for a couple of seconds. In that moment I had to catch myself because I suddenly got a rush of such anger towards these people that were in my way, these were the feelings that I had carried off stage with me from my monologue and I actually do think that if I had pulled myself back I may have lashed out and yelled at them. The words were already in the back of my throat and I felt myself prepare to shout because there was so much anger and grief running through me. It was a moment that stays with me because I have never felt something so intensely after I'd got i stage, those emotions were carried with me and not left in the space. Although this was positive in the sense that the connections I had to the emotions and thoughts of the character because very present, I think that it would have some draw backs if this became a constant practice. Firstly, I had lost control of myself as an actor and therefore if I hadn't been able to stop myself I could have seriously disrupted a scene by yelling at my cast members while exiting. Not only would this throw them off as actors but it would also break the world of the stage for the audience because to them I may just seem like a frustrated and anger actor. The experience in all lead me to start pondering where we draw the line. As an actor we strive to create a truth in a situation that has never occurred to us exactly as it happens on stage.

Another thing I loved about working on Laramie was the fact it was an ensamble show. I realized that I enjoy being on stage all the time, even if im not speaking, and immersing myslf in that world so much more than I would just coming on at a section of the play to deliver loads of line and then wait back stage for the rest of it. I think that would be so boring, and as an actor not as fufilling because you aren't able to follow the whole journey of your character and the play. I felt just as emotionally involved in this production when I was simply on stage carrying out movement as I did when I had lines. Both were equally stimulating and I wouldn't have traded my role in this producation for any other show where I had a main part.

Evaluating the production

Overall, I thought the production was an enormous success. Each one was a surprise to me with different feelings and connections appearing every time we did it. The play had an amazing honesty and truth that was present throughout the whole run and you could see that as a cast the text was precious to us. Due to the play being real people words the entire way through, our cast had a huge respect for the text and this was never dropped. I think the pride we took in honouring Matthews memory and the want to do it well stood us in good stead. An awful thing to happen would have been for us as a cast to start to take the piss out of these peoples words or put on these sterotypical characters that we think they should be instead of taking the time to find out who they actually are or could be. From the very beginning of the rehersal process it was made clear that no one was there to laugh at the play & the character and that everyone wanted to commit and do their very best to do the script and the characters justice. I think this was a large factor in what made the play such a success because it meant that each and every character that came on stage, no matter how many lines they had, brought something new and interesting to the world because no one was playing a sterotype. If we had all tried to be western cowboys preaching hate the play would have only existed on a surface level and possessed no depth. Having all these different people and opinions on stage was essential to creating the world, and Laramie was very much all about the world it existed in (why else would it be called The Laramie Project). Having different characters on stage with different view point on all the topics also gave the play a lot more of a dynamic because it meant that we were able to create conflict and different energies to bounce off of on stage. Without these different ideas and opinions popping up everywhere the show would have been bland and without a emotional journey.

Although I believe the production was very successful, there were elements that we could have worked on more if we were going to do it again. In my opinion the main draw backs to our show were to do with the set or technical things that weren't necessarily to do with the actual acting. The rehersal process was quite last minute in some areas, the set being one. Practicing with the full set for the whole show didn't happen utill the dress, and although we managed to get away with it in the final show I feel the moving of set could have been a lot more precise and efficient that what it was. There was lots of shuffling about and the set was never put bang on the marks on stage, as well as quite a few confusing moments about where the set was actually going. If we had had more time and practice with the set I think we would have been able to devise a more abstract & physical way to maneuver the blocks that would have tied in with the world we had created.

As a cast we tried really hard at this and progressed enomasly throughout the rehersal process but knowing your intention behind the movemet was something that came up repreatedly in notes. This aspect of hugely important in the success of the show with a piece of a theatre thats quite movement based that physicalised stuff needs to have a background and depth to it otherwise its no longer theatre and just becomes a bunch of people doing actions on stage. I think our cast did very well at valuing this and understanding the importance and therefore everyone did put in the work to make sure that they knew what their intentions were behind each action they needed to perform. As a cast we played a huge game of trust because we were an ensamble, meaning that the fate of the play lay equally on everyones shoulders. However this didn't cause anybody to try and grab the limelight or take anything away from anybody else or even try and tell other cast members how to do their part. I feel like we all were content in the parts we had and just made it our bussiness to do the things we had to do to the best of our ability.

Script Annotations

WRITTEN LOGBOOK - Movement