We were given an album, ‘Things to Ruin by Joe Iconis’,
which is a collection of songs that meant which the composer states is “some of the songs are written specifically
for the show, some of them found their way in” and they were hoping that
the audience leave the production thinking they have seen a musical theatre
piece, but not entirely able to describe what they had just seen. We each went
away and listened to the album, available on YouTube or on Spotify. I first
heard the album back at the start of the summer holidays, and felt that the
setting suited a high school environment, but some of the songs, such as ‘Albuquerque Anyway’ featured a
character that didn't connect with the high school environment. We will need to
take this into consideration when we are coming up with a narrative, or when we
are characterising each character and their song.
The performance could be a series of narrative strands, each following a character and a song, with a few scenes to extend their narrative slightly. We first discussed how the performance could be a song cycle, how each song doesn’t necessarily have to connect, and it can merely follow characters from all walks of life, from any era. However, upon discussing our characters further, we made the decision that we can set the overarching narrative in a school, and follow individual students, that may not necessarily be connected, but still attend the same high school.
The difficulties behind creating a performance based on an album are that we do not have a script, and we didn't have a narrative given to us. These were things we had to create ourselves, all through workshops and discussions. This devising will lead to a production from a selection of the songs, without having a script or narrative to originally base our performance on.
‘Things To Ruin’ as a stimulus gave us somewhat relatable narratives from the songs, such as ‘The War Song’, who features an outsider who feels lost, a narrative that many teenagers might face. The characters we drafted from our songs all seem relatable in some way, which helps us in characterisation. The idea of it being set in a school means that we can base our performance on our own experiences in school, particularly in Sixth Form, with our production’s narrative being set in a high school.
The performance could be a series of narrative strands, each following a character and a song, with a few scenes to extend their narrative slightly. We first discussed how the performance could be a song cycle, how each song doesn’t necessarily have to connect, and it can merely follow characters from all walks of life, from any era. However, upon discussing our characters further, we made the decision that we can set the overarching narrative in a school, and follow individual students, that may not necessarily be connected, but still attend the same high school.
The difficulties behind creating a performance based on an album are that we do not have a script, and we didn't have a narrative given to us. These were things we had to create ourselves, all through workshops and discussions. This devising will lead to a production from a selection of the songs, without having a script or narrative to originally base our performance on.
‘Things To Ruin’ as a stimulus gave us somewhat relatable narratives from the songs, such as ‘The War Song’, who features an outsider who feels lost, a narrative that many teenagers might face. The characters we drafted from our songs all seem relatable in some way, which helps us in characterisation. The idea of it being set in a school means that we can base our performance on our own experiences in school, particularly in Sixth Form, with our production’s narrative being set in a high school.
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