Alternative spaces | hpurplepieproduction

What is a Alternative Space ?

An Alternative space is a venue or space for a performce that is somewhere in a different place rather than your typical historic Theatre. These venues are non traditional and can be outdoors, indoors, historic buildings, parks, shopping centres, ally ways,pubs, bus stops etc. Site specific performances are in the same category as Alternative space performances the only difference is that people normally use the title site specific rather than a Alternative space performance. The alternative space normally does not include set or technical equipment so the performer or performers would have to work around this by bringing in a generator to give their electrical equipment power if it were outdoors, use the spaces area for their set or to bring in set equipment that can be supported on its own and to make the performance intreeging for the audience that would be watching. If a company were to perform in a alternative space they would have to organise everything about their performance themselfs. This means they would not get the help that they would get with technical equipment if they were to perform in a conventional venue.

This would mean to supply audio equipment to play any sounds or music if it was necessary to the performance, Lighting if they alternative space was to dark for a performance, seating arrangements for their audience or a area where the audience would watch from, they would have to advertise and market their production without any help from any other venue companys unless the performance would be in a venue that has a owner they could possibly help with this, Box office facilitys and refreshments for the company. Also depending on where the performance space is the company might have to write out a risk assesment.

Companys that perform in alternative spaces.

Heartbreak Productions Trailer of Dracula

Flashmobs

Another company that would class to perform in alternative spaces would be flashmobs. Flashmobs consist of a huge group of people that would perform their peice in a public area when nobody realises. Flashmobs can be advertised but they normally get a better rating when it is unexpected. Flashmobs normlly do not need set as they are known to perform a dance number. Set and pops can be included in a flashmob number it just depends what this act is. A flashmob can start with one person then the act can gain more people to join in with the same performance. The whole point of a flash mob is to attaract the publics attention to stop and watch what is happening and to amaze them with their routines and how clever they have put their act together. A different type of Flashmob could be a singing act were one person would randomly start singing in a alternative space, this would make members of the public think what is going and then suddenly another person would join in. The act would finish with a huge group of people joining in making the performance more affective and attractive to get more people watching.

Also a acting flash mob would also be included in the flash mob catagory as people would think it could be something happening in real life then all of a sudden something drastic would happen to then make the audience realise it is only a performance. Another reason for a flash mob could be a protest about something to get the public attention. Flashmobs still have to provide their own equipment such as electrical equipment to play their audio. To supply the power to play their music sometimes a flash mob can ask the local council to see if they can use any power points in the area or even go into a local shop and link their power cords to their electrical supply. It is up to them to organise this. Costume and props are also organised themselfs and set is not normally provided as they only use the area they will perform in.

Contraband International LTD are a company that supply flashmob routines for the public. Their flashmob routines consist of dance numbers and football flash mobs. As Contraband International LTD are a big company of flashmob groups on of their flashmob groups are called Elements.

Elements are a dance flash mob group which was formed in 2006 and are located in cambridge and london. They specialise in hip hop and street dance but the group have also been trained in jazz, ballet, contempory and tap. Elements have performed in places such as hill street centres, shopping centres, partys are also in theatres when competing with other performance companies.

Contraband International LTD Football Flash Mob

Elements Flash Mob Protesting Against Rape

Heartbreak Productions

This company has been around for 20 years and have performed in many different spaces outdoors such as zoos, park gardens, castles, schools and halls. Heartbreak productions perform full shows at these venues. The past productions include Dracula, Midsummers Nights Dream, Twelfth Night, Romeo and Juliet, The Railway Children and many more. When the company are hired to perform in these venues they ask for you to provide things such as :

A performance area 20 feet by 20 feet minimum
Two electrical points
An occasional Theatre or a Local Authority Public Entertainment Licence where applicable
Access for the company to view the performance space at least three hours before the show
Parking, toilets and stewards.
Box Office facilitys
Changing Rooms
Refreshments
Promotion

The Facilitys what the company provide are :

The show
Staging
PA System
Insurance/Electical
Lighting
Accomodation
Pubilicty and Marketing Materials
Tickets
Online Box Office
Promotion

They also include Public Reliability and cost fees depend on the performance, where it will take place and how many audience members.

Looking at some of the clips of this companys performances it seems quite clever how they have put their performance together . For example looking at their Dracula trailer they have little set and use the day light and night to make it look affective. In the day light the show seems quite calm but when it gets darker the show then becomes more thriller like. As they dont have stage affects they have to show movement throught their bodys or moving items of set themselfs. For example to show that they are in a moving wagon they have to bop around when sitting to show this movement. When they show that a ship is going over water they have a huge sheet and ripple it to represent waves.

Singing Musical Flash Mob

Acting Flash Mob

Artichoke

Artichoke is another performance group that does large-scale and effective pieces in public areas such as in the streets, public spaces or in the countryside. Instead of putting a typical acting performance togteher Artichoke tend to base their performance around one certain thing as they want to appeal to the widest possible audience . A good exampl of what Atrichoke do is when one of their acts, in spetember 2008 included a gigantic robotic spider that was kept on the side of the concourse house in liverpool as the centre piece as the city’s European Capital of Culture celebrations. This was a very unexpected appearence of this machine and stayed in this location for five days.It made people think what it was there for which then lead for the word of this spider to spread. After the five days of staying on this building the spider then started to move down the building and stopped the city as it started to head to the Albert Dock and proceeded to the Cunard Building. She then made her way to the Queensway Tunnel, via Water Street, Castle Street, Lord Street and Ranelagh Place. The music that they used for this performance was infact a live band that followed the spider from behind and taveled in vehicles. The equipment was coverd with waterproofs as the weather was raining but this did not affect the robotic spider.In the finale the spider disappeared down the entrance to the Queensway Tunnel, never to be seen again.

With this company performing in alternative spaces this means that they have to organise everything themselfs. As their performances are classed as a large-scale performance it would cost a lot of money to be able to provide all of their equipment and props. Artichoke's performances are mostly free so they have help with funding for their equipment.

Artichokes LA Machine performance in Liverpool

The Sultans Elephant performed by Artichoke at central of London

A similar performance space to our Alternative space is where The Doors Project took place which started of in Madrid. The idea of The Doors Project is basically a series of site specific performances in different doorways around the world. Rather than this beig a acting peice it is a choreographed routine. Eryn Rosenthal is the director of this project and is trying to find funing to carry on her project so she can take it to other doorways around the world. They want their performance to be a powerful visual metaphore for what our lives feel right now. So in Madrid there has been alot of protests so their performances in Madrid will try give off this idea. Eryn likes to interact with the arciteture and the threshold of the buildings as it connects us to the past of this historic bulding and gives us a bit of an idea what this performance will be about.
Comparing this space to our selected space is very similar because both of them being in a doorway an that one of the doorways where Eryns performance is, is very similar with ours because of the graffiti, old building and gives the audience members an idea of wha the peice is about. Unfortunatly i cannot find any more information if Eryns project took of and performed in other countrys but here is a link of her video. The video includes a interview about her project, where it will take place and reasons why Eryn is putting this project together.

The Doors Project Link

FESTIVALS
Conventional or Alternative ?

Theatre festivals and music festivals have been around for years now and are becoming more popular every year because the popularity is growing each year the question is are they classed as a conventional space or a alternative space ? Edinbrugh Fringe Festival was one of the first theatre festivals put together in 1047 they would of been classed as a conventional space because most performances were performed on a typical stage that included lighting and sound equipment but some acts would of been performed in the streets and they would of been classed as a alternative space as the performers would need to provide the equipment they needed themselfs and find ways to make them work. In my opinion the Fringe Festival can be classed in both categorys only because of the amount of acts there are and some acts are perfomed on a conventional theatre stage and some acts are performed in the streets or other conventional spaces. If other people were to label the Fringe Festival as a conventional or a alternative space i think overall it would be classed as a Alternative space because festivals have become more popular and with the performers building up their experience when performing at a festival they have figured out more convenient ways to make their performance easier to run. Also Festivals to this day are very popular and people are used to performances being performe outside in this type of enviroment so i think overall a festival would be classed as a Alternative space.

Conclusion
The positive point of our project would be that we worked well as a team and when we struggled we would make sure we would arrange a time to get together and discuss our problems. Since our filming space was a last minute decision because of bad weather we worked around how we would film and what we would put together within a resonable time. Our group worked well with finding our spaces, editing our film piece and attending rehearsals. The negative point of our project would be that i think that we did not get together enough, this could of been because we were put together weeks after the other groups, we also had rehearsals to attend for our upcoming shows and we were running out of rehearsal time for this assignmet. When putting ideas together for our performance i think we struggled as we did not come up with a bunch of performance ideas we stuck with the one and worked on that. I felt that myself and another student were the only two coming up with ideas and wanting to discuss but the others seemed nervous with discusing what their ideas were . Our final space that we chose fit well with our performance idea because it looked scruffy and an ideal place for a homeless peson to live but i think we could of expanded our search a bit more and looked out of this area and maybe looked in other places such as Redcar, Stockton or the other side of Middlesbrough.
The main thing what our group struggled with would be plaing our video to our audience as we were struggling to find equipment to project it onto the doors, the handheld projectors didnt work properly because of the light and with it being to small. We ended up using ipads and surrounding our audience with the ipads. One was infront of our audience member so they could watch our video and the others were surrounding them for the audio because we could not play the ipads at the exact same time the sinc would be out by a second or two. Fortunatly this was perfect for us because the audio gave a creepy affect and made the audience know that something was going to happen.

Overall all i am happy with our performance but would not take our exact piece to a festival as i think it needs better audio and projecting equipment. Other than that i would be confidant to take this piece to a festival.