Company spending

As head of finance, it is my job to review the budget regularly as well as keeping up with the companies spending. I have to have direct communication with the head of set, costume and props to make sure the spreadsheet is up to date at all times.

Budget

Here, I have attached the budget. This is what the company is keeping to as their limits. On the ‘Administration’ page (or on previous post ‘Budget’), you will be able to see the original budget which included the copyright to our performance. Due to expanding the financial needs for other aspects of performance, our producer decided to take the copyright out of the budget. We agreed as a group to put towards the copyright ourselves.

 

PROGENY SPENDING 2

Here I have attached the most up to date spread sheet which notes down all of the companies spending. (This will change slightly until after the performance is over).

As can be seen from the budget and the spending spreadsheet, Progeny have been lucky enough to receive in kind support from the Football Club. They were nice enough to lend out their space as rehearsal space for free. Although we received in kind support from LPAC in regards to rehearsal space, space was not always free so we were left with no where to rehearse. Having the Football club allowed us to have a guaranteed space.

Items such as the wood (from which the angels are made) have also been given in kind, meaning we saved a lot of money. The props cupboard at the LPAC has also served us well in saving us money. Altogether, we have saved over £80 on props that we would have had to spend if it wasn’t for the props cupboard, friends, family and companies support. This has benefited our company greatly, meaning we have been able to focus more on aspects such as costume which have needed alterations.

If we were a real company without the support of the LPAC, we would have had to source everything ourselves, meaning we would have had to spend more money. We have to stick to our budget, but there are other ways to raise money. Refer to the ‘Fundraising’ post.

Francesca

Word count: 365

Playbox Theatre

I have recently discovered a company named Playbox Theatre who, in 2010, produced and adaptation of Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber.  Matthew Finch states that Playbox were “blurring the transition from everyday life to a darker fairytale world” (2010). Although this is similar to what we were doing with A Gothic Tale, as we were showing the reality of what happened after the ‘happily ever after’ – in between the dream scenes, our performances differed drastically. Where their production was based on Bluebeard, ours incorporated Bluebeard and The Snow Child. We also added certain characters such as the Ex-Wife and the House Keeper. Finch later goes on to say, “in the opening dance, a suited man – the malevolent husband of the protagonist – moved among the girls, posing them, dancing with them, tearing out their hearts in his search for the perfect woman” (2010). Their ending was completely different too. A Gothic Tale ended with a series of twists including Elizabeth (The Countess) accidentally killing William (The Blind Piano Tuner), then with the reveal of the newly dead Ex-Wife , then Elizabeth killing the Count (on her second attempt) and finally with the House Keeper locking her in the bloody chamber. Playbox’s production ended with the Countess blinding herself with the key to the bloody chamber:

The original’s happily-ever-after conclusion is replaced by an extended sequence derived from Carter’s vampiric Lady of the House of Love. The widowed bride blinds herself with the key to her husband’s chamber and attacks the women’s magazines that litter the stage with their incessant bombardment of words and images. She feasts on stolen hearts…before turning on her new lover to quote her husband’s ominous words: ‘This is the key that leads to the kingdom of the unimaginable.’

(Finch, 2010).

Despite these differences, some elements where the same as they are based on the same story. For instance, the necklace given to the Countess, in both productions, where made of red ribbon to symbolise a slit on her neck.

 

Playbox were founded in 1986 and they work closely with young people,

It exists to provide young people and developing artists a unique environment for training, creation and exploration in theatre and related artistic forms.

Playbox believes passionately in the evolution of a strong artistic network regardless of age, experience, social, religious and cultural backgrounds.

Throughout the year Playbox Theatre offers a wide range of programmes and activities for young people to learn and develop skills across the arts.

(Playbox Theatre 2012).

Being a highly established company their marketing differs to ours. However, like Progeny Theatre Company, they do have a Twitter account and a Facebook page. Their Twitter account is used in the same way as ours. They use it to keep their followers informed about upcoming performances and to make announcements about their company in general. They also notify their followers about involvement opportunities within their company. With them being a well-known professional company, they do have more followers than we do. They have 944 where as we have 167.

playbox twitter 1

(Playbox Theatre’s Twitter account)

 

Playbox twitter 2

(Playbox Theatre’s Twitter account)

 

progeny twitter 1

(Progeny Theatre Company’s Twitter account)

progeny twitter 2

(Progeny Theatre Company’s Twitter account)

 

Playbox use Facebook to document the process of their productions and to give their audience sneak previews, as do we. We use our Facebook page in many of the same ways in which Playbox Theatre do. We have rehearsal photos, promotional videos and events, including the event of our show. We each have and ‘about’ section which include our mission statements. However, Playbox Theatre also have a small history of their company and directions to their headquarters, The Dream Factory. These are things that are impossible for us to have as we are not an established company. Although I do feel that we create more engagement with our audience due to the things such as competitions that we hold. This allows us to interact more with our audience. Again they obviously have more likes than us. They have 1,179 likes where as we currently have 233 likes.

 

playbox fb

(Playbox Theatre)

 

progeny fb

(Progeny Theatre Company)

 

playbox fb 1

(Playbox Theatre’s Facebook page)

 

playbox fb 2

(Playbox Theatre’s Facebook page)

 

Progeny fb1

(Progeny Theatre Company’s Facebook page)

 

progeny fb 1

(Progeny Theatre Company’s Facebook page)

 

Word Count: 689

Works Cited

Finch, Matthew (2010) Guest Post: Matthew Finch on Playbox Theatre’s ‘The Bloody Chamber’. Online:

http://thefairytalecupboard.blogspot.co.uk/2010/05/guest-post-matthew-finch-on-playbox.html [accessed 16th May 2013].

 

Playbox Theatre (2012) Mission Statement. Online:

http://www.playboxtheatre.com/aboutus/Mission_Statement.html [accessed 16th May 2013].

My inspiration.

It is blatant when reading the final script that it is based on Angela Carter and her work. When reading The Bloody Chamber it is obvious that Angela Carter wanted to portray a feminist twist within her stories with a sexual fairy tale element. Her stories were just like fairy tales for adults when I read them and I was trying to figure out what each story was based on when comparing them to original fairy tales. Angela Carter inspired me through the images she created in her work as when I read her stories I had a clear image in my head of what everything looked like and what the characters facial expressions and their general character was. When reading The Bloody Chamber I got a very strong image of a castle that was almost timeless and in a very secluded place in the woods. It almost reminded me of the castle in Disney- Beauty and the Beast. Imagining this setting helped me to concentrate on what the characters would be like as the Count who lives there would be a well spoken man who holds a lot of power and I think the Countess would also be the same way as I imagined that he would pick a woman who was well brought up but not necessarily rich so he would be able to influence her with his wealth. I also imagined a small village outside the large woods this castle was in where there would be a small villages which are full of peasants. This fitted in with the Snow Child story as she appeared in the woods and I imagine she has walked from one of the far villages to try and find dry wood for a fire but it is quite impossible because of the snow. Due to the imagery throughout Angela Carters writing being so strong I feel this is what influenced me more than her actual style or writing as having such a strong image to follow in your head I was able to piece together how and why the characters acted as they did in this setting.

Hannah Smith.

Posters

After revising the first set of posters that we created, we decided to create new ones as we were not fully satisfied with them- due to things such as the poor lighting – shown below:

progeny poster 1.2

progeny poster 2.1

progeny poster 3.2

progeny poster 4.3

This time we decided to use a royalty free image as we found one which fit our piece perfectly. The image was of a woman holding a rose (one of our motifs). The only part of the woman which was visible is her hand and her lips, on a black background. We like the simplicity of this photo as it is eye catching without giving much about our performance away. So we extended the black background to the right of the image so that we could include the necessary information. We wanted to make our poster noticeable so that it was clearly visible even amongst other posters. The darkness of our poster makes it stand out from others.

Final-Poster-Time-Inc.-page-001

Once our posters had been printed and delivered, after getting them stamped by the university, we began putting them around the university campus. Firstly we put them around Lincoln Performing Arts Centre (LPAC) and then we put them in the university library so that all students would see them. We then put them in the Media building, the students union, the main building, the Shed (public house) as well as in other areas around the campus. However, as our target audience do not only consist of students, we also went into certain shops and asked them to put them up so that the general public could see them. Many of the shops were extremely helpful in offering to advertise us and some took great interest in our posters and asked us about or show. Our posters have definitely generated the attention that we intended.

sainsburys poster

 

As well as posters, we also had a 6ft by 2ft banner printed. This consisted of the same image and information as the posters as we wanted to keep our advertising consistent. Through the Brand Manual (created by Sam Taylor) we learnt that consistency is significant when advertising. This is due to the fact that a company need to make their advertising instantly recognisable. For instance, after seeing the design and layout of our posters, the banner becomes immediately associated with them, and our company, just by having the same images, colours and font type. Unfortunately our banner had the wrong date on it as it had the 17th of May instead of the 19th of May, due to an unavoidable mix up. With such a small amount of time and a small budget we could not get this reprinted. The only solution that we could think of was to change the date ourselves. We did this using a white marker pen as it was the only thing that would stand strain against weather conditions. After sending emails and making telephone calls, I managed to get permission to hang the banner outside the main building of the University. I feel that this made a substantial difference to the sale of our tickets. Before putting the banner up we had only sold thirty eight tickets, however, by the day of our show we had sold over 100 tickets.

banner 1

banner 2

 

Word Count: 531

 

Progeny Theatre Company’s Brand Manual by Sam Taylor:

Brand Manual

Taylor, Sam (2013) Brand Manual, Lincoln: Taylor and Watt Designs

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