As our piece 'After Abigail' had to be suitable for touring purposes, we tried to make our set as minimalistic as possible, as we couldn't even be guaranteed the use of an offstage. We were heavily influenced by the works of the playwright Bertolt Brecht

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Amy Steptoe 13GR

Indicate how the influences and ideas of other playwrights and/or directors, designers and performers (i.e. practitioners) have been used.

As our piece 'After Abigail' had to be suitable for touring purposes, we tried to make our set as minimalistic as possible, as we couldn't even be guaranteed the use of an offstage. We were heavily influenced by the works of the playwright Bertolt Brecht and introduced his concept of an epic theatre into our piece. It worked very effectively especially as we needed to make our set as minimal as possible. We came up with the idea of a 'shelf' which consisted of everyone who was 'offstage' - basically if they weren't involved in the action 'onstage'. We used our bodies, in a specific, consistent pose (reflecting our character) to create a picture in the upstage corner. This idea was influenced by Brecht as similar to some of his works, Caucasian Chalk Circle for instance, as although the actors involved in the 'shelf' weren't actually part of the action, they still played a valid, important role in the piece itself as the picture we created was an effective device as it communicated each role much more clearly to the audience.

Another influence we had which aided us additionally in creating an effective set, useful for touring was the play 'Woza Albert' written by the playwrights Percy Mtwa, Mbongeni Ngema and Barney Simon. Woza Albert was set in South Africa and consisted of only two men, who toured their piece around, similarly to us, and performed to many different people in a variety of locations. Therefore, their set needed to also be adaptable to many spaces, and as ours needed to be also, we were heavily influenced by their choice of props in particular. They utilised only two boxes, but managed to still create a variety of situations and scenes from such minimal props. Therefore, we applied this to 'After Abigail', which was especially helpful to our touring nature, and used only two stools. Thus, we adopted Woza Albert's use of set to our advantage and it worked very well as we managed to create a variety of scenes from our two stools.
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We were not only influenced by Mtwa's, Ngema's and Simon's use of set and space but additionally their style of opening became very influential. Once again, as their piece was to be toured across South Africa, performing in random spaces, it was absolutely necessary for them to engage their audience; otherwise no one would actually watch them. Thus, their opening was their most important moment - to get their audience interested. This style influenced us dramatically and we applied it to our opening. In the same sort of approach we injected music and movement into the opening few ...

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