In order to decide who to work with on our collaborative theatre projects, we filled out charts that listed our skills, approaches to problem-solving, knowledge and experience, and interests. This will provide us with a framework that will allow us to be sure we have a balance group and ensure that we have the right skillsets needed to put on the piece that we devise.
One thing that I feel I am skilled at is being able to articulate my thoughts in writing. I am able to take complex ideas and consolidate them into understandable written language that can then be effectively communicated to my peers. I also am very creative and good at brainstorming and can come up with a multitude of ideas that are very different from one another in their approach, but still relate back to a central topic.
When I am approaching a problem, I feel that it is usually easiest for me to see it on paper. Sometimes this looks like writing down what I am thinking in a stream-of-consciousness paragraph and then sorting through the different ideas. Other times, I like to make mind maps or draw diagrams in order to visually display what is going on inside of my head. I also feel that talking it out with a small group is very helpful but is the most effective after everyone has had a bit of time to think and brainstorm independently.
I have a great deal of experience with working in the theatre both onstage and backstage. I have worked with lights and have a general understanding of how lighting can affect a show visually. I also have experience with choreographing and teaching choreography. This could have many applications, from figuring out how to move people around the stage in a visually pleasing way (or not pleasing depending on the effect we are going for) to being able to take command and lead a group to a common goal if the need should arise. An interest that I have (other than theatre) is keeping up with and exploring current events. I like to be informed about what is going on in the world and am constantly reading the news and following stories that pique my interest. This has led me to some interesting discoveries, and I enjoy how a story that starts out seemingly small and insignificant can have much larger applications down the road.
Approaches to the Collaborative
Creation of Theatre
One experience that I have had collaborating to create original work was working with another choreographer in order to create a dance combination for a show. To approach this task, we first began by outlining our vision for what the wanted the impact of the number on the audience to be. We looked at where the song fit into the show and what the main message of it was. Our work was guided by our previous experience with musical theatre dance styles because we had both experienced similarly themed dance numbers (to the one we were working on) from other shows. This allowed us to draw inspiration from our previous knowledge and build a framework to begin choreographing our own number. We worked by first writing down the moves that we knew we wanted to have in the script near the lyrics that they would occur by. We also played through the song many, many times and improvised in the places that we did not have anything for until we found something we liked. If we disagreed, we would show each other our vision for the specific part, talk about it until we reached a consensus, or agree to come back to it later and re-approach the issue from a different angle. One exercise that we found very helpful was to sit and listen to the song in its entirety first before making any decisions about the dance to be sure that we were aware of the full scope of the song from beginning to end.
A second experience that I have had with working collaboratively was operating spotlights on a production. To approach this, I began by learning about spotlight operation from an experienced volunteer who had worked with the spotlight team for many shows. They had me work the spotlights on both sides of the stage to be sure that I was aware of what both spotlights (and my spotlight partner) would be doing during the show. Our work was guided by the characters moving around on the stage and we had to be sure that we illuminated the right person at the right time and were aware of what the other spotlight was doing so that we were not both on one person and leaving someone else in the dark. We worked from a sheet that would tell us both our own spotlight cues and the spotlight cues of the other light. We communicated during the show via radio headsets because the sound booth in between us obscured our view of each other. Additionally, we had to be sure that most of our talking and light configuration was done before the show stared because we were situated in the audience and they were able to hear every interaction between the spotlights. An exercise that we often used was running through the more complicated lighting switches before the show started, when the actors were checking their microphones. As they would come out onstage to test, we would practice spotting one or two of them and changing the gel colors in the lights or fading in and out to be sure that we were mentally oriented as far as where the light would fall onstage when we turned it on.
Exploring Devising Companies
In order to better understand the process of devising, we investigated several professional devising companies and their approach to collaborative creation, what guided their work, how they worked, and the exercises that they used. The first company that we looked at was called Tangled Feet. This company approaches their work by looking at real-world issues and events that are happening and drawing on them as inspiration for their shows. They also tailor their work around their performance spaces, which can be either in a theatre or in a public space such as a parking lot. Their work is guided by the notion that they must work together as a group or else their work will not be the best that it can be. Additionally, they leave their piece open to audience feedback and are constantly modifying it throughout the run of the show. They use exercises such as physical improvisation to guide their work. This fits with their action-driven pieces in which the movements of the actors physically are just as important as the words that they are speaking. Additionally, we looked at an exercise that they perform called “What’s in the Box?” where players stand in pairs and pretend to give a gift to their partner. The partner then must react to the gift an make up a story about it. This exercise helped us re-enforce the idea of teamwork and that building off of an idea that your partner has already established can create unique ideas that you would not have come up with on your own.
We also looked at a devising company called DV8. They approach their collaborative creation through dance and do not have a permanent company but, rather, assemble a new cast for each show based off of the content that is devised. They feel that dance and theatre should not be so separated and aim to integrate them in their performances. Their work is guided by social, psychological, and political issues and they also explore the changing relationship between men and women in some of their pieces. They work through many (usually at least two) phases of research and development, often coming back to their piece many times in order to refine it to create an impact on the audience that better suits their vision for the show. An exercise that we practiced from this company was one where a reader read a monologue to a rhythm and we improvised physical movements that fit the monologue and the beat. Inspired by a video of the company that we saw, we decided to use chairs and synchronize our movements which made for a very united-feeling performance that helped us bolster our sense of teamwork and collaboration.
Group Goals and Brainstorming
This week in theatre, we began to discuss group goals and guidelines in preparation for working on our collaborative theatre projects. We also began the process of devising and did some brainstorming.
We began to create our group’s goals by individually writing out a list of five things that we felt were important for the group to consider when working together to devise our piece. Personally, I wrote things such as agreeing to consider all of the presented ideas before saying no, delegating work when needed and trusting the choices of our classmates, communicating feelings and saying something if we felt a change needed to be made, respecting the ideas of others, and finishing the work that we commit to. We then came together after working independently and shared the ideas that we had come up with with one another, reading our goals aloud one at a time. Finally, we took the ideas that we all felt were important and wrote them on a single sheet of paper that was then photocopied and passed out to everyone in the group. Our final goals are as follows: We agree to be open-minded and consider the ideas of others, we agree to delegate and communicate expectations for work, we agree to bring a good attitude and express if we do not like what is happening, we agree to respect the work time and finish what we need to in the given time, and we agree to be nice and work kindly.
I feel that starting with these goals before committing to any group was a very wise idea. It will give us a common goal that we can all refer to and will establish guidelines in case there are any disagreements within our group. It was also a good way to address the strengths and weaknesses of the group members and to address that we are not all perfect and all have strengths that can be utilized for this project and weaknesses that can be improved upon.
We also began brainstorming as one of the first steps in our devising process. To begin, we were instructed to each bring in some form of stimulus (a photo, song, memory, object, etc.) that we could use to spark ideas. We all put a representation of our stimulus on a large piece of paper, described what it meant to us to our groupmates, and listened as others shared their stimuli. Net, we all silently wrote down any thoughts that we had about what was presented on sticky notes and placed them next to the things on the paper. I felt that this was a very effective way to share our ideas with each other while also being allowed to formulate our own ideas individually. I am excited to see where this leads because we are planning on doing a similar brainstorming session the next time that our class meets.
Exploration of Related Concepts
This week in theatre, we expanded our exploration of stimulus for our devised piece and began to brainstorm topics and concepts that aligned with the themes we pulled from our stimuli.
We began by bringing in more images, objects, or literature that spoke to us in some way, as we had the previous week. Again, we introduced our pieces to our groupmates and individually wrote on sticky notes any thoughts or ideas that came to us, posting them next to the piece that corresponded with it. All of this was done on a large piece of paper so that we could see our work laid out. Next, we compared the thoughts that we had from the first and second brainstorming session and looked for common themes, patterns or ideas. What we found was that we were all intrigued by the idea of preconceived notions and taking things at face value rather than looking deeper into them. To some degree, our varying stimuli all reflected this idea even though they were all very different forms of media including a quote, several pictures, lyrics to a song, and a radio broadcast (and people’s reaction to it). I feel that because we had so many different pieces of media to spark our inspiration, we were able to think outside of the box and come up with ideas that were unique but still connected to a central theme.
After finding a common theme, we began to brainstorm further by creating diagrams of connected ideas on the whiteboard. We wrote down words that seemed central to us and then branched off of those to explore related concepts. From this exercise, we were able to narrow our topic down from general stigma and first impressions to stereotypes, specifically those created in high school. We felt that this was a concept that our group could connect with because as high school students ourselves, we had all experienced being stereotyped in one way or another and thought it would be interesting to explore the concept further. Finally, we played several improv games with a focus on social high school situations to get our minds thinking about our chosen topic and generating ideas. For example, we all pretended to be in a high school cafeteria and improvised some of the different emotions that a high schooler might be experiencing at any given time. I felt that this exercise was very helpful because although emotion was not something we had explicitly discussed in our brainstorming, it is a central part of the discussion around stereotyping and I felt that this game helped us to realize this.
Improvisation Exercises
This week in theatre, we focused on exploring stereotypes through improvisation exercises. Each of the people in our group researched an exercise that we felt we could pull stereotypes from and brought them to class to share with our classmates.
The game that I brought to the group was called “A Night at the Oscars”. We began by splitting our group into pairs. One pair came up with the name of a fake movie and told it to the other pair. The second pair had to improvise a scene from the movie (like the clips that are shown at awards shows) and then the groups switched. A neutral third party then judged, and a winner was chosen. Finally, the actors from the winning “film” gave an acceptance speech, keeping in mind the type of person that would make a movie like the one that they performed in. This exercise was useful for exploring stereotypes because it relied on making assumptions based on the title of the movie that they were given. Additionally, it relied on making assumptions about the type of people that would produce a movie like that.
Another exercise that my group participated in involved one person standing in the middle of a circle. The people in the circle would one at a time come up with a character and a situation in their head and then, in character, say a single line of dialogue to the person in the middle. Immediately, the person in the middle had to respond in character to the line that had been spoken to them. They went around the circle, and then the person in the middle switched out with someone in the circle until everyone had been in the middle. This exercise was also useful in examining stereotypes. It did not give the person in the middle much time to think about how to respond the dialogue. Often, what they said was the first thing that came into their head. In our class discussions, we often referred back to the fact that stereotypes and first impressions or preconceived notions were closely connected. Therefore, this exercise simulated situations where stereotypes are created.
One thing that I noticed in our theatre exercises was that we often resorted to humor when improvising. My theory is that this is because we were all somewhat uncomfortable with the idea of assigning stereotypes. To cope with this, we used humor to make light of the situation. I feel that this was an important realization for our group that could be further examined. It related to the ideas that things like stigmas are taboo and are acknowledged as existing but are not talked about in plain terms. In the future, I hope that our group is able to explore some serious exercises about stigmas and stereotypes if this is the topic that we choose to continue with.
Topic Discussions
This week in theatre, our group continued to discuss and refine our topic for our collaborative piece.
Something that had caught all of our attention was an advertisement for the Guardian that focused on the way that media can spread ideas around to large groups of people and can either twist or reveal the truth. The ad was centered around the familiar story of the three little pigs (but set in contemporary times) and employed the use of media such as social media and television reporting. By the end of the “media storm” that the destruction of the three little pigs’ house collapses had caused, it was revealed that they had committed insurance fraud and that the wolf was an innocent victim in a greater plot. This interested our group because many of our discussions had found their way back to media and how it can alter people’s perspectives.
Jumping off of the progress that we had made in our previous discussions, we decided to slightly shift our focus from stereotypes to assumptions. We began by looking at the question: what do we make assumptions about?
Some answers that came up had to do with things such as abortions and the pro-life vs. pro-choice debate, mental illnesses such as depression, medication usage, and the effectiveness of activists. A common theme that we noticed was that many of these topics had very serious connotations connected to them even though most of our improv had been connected to humor. Despite this past trend, we were able to have a serious discussion about the factors that cause people to make assumptions about these topics, and the consequences that these assumptions can have.
By the end of the discussion, we had tentatively arrived at the topic of medication and over-medication assumptions. We felt that this was a contemporary issue that would be interesting to explore and do some further research on. We were all intrigued by the seemingly needless problems that were caused by people on too many drugs that they were being convinced that they needed. Personally, I feel that this is a good idea for us to look into because we all seemed to be somewhat enthusiastic and curious about it, which could lead us to some new and exciting discoveries for our collaborative project. The ideas that we had about, including the media as a part of our piece also tied into the theme of assumptions. We noticed that it is often assumptions that cause people to write radical things on media that can set off storms of rumors and lead to further assumptions.
Themes from Improv Exercises
This week in theatre, we began to improvise scenes based on the theme of drug addiction and overmedication. In our group, we paired up, and the first two people took the stage. The other pair came up with a line of dialogue related to our topic and two characters for the people onstage to portray. We then switched off and repeated this exercise several times. To record the new information and realizations that we gained from this exercise, we filmed them on a cell phone so that we would be able to watch our scenes, as well as make a note of any important ideas that we came across while performing that we wanted to re-visit. We also created a collaborative online document where we could write out ideas and make suggestions that everyone could see and access. We felt that this was an effective way to share information in a place that was easily accessible. Additionally, giving everyone the ability to access and edit the document will be very helpful because we can continue to work on it, even if someone in the group is gone.
We began with a scene about a mother and daughter who had just visited the doctor. The doctor had prescribed a new medication to the mother. This scene made us think about themes such as the refusal to share information among family members out of fear of worrying them. For example, the mother was reluctant to go into her detailed medical history with her daughter because she did not want to unnecessarily burden her with stress. However, this only made the daughter more worried because she wanted to do what as best for her mother, but she felt like her mother was hiding something important from her and that their mother-daughter connection was weakening. Another theme that came out of this improvised scene was the degree to which doctors should be trusted. The mother character had just been prescribed a new medication and, while she had faith that the doctor had her best interests at heart, the daughter was not so sure and was worried that the doctor may have given her mother a prescription that she did not truly need.
Some other significant themes that came out of the scenes included things such as excuses that people make to continue to take medicine that they do not truly need, peer pressure to take medicine that is considered “cool”, the differences between mental and physical illness and how they are treated in the medical world (including the stigmas that surround mental illness), and people who have convinced themselves that something is wrong with them even when doctors have told them that nothing is medically concerning. We also looked a bit into the ethical obligations that doctors have. It came up in one of our improvised scenes that perhaps doctors want to provide their patients with an answer, and they feel that medicine was the best way to do this. After some preliminary research into the subject led us to discover that many doctors have to see many patients in a limited amount of time, we began to sense that we may have been onto an important discovery and agreed to research it further. We also recalled from our research about opioids that many paramedics stop to help the same opioid addicts time and time again. We felt that this was significant because there is little that the paramedics could do to help these people other than try to revive them if they overdosed, provide them with information about ways to reduce or stop usage, and hope that they lived to see another day.
Finally, we began to discuss how the media influences the way that we view drugs in our world. We were particularly drawn to the way that prescription drugs are advertised to us. We watched a few television ads for various drugs and noticed that even though the drugs were to be prescribed for very serious medical conditions and could have significant negative side effects, the people in the commercial and the voiceover narration were often very happy and hopeful. We felt that this was not a true reflection of what the drugs would do to a person and were worried that many people would buy those drugs without realizing their true effects. This made us somewhat sad that companies would be so desperate to make a profit that they would almost trick their consumers. Additionally, we began to view the ads with more suspicion than we initially had. We decided to do more research into drug advertising because we felt that this would be an interesting aspect to explore when looking at drug use, addiction, and the media in our collaborative project.
Publication Bias and Doctors
This week in theatre, we watched some TED talks relating to prescription drugs and the medical field. We felt that this would be helpful in the development of our project because, while we each had our own ideas of what the doctor-patient relationship was like, we had never actually heard any doctors talk about it, and we felt that this information would give us a better idea of what we were trying to portray in our collaborative piece.
We began by watching a talk about publication bias in the medical field. The speaker was Ben Goldarce, a doctor who had experience with prescribing patients the medications that he was discussing. He talked about how many scientific studies will only be published if the research yields positive results. This can be problematic because doctors making decisions about patient care need to have all of the known information about a drug in order to make informed decisions about what to prescribe. If negative results go unpublished or get buried, this can pose a danger to consumers and patients because doctors often only look for the results that have been published.
This was a phenomenon that the members in our group had not known was such an issue. Even though we had discussed publication bias in our IB Biology class, we still were shocked and could not stop talking and thinking about what we had learned in the video. Because of this reaction, we felt that this would be an important detail to include and explore in our collaborative piece. It is our hope that our audience will have a similar reaction to the one that we had and gain and greater awareness about biases that exist in the field of medicine and prescription drug distribution and marketing.
We also looked at the world of prescribing medicines form the doctor’s perspective. From watching several interviews and speakers, we learned that there is often pressure placed on doctors to prescribe things to fix a patient’s problems in order to get good ratings on patient satisfaction surveys and maintain their reputation. This meant that doctors were feeling like they needed to find “quick fixes” for problems that could have been solved in ways besides having medicine prescribed for them. This could include patients coming in with a problem that was not truly medical, and the doctors needing to “biologize” the issue to satisfy the patient. Additionally, doctors were expected to see many patients in a limited amount of time, and prescribing medicine to fix a problem was often more time-efficient than taking the time to work with the patient and family to find an alternate solution that did not involve prescription drugs.
We felt that this would be an interesting perspective to examine in our piece because we did not want our message to place all blame for drug abuse and the opioid crisis on doctors. Although they play a role in it, we wanted to examine how the entire health system is flawed and can impact individuals and their families.
Scheduling and Outlining-11/18/19 This week in theatre, we focused on creating outlines, both for effective time management and what we wanted our show to look like.
We began by creating a rough schedule in order to manage our time most effectively. We looked at the number of days that we had left in the devising process and wrote each one down in a shared document. We then decided how many days we should allocate for a rough outline of our script and how many days we would need in the theatre in order to work out the technical elements of our play, such as sound and lights. Additionally, we decided on a day to produce our play and confirmed the date and time with our teacher. Deciding on the performance day was an essential part of our scheduling process because it gave us a solid deadline to work off of. I am hopeful that this will help us realize the amount of time that we have left to finish our piece and will allow us to effectively budget our time.
We also began to outline what we wanted each scene to include as a preliminary to the creation of our script through improv. We began by looking at the intended impact that we wished to have upon the audience. For our piece, we have chosen to show that a person who is overmedicated or addicted to medication can have an impact that extends beyond personal devastation. We wanted to focus on the people around the struggling person and look at how their behaviors impacted the greater community. To accomplish this, we chose to focus on four different people who would interact with overmedicated or addicted people. One of these people is a friend who sees their friend struggling with a problem and is concerned when they decide to try a drug that they have seen in the media. Next, we will have a doctor who is overwhelmed by the number of patients that they have to see in a short amount of time. This causes them to quickly prescribe medication for a patient and refer them to another doctor. This situation is repeated as the patient visits another, and then another doctor, leading to them receiving many different medications. In the third scene, we will look at the role that law enforcement can have in the war on drugs, and the fourth scene will look at a family. By including these four different people in addition to the people who are addicted/overmedicated, we felt that our focus would be shifted away from producing a play solely about drugs. We wanted the focus to be more on the way that drugs can influence the relationships that people have with one another and felt that adding in these extra characters would contribute to our intended impact.
Additionally, we began to look at places in our play where movements could be used in place of dialogue to convey ideas. This is essential because it was a very central part of the devising company that we are drawing inspiration from. In the coming classes, we will continue to look into this aspect. Finally, we formulated a plan to create the video that we will start our play with. We intend to make this video somewhat humorous and follow it with a very serious scene. We feel that this shift in emotion will shock the audience, and we hope that this shock will add to the overall impact of our piece.
Improvisation and Video-11/26/19
This week in theatre, we worked on finishing our drug advertisement video and improvised some of our outlined scenes in order to create dialogue.
In our video, we had footage of people being sad and having problems in the beginning (with a black and white filter) and people being happy and in color in the second half of it. We modeled this off of other ads for prescription drugs that we had seen. Although our intent was to be somewhat comical, it was almost humorous in itself that our video matched the other drug ads so closely when they weren’t even trying to get a laugh. We also included a list of possible side effects in our narration that were not said with urgency or alarm but, rather, with a calming and soothing voice that matched the narration style in the rest of the video. Finally, we added happy music to the end and included the phrase “be sure to ask your doctor about Evidentinol”. Our hope is that the serious scene that follows this somewhat humorous video will have an impact on the audience and cause them to realize that we are discussing a serious issue after the mood shift happens.
We also began to add lines and blocking to some of the scenes that we had outlined. We began by printing out copies of the script outline we created and acting through the scenes one at a time. As we ran through them, we would discover new dialogue and blocking that could be added or changes. We then would go back and try the scene again with the new changes and continued to modify our work throughout the period. I felt that this was a very beneficial exercise. For one, it involved every member of the group and was a clear way to make sure that we were all on the same page about the scenes that we had previously been working somewhat separately on. Also, it was a good way to ensure that the things we had worked out on paper were understandable in the context of a live performance.
One thing that I was surprised by was how much of the scene we were able to do without having a great deal of talking. Something that our devising group did a lot of was replacing words with movements and having a balance of talking and physical representations of ideas. This was easier for our group to incorporate than I had feared and we often found that the movements were more powerful and got our point across better than the original dialogue that we had replaced.
Cast List and Movements-12/2/19
This week in IB theatre, we continued to run through and refine our script. We created a cast list and looked at how movements could replace dialogue in sections of our piece.
We began by creating a cast list for our piece. It was a slight challenge to figure out how to place everybody because while there were only four members in our group, we had more than four characters that we wanted to be portrayed in our collaborative theatre project. To resolve this, we broke down what characters were in what scenes and divided up the parts so that no one would be playing two different characters in the same scene. It is our hope that this will help avoid any confusion that the audience might experience as they watch us change characters throughout the piece.
Another strategy that we developed to make it clear that we are playing different characters at different times is to wear a base layer (probably black) and put on various different costume pieces over the base layer whenever we switch characters. This will give the audience a visual reference to cue off of and recognize when our parts have changed. Additionally, it may be helpful for the actors to associate different costume pieces with different characters so that they do not get lost or confused about what scene is happening while they are performing.
A vital aspect of our chosen devising company’s method is related to using a balance of movement and words. Because we had a script with plenty of dialogue, we felt that it was important to balance this out with movements that would get our point across to the audience while being visually striking and understandable. One of these movement moments occurs in a scene where the main character is attempting to combat their drug addiction. They have just gone to rehab and begun to rebuild their life when suddenly a pill bottle appears above them on the stage. The idea of this part of the scene is that they cannot escape their addiction and they are drawn closer and closer to the pills (though they try to resist) until they relapse. We plan to show this moment by having someone stand on a chair (in their neutral base layer to show they are not playing a character) and suspend a pill bottle above the actor on the stage by holding it up in the air with their hand. The actor onstage will step closer and close to it and will step up onto several boxes until they are level with the pill bottle. They then will take it from the neutral actor and the scene will progress from there. In this moment, we hope to use a physical representation of a person being drawn across the stage to a pill bottle to represent the struggle that is going on inside their mind as they wrestle with their addiction.
We were pleased with the way that this scene looked when we ran through it. We felt that the movements that we created gave the scene even more meaning than if we had simply written dialogue that showed the character relapsing. The idea of using movement instead of dialogue in select scenes of our piece is an idea that we hope to continue to explore.
Feedback, Sounds/Lights-12/10/19
This week in IB theatre, we applied feedback that we received on our piece, began to stage our scenes, and worked out the lighting and sound cues.
Previously, we had shown a preview of our scenes to our teacher and received feedback. One of the things that was commented on was a lack of continuity to tie all of our scenes together. To solve this, we decided to create the running concept of a support group that the people in each scene were a member of. It was our hope that this would help the audience understand that the scenes were all connected to a central topic. We took each of the main characters from the vignette scenes and created dialogue through improvisation that would allow them to transition into their scenes and tell their story to the other people in the group. We also felt that this would allow us to discuss some of the personal details of our characters that were not as present in the scene themselves.
We also took our piece into our performance space and began to evaluate how our planned sets, props, and costumes would work. We ran into several issues with the way that the stage was set up because we felt that it would not allow us to put chairs in a semicircle for our support group scene. However, we planned to solve this by taking the step off of the stage to make it all the same level. Additionally, we discovered that the costume changes would be too fast for the actors and have not yet found a solution for this but are working on it. We also began to work on what part of the stage we wanted blocking on. This was especially important to consider for the scene that occurs in the doctor’s office because we wanted to show both a lobby and an examination room without having to shift any set pieces. To accomplish this, we set up a reception desk on one side of the stage and had a special lighting change when the scene shifted into the exam room.
Finally, we worked on figuring out our sound and light cues. In order to intrigue the audience and convey locations that may not have been apparent due to our minimalistic set design, we decided to use sound effects in select scenes. These included things such as background murmurs and ringing phones in the doctor’s office and music for the party scene. We also set up lighting that would draw the audience’s attention to the important aspects of the scene. This is especially apparent when one actor stands on a chair and holds up a pill bottle. For this part, we had a single light shining above the actor, highlighting this crucial piece of the scene.