Reflection on working from the brief

Reading the brief initially my understanding was that the essence of the performance had to be ‘a humorous presentation… about the transition issues facing students finishing high school’ (TIS brief, 2008). Further to this it should be:

• relevant for students age and needs
• could include a range of possible themes
• no set style, form or content
• be neutral towards all tertiary intuitions
• not offensive
• and positive towards tertiary institutions (TIS brief, 2008)

My approach in working from the brief was to take it to the ensemble I was working with to see where we could end up taking it. What resulted was the intention to develop a humorous presentation on the issues student face transitioning from secondary to tertiary education. This has resulted in us missing the mark to a certain degree. Nothing we could not fix or reverse but a big learning curve for myself. It is apparent now that there are five clear aims that I should have specifically highlighted for the group and constantly returned to when creating this performance. They are in no particular order of importance:

1. Ensuring it is relevant for students age
2. Ensuring it is relevant for their needs
3. Ensuring it is neutral to all tertiary institutions
4. Ensuring it is non offensive to everyone
5. Ensuring it is positive towards tertiary study

What I managed to do was to understate the importance of these instead highlighting my perceived understanding of the essence of the piece. The inoffensiveness of the piece was never a problem as this was because this was highlighted by marketing consistently as the one requirement that the show must be. The neutrality of the piece was also never really a problem. As the process progressed the ensemble did fall into a habit of referring to tertiary study as uni but this was simply a symptom of the ensemble all being university students. The development of the piece was always centred on the work being neutral even if the language didn’t depict this. We had always known the age of the audience was approx 16 to 19 and this was something that we had entered into the process knowing and understanding that; but what significance does this approximate audience age have for creating theatre? This is not a question that can be answered because it’s not a black and white issue, although what can be said is that young peoples theatre should not play down to its audience, it should be as good as adult theatre if not better. The two of these aims that were neglected in the process was ensuring the performance was relevant for students’ needs and ensuring a positive spin towards tertiary study. This was mainly due to two reasons:

1. Failure to return to the brief to ensure performance was proceeding in right direction
2. A lack of detail in the brief for the desired specifics of the performance

The show prior to last week had a very negative meta-message in regards to tertiary study being difficult and full of many problems. We did not set out to portray tertiary study in this light but this was a side affect of creating work based on issues its going to inherently negative from the get go. Returning to the brief throughout the process could have helped to avoid this by ensuring we highlighted the issues as positive. The lack of detail in the brief did not aid this either. This lack of detail didn’t give me a clear understanding of what the needs of the student audience was. This has since been illuminated to reveal the needs is the information about specific things relating to tertiary study. Having a clearer understanding that the performance was meant to be infotainment could have helped the process as well.