After a long break from working on the project (due to my maternity leave) Katherine and I were back out in West Park, Wolverhampton testing the newly recorded version of our Bandstand audio theatre piece.
Obviously it ended up being December when we got onto outdoor testing again, and it was a seriously chilly day. But undeterred we each tried out both parts (man & woman) of the two-person experience, paying special attention to the timings – checking that listeners/participants will have enough time to enact their instructed movements (e.g. walking around the bandstand) before receiving their next instruction.
We were pleasantly surprised at how close it already was to being right, but there are still lots and lots of tweeks to timings, instructions, placement of text within the soundscape etc. Katherine and I have sent our notes to Mark Day, who is creating the soundscapes for the pieces, and he is now polishing these up and adding more in the way of music and atmosphere to compliment the storytelling and instructions.
In order to help Mark visualise what the audience will be doing, and as a way to record timings I took a few useful but utterly dull videos of Katherine walking between certain points. They do however give you a few clues about what the audience members will be doing as part of the experience. Here they are for your viewing pleasure .. (it really does look cold doesn’t it?!)
Bandstand, development blog post by katie.