With my personal study, I want to explore the relationship between theatre and photography. Understanding how creating scenes onstage is similar to creating an image. As a theatrical student, this theme connects to my life and through shows and performances over the past few years, I am starting to notice similarities between these two disciplines. When creating a piece of theatre, one must think about the relation between what the audience sees on stage and how the actors perform it. Theatrical aspects like set, lighting, sound and projections must also coincide with the overall performance and be completely in sync with the overall storyline. When producing images, the photographer must also think about the relation of light and framing within an image, but it is restricted into how the images are presented. A photographer can only present through mounting images on a wall or producing a film or photo book for example. Whereas, theatre has a sense of freedom. The actors and scenery are not restricted to a stage or theatre. Productions have the ability to immerse an audience and actors are free to roam the aisles and auditorium, or bring an audience into a performance environment. It is this difference between the two that i want to show in my project.

The theme of ‘Nostalgia’ made me think of using my own experiences in theatre to influence my final outcomes. It would be represented through my use of images from past productions that i have been involved in. When creating new images, I want to take the point of view of a theatre director rather than a photographer. Meaning that I want to show my story by creating a staged production through a series of still images rather than a moving piece of theatre or film.

The majority of my photoshoots will take place on location (ie. at the Jersey Arts Centre and at venues that I, myself have performed/worked in) but I still want to use the studio to create portfolio headshots that are a key component for anyone working in the theatrical industry. I am going to create a series of environmental portraits within the theatrical world, using areas like technical boxes or rehearsal studios. From this I would combine images of different settings by manually tearing apart images and physically changing how they look. With regards to headshots, I want to use some of my own as well as new images that I take, and physically change the images by hand and through AI software like Adobe Photoshop (Beta). I also want to explore ways of showing movement in my images through blurring techniques both during and after photoshoots, for example taking a series of images at fast shutter speeds to capture the series of movements and combine them in photoshop or capture a movements on slow shutter speeds to create more of a blurred image.

When presenting my final outcomes, I aim to create a linear display of images within a photobook, but use a background of carefully chosen sheet music – adding a musical element to the story. This would add to the achievement of my aim to create a full theatrical experience presented on paper as opposed to the stage. I want to show as many aspects of the theatrical world as possible within my story, creating a full autobiography of my own personal experiences in the industry.

I want to start my photoshoots at Mont Orgeuil Castle during the Jersey Youth Performing Arts production of ‘Ghost Stories by Candlelight’, an immersive piece of theatre that I have directed from scratch working closely with the playwright in order to create something that hasn’t been seen before.