TIE - Part 3

As I've implied before, TIE companies are often small and underfunded. They will often perform in a place that isn't a theatre and will have time constraints - most of the time they work in a school environment and have to take into consideration lesson times of which to fit their piece into.

Using this, we were asked to name the aspects of normal theatre under the headings of story, location and character as shown in the table below:

We were then asked to circle what constraints TIE would have on this 'normal' theatre as shown in the table below:

As seen, certain aspects of theatre will be somewhat impacted, although they may not be entirely impacted:

Music/Sound: The performance space may not have the equipment to manage such a thing. The company may not be able to afford a sound system or have the ability to transport it from place to place.

Transitions: The space may not be as big nor may the time constraints allow for lengthy transitions.

Blocking: The space may be too small and thus the blocking may not show properly for the MOO's to work.

Costume: May not have the ability to transport the costume or the budget to have any.

Volume: Depending on the size of the space, actors may have to be louder to fill it up.

Proxemics/Interaction: Smaller space means less opportunity to distance a character from one another thus impacting the MOO.

As seen, there are certain aspects of a TIE piece that would be impossible:

Lighting: Heavy, expensive equipment that can't be transported and a lack of darkness in the place which would mean that any lighting effect would not look as good.

Set: Has to be moveable and to easily fit into a variety of spaces.

As is evident, the only thing that is left are acting skills. However, a TIE piece will have a lack of character arc to make the character more engaging to an audience and to keep them emotionally invested. There are a few techniques within the realms of TIE to help this:

Dynamic asides (a form of direct address) tell the audience the things that a character wouldn't be able to reveal subtly in depth in a normal piece. It allows for some emotion and allows an audience member to easily connect with a character much quicker than in 'traditional' theatre.

As I have mentioned before, the target audience defines the style of the piece, be it naturalistic (Stanislavski) or abstract or have elements of physical theatre. The two videos below will highlight the differences between a Stanisvlavski style piece and an abstract style piece. For younger students a Stanislavski piece will be much easier to understand without having to infer much from the abstract movements.

A vital tool in TIE is humour because if that is used then an audience will be on the actor's side as they have been engaged with.