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Getting the Message AcrossDateline: 18th September, 2005Theatre makes an impact. It can hit hard and, by manipulating the audience's emotions and thoughts, can communicate ideas in ways which can be subtle or blatant, in-yer-face or insidious, but very definitely entertaining. It's not surprising, then, that both public bodies and private companies are turning to theatre companies to present short shows to target audiences to get their message across. It's just like theatre in education but at a more adult level. One company which has found itself preseting more and more of these shows is KG Productions, whose artistic director happens to be BTG editor Peter Lathan. It began nearly three years ago, he explains, when two friends - amateur actors - were asked to do a ten minute performance for a community group umbrella organisation on a specific topic. They had actually entertained at similar events before but didn't feel up to producing something with a specific message, so they suggested the organiser get in touch with KG. "That's how it began," Peter Lathan says, "and it's just snowballed from there." In the past the company has been asked to produce shows explaining the impact of the Disability Discrimination Act Part IV on adult education tutors, showing the importance of succession planning to local authority principal officers, demonstrating the causes and effects of workplace stress in the office environment and celebrating the achievements of a local authority to its employees. In the last week it has produced a ten minute show about what a Local Area Agreement is which was presented as part of a public consultation exercise. "We work to a very tight brief," Peter Lathan explains. "I meet with the client who explains the topic as thoroughly as possible. I then make a preliminary outline of the logistics - how many actors I think we'll need, what the development time and rehearsal period should be, and - most important to both of us! - how much it will cost. "Once that's all agreed, I go away and do a first draft of the script which goes back to the client to make sure that all the points are covered and I haven't made any factual errors. If the timescale allows - and it doesn't always: I had just four days for the LAA script - I'll consult with the company and get their ideas. We often end up talking and experimenting for hours. Once the draft is agreed, I make any alterations necessary and we go into rehearsal. The client will normally come along to an early rehearsal so that any fine-tuning can be done before things are established and usually to the final run-through. Then we turn up and do the show!" Venues can be anything from a theatre (most unusual) to a conference room in a hotel or a community centre. The company has worked in the conference room of Sunderland's Stadium of Light (a football ground), a conference room in UMIST (Manchester), and even a Salvation Army church (which has, according to the company members, the best (and cheapest!) canteen of any venue they have ever played. "It would be easy," says Lathan, " to lump together a series of sketches and one-liners - because clients always want the show to be amusing - but we won't go along that route. The piece must have a proper dramatic structure and real characters, otherwise they might as well get a stand-up comedian." There is, he adds, little difference between writing one of these shows and one of his own plays. "The only real difference is the act the we are given the topic: otherwise it goes through the same process of drafting and redrafting, workshopping and testing, and, as director, I work with the company in exactly the same way as I would if we were doing a 'proper' play. "The great thing about these shows, from a company point of view, is that they are guaranteed money earners. We know how much we are going to get paid. If we take a play to a theatre, we normally work on a box office split basis, so we have no idea how much we're going to earn until we see how many there are in the audience - and what they've paid, for if they are mainly concessions, our potential income drops by about a third! "They have numerous advantages: they keep actors in work; they provide seed money for future productions; they can be proving grounds for actors new to the company, and they help us to streamline our working methods. They can also have a beneficial effect on theatre audiences: sometimes people who have never seen a live production before suddenly realise what they are missing - and that can only be good. "Finally, they are very good for me as a writer. I have learned a huge amount about keeping the structure tight and avoiding redundancy and deviation from the point. When you have a lot to comminucate but a very limited time in which to do it - these shows run for ten to twenty minutes normally - you learn the value of conciseness!"
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