Amanda’s Bedtime Routine

I start my night time routine round about 11 o’clock at night by getting a glass of water from the kitchen.
I then go up stairs, put my drink on a window sill next to my bed, and go next door to the bathroom.
I brush my teeth and remove any make-up I have been wearing on that day.
Washing my mouth out to make sure there is no lingering tooth paste, I rinse my retainer under cold water and put that on.
Once I’m back in my room, I get changed into my pyjamas.
I get under the covers, usually just a duvet cover and I go on my laptop between 40-60 minutes, catching up on YouTube videos, or reading a chapter of a story. Recently I’ve been watching an episode of RuPaul’s drag race on Netflix a night. Once the episode has finished and I’m all caught up with videos I will turn off my laptop and place it beside my bed on the floor. I get up to plug in my phone to charge and turn on a fan on a slow setting as I like to sleep with a constant noise, which blocks out any possible loud noises that can disturb my sleep. The slightest noise will keep me awake. After all that, I turn the lights off.
I get into bed, lying on my front with my head resting to towards the door or pathway in a room and hopefully go to sleep. Depending on how strenuous the day has been it can take up to 20-60 minutes to fall asleep. (There are some days that do not follow this schedule as my sleeping pattern varies).
Most of the time I only get about 5 hours of sleep a night, and while doing this exercise as made me realise that the lack of hours might be due to this route and what I do before sleep.

 

A.M

Our Inspirations.

As previously mentioned we as a group have a lot of inspirations. Most of the theatre we have seen, especially in the last few months has inspired us. And I just thought I’d quickly go into detail about how exactly we’ve been inspired by these other Theatre Companies.

Firstly, Partus (2017), by Third Angel. The first show of the year and the one which has stuck with us for the longest. Partus, used verbatim theatre to tell women’s stories about pregnancy and birth. Those of us who saw it were hugely inspired by it in particular the way it managed to create a warm and welcoming atmosphere. We’ve decided to incorporate this welcoming feel by greeting our audience members at the door and welcoming them into the space with a cup of hot chocolate or herbal tea. We also decided to take Partus as an inspiration when deciding to cap our audience. This was an important decision for us as a group and made us truly question which was more important: the money we could potentially make, or our artistic vision? In the end we decided to go for artistic vision. Meaning that we’ve chosen to cap our audience at 80 allowing for an intimate and homely feel within the performance.

The Audit (2018). It’s a fantastic thing to be able to see the work of our lecturers. Proto-type are a company with very different artistic aims and visions to Sherbet Lemon theatre, however, we have still managed to find inspiration in their work. Particularly when placing a narrative into our story. Much like in The Audit we wanted our narrative to seem like a natural addition to frame our piece, rather than something which was shoehorned in at the final minute just to make the piece seem a bit more coherent. As The Truth Bedtime… is not a strictly narrative driven piece of work, we still felt that we needed a narrative in order for the audience to sympathise and feel invested in our performance.

Finally, Education, Education, Education (2018) was a show we all saw when we were feeling a tad deflated, we were at the part of the process where everything was beginning to feel like a bit of a struggle and this was exactly what we needed to perk ourselves up! Out of all the shows we have seen Education, Education, Education is easily the production which is most similar to ours with a blend of humour and serious moments, it was really important to show us that what we wanted to achieve was actually attainable. Particularly their use of pop culture references and how seamlessly they blended into the production without feeling forced. Their branding as a company, namely their spotify playlist is another idea which we decided we wanted to use within our performance.

 

E.H.

 

Works Cited.

Proto-Type (2018) The Audit [live performance]. Performed by Proto-Type. Lincoln: Lincoln Performing Arts Centre, 13 March.

Third Angel (2017) Partus [live performance]. Performed by Third Angel. Lincoln: Lincoln Performing Arts Centre, 18 October.

Wardrobe Ensemble (2018) Education, Education, Education [live performance]. Performed by The Wardrobe Ensemble. Lincoln: Lincoln Performing Arts Centre, 16 March.