At The Hip
A new headphone-verbatim play by Roslyn Oades & the Hot House Studio Ensemble.
This audio-script is based on a three-month interview process with residents from the Albury-Wodonga area conducted in April-July 2016.
All interview recordings referenced in this script were conducted by the Studio Ensemble and director Lyn Wallis.
Produced by Hot House Theatre.
Copyright 2016.
Rhys Llewelyn on sound
On this website, there are lots of scenes from the play that you can see three different ways.
LISTEN
Listen to the original recording, and hear the interviewee’s voice.
WATCH
See the members of the HotHouse ensemble speak the words, using the headphone verbatim technique
READ
Read the script for the show, which shows some things you might not be able to see or hear – directions, extra settings – as well as sometimes showing you bits of the original recordings that were edited out.
Production Notes
At The Hip is a documentary script, which incorporates two distinct performance styles:
Headphone-verbatim or audio-cued performance, during which the actors are fed an audio-script via headphones, in order to recreate community-based documentary audio interviews with fidelity.
Naturalistic text (scripted from improvised conversation) in which the cast perform as themselves and narrate the process of making the work as an ensemble of local reporter/actors.
The cast (and the characters they play) speak directly to the audience – in effect, endowing the audience as their interviewer or a special guest in the room. The script occasionally includes lines from an ‘unheard interviewer’. The audience does not always hear these lines but the cast always acknowledge and respond to them, as though a person in the audience had addressed them.
The headphone-verbatim performance technique employs an ‘audio-script’ constructed from carefully crafted documentary recordings – this audio-script is meticulously reproduced on stage by the cast wearing headphones. By preserving the precise vocal mannerisms of real-life interviews in performance the cast sets out to mine the rich nuances of conversation like musicians following a score. This transcript attempts to replicate the audio-script for At the Hip as faithfully as possible, but should not be considered as the complete performance script.
Script Markings
Within this script the following markings are used to indicate audio playback to the actors in-ear monitor feed:
Arrows are used to signifying the triggering of a new audio track to actors’ headphones. For example:
>>>>>> IN-EAR AUDIO CUE #1 >>>>>>>
Boxes indicate the end of an audio-scripted section. For example:
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