In February 2004, I went to the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester to see a production of Jim Cartwright's The Rise and Fall of Little Voice. As an audience member I found a lot of the production elements very affective. The stage was in the round and to me this created more intimacy, as the actors were closer to the audience and on the same level. This was affective because I thought that the audience was more involved with the play this way and I felt that I was part of the story and part of LV's audience for when she sings.
The stage had a record label in the center of it. To me, this showed that the play was mostly based on music. When LV was singing in the club the record label rotated. This was affective to me because not only could all of the audience see LV but it showed that her heart is in the music and that she needs to stop the record to get out of this quiet girl who gets walked all over that she has become i.e. she needs to confront her mother to get out of her rut and be who she wants to be. This also represented to me that the stage was just a view of the world in LV's head; her world had just collapsed into the record and her life and mind revolves around her and he father's love of music. Each section of the record was a different room but each room still overlapped to create more intimacy. For example, two legs of LV's bed were on her bedroom carpet and the other two actually on the pavement. To me, I thought that this frightened LV as she appeared to be a private person but even people walking along the street, outside her house, were still too close to her for her liking. This piece of set design was affective as to me as a member of the audience, I felt that passers-by and even the audience appeared to be in LV's bedroom and maybe in her head and this made her even more insecure and private....