Performance Evaluation:
Yesterday we did our political performance that we have been preparing for the past 6 weeks. I had much fun performing in front of an audience of over 20 and thought it went incredibly well. I feel this way for a variety of reasons.
Firstly, the audience seemed intrigued by what they were seeing. My girlfriend watch me and said she liked it because of how “wacky” it was. I was surprised as to how she understood it was something to do with the corruption of humanity which made me even more optimistic of the outcome. A few people told me that they messed up their lines but she never noticed anything of the sort so from an audience's point of view, it remained smooth. Every moment that I had the cance to look at the audience they were looking at the performance taking place and nothing else which is a very positive sign.
Secondly, there were many problems we had throughout the rehearsals that involved people sitting in the minor stage that didn’t happen during the performance. Everyone would move and talk whilst sitting in minor stage which would have inevitably distract the audience from the characters on the major stage. As an ensemble we were terrible. All the moments when the actors were supposed to participate only a few would do so. For example, when Vlad uses direct address telling us to block our ears and say “lalala” each time a certain character would speak. When he breaks the 4th and technically the 1st wall we are supposed to exaggerate what he asks of us but only I and a few others did so. Yet again when it came to the real performance everyone committed to the action.
Additionally, I felt that my performance was a lot better then it was during rehearsal. As a producer I was supposed to act very bossy and incontrol but throughout the rehearsals I felt as if Michael had more power over me. However when it came to the moment when I stop the game show to fix the audience to make them look like a ‘pleb’ or ‘boss’. I did it with control and power. I loved both of our deadly sins montage scenes “anger is passion” and “passion is also sexy”. The first one I used gestus to make the audience find it more funny and I was afraid of possibly breaking the table as I had to jump up onto it. The second scene was supposed to include Skittles as a sex pill but I forgot to buy them. So we during the rehearsal we just mimed them. During the actual performance I made a risky decision that I probably shouldn’t have done but I did. I saw on the prop table deodorant so I picked it up and ended up saying “have sexy passion spray” Jack instantly grabbed it from me, opened it sprayed himself whilst the other fought over it. It went perfectly and looked much better than it would have if I mimed throwing Skittles to the floor. During the ‘britain's got benefits’ scene I performed looking at the actual audience and I noticed most of them smiling at me so that when my character was smiling it was me just smiling back. Even though this part was naturalistic it was followed by me grabbing onto crutches that didn’t even fit me properly which was very noticeable.
Even though I felt like it was an all round positive product there were things that I think could have been improved.
Firstly, if people didn’t mess about during rehearsals and actually pretend as if the audience was there then we would have been more prepared. It wasn’t a polished piece mainly for that reason. This kept making us have to stop rehearsing so that Chris could tell people off which used up precious time. Even though we understood the piece more and had a one or two full run through before the show there were moments where it could have been cleaner. So if I were to do this again I would ask the people talking to be more professional.
Secondly, at the very beginning when Isie brings the audience in they looked very confused and a few of them just walked in and tried to sit anywhere. This made the section very messy but was recovered eventually. This could have been avoided by explaining to the audience what exactly we’re doing. This could easily be done by Isie opening the door and telling everyone “Hi welcome everyone is here to take part in the austerity game show? For our political performance”. By telling them about it before entering the space they would feel more included rather than thinking that they're just supposed to watch a normal play.
Additionally, the majority of the audience looked confused at the end of the play whilst everyone say’s the 270 words that sum up themselves. This was to do with the fact that it comes out from nowhere and it sounded as if the words just mumbled together. People also just left after about 10 seconds. I think if Tom had a placard reading “270 words” sum up me. Then everyone else had a placard saying one thing that sum them up whilst saying their 270 words it would have clarified what we were trying to portray.
I think as a whole a profession execution of the play was successful. We had many brechtian techniques that worked really well. Such as, narration from the durex scene, placards on many occasions but at the end was most effective, breaking the 4th wall throughout the whole play, multi-role in price and indulge, song and dance in ‘britain's got benefits’, montage in the 7 deadly sins and gestus throughout. I think the future potential of the piece as a theatre product could be to take it to a big stage and perform it for a week. There would need to be major changes such as making the transition between each scene more clear.
