Today we completed our final experimental theatre piece. This term was all about process and using different means in order to communicate our theme of: "The link between creativity and madness" I believe we achieved this very well and always work in an experimental way. The final performance certainly reflected our aims and hard work. I feel like we performed effectively as an ensemble but some areas could have done with tightening up. In this evaluation the key areas I will be focusing are "The artistic achievements we made; the level of professional execution; strengths and weaknesses and the future potential of the piece as a theatre product." I will analyse and evaluate both the promenade section of the performance and the main piece.
The beginning section of our promenade piece was visually bold and striking. I believe it made the audience feel on edge and a little bit freaked out when they were greeted by a group of people standing still with trestle masks on tracking their movements. This meant that straight away we had their attention and were able to keep them engaged in our performance. When Georgie burst out of nowhere and began to frantically climb the tree (whilst reciting Tom Wait's lines from "Nirvana") this changed the pace and set up a foreshadow for our bar piece later. The moment when we all walk forward point and pull our masks back down could have done with refinement. This is because there was a lot of dead space which could have been filled with text from the poem. We could have also employed some Grotowski vocal techniques here and created some sounds as an ensemble to represent the hopeless search for Nirvana. This atmospheric cacophony of sound would have engaged the audiences senses and make our promenade piece more vocal interesting to watch. The transition into the next area of the piece could have been cleaned up too. We never really made a choice whether to run away into our positions in the corridor or to walk away in formation. This meant that some of the group ran and some just fizzled away moreover dissolving the idea that we were as one entity in this section. If we were to do it again I would suggest we ripped off our masks (so we could see better) and run away together so we don't break the illusion we had just set up.
In the next section of our promenade piece we continued using the idea of clear simple imagery to communicate our point. I simple put on a piece of costume (goggles and hat) that I wear in the bar and began running up and down the small strip of corridor frantically "searching for my Nirvana". In the 4:30 showing as I came running down towards the audience they began to scream and stop in their tracks. This was unexpected but I made sure to use this to my advantage by taking a moment to pause and stare them down as if I was asking for help before I began to ran back. I believe this broke down barriers between the actor audience relationship and instead of them just being scared of what I was doing they would begin to sympathise with my characters hopeless search. I feel like this also provided a strong change in energy from Chloe slathering chocolate all over her face. To make this better I could have placed items around that corridor that I could find. This means I could have a big physical reaction to finding my Nirvana thus making the intentions of the promenade piece even clearer.
In relation to our group performance "A Taste Of Waits" I thought we pulled it off with aplomb; it was by no means perfect however the journey from it being a concept to a fully fleshed out piece was remarkable. It was the culmination of ideas and different styles of performance that made this an effective and more importantly affective piece of theatre. As soon as the audience entered because we had already got into character for about five minutes they were greeted by this dank atmosphere. Was created by applying Artaud's principles of total theatre. We had intimate lighting to make the place look lonely and desolate (which would later on be used to fill the room with colour in relation to the drink e.g. Red = pleasure) we had bluesy jazz music, dynamic costumes, cardboard set, everything to spark the audiences imagination. One of the core things I learnt during this term is about filling gaps when needed; in the 4:30 showing during the story telling section I looked up and noticed nobody was at the mic. Reece was still holding the object and Georgie was walking towards an non-existent person. In the moment I realised that of no-one took the drink then the energy would drop stopping the performance dead in it's track. So I barged forwards, grabbed the drink, chugged it and threw the cup on the ground in style. In this moment I felt so instinctual, because I was really in character and switched on in the piece I think I was able to react quickly off any stimulus I was presented with. It was an amazing feeling telling the story of "The little black girl in the red dress" who was a champion. I felt like during this term I really struggled with story-telling as I was always speaking as Sam but for the first term I just let my self go, and it felt great. I feel like the whole class as an ensemble were behind me backing me up with soundscapes and when it was over Olivia took that perfect opportunity to do our moment. This meant that I had a huge sense of journey during the piece and went from being a champion to a loser.
The actor audience relationship definitely differed between showings. The first crowd was young and slightly rowdy. You didn't have to do much to get a reaction out of them. If I wanted to start talking to one of them they would almost immediately laugh but at least it gave me something to go off. With the parent audience this was a lot harder. This was because they had more sense of inhibition and were on edge. There was an ineffective moment where I followed an audience member all the way from the door to her seat noticing every thing about her. Then when it came time for me to talk to her she just apologised and kind of willed me to go away. As a performer I should have continued interacting with her but as a person I knew she felt uncomfortable and that was an undesired response. This goes against what we've been learning this term; Artaud purposefully made his audience members uncomfortable to uncover truths within themselves so in order to make this aspect of my performance better I should have pursued the conversation instead of moving on to someone different. Another area of weakness in the performance was during the second time I performed the promenade piece. I was exhausted after putting so much punch into the first peformance that my second bout of running up and down the corridors lack energy. The frantic searching objective was not played as strongly therefore the theme would not have been received as clearly. In order to fix this I will make sure to have better endurance when doing multiple runs of a show in a single day and make sure I am properly hydrated and warmed up. This means that both runs would have been just as effective as each other.
Finally, as a potential future theatre product I believe our production has legs. The piece would speak to audiences of all ranged as the themes of mental health and creativity resonate not just on a young platform but speaks to older audiences too. In the end of our piece we gave a group performance that was educative and poignant highlighting all the key aspects we were trying to convey. I believe we could use this piece as a platform to talk about mental health on a level that goes beyond just hitting the audience with arbitrary statistics but rather challenges them to really look at mental health and actually empathise with suffers. As it was an experimental piece of theatre it is a very malleable production and could be shaped and changed to fit any audience we would want to see it. We could extend the end creativity test to include more audience participation and maybe even attempt to have seem verbatim sections within our promenade performances. This would elevate our performance to a level that is complex but still enjoyable to watch.
In conclusion I believe we created a poised and boundary pushing piece that applied all the techniques we learnt this term effectively. This has been a steep learning curve about working in an experimental style and I can't wait to discover ways to apply this to all the work I hopefully do in the future.
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