Evaluation of Final Performance

I believe that our final performance was extremely successful and that we had increasingly developed and learnt several elements of performance through our performance which enable us to perform "The Most Horrific".

I believe I was most successful in creating a journey throughout my speeches on the block. I felt that this was important so as not to continuously shout at an audience for 30 minutes, shoving information into their heads and quintessentially making them inactive or switching off. I feel that with each sentence I was given, I aimed to create a stance; deciding level of desperation and the height of extremity whilst also keeping my energy up and ready. I did this with an analysis of my lines, and experimenting with the stresses that I put on words and the most sensational phrases that require volume, whether that be up or down. I also experimented with the use of whispering making it so that I could whisper "two fingers inside her" and make it as grotesque, hopefully juxtaposing the extreme and overdone physical scene that I had just portrayed.

Physically staying alert was quite difficult but I think remained constant throughout, trying to include the entire audience without blocking them and keeping the board was hard however I found that in the final performance I was easily able to create opportunities to escape from the popular front and engage the back of the stage, balancing the stage and keeping the audience entertained. I also immensely enjoyed our "Ugandan lesbian" scene and enjoyed the heightened tension of the ending and felt it really broke the barrier between the audience feeling incredibly uncomfortable and overstepping the line of desperation. I think that it was effective as the audience were involved in this gradual build up of physicality and voice and created a really incredible moment of gestus. 

I believe that Kims character was immensely effective as it completely contrasted everyone on the C D side of the stage, her earlier improvised moment wherein she order sushi, interrupting a speech created a moment of spass, breaking up the speech and exposing the hypocrisy and cruel nature of those who seem more excited about lunch than hearing about those suffering around the world. Also the incredibly gestic moment wherein Billy holds up a "Save Our Girls" and Romy and Kim both ignore the sign until the name "Cheryl Cole" is mentioned, both sides deliberately opposing each other as well as the connection between the almost trivial name "Cheryl Cole".   

Our interesting use of placards in our devised scene worked effectively amongst the promenade section, as the ending where Zion and I both escape through the audience diverting their attention to the next group. I feel it would've had even more clarity if they included labels of our names so that even if the audience didn't look upwards they would still understand what we were presenting, and which news story we were recreating. Also the use of song, as one of Brechts techniques, I felt gave it an extra energy and edge hopefully making the songs used stick in their heads. 

In Sarah's group I found the use of multi-rolling incredibly effective it distanced me personally from attaching a person to a particular character. I also found the use of dressing Jacob into the dress really created enjoyable spass and exercised the idea of dressing a character and developing it directly onstage rather than covering he audiences eyes, but exposing every second of it. I also found the rap written by Rory was shocking but almost shocked us into becoming active members of the audience and directly reacting to what was being said and displayed to us through different forms, breaking up and highlighting their groups development from the script and stories within them. 

I thoroughly enjoyed the split scenes of the almost Goggle box-esque audience in Wills performance and found it incredibly interesting to see what was being created by all of their separate reactions and the ensemble feeling of all of their heightened characters that worked incredibly well in unison. I also enjoyed the gestic moment between Jasmine and Ben wherein he had a gun to the head as he stage raped her, this section was incredible because you could see the enjoyment drain out of his face and the after moment wherein he adjusted her skirt after committing the act, I think this exposed the corrruption of the media and the idea of demanding horrific things to occur and feeding off of the money that they brought into the newspapers and maybe not for this story but the sensationalism that journalist must go through to create "worthy" news stories. 

I think that this term taught me a lot about the development of theatre and Brecht's work to produce thought provoking and entertaining theatre and the various techniques used to do so. I also believe that as a group we successfully incorporated many of these ideas into our final piece and felt our energy delivering the lines pulled our performance through. The only element I believe we could develop was sustaining our physicality at a "seven", I feel that sometimes we may have dipped throughout the performance, however I feel it can be easily accomplished if more intense work into physicality was rehearsed in our own time. I feel that I have learnt numerous elements of political theatre this term, and would love to continue to incorporate this into further pieces of theatre. 

"No.. But" & Mother Courage And Her Children

 

The "not....but" moment that we explored in the play helps to highlight the ideas of gestus and contradiction within Brecht's characters, ultimately making a greater comment on society.

 

Exploring a "not...but" moment in The Caucasian Chalk Circle as the scene wherein the Governors wife receives a message telling her that her palace has been overthrown and revolutionaries are on their way. In the play she flees, leaving her son Michael. Lots of other possibilities may include  take Michael, accept her fate, suicide, negotiate, stay and fight.  These "No...But" moments allow the audience to see the exact same scene with other possibilities changing the outcome. It allows the audience to see the character as a multi dimensional person and so allowing them to look critically at the characters without taking them for granted.

We found that staging the scene announcing the location and time period by the daughter (Katrin) that later became the dead person allowed the scene to become less about the audience caring personally for the daughter but rather allowed them to engage critically. The use of multi-rolling also allowed the audience to become less attached and more distance. Through use of song at the end allowed us to enter in more of Brecht's techniques, and added more spass to the performance. We also had many gestic moments within the scene displaying a sense  of status and characters dimension so that the mother could show a "No...but" moment through a short gestic moment, showing her underlying care for her daughter. Other groups also included their versions of the Mother Courage and her Children scene and we found that although they included techniques that Brecht introduced they could've made their gestic moments even more heightened and clearer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rehearsal

 

 

Today as a collective we separated the lines through just separating the class into A's and B's and then D's and C's. As a D in the second latter group we gave 2 others a C part to split between themselves, almost as split personalities of the same person. Then we gave a few lines to everyone around a circle as to share the parts equally.

 

We then started to perform the piece working out all the kinks and twists that may occur and found that as a body of people saying lines that only on character is meant to say made it difficult because of the queues and continuing the energy of the person before you whilst also giving it your own flavour. Also because we had to climb onto a box it made the exchange between the next person difficult and so everyone had to be alert at all times in order to be ready and prepared to jump in and say their line whilst also being actively present in the background. However the jumpy queues added to the concept of this adaptation of the script as we found some people false starting and crouched down which allowed levels and a sense of diversity as a collective. The strengths of this gave us more opportunities to be more active in the scene without taking too much way from the other side which were acting slovenly and bored. Moreover another possible hardship we faced as a company was the fact that giving a lot of energy but acting exhaustingly bored was hard to display and so the other group had to try hard to be present and unaware at the same time, whilst also exaggerating this persona.

 

Also as a group we wanted to develop the stories further from what was said about them in the play and so decided to devise short scenes based on some of the news stories. My group was selected to create a piece of theatre based round the refugees at Christmas island. We sectioned our group into mothers, children and immigration officers and then devised a silent scene showing the mothers leaving the children, (including a No, but idea) killing themselves and the soldiers then allowing them to pass through. On receiving feedback as a group we decided to make it clear what story we were presenting, we then discussed the use of labels to differentiate between us. We also wanted to incorporate song into the piece and used silent night as it is reminiscent of family and giving, two themes relevant to the story, and so the soldiers hummed the tune. We placed this scene under a corridor allowing there to be a transition.
 

In the afternoon we developed short scenes that highlighted four of the stories referred to in The Most Horrific:

·         Force feeding in Guantanamo

·         Yarlswood detention centre

·         Refugees on Christmas Island

·         Treatment of gay Ugandans   

Another group developed the Force feeding in Guantanamo and I found that creatively it was incredibly and I enjoyed the sense of censorship and the sounds of the beeping recalled an idea of life machines and the horrible hardship they face being force fed. However as a group to enhance the idea they should just thoroughly time the mouthing to the beeping sound and I found the clear facts introducing the scene made it increasingly more clean.

 

As a group we discussed gestus and possible moment that we could incorporate into it. As a class we conversed about the characters within this scenario and that this media masterminds may be quite snobbish and selfish, and how we could create obvious and externalised moments of this. An idea offered up was that people discussed on the phone in mid conversation or that someone may serve the media bosses coffee, creating an idea of gestus as the status was clearly displayed and made a comment on the present society, and the idea that people will do anything to be heard, even if it isn't regarding their own job specification.

 

In the next rehearsal I think it would be nice to incorporate more of Brechts techniques such as labelling said places or locations possible plaques making it clear on who is what and distancing the characters from the actors and making it glaringly clear to the audience. Also possibly including Spass into this piece of theatre as Brecht realised that whilst laughing we could also be thing in the mean time and so we would be having fun whilst deeply considering the concepts behind it.

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