Performance Evaluation

Today was our final performance, which we have spent about five weeks preparing for, but only have had one rehearsal a week. We spent the whole day today rehearsing and trying to polish everything off, including learning lines and working out transitions. Before today, we hadn't put all the sections together and no one was certain about how it would work being performed in the library.  We did two run through in the library, after working through the piece in a rehearsal room and got notes from our directer, which helped to clean up any last minute problems. With out the run through, we would have struggled to do the performance, because it gave us a clear idea of what we each needed to take responsibility for and what our ques were.

We started the piece down in the foyer, talking to the audience about our favorite book character. I think this was an effective opening because we started off by breaking down the fourth wall and interacting with the audience, reminding them we are just actors. By telling them about our favorite book characters it gave the actors and audience an opportunity to find common ground and get  the audience thinking about their favorite book characters and how those books have affected them. The opening could have been made even better if there were more audience member to talk to and if every actor had a prop or piece of costume to show their book characters, instead of just a few actors. We were also given the direction to walk around in the same physicality of our character, which no one did. Exaggerated physicality is a Brecht technique and is useful to add comedy and confuse the audience. 

We used the library because it suited our piece, which was on the topic of education, libraries and books. I library was also effective in Brechtian terms because it is a nontraditional performance space, which would get the audience to think and alienate them. The layout of the library meant that the audience could travel round, following the path of the play, without all the cation being revealed all at once. Actors could move to an aisle of books whilst one scene was happening by the desk and give the audience an element of surprise. It also meant that the audience didn't  get too comfortable in one  place or become to immersed in the drama, which is what Brecht would aim for, so that the audience would question, instead of turn off. 

All the people who did a section of 'spine', wore the same denim jacket to show that we were all the same character. we also did an exercise in the morning to find a strong physicality for Amy and the old woman. We established that Amy would have her arms crossed and put all her weight over to one leg and the old woman would be stooped over with one hand on her back. We applied the knowledge we learnt from our character and gesture exercises, to create a strong, over the top physicality. However, by the time we came to do our run troughs, we were concentrating on ebering our ines and putting on the denim jacket, so we didnt get into the physicalty. I triedto cross my arms and give my charcater a cockney accent but I didn't commit to the exagerated physicalty. this meant taht mine and the other 'spine' monologues became more naturalistic, instead of brecthtian.  

I think that the strongest part of the performance was the end section, where we had the scene on the school bus and Malala got shot. I think this was so effective because it included the whole cast and we used physical theatre. The groups standing either side of the bus, who dropped the books to make a gun shot sound, all listened to one another and did everything in time. When Malala was shot, all the girls rushed to her and lifted her above our heads. We improved this part after our first run through, by lifting her as high as we could, instead if just by our heads, which meant that it was much more engaging to watch.

I feel that with more preparation time, this performance  could have been improved. Having this extra time would have meant that we could work on creating stronger characters and put in sections that we began to create, but never got time to fit them in. The material we had was good, but I feel that the peice was a bit minimal. Some members of the cast wrote monologues from the point of view of members of the community who rely on libraries. I think these monologues would have been good to incorporate, whilst the audience were coming in or maybe before the Malala section. 

To conclude, I think that our performance was affective because we applied Brecht's techniques, including signs and coming out of character. We used 'spas' to add comedy to the piece, so that the audience didn't become overwhelmed with too many facts. The performance ran smoothly and if anyone did forget their lines, they improvised, so that it wasn't obvious to the audience. It could have been improved by adding more interesting transitions and bulking out the peice with more sections. I think that if lines had been learnt earlier, we would have spent more time in rehearsals devising more stuff, instead of correcting the stuff we already had. I think that in order to make the audience question the subject, we should have done more things to alienate them, including exaggerated gestures and physicalities.