Evaluation of Our Experimental Performance Piece

Evaluation

Overall I am very much satisfied with our experimental piece. I believe we all showed commitment to our characters, maintained a strong actor- audience relationship and had enough freedom within our characters and the choices that we made as actors during the performance.

The three most effective moments of our piece was a moment in which we managed to encourage audience members to sing and dance with us during the Tom Waites song (a song they most probably didn’t know), when we had a moment when we simultaneously improvised a conversation solely based on an actor forgetting to do something and lastly when we as a cast got involved in a characters storytelling and this created enough of an atmosphere that you could feel the tension in the room.

The first moment was effective because we were able to, in such a short time, build an actor- audience relationship so much that a few audience members got up from their seats and decided to join in singing. I feel that this happened because the audience members had felt a connection or a relationship being built in the bar environment between the characters and themselves because we had often spoken to or made some form of contact with them as characters. I find this interesting because I certainly didn’t expect that involving the audience throughout the piece would make them feel comfortable enough to join in. I think building a strong audience-actor relationship was definitely very important to our piece because our interaction with the audience helped them to both understand and acknowledge the environment our piece was set in and also create a more comfortable and realistic setting. I feel that the audience although they were probably quite confused about what they were seeing probably went away feeling as though they had made some form of a connection with us through our character which, to me, is quite pleasing to know. I think the rest of the audience who were not joining in singing and dancing with us were just happy to watch other audience members joining in as it was moment of unison in which we sort of broke down a barrier by literally reaching out and pulling an audience member in instead of telling them to remain as mere witnesses. This kind of breaking down of barriers is something that isn’t very usual to see in theatre when an actor physically touches an audience member. Personally, I feel it is a very beautiful moment as the audience crosses over fully into our world and we get to share with them our happy vibes from the song. This moment fitted in well with the teachings of Grotowski because we worked to make a deeper and fuller connection with the audience creating an audience-actor relationship so much so that some of them were fully involved in the piece both physically and I think mentally.

The second effective moment of our piece was when an actor who was supposed to get out his guitar and start playing the Tom Waites song completely forgot to. In this moment a member of the cast remained in character and drunkenly said something along the lines of ‘Hey, why don’t you play us a song?’ The actor picked up his guitar and in character said ‘Sure, yeah I’ll play something’ as if he had no intention of doing it in the first place. I believe this was an effective moment because it was a moment in which two actors were able to improvise with one another without even knowing they would need to for the benefit of the entire cast because without the actor beginning to play the character the end of our piece would not have been able to happen. I believe that it took a very high level of professionalism to know how to remind an actor to do something whilst completely remaining in character. This was also effective because the audience stayed completely oblivious to the fact that a mistake was made because we all worked so well at covering it up. This was a great example of teamwork in that we are all able to support one another. As an actor, it’s quite relieving to know that if you do make a mistake or you need reminding or any sort of help whilst in a performance that other cast members will have your back. I think this cover up only really effected the audience in that it further displayed the way in which characters in our Tom Waites world interacted with each other and also the way in which they’re relationships work. To the audience, they may have seen it as just a rehearsed part of the script or an interesting improvisation in which one character decided to show interest in another’s property.

The last effective moment was when a character played by Adjei began to tell a story stimulated by an object which happened to be a remote control. I feel that in that moment Adjei had great confidence and trust in him that whatever he was going to say would be good enough for the story. I could tell that through his improvisation he had found the freedom to allow the story to take him wherever it needed to go. From the look in his face I could see that he wasn't worrying about how successful the story was going to be he was just going along with whatever came out of his mouth. This freedom meant that he wasn't panicking or stuttering and instead seemed as though he was telling us a story he had come up with weeks ago. I believe that because his story was told with such confidence the rest of us were able to create a soundscape in which we were all independently taking on the role of different sounds and not having to worry about whether or not we were making a suitable soundscape for the story. I think the combination of the intense story told with such confidence and the varying soundscape we had created produced a piece that gave the room a tense atmosphere in which everyone in the room actors and audience were experiencing the story surrounding them. The lighting at this point served to make this moment even more effective because as the tension built up in the room the more noticeable the red lighting was becoming. In rehearsals I had not noticed this, maybe because as actors in the rehearsals we were not all in sync with each other and weren't really able to respond to or acknowledge our environment, but I feel that the use of red lighting in the actual performance helped to intensify and heighten the suspense at the climax of the story. I feel that these factors combined created an environment that meant that the audience became so engrossed in the story as we all made a huge deal of heightening it. The audience’s entire attention was drawn into this scene as we created a piece that stimulated sound through noises and storytelling, feeling through the intensity of the moment and sight through presenting the actions of the story. I believe that this also an example of Peter Brookes teachings where the actor works as a sort of medium channelling emotion and telling a vivid story that engulfs the audience into it.

I believe that one of the least effective moments of the story was at the beginning of the piece when the majority of the characters were seated and only one or two were standing. I found this to be ineffective because it meant that not a lot of us were being brave enough to take initiative and stand. I feel that it was quite hard to stand up because I felt that if I did so I would draw to much attention to myself but I did anyway because I felt that too many of us were sitting down. I feel this affected the audience because they would not have been able to experience a variety of characters. For example, because the majority of characters were sat down all of the characters came across to the audience as if though they were sociable whereas if we had had more characters standing it would have meant that there were a variety of characters some that wanted to socialise and others that didn't. I believe that this could have been improved more if we had worked harder to develop our own characters so that as actors we would know our characters thoroughly and be able to tell whether they would actually want to socialise with the audience or not. Also, I believe that this could have been further improved if we all had more confidence and felt as though we were freer within ourselves. This way we wouldn't have felt inhibited and restricted to sitting down instead of being bold and standing up for a while.

Another moment that could have been improved because it was less effective was when we all began to huddle together to fall asleep on one another at the end of our performance. I felt that this was a great way to end the piece because it added to the whole madness of our piece however because we hadn't rehearsed this part very much we were not able to work out how long it would take the audience to walk out of the room therefore we had to stand in very awkward positions but none of us knew how long for. Because of this many of us began to talk and come out of character before it was time to seeing as the audience had not yet walked out yet. This was quite unprofessional to do because it meant that the audience were not able to experience our piece fully because the characters that were fundamental to maintaining the piece were coming out of character. For me, it wasn't fair on the audience to give them so much of an experience and then take from it by coming out of character. To improve this I would have made sure that one person is responsible for letting everyone else in the cast know that the audience have left and only then would we all be able to come out of character. This would have meant that our piece would have had a higher level of professionalism and the piece may have been more highly thought of.

The strengths of my individual piece were that I was able to find enough freedom within my character to really tap into what my character would and wouldn’t do. I feel that this meant I was able to use my character more effectively and that her characteristics were more prominent as I was not inhibited within myself. I believe a strength was that I was brave enough to interact with the audience whilst staying in character and also maintaining my character throughout the whole piece. Another strength was that I was able to stay on top of everything and so I knew exactly what was going to happen next so I could always move swiftly and efficiently to where I needed to be. This was definitely a positive thing because my confidence in what I was doing lead to the confidence in other people to know what they were doing because they were able to follow by my example. This meant that as a whole we were all really depending on one another and using each other’s characters to get to where we needed to be. I think my weakness was that I sometimes deliberately didn’t make bolder character choices because I felt that too many eyes were on me at that time. Although throughout the piece I felt I didn’t become totally free because there were far more audience members than I expected there to be. In rehearsals I hadn’t though too much about audience size and so I hadn’t prepared myself for the large number of people watching.

One strength of our group piece was that we were all there to rely on each other and were able to make sure that when one actor fell behind or forget something we were able to depend on each other meaning there was a good relationship kept between actors. One weakness would be that we were a little bit unprofessional towards the end and spent too long on rehearsing the entire performance and not enough on the last bit so we were all unsure on how long we should have to wait for the audience to leave this may have changed the audiences view on our professionalism.

Mental Illness Discussion

Today we sat down and had a open discussion about what mental illness was to us as individuals and how we feel about it. I feel that it was important to do this before our performance because the foundation of our experimental piece is mental health therefore it would be helpful to discuss what it is and what it means for those affected by it and those suffering from it. Personally, it was interesting hearing what people similar to myself feel about it as everyone in the room discussing it was around the same age group as me. Seeing as it is a very personal thing that can affect people in a various number of ways it was important that we addressed the subject in a sensitive way because it was important not to offend or make anyone feel guilty or uncomfortable for sharing their experience with mental illness.

Personally, I said that I felt that it was interesting that someone else's mental illness is something that you don't really notice is a problem or problematic until you learn that mental illness is a problem in itself and that you can just associate the 'symptoms' of the illness as just behavioural traits that come natural to the individual that you know and because you are so used to that person behaving in that way, it takes time, knowledge, a bit of growing up and some maturing to ever come to terms with the fact that that person actual suffers from a mental illness.

Others mentioned that:

• its not just the sufferer that is affected by the mental illness, a lot of the time the people around them e.g. family and friends are affected.
• mental illnesses often effect people differently
• there is often a spectrum of varying versions of one illness; some that are more severe and some that are less 

We were next asked what society could do to help sufferers:

I mentioned that often the accurate diagnosis of a mental illness can sometimes help the sufferer in knowing what is causing them to behave or think in the way that they do. Sometime its helpful to have clarification that you are suffering from something real. I think this makes it easier to help address the mental illness because it means you know exactly what your up against and what it is that is a problem for you.

Others said that:

•  its helpful to have your own feelings toward the illness and have them validated without people telling you that they once felt the same and that they understand it or giving examples of 'similar' experiences that they have been through or no of. This is helpful because its nice to know that your feelings are yours.
• its helpful that the people around you know that the family and friends of the sufferer can be affected by their illness too. 

I agree with all of the above statements and feel that it was great to just speak about the subject as a class and not feel criticized about my individual feelings towards the subject because there was a mutual understanding in the room that everyone had their own experiences and feelings about mental illnesses. Discussing the subject, made it clearer to me perhaps why and how mental illness may be linked to creativity. Here's how:

I feel that everyone has a different idea about what mental illness is and how much it actually means however only the people affected by mental health know what it really means. This must mean that a lot of the time mental illness and mental health are often misunderstood and or misinterpreted as something else leaving sufferers and people close to the sufferer feeling as though they cannot be understood by other people and that they need to express feelings towards the illness and in a lot of other cases feelings towards other things through another medium. This medium can often be creativity. Through creativity you don't have to speak, you don't have to justify and anything and you don't have to expose your own self and make your self vulnerable to other people that will choose to be close-minded or just not understand. Creativity offers freedom. In some suffers of mental illnesses that I have spoken to they have often told me that they don't very much feel free. If creativity offers freedom then it is easy to see why anyone would resort to doing something creative in order to escape.

The Structure of Our Piece:

1. Audience enters and all the characters stare at them making them feel uncomfortable
2. Bar girls filter the audience into the seats dotted around the bar
3. Tom Waits quotes are projected around the room until they overflow and we stop
4. We begin to play the copying game
5. Yasmin enter with box of mysterious object and it is revealed to us after the ritual and Reece predicts the weather
6. Eve introduces the bar/chemical girl and we all begin to react off of it
7. Bar/chemical girl drinks chemical hormone
8. The lighting changes to the colour of the hormone
9. Someone begins to use the object as a stimulus to  tell a story
10. One main actor acts out the character in the middle and 3 Butoh Dancers begin to act out the emotion and movement of actions mentioned in the story
11. We then all begin to do whatever the weather Reece mentioned to us symbolises
12. Dies down again]
13. Scene in between characters
14. Repeat 5-13 a total of 3 times
15. Luther sings on and we join in we fall asleep in a huddle
16. Bar girls lead the audience out.

Lesson 6 9/02/16

Lesson 6

We discussed at the beginning of the lesson that during our rehearsals that we would try not to respond to the pressure of letting go or performing in front of anyone. We were given feedback to:

·         Learn to go

·         Have fun when you are performing and enjoy what you’re doing

We had to ask ourselves:

What do we need to do today?

-work out strength and weaknesses of the piece by seeing what works and what doesn’t

We began to set up the bar and put cardboard all over walls to give the space a blanker feel to it and give the space another level of an atmosphere.

We then asked ourselves:

Why is our performance piece experimental?

Because:

·         It’s not traditional we don’t know what’s going to happen- this links to Grotowski’s teaching of channelling emotion like a medium (which is what the improvisation storytellers do during the performance piece)

·         We are altering a space to make theatre- this links to Peter Brooke teaching of being able to take any space and make a piece of theatre there.

·         We have being studying Tom Waits and our piece is based on him. We have previously acknowledged that Waits has a contrasting view to many people similar to the experimental practitioner Artaud.

We then asked ourselves:

 How can we make our piece good? 

·          By keeping things simple but bold and commit to the action

We next did a character exploration exercise in order to further develop our characters and add more layers to their personalities. We were asked to walk in our own characters up to the front of the bar table, get a drink, walk over to a large box, stand on it say a Tom Waits quote, walkover to the microphone and say another quote from Tom Waits.

We received feedback on our characters for this exercise:

·         Inhabit your character

·         Let go of anything that is stopping you from freeing yourself

·         Keep feet still to be grounded and rooted to receive energy so your character can feed off of it

·         Give more energy

·         Allow your character to come out fully and focus less on the drunkenness of the character  and more on the personality hiding behind the drunkenness

We then did a run through but without lights and all of the appropriate props and costume.

Feedback on Run- through:

-Butoh Dancers during the story telling need to be the movement of the action instead of the main character

-Don’t be scared to get into the middle of the stage because you need to own the entire space

- Develop your character more because otherwise it doesn’t feel like a bar

-We need to get more contrast in the piece (between more than just characters)

-Go a lot further with the build ups of tension

-Be much more free

Lesson 5 2/02/16

Japanese Butoh:

Today we learnt about a Japanese style of theatre called Japanese Butoh. We learnt that it was very spiritual and involved rituals. Many other cultures have been influenced by this style of theatre. They view energy and its benefits as fundamental to Butoh.

There are two types of Japanese Butoh:

·         no theatre

·         kabuki theatre

It’s known that Butoh Dance came from Butoh Theatre.

Butoh Dance:

-          Butoh Dance means that you move with absolute freedom, only doing what your body naturally wants to do. This means that every Butoh dancer would dance differently and have individuality in their own movement.

-          Butoh Dance often looks at opposites and tries to find beauty in the grotesque.

-          It also asks the individual where can they find free movement.

We next did a Butoh Dance exercise:

Some music was put on to allow us to focus on something other than our own thoughts. We were then asked to move with the music allowing ourselves to be absolutely free, moving at a pace we felt we wanted to move at without any constraint. I found that this exercise was helpful in allowing me to understand the importance of moving and also being free. In being free, I found that I could be more genuine and honest with myself, as I began to think less about what I was doing. It also put in a very relaxing state, enabling me to tap deeper into my freedom. I felt the exercise stopped us taught us how not to constrain ourselves both physically and mentally.

Cling Film Exercise:

In this exercise we had to put a piece of cling film over a clenched fist and try to force our hand out of the cling film by trying to burst the bubble. The hand had to work against the force of the cling film much like how an actor may need to work against the force of constraint due to insecurities or lack of knowledge or will to free oneself. We all noticed that when trying to force our hand out, there was a build-up of tension and then the cling film suddenly popped. After this, the hand finally finds freedom which is mimetic of how an actor will only find freedom once they work against the force of constraint (whatever is stopping them from being free)

We then tried to recreate this moment but instead left out the part in which we covered our hand with the cling film. We found that because there is no tension or force you can only imagine it. I personally found, that there was no sense of unpredictability that there was the first time in not knowing when your fingers will burst through because you seem to be deciding when and which finger will pop out.  It also felt quite unnatural to create this feeling of ‘restriction’ when actually there is nothing there to restrict you. This sort of reminds me of how all the things that are there to stop you from being free are all actually in your head and the only thing that is stopping you from freeing yourself is your own self and the barriers you decide to create.

Following in A Circle:

We had to stand in a circle and turn over with our right shoulder so that we were facing the back of our neighbours head. We all had to walk behind this person maintaining the same distance between ourselves and them. I found that when concentrating on maintain the same distance as our neighbour meant that my feet very heavy because we had to work harder to be in more control and create more awareness in what our legs were doing. Personally, I found that I often hesitated to put my foot down because I was trying quite hard to make sure my foot was always positioned an equal distance from my neighbours. I found myself copying my neighbour therefore whenever he hesitated I in return hesitated.

Skipping 4 Year Old:

In this activity we had to skip around the room like 4 year olds until we were asked to slow right down into a much slower pace. We were asked to this a number of times. I found that I felt as equally as out of control, moving at both speeds, due to the great contrasts between the two throwing me off of balance. This exercise is linked to Butoh as it shows the transition between freeness (in being a four year old) and control (in walking very slowly).

Rehearsal:

In rehearsals, we had to practise singing a Tom Waits song called Blue Skies. The song at first sounds quite positive and happy but the lyrics talks of a person not having any possessions or money but still being happy. I feel that the song relates to the theme of mental health because in some circumstances in some mental illness cases people often don’t feel the way that a person without poor mental health would feel. It could be argued that a person with good mental health would be quite saddened by not having many possessions. (The song will be sung at the end of the performance both in ensemble and in a solo).

Some of us with characters that were not as developed as they had the potential to be were then assigned a character with a minimal characteristic. I was given ‘a gossiping and judgemental old neighbour’. This matched the characteristic I had already planned for Gladys previously. The line I was given (a lyric from a Tom Waits song) was ‘what’s he building in there’.

We spoke about how we should behave when the audience arrived in the room and we decided that we would stare at them in order to make them feel uncomfortable as if the bar/brain was a bar that no one would really want to walk into.

Diction 20 Game:

The next exercise we played was one where we as a class had to sit in a circle and count to 20 in no particular order and whenever someone repeated a number or said a number at the same time as someone else the game would have to be reset back to 1. We had to restart the game quite a few times but this practise helped us to work on slowing down the pace of our voices and also diction so that we could make clear to everyone else what number we were saying. This can also be applied to our performance in terms of using clear diction as a more effective way to communicate.

In our rehearsal I feel that we really had to rely on each other a lot to move the whole process of the run through of our performance. for example, when forgetting what we were supposed to say as an ensemble being able to look at someone else and know from them what you should do was helpful.

Doing exercises before the rehearsal meant that we were able to get rid of any negative energy from outside the room helping us to get on a bit better with each other. (grotowskis teaching)

Doing exercises together in general has helped us to become a good team as a class because we have been able to see that we have to support each other because we felt that our group responsibility us increases to really work together.

Hannah's told an on the spot story about a house fire- i felt was so organic because she gave herself space to think of more material through her repetition of Tom waits lyrics. she kept it very simple and this meant that the story was so much more significant and put together.

Overall I feel that today's rehearsal was more of an organised chaos because we don't always know what we are doing but we know what we are supposed to do in the order.