Experimental Performance Evaluation:
The performance was broken up into 5 segments:
·
Cabinet Duets 1
·
Wills Group
·
Cabinet Duets 2
·
Simons Group
·
Sarah’s Group
I was involved in the first and last segments.
I feel myself and Wills duet was even better than we
anticipated. Our concept was one that left all trust within our bodies
instincts and special awareness. As we had sheets over our entire heads we were
completely blind meaning once we went under there was no sudden choices we
could make. At first I felt slightly
rigid and aware of my surroundings as voices crept up behind me. The duration
of this performance was on a loop and so felt like hours. This meant I had to
ground my thoughts and channel them into the art. As I dipped my hand into the
paint I felt power, instead of preparing what I was going to paint I just
allowed my arms and body to flow into shapes and patterns. I feel moving
organically and feeling my bodies’ natural rhythm is what helped me to
successfully paint my representation of hell while blind. The audience’s
reaction to this seemed successful as when I turned to walk away as I took my
sheet of there were many surrounding and reading our information sheet than I
had expected.
Our performance went smoothly with very minor errors. The
area we had rehearsed was completely different to our performance space so this
became a minor obstacle for special awareness. I feel one of the issues was the
movement of the audience. Our performance included audience members being moved
around constantly and although we assumed that if one was moved others would
follow, on the actual performance many tended to stand there grounded unless
directly told otherwise. I think this was down to the ratio between audience
members and ensemble as sometime sit was difficult to move two audience
members.
The room blacked out perfectly which was fantastic as it
meant our head torches could come into full effect. I feel this really
differentiated our piece as the darkness almost made it more personal for the
audience, making them feel in a more enclosed space. There was some difficulty
with the head torches in the mother and son scene as mine was slightly knocked
of my head, however this was not a massive issue. This scene was the most
intense out of them all. Performing it three times became increasingly
exhausting however Esme was a fanatic partner and helped keep it alive. While in this scene I thought about cost of
the actor and how to push myself further in order to get better results. The
audience also seemed slightly tense in this scene as at some points I was
coming very close to them, I feel we maybe should of dispersed them more for this
as it is a highly physical scene and there could have been some health and
safety risks but luckily there was none that occurred.
The audience seemed reluctant to answer my questions at the
beginning. Many did not seem used to experimental theatre and so were surprised
to be so heavily involved. I thought this was great as it gave a raw outlook on
our performance.
I feel my dedication stayed throughout. I was true to the
thing I was creating rather than taking on a character, as this is not what
experimental term is about. The ensemble worked together fantastic and I could
feel the energy bouncing between us. I thought the ending including everyone
could have had great meaning however this was lost in a lack of preparation. I
think the original concept including jars and creating this physically was a
very interesting idea but I understood this was difficult to perform. It was a
clean ending but maybe a bit safe.
From this term I feel the teachings of the great
experimental practitioners and creating experimental work has really widened my
thoughts on theatre and how it has no boundaries. I now see theatre more as an
art for than I ever did before.
