Experimental Performance Evaluation:

Experimental Performance Evaluation:

 I have thoroughly enjoyed term 3 and feel it has brought new and exciting colours into my performance ability. Overall I feel our performance was a success. The cast where fully mentally involved within every scene and I think our meaning carried throughout the piece. The experimental nature of our piece made me concerned that it could have been perceived as a master piece or random nonsense however the cast’s dedication and how we were directed made it something I was very proud to be a part of.

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.