Evaluation

Group Performance Evaluation:

I feel that our group performance went very well and this was mainly indicated by the audience’s reaction, feeling in the moment of the performance and that our timing was correct. However, there is potential for this piece to be developed and improved if we were to perform it again.

I feel our opening soundscape directed at our audience on our site’s balcony was effective as they felt visibly uncomfortable. When we began interacting with them we achieved our goal of unsettling the audience from how a person usually expects to watch a performance, which is without their personal space being breached. We did this to foreshadow the events happening in the two couples lives and to bring the audience into the unpredictable chaotic world of their relationships as well as to put them on edge.

Following this I took male audience members into the girls toliet. I felt our combination of lighting, sound, visual, smell and touch that we considered when devising were effective in provoking the audience's emotions as they had a strong emotional reaction to this in the surrounding. We were not simply doing this for the sake of it but to instead communicate our story and the stress, anxiety and attempted bravery of the two girls as they tried to come to terms with doubts, break ups and events of their relationships. In hindsight, although we turned taps on, streamed toliet paper across the floor and smeared soap on the mirror, I think we could have destructed the bathroom in a way similar to Seamus and Will as they had written messages all over their toilet walls, doors and cubicles before hand. However both of our performances were different so I don't think this had a negative effect as we were performing seperately at this point with differing individual content.

We accused our partner of cheating us with someone else and the tone of this changed when we accused that person of being in the audience. When uninvitedly entering people's personal space raising in volume to communiacte our anger and frustration, audience members had various reactions of surprise, embarassment and laughing. We were expecting the audience to stay on the landing around the toilets after we had taken them out of there but found that they moved back to where they began watching the performance, below the balcony. We managed to change this by inviting them back up in our role but I think if we were to do our performance again we would improve this by better audience navigation and tell them or use our body language to make them stay.

The physical theatre section within our performance was well recieved and rehearsed due to good timing making the lifts as smooth and continuous. We efficiently moved the audience members to the sides of the corridor to create enough space for us to perform in. I ignored them and changed my focus to my partner as my objective was to stay with Will and we wanted to show the intensity of the two couples relationships. Commiting to this moment meant that our piece ended effectively showing the break up of our partners as Will entered the lift to get away and I retreated to the toilets again as he re-entered to meet Ffion's character on the balcony. What we devised was simple but effective in telling our desired story. As we performed this with emotion we solidified the idea that we were now leaving one another. y and I feel the silence which it carried created an effective contrast to previously shouting and getting annoyed at one another.

Dress Run

Today, was our final dress run before our actual performance which takes place tomorrow. We felt it important to meet up the day before our performance for one last additional dress run to cement what we have learnt into our heads with confidence and smooth transitions. In this time we essentially made sure that all of the connections we had made to our chosen site and its meaning were clear and tried to ensure that our performance strongly conveyed our desired message.

To do this we showed our final prodcut to another group of students and recieved their feedback:
- To improve the section where we are accusing our partners of cheating it will be easier for the audience to understand what we are saying if each couple speaks one at a time. This will help not confuse the audience.
- In the bathroom scene Ffion and I need to let our lines "loves me", "loves me not" build to a higher tension point before we stop to make the audience even more anxious.
- They commented that they liked our interpretation of the site and that the lift was incoorporated in this too. They felt that being taken into the others gender's bathroom and dividing the audience by force was effective and that being taken across our site was intriguing.


Observations that we made:
- We realised when performing to a group that Ffion and I need to make our bathroom scene slightly longer so that we are not on the landing too long before the boys finish their toliet scene.
- All of the performers in our piece need to direct the audience on the landing outside the girls toilet to the sides of the corridor. This will help communicate to one another when to start our physical theatre piece without words and make enough room for this.
- We need to be aware that audience members may not automatically move or stand where we want them to and need to cater for this still in role if it happens.

Week 5 -

Week 5 – I was ill on the day of our site specific lesson (Tuesday) but came in on Friday to meet our group, catch up on what I had missed and rehearse.

Both of the couples of our piece are creating a physical theatre element within our performance which takes place towards the end to show the struggle of their relationship and how out of hand and contrasting the couples have become as they begin to split apart. Since I am playing the clingy one in mine and Will’s relationship, as I am pregnant and determined to stay with him, I cling onto Will during this as he tries to say goodbye. My objective for this is to be romantic and hold him in my grasp while with each move he tries to say “no” and push me away firmly but gently as he wants to move on and leave me. Eventually with time this becomes more desperate and Will's movements towards me become harsher and more definate as he tries to escape. We both communicate this physically and with facial expression and eye contact. The power of not using words at this point comes after a frantic sound cathedral as the couples argue and we feel this contrast shows the change in their relationship before they finally leave eachother.

Previously, in our last rehearsal we were both initiating the movements we had been devising simultaneously and with concentration. This week we realised this is ineffective and confusing and that I need to initiate the movement in an attempt to take control and stay with Will’s character. Doing this will communicate our story and my given circumstances more effectively. My movements became more forward as I iniate the movement and when doing this and I have strong eye contact with Will to communicate my objective. Importantly, this makes the connection of love which we originally devised from our site stronger and more visibly clear for the audience. I think this makes it clear to the audience that we have contrasting intentions and are no longer thinking as one anymore.

Week 4 -

Week 4 -
We met up on Monday after school for extra rehearsals for our comapny to polish our bathroom scenes.
Me and Ffion developed ours significantly and had much more ideas due to the information and research I had found from older people in the school about our site.
We are going to enter the bathroom anxiously, as planned last week, checking our apperance in the mirror and fussing over our body shape as this is something girls typically do. After doing this for a while we both sigh together and start saying our "Loves me" (my line) and "Loves me not" (FFion's line) that we prepared last week and build this in intensity. We had a converstaion with the boys after school previuosly and decided that as there are four of us, two guys and two girls and we are exploring the themes of relationships, Will and I will play a couple and Ffion and Seamus will be the other. In each pairing there shall be one very disturbed and desperate person with stalker like behaviour (which me and Seamus are playing) and a relatively normal and naturalistic one (played by Will and Seamus).We feel this will allow us to inteact more later on in our piece, despite our scenes being currently in different bathrooms, and show the complex dynamic of a relationship. I felt although I am playing the more psychotic character than Will and FFion I still wanted my character to be relatable and have meaning and some naturalism to it. As a result, I came up with a background story for my character. I have been happily in a relationship with Will's character for a while but become mentally effected neagtively when I find i've become accidently pregnant making me paranoid and startled by the news and acting irrationally due to it, accusing him of cheating on me. I think this is far more effective and relaistic and will have a depper meaning to the audience as there will be more of a back story to our perofrmance explaining any unanswered questions they may have.
As a consequence of this character development I am going to draw my attention towards my stomach and show worry to communiacte this. The more abstarct element of mine and FFion's bathroom performance is that we reflect eachother as she is sane and saying "loves me not" with belief that she has moved on from a past relationship for the right reasons and is ready to date again as she gets ready. I reflect another more concerned and fearful side of human nature and our gender as news of my pregnancy frightnes me and causes me to say "loves me" in desperation as I am trying to convince myself that all will be okay and my partner won't leave me due to my unplanned pregnancy. This repition of these lines is going to be spoken over the top of quiet romantic background music to set the scene and contrast our complex emotions. As i become more and more wound up Ffion enters a cubicle and begins chucking out underwear into the audience to symbolise her getting ready to meet someone and portray that she has fully moved on. I think this will startle the audience as we shall chose to take the opposite sex from the audience into their opposing toilet to push them from their comfort zone and show them the other side of the sex's concerns which they may not have seen, understood or experienced before. I will continue to build in intenisty until Ffion pushes me onto the floor making me stop telling me to "get a grip!" to break the tension and show the frustration we both feel. She will turn off the music and lights as we want to make the audience partially share the feelings of our characters and experience our performance through different senses. We will then briskly touch them and play with lighting by lighting a lighter in front of ourselves in the mirror to show release as cigarettes and various other addictions relax people. We also want the audience to see that the warmth of the flame close to our face is a settling comfort and will see it reflected several times due to the reflection in the mirror. We recieved positive and startled feedback to all of this - particularly in response to the bras and underwear - from the boys which is what we wanted. Their feedback was to slow down our timing and creat longer pauses which we agree with to enhance the effctiveness of this. After all company members sharing our ideasthe boys and girls of our company have made different pieces with strong similarities between the two as we both show tension and anxiety and push the audience. I am glad we've this extra rehearsal and feel relieved that now we have cemented it in our heads with feedback so that we can move onto other sections.


In the class we just had we spent all of the time going over our opening and most of all devised a short piece of physical theatre after accusing the audience of cheating on us and our partner.
 To show differences in our relationship and someone stalking another we portrayed the less-mentally stable person as clingy and drew upon stalker like behaviour that we had read of in newspaper articles such as extreme closeness and incessive clinginess. We feel that when you become an active stalker you use a lot of physical ways to get close to people such as grabbing and grasping them. This is why we want to show this physically and with facial expressions rather than using diolouge. We would tell this part of our circle without words as it is not needed. I run up and do a lift where I wrap my legs around Will as he is standing as tries to push me away. This is repeated three times and then we exits into the lift and me ans Seamus retreat back to the toilets. Will and FFion outside on the balcony introducing themsleves and this is the end of our piece. We feel this is appropriate as a strong stimulus for our work has been cirlce and their nerver-ending continuos spage which have been found numerously at our site. This shows the complete cycle as we foreshadow as although they meet seemingly normal andstable this is not necessarily the case as the cycle may also repeat itself it the performance were to continue.

Week 3 -

Week 3 -
In this lesson our group devised our bathroom scenes. This is as a bathroom, for both genders, is representative of everyday humans whom before a date would spend a lot of time in the bathroom making themselves look presentable for the person they are going out with. This can hold many inner complex feelings of nerves, anxiety, pride, doubt, confidence. We are going to explore mutliple sides but think it will be most interesting to explore the more negative emotions as there is more potential for this.

Ffion and I noticed the sinks and mirrors initially as we walked into the bathroom and decided to focus on this as it intruigued us as we wanted to portray the insecurity, vanity, and hesitance this associates. We also want to show the urgency some feel that they MUST check that they are perfect in the mirror whether it be for their own self asteem or the approval of someone else or a mixture of both.
We experimented with lighting and explored insecurity by taking it in turns to recite to the mirror "loves me" and "loves me not". We feel this is more experimental than simply speaking these thoughts in their complexity in a naturalistic style. By looking in the mirror and adjusting ourselves and using our physicality we shall show this instead and the long pauses and silences will show the unsurity of our characters rather than saying what we are feeling directly and in an obvious way.

We reflected on what the boys had devised in the toliet and recived feedback from eachother as a compnay to see where we could take our idea forwards. We liked that the boys had played with lighting to engage the audience's senses which we were soon keen to also do to add to the dialogue, expression and physical movement we had devised in the girls's bathroom. I feel the boys choice of flickering lighting of different colours and keeping the audience in darkness for some periods of time was effective and made me on edge and tense when experienceing it, which was desired as we are trying to show this is how it can feel getting ready for a date. The boys watched our dialogue and physical expression in our bathroom which built with pace, volume and intensity as it grew more and more extreme. They liked this idea of playing with sound as they had chosen to play with lighting and said it had a similar startling effect. Sharing ideas is really helping us to form our piece and explore the meaning of it and where we will take it. There are some difficulties rehearsing in the toilets as they are commonly used and busy so next week, after this productive week, we shall rehearse after school to try and prevent this partiuclar matter. However when we have been unable to devise in the toilets as it is a tight space we have been discussing out piece and how it will work to still be productive.

History/details of Orange Block (where our performance is in): I found that orange block is a fairly new addition of the Brit School site compared to other older parts of the building. It has been built recently and has access to many strands such as music, dance, theatre and interactive media. I was speaking to a girl in year 13 about this site and she said that she has nearly on several occasions over-filled the bathroom sink with water accidently as the taps are hard to turn off but to her knowledge this has never actually happened. From personal experiences that I have heard from talking to people around the school girls, as our group have discussed, have locked themselves in a cubicle of the bathroom before, although this is very rare. The research I have done is useful to us to as it helps our devising process as background information and history inform and inspire us on how to portray the site.

Week 2 -

Week 2-
In this lesson we first decided where the audience would be in order for us to develop and devise our piece. As we see the balcony as a central part to the idea behind our performance so far, we decided to start on it with the audience below us as if we are looking down to them to make them feel unsettled and as though they are part of a love relationship. This will show a sense of power.
To show this power we decided to aim our attention towards the audience from the balcony by eyeing them in a sexual way to make them feel uncomfortable with the intention of making them feel it is real and not just actors performing. We all want to push the audience them from their comfort zone and break Stanislavsky's idea of the "fourth wall" by acknowledging their being. We whispered to one another about them before saying out loud to them comments on how we thought they looked.
This opening sequence will work best and be a strong effective opening if we all commit one hundre percent to this action despite the fact we are looking at our piers in a sexual way which may seem embarassing.

Week 1-

Week 1 - Our site's Qualities, Meanings and Properties

In this lesson we discussed the pictures taken of our site (see previous post) and the properties, qualities and meanings of our site as well as things about the site that stand out to us as interesting with potential for development.We finalised themes and agreed that properties which were intersting included the lift, balcony and the holes in it, the toilets, both male and female (particularly the sink and mirror) the circle lights in the ceiling and the stairs. These had qualities such as hygiene, privacy, continuation, vanity, escape, travel, moving on. We were particularly interested in the circles on the balcony that matched the circles in the ceiling which to us reflected the continuation of a relationship or of life. We decided to focus on the idea of relationships as I noticed that the balcony has the suggested meaning of love due to references such as Romeo and Juliet which could enhance our performance's meaning. Certain properties within the site such as a makeup stick left in the girls bathroom could also contribute to this development as it shows the covering-up process females go under in order to impress and attract the opposite sex. This made us also realise that toliets, particularly for females, are a place to gossip, to fix your appearance and commonly in literature and film and television a place to lock yourself to escpae something momentarily.
Discussing what all of the elements of our site could mean and hearing one anothers ideas was useful to create a foundation for our piece.