On Tuesday the 8th December we staged our final performance piece to a family audience and a few members of the theatre staff. I think that it went extremely well in the end, I worried that the audience wouldn't understand a lot of the potentially offensive content and the overall message of our piece but after asking some of the audience what they thought they seemed to not only have picked up on some of our thoughts on capitalism (through our satirical presentation) but also enjoyed the theatrical elements of the piece.
I really enjoyed using the performative elements of Brechtian theatre as i've always enjoyed employing similar comedy techniques to my acting but not knowing how to do so with the same efficiency whilst not subtracting from the message. I was worried that the comedy would overshadow our viewpoint of right wing politics being inhumane and immoral. In this sense I feel that I have developed as a performer and I have learnt a number techniques and staging ideas that I will assuredly adapt and use in future devising tasks.
All of the scenes I was involved in personally ran smoothly and the comedic elements as a whole were well received. Most of my scenes were improvised and there was an element of danger in us messing up our speech or stuttering but it all went extremely smoothly.
There weren't many issues with our piece and the few that we previously had were ironed out before our final performance. We cleared up the transitional hiccups with our cues for lines, exits and entrances, and props. The running all together was smooth and there were no moments where we didn't know what came next as there were in prior rehearsals. Many of my scenes such as the game show sequences picked up quickly as there was no intro music and therefore no lee way luckily by this point I had the running order drummed into my head.
All of the scenes I was involved in personally ran smoothly and the comedic elements as a whole were well received. Most of my scenes were improvised and there was an element of danger in us messing up our speech or stuttering but it all went extremely smoothly.
The one thing I would like to have improved on our show was the ending scene where we collectively read out the 270 word obituaries. Aesthetically I think it was amazing but I think we could have done something to explain it our make it clearer to the audience as I think a lot of it went over the audiences heads.
I liked the finishing touch of using the "love costs nothing" placard as it put the whole show into perspective and brought it back to the idea of humanity over wealth and greed.
As a whole I enjoyed this performance as I was comfortable in my role and knew what i was doing. I also trusted my peers who i performed with and those who performed whilst i sat at the back in a minor role. I'm proud of our group as a company including Chris and Ben as our workshop leader / directors. Despite the stress and obstacles that stood in our way, in the end, we put on a trully amazing peice.
