Final performance

We spent our last Tuesday lesson perfecting our class pieces and making sure they were clean. We went through it multiple times so that people could clear up any doubts, and so everyone knew where they were and when they were there. We also neatened up particular things such as the strong exaggerated scientists physicality and the shuffling making sure that this was at a 10 not a 6/7.  We needed to be confident with our class piece as it would not be performed in the space we had been rehearsing in, so being confident meant that we could easily transfer the performance to the new space without wasting much time.

Performance

In our final performance I believe that it was an extremely successful show. Every individual was fully committed mentally and physically throughout, which gave raw and natural emotional impact to the audience evoking thought about what they were seeing rather than relaxing and just watching a piece of entertainment. This was mainly achieved through the immersive nature of the piece as this allowed the audience to be In charge and experience the small cabinet of curiosities group pieces as they chose. This also meant that they felt more involved rather than them being separated into actor and audience.

My duet in the exhibition went well and was successful as we responded thoughtfully to ‘The Pikes’. We picked a prominent theme and we devised a more visual and thought provoking piece that was achieved through our physical and vocal choices like Artaud’s work. We had taken on the feedback from our peers and made our performance stronger in all aspects. There were a few things we did change last minute such as costume and the staging. Our costumes were originally all black with tights masks but we changed this so that I was the only one wearing a mask, we agreed that this would push the gender inequality theme more as I had no identity, whereas Josh remained his normal self. The staging changed slightly during the performance due to spontaneity, Josh would run of with his ball at the beginning and I would chase him or he would push my building blocks to the other side of the room which I would have to go and get. This all was natural response to each other; if one of us decided to change something up slightly we just went with it. I think this worked as we where honest with our movements and choices and I think this came across in our performance.

In our class piece I believe that we really thought about our theme of Nature/Nurture and projected this clear narrative to the audience making it a thought provoking piece. Our piece juggled humour and serious drama in a professional manner that made the audience laugh in parts and really listen and think about what we were saying in others. We moved the audience around the space as it was an immersive piece; I feel that we were very considerate and careful when moving the audience around resulting in them feeling more relaxed and comfortable. I think our piece wouldn’t have been as successful if it wasn’t immersive, as we put the audience in certain scenarios that forced them to think not just watch. On the negative side the experimental nature of our piece meant that the audience might not have understood certain parts of the piece but that added to Artaud’s methods in the respect that we had the audience working out things for themselves and questioning things.

At the end of all the pieces we all joined together and began to do some chanting in response to Butoh. I felt like this was very un rehearsed and did not feel like an appropriate and meaningful end to our piece. I would have liked to end the piece in a stronger and powerful way as I feel that the ending we picked was rather slap dash. This was due to lack of time and if we had had more time we would have come up with something more completed.