Evaluation

I really liked our final performance; I found it was the best that the ensemble had performed as a whole.  I thought that it really summed up all the effort that every individual actor had put into the rehearsal period.

Our final performance was good for many reasons, one of which being the energy that both the actors and audience gave the piece.  The actors hard work throughout the term was shown in a thoroughly well structured performance.  The breaking of the fourth wall in our piece meant that the audience played a big role in the success of the play as well, the audience on the night couldn’t have responded in a better manner, they really got stuck in and were always ready to be involved in the performance

I believe that the lighting and other electrical appliances were very successful in giving our piece a dark, destructive mood.  The actor’s use of torchlight was excellent, as it gave an uneasy feel because the audience were never quite sure where the light was coming from.  The large projected screen behind the actors gave a modern, and claustrophobic feel which also added to the uneasy nature of our play.

I was absent for two major rehearsals, and despite my full commitment to try and catch up on what I had missed, I felt it did, to a certain extent stunt my understanding of some of the aspects of the play, however I attempted portray this lack of understanding to the audience, this is because I thought nothing can make an audience member more uneasy than if they think the actors don’t know what is occurring on stage.  This could have come across as clumsy, but I believe I managed to use it successfully.  

My group’s scene went pretty well.  Right up until the final performance we were tweaking aspects to fulfil our own success criteria, which involved making the audience feel as out of pace as possible.

I believe the energy in the piece was the most vital part, as it was something that could have made the piece look un-rehearsed, but I think that both the actors and audience gave the performance the much needed energy, to help pull it off as the best performance that we did on the day.  The final rehearsal lacked energy, as the audience were our fellow students, and this brought down the success of the performance, however in the performance that mattered, we thoroughly succeeded.

My personal weaknesses came in my understanding of the piece itself, mainly because of my absence to some rehearsals; this did effect my final performance as I was unsure of my character, and the decisions that they would make, also my job that was decided late on was that I would seat the audience as if they were in a club ‘The Nerve Meter’ the only thing I found difficult in this part was deciding how to treat the audience members, whether I should carry on with the theme of the dark, nightmarish club, or if I should seat them sophisticatedly, I decided that a range between the two could be more effective that either, because it could give a schizophrenic and again uneasy feel.

I really enjoyed the Experimental theatre.  The most important thing I learnt is that theatre is not always about performing a long story of someone’s life, but it can be as strange as creating an atmosphere surrounding the actors and audience.  This term really let me break free from the metaphorical chains of naturalistic theatre, and helped expand by knowledge about more aspects of theatre.