Evaluation of devised piece

Evaluation

"The game of life"

Sophia Hinchliff

My groups piece was based on the stimulus we were given at the start of the term, which was an apple. Our performance was inspired by Site Specific and Site Responsive theatre. 
My group and I brainstormed a lot of ideas, and we all came up with the idea to base our performance on life pathways and choices. As the apple to me represents life, but it is not all good. As I mentioned in my research how the apple can symbolise health and purity, but can also symbolise death and poison.

We all came to the conclusion that the apple for us symbolises the walks of life, and how life can take you down different pathways. We wanted to create a raw, emotional and moving piece to portray real emotions and situations to the audience and I feel we achieved this.

Since the beginning of term we have learned about different practitioners and their methods. One method we used in our piece was "Radiating" which was created by Michael Chekhov. We used radiating at the end of our piece to connect with the audience, as throughout our piece our emotions and feelings were very depressing and sad, we felt using the radiating technique at the end would almost draw the audience's attention away from all the negative emotions and into our space, as the poem at the end was positive and was showing how there is light at the end of the tunnel and you will make it through bad times, so I felt radiating at this point was a good idea and allowed us to reflect on our piece and send out positive energy to the audience, so they did not leave our performance feeling sad and affected by what we were portraying, as I am sure most people in the audience could relate to each of our monologues, as they were all from the heart and were based on the truth.

 Another technique we used which was also created by Chekhov, was moulding. We used moulding at the very beginning, when we are all trying to escape from the space we were trapped in, and we built a fourth wall, like a barrier between us and the audience. Moulding worked very well as it appeared that we were pushing against something and trying to break free.
 This movement was very powerful and it actually took a lot of strength as when I was moulding my arms were shaking were I was pushing into the air so hard. Another technique we used almost as a structure was Yoshi Oida's "Jo Ha Kyu" which means "beginning, middle and end" we always referred back to this technique and it really helped us develop our piece. We would always be trying new transitions, movements and dialogue to move from the Jo to the Ha, and from the Ha to the Kyu. This technique motivated us all to have a strong structure in our performance.

I feel what really worked for us in creating this piece was our own personal connections with one another. Before, I had never really spent much time with Jade or Max, but as we were working together we all formed a bond with each other, and we each accepted each other and learned new things about each other. This piece was very hard hitting and emotional, and it bought out my own personal emotions, which rarely ever happens for me, as I am quite a closed person emotionally. I felt our connection as a group gave us all the confidence and motivation to keep going with our piece and to keep creating new ideas. 

Another main thing that allowed our performance to work was the space we chose. It is such a big, open and versatile space, it allowed us to have so many different ideas and it gave us somewhere we could all go to and feel free to perform, and it was very private from other classrooms. The ideas we had for the setting of our performance worked very well, the tea lights and the leaves created an enchanting and ambient feeling, which linked so well with our piece, and it really created a peaceful mood when the audience entered, and I feel as our piece was very hard hitting, having such a tranquil and relaxing set up, really worked well as it created a contrast, and allowed the audience to feel relaxed.

 If I could think about anything that could of been improved, it simply just comes down to rehearsal times. I feel our group in the last week were under so much pressure as we just were not as prepared as we should of been. We had so many good ideas, and it was such a personal piece to all of us, we just did not balance our time as well as we could of. We should of been stricter on each other with rehearsal times and should of stuck to our schedule.
I feel all the monologues we created were very strong and the poem I found for the end piece portrayed a clear and positive message, the movement was our weakness in this piece, as we just were not as rehearsed on it as we should have been. The physical theatre aspect of this piece was clearly there, it just should of had more time put into it, as our main priorities were creating the monologues and learning the poem for the end, and not the movement. 

Something I feel did not work as well as I thought it would was the "flocking" technique, which we learned in our first year. I feel if this movement was better rehearsed the turns and transistions would have been sharper and more effective, we wanted to create the idea that we were not people, we were vessels, trapped in the game of life, and by our movements inside the box we wanted to show that we did not move like people did. This did not work as well as we all imagined, but I feel it still had some sort of effect, as it was very frantic and portrayed a stressful feeling.

The audience responded exactly how I wanted them to, after the performance I received a lot of positive feedback from audience members and how they felt very emotional when watching our piece, and they could relate to the things we were saying, as every person in that audience has at some point gone through hard times and emotional trauma so it was a piece of theatre everyone could relate to. Someone told me they could tell that my monologue had came from my heart and that they felt very connected to what I was saying. This made me feel proud as I wanted to have this effect on the audience.

 From this piece, I have learned a lot about myself and my own emotional feelings. It opened up a lot of emotion inside me, which took me by surprise, and I feel like this performance allowed me to express my emotions about how I feel in my personal life, without having to justify what i was saying to anyone. Performing my monologue felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders, as I let out a lot of deep emotions which I cannot express in my personal life, but through theatre I can. So I have learned that theatre can aid the way you feel and it can help you through difficult times. It is similar to what we learned from Stanislavsky's naturalism techniques, and how he likes his actors to involve real life situations in order to enrich the character they are playing. As an actor I am a strong believer in this technique as it works so well for me and I believe it helped me a lot in this performance.

Overall, I feel the message we wanted to portray from our piece was understood by the audience.
 I have learned from this piece that having the strength and courage to do something which at times can seem impossible, will help you through life and everybody goes through bad stages in life and you learn from your mistakes and cannot live in the past. This performance was a journey for us as a group, we learned a lot about each other and were able to work professionally and closely as a group. If I could do this performance again I would be much more strict with rehearsals and stick to a schedule, and I would also spend more time on the movement within the piece.

 We all worked equally as hard as each other and all created ideas and contributed fairly into the making of the piece. 
I am proud of myself and my group for being able to create such a meaningful and personal piece of site specific theatre.