FINAL EVALUATION.

My Group Performing

My final performance was a mixture of both empowering myself, and empowering the audience. The show went very well, with my scene running smoothly and seamlessly between others.

My voice throughout the show was strong and well lubricated for public speaking. I made sure of this by drinking lots of water before the show as I was afraid my vocal chords would e dry and stop me from my projection and inhibit the power in my speech. At one point of the performance however, my breathing was off. I had just done a scene where my character rushes around the space, and then transitions into a public speaker. My breathing was still recovering from the fast movement when I spoke, I should've made sure I had my breath back to normal before I continued. That being said, I still managed to project sufficiently to the audience and with considerable diction and clarity. One of my weaknesses in the show was definitely my articulation. My character donned a cockney accent which in it's self is rough and harsh, but I still didn't manage to be clear enough so that my words were understood. I blurted out words at the right volume but losing its clarity - this is only at the beginning of the piece.

I feel our piece definitely utilised Brechtian techniques such as placards, song and break the fourth wall effectively. Brecht's techniques really help the actor to portray their message easily as it allows you to say things without speaking through different mediums. One of his mediums was placards. We used these commonly throughout our piece to show who we were portraying. This was effective as it gave the actor an immediate way to show the audience clearly who we were playing. At one point, we spend a long time mucking around trying to find our placards which became a struggle but alas, it was still an effective technique.

One of our strongest points of the performance was our message. The message that tax evasion is wrong was clear and strong. This was understood by the audience well as many audience members chose tax evasion as their topic on their post-it notes. However, I do feel that our message would've been stronger if we didn't over complicate our piece with the use of props, as this became cluttered and messy during scene transitions.

I definitely found that the props restricted the piece the most as there was so many of the, that we spend a good minute during our performance just searching through the mess for our prop. This made the performance feel unrehearsed and sloppy, which wasn't the intent. I think we just went overboard on the idea of Brechtian placards.

Intro Ensemble Scene

Personally, I really wanted to convey the rich politicians that avoid tax as scum, which was difficult when you need to create a character that makes people laugh because immediately people side with the funny character with empathy - which is exactly what I didn't want to happen. This being said, I found that people didn't like the character Starbucks by the end of the piece, showing that the greedy character worked effectively.

My group definitely found working together difficult as we all had very different ideas to contribute, but overall our scene was solid, well rounded and performed well. I found that Louis had a very good performance as he managed to physically portray his characters very well. For example, when he played the old man he managed to arch his body over into a very archetypal way. This made the piece feel very Brechtian. I feel he was very strong physically. He just needed to match it vocally as his Barack Obama was very similar to his old man voice, which does spoil the illusion for the audience.

The final piece was effective as the message didn't stray to far from our original goal. In particular, I really thought that the ensemble sections were strong as the entire class moving as one created a rather intimidating atmosphere, which resonated well with the song (Standing In The Way Of Control). The movements were aggressive and enforcing which was poignant for the audience to see a collective standing up for themselves. I also thought that my scene with Jamie and Louis went really well as it portrayed the rich and wealthy as farcical. This was conveyed well through my physical characterisation as I moved around very fast and sharply. I found this to be rather humorous.

Me looking like and idiot

My weaknesses for the show was definitely my voice and my transitions. If these were improved, the scenes could've been really slick and exciting - what they did do however was create an  awkward mess which left the audience confused as to what was going on. Nevertheless the audience still managed to understand the message clearly. If I had to change anything looking back on the show now, I would definitely change the amount of props we used.

During political theatre term, I have discovered that I quite enjoy pushing the boundaries of what you can say to audience, blurring the lines between performance and protest. I really enjoyed stirring reactions from the audience with political messages that people deem taboo. It was interesting to see how taboo subjects make the audience uneasy, stirring up intense emotions. A reaction which I find peculiar.

Overall, I found that the show went very well and showcased a lot of important themes that needed to be expressed and could only be expressed through theatre. The audience left the room feeling inspired from my groups scene which made me proud.

POLITICAL SCENES (Performance Workshop)

The Debating Chamber

In this lesson, the company intertwined each scene with one another to create the final full length show of the debating chamber.

We developed a physical theatre routine which would be our intro to the show, which would be shortly followed by a speech about politics - welcoming everyone to the debating chamber. The music we will be doing the routine to is called "Standing in the Way of Control - Gossip". For the performance I need to obtain a suit and a Hawaiian shirt.

My Scene

Overall my scene was strong but at points lacklustre. What we had devised came in at around 5 minutes, which wasn't bad but a lot of that time was waffling on or sloppy transitions with props. After performing our scene for around 20 seconds, we found out that the speaker as slightly faulty. Meaning the audio track was quite. This made it awkward to sing over the top of and to dance with. If this happens in the actual performance, I will just have to fully commit to singing loudly and dancing hysterically.

The main issue we had was props. The transitions with props was ludicrous. We decided to have way to many props on stage for the piece which over complicates things to a point of the show being ruined. This means that in rehearsal we will have to work through this issue by either scrapping some props or making certain we have a smooth transition.

Another issue we had was the ending. The ending isn't developed properly to a point worth performing. We performed it but it still seemed liked the scene had to more to show. It left the audience hanging which wasn't intended. This loses the power of the piece and the message.

Overall, the scene was strong but needs further improvement before it can be shown otherwise our scene will lose its meaning.

Offshore Tax Havens

Update: Study Period Rehearsal

Jamie, Luke, Louis and I all came in early on the Thursday to refine the piece to a point we're proud of.

In this rehearsal, we refined the prop transitions. We all felt this slowed the piece down, and with the updated transitions, it is now much more slick and fluid. This will help keep the audience engaged in the message of our piece. We also cut the audience interaction scenes. They seemed out of place from the story and felt like it ruined the flow of the piece.

We also found that our politician impressions section was only performed to one side of the traverse audience. To counter this, we decided to have them performed at the end of the stage so that both sides can look down the centre and see the characters perform.