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.