Performance Evaluation

Physical theatre Performance Evaluation

Today we performed our physical theatre pieces in front of the whole strand and various theatre teachers. EVERYONES WORK WAS AMAZING! So many people in the strand did really well today. 

*SNAPS FOR THEATRE*

Overall, in my opinion our piece went extremely well, and I am truly proud of what we achieved today. I believe this success was reflected in our BRIT grade 7/10. Normally I find that before any performance I get extremely nervous and start losing confidence in my work, however today I was very calm and collected before our performance. I think this is because the right amount of rehearsal time allowed me to really understand the foundations of our piece and to know every single detail and its significance within the performance. No mistakes were made because of our extensive rehearsals and all of the movement or sections of our piece flowed really well from one to another. Throughout our piece I felt very much like I was "living in the moment" and experiencing the emotions evoked within our piece similarly if not more than our audience. The poetical elements of our piece really brought our work to life and I think our decision to not include any music or backing track to our piece payed off. It allowed the poetry to speak for itself. The only things I can think of for us improving on todays performance are: 

• More  organic improvised moments
• More clarity in transitions
• consistently maintained natural fluidity

I am very happy with the way that our performance went today and look forward to adapting it and creating a whole group piece in the coming weeks. 

Rehearsal notes #5

Today rehearsed all the various sections in our piece, and began to knit them together and iron out our transitions. 

The new updated chronological order of our piece is as follows:

Paper airplanes 
"faces to the foe"
"Charlie team"
Soldier crawl
Explosions
Gas attack
Remembrance
mother sequence 

We then ran through the whole piece over and over and OVER to ensure that we both understood and knew the piece backwards and forwards and inside out. I am very happy with the way today's rehearsal went and i feel like today was the most productive and efficient rehearsal that we have had yet. No distractions, lots of hard work, commitment and energy meant that today we finally got to that stage where our performance piece is ready to be performed and tweaks or edits and no longer necessary. All we can do now is keep running through the movement whilst trying to keep the emotional element of the piece new and different and refreshed every time we perform the piece. 

What went well: Lots of material was refined and lots of run throughs took place which i am very happy about. 

How we can improve: Even more energy and a sense of flow is required before our final performance.

Rehearsal notes #4

REHEARSAL 4

Today we created and rehearsed the gas attack section of our piece.

Myself and Laure began with a warm up, and then ran through all the different sections of our piece. this really helped me as I seemed to have forgotten a few things here and there. We also smoothed out and refined the airplane section of our piece to make it more clear and readable to our audience. We also watched some videos on youtube to help inform our understanding of gas attacks.

Here are are small selection of things we looked at:

We wanted to include some religious references in our piece so therefore we combined the experimental movement we came up with in today's rehearsal with the clearest and simplest physical representation of religion: The cross.

In order to create a transition between our previous movement and the gas attack section, we had the idea that the soldier whom is about to be gassed (me) can be physically preparing for war.

Our thought process behind this was that a soldier dressing, and preparing themselves for war could also symbolically represent a young man preparing himself to die. We want our audience to subliminally anticipate the soldier's death.

What went well: Lots of improvised material was created in today's rehearsal!

How we can improve: Next rehearsal I will ensure that myself and laure do not distracted from our work by other people.