My
group’s devised performance was based on the theme, “La Mer” which included a
range of stimuli, the stimuli included poems, songs, a painting, our individual
characters we chose and naturalism techniques.
Our performance required a lot of research on our real life characters,
situations they were in and naturalistic acting techniques.
On
the whole I feel my group and I delivered a very strong, moving and
naturalistic piece. I feel our energy as a group helped us vastly throughout
rehearsals and our performance, and it inspired us to become more detailed and
emotionally connected to the performance. Our group energy I feel showed
throughout our performance and there was never a moment in the piece were the
energy levels changed, I feel we maintained it very well throughout, which is
certainly something that worked for our piece.
During
director’s notes after our rehearsals, we received great feedback about our
projection and volume. We were always projecting to high standards, and were
always clear throughout the whole performance, this a largely important factor
to drama performances, as the audience has to be able to hear and understand
what is going on at all times.
I
personally feel I have naturally quite a loud and clear voice, which is a clear
benefit in acting as projection is key, especially in theatre.
I
feel the energy is linked to the projection, as we all felt confident with each
other as performers and confident in our ability to produce a strong piece,
which enabled us to have great projection and clear speech at all times.
We
also received great feedback about our articulation and pace during rehearsals
from our voice tutor. These factors worked extremely well during our performance
as our dialogue was easy to adapt to from the audiences perspective and we were
audible and understandable throughout our piece.
I
feel on the whole our performance concepts and idea’s worked really well as
they were realistic and easy for the audience to relate to in some ways,
particularly about our characters having lost their fathers, this is something
the audience can relate to, and we conveyed empathy for each other throughout,
in which the audience were able to empathise with the characters too.
During
rehearsal time, my group and I were always trying out new ideas and seeing what
would work and what wouldn’t work, I feel compared to my song lyric devised
group, we tried out so many more concepts and ideas this time around, as I feel
we have all become much more confident and versatile as we know have more
experience of devising. As a group we showed consideration to one another at
all times and we were always researching together about Naturalism, storms,
real life facts about boats that have sank during storms and images of storms
so we could visualise as a group how it would feel for us to be in that
situation together.
We
worked very well as a team and there was never any bad feeling or
competitiveness within our group.
I
feel working together as a team and sharing ideas during every session enabled
us to make our performance work as we were constantly experimenting and
changing little details, and developing relationships with each other as
actors.
If
someone individually in the group had an idea, we would all discuss that idea
and interpret it into how we would all visualise it within our performance.
We
of course, studied our chosen real life characters individually and together,
making links between all characters and acknowledging the unique personality
traits each one had, this really helped us in creating our performance as we
all became so absorbed in our characters, and I felt at some points, I had
turned into my character, especially during the performance, as I was seeing things
through her eyes and not mine and I became totally in the zone with my
characters emotions and opinions. I feel everyone in my group felt this way
too.
Naturally,
during our devising and in our performance there were some aspects that did not
work quite as well. During devising, we came up with various ideas that we
later realised would not work in our performance, one the ideas we came up with
which we decided to let go of was to have Sophie’s character, Kelly die
tragically from her heart condition, and all the other characters frantically
screaming and becoming slightly mad that they were stuck on a boat with
somebody they hardly knew, dead on the floor.
We
tried out a few improvisations for this idea, but in the end we all came to the
conclusion that this idea seemed a little too “cliché” as her character had a
life threatening illness, and it almost seemed too obvious that this would
happen to her character. So as a group we decided it would be much more
effective for the characters to drown and die together, rather than having just
one character dying. We wanted all the characters to feel the same pain and
empathy for each other, they started on the boat together, so the idea that
they leave the boat together was a dynamic idea which I felt worked very well,
especially as we used the voice recording of our characters just before they
drowned at the end of our performance, which we learned was very haunting and
chilling from feedback.
In
our final performance, there were little details I feel did not work and things
we could of improved on, for example; I feel we could of dived even deeper into
the father link all the characters had, and maybe could of portrayed even more
emotions about the situation, it could have been mentioned more, now that I have
watched the performance.
Another
little detail I noticed we should have used more was physical contact with one
another. My character used physical contact with Izzy’s character towards the
end of the piece by linking her arm and leaning on her shoulder. But I feel all
the characters could have used more physical contact with each other as it
could of made our performance appear more naturalistic, because if I was in
that real life situation and was sharing my personal emotions with people who I
empathised with, I more than likely would have hugged them or held their hands
during the storm and the confessions.
In
rehearsals and during devising sessions my group could have discussed in more
detail what they would do in this situation and how they would react, then we
would have been able to portray an even more naturalistic piece, and more
importantly, discussed what our real life characters would have done, we did
discuss it, but I feel we could have discussed in more detail and adapted this
to our piece. We should of spent more time on our spacing around the stage, but
as it was naturalistic the spacing did not matter too much as it was mainly
focused on our acting abilities, and the audience were in Arena, which meant no
body was ever masked, but I still feel we could of mapped it out more clearly
with each other, for example, having the black blocks more into the centre of
the stage and having our characters more close together at times.
I
feel overall our performance was very strong and I am pleased and proud of my
group and myself for putting together our piece and the effort and energy we
all bought into our performance, however we could have made a few little
changes to improve our performance to make it even more stronger.
I
feel we definitely should have spent an extra few minutes towards the end of
our piece when we all open up about our characters Father’s, in order to
establish the situations more and to create more dramatic effect and empathy
for the audience and for our characters. It felt ever so slightly rushed, but
it has improved massively from when we first started devising. I also feel to
improve our performance we could have spent a little bit more time creating
stronger relationships between the characters, even though I do feel the relationships
were there and the audience could see them forming, particularly my character
and Izzy’s character, I feel all four characters should have been more linked
and could have bonded much more during the storm and just before their death
came.
In
conclusion, my groups performance was strong, emotional and haunting, I feel as
a group we worked extremely well together and always maintained a great
attitude towards devising, and were never stuck for ideas. It seemed rather
difficult at first, but after we all shared ideas and began improvising it
flowed extremely well and enabled us to create our piece together. I am happy
to have worked with my group and am delighted at the outcome of our hard work,
which came from devising and rehearsing together.
