EVALUATION

Overall I think that our performance was successful because of our detailed and extensive rehearsal process as it gave us time to explore, change and develop our piece. Throughout our rehearsal process the performance went on a real journey and transformation that I think was crucial to the development of the piece.

At the start of our rehearsal process, we found that getting inspiration from our stimuli was easy enough and we began to start to form a piece. However after getting feedback we realised that our piece had become very dance based and when we re-evaluated what we had already created we found that it was all focused on lifts and looking effective on stage rather than being an innovative piece of theatre. We found that this was because we hadn’t looked at the stimuli in detail but instead only taken them at face value, this had created an emotionally empty piece without any characterisation or development of the relationships within the piece. When we then went back to the stimuli we started to look into the pictures deeper and decided to look at the less conventional side of the stimuli as what we had originally created was very predictable. By re-approaching our stimuli with fresh eyes we found that what we started to create was more focused and relationships rather than just women. I think that this was really important as we had used improvisation to create the base of our new piece and the fact that we naturally went to relationships not just women I think gave our piece an instinctual element to it. Consequently we started to look at more relationship stimuli and things that related to shell shock, as we continued to discover new stimuli we constantly had new ideas and built on our other ones to keep our performance fresh.

Personally I think what made our rehearsal process effective was that Asa and I had a really goo, strong and open working relationship allowing us to create a safe place for us to rehearse and to discover new ideas. I think that our performance was good because we had created a secure place for us to be able to experiment in, so that our performance could stretch us as actors and could explore different themes as we felt comfortable to confront these problems.

Personally I think that we could have maybe included more elements from the stimulus in our performance and we could have explored them physically in our rehearsal so that we could have recreated some of the images in our piece. I think that this would have given our piece a stronger feel of the 1910’s and WW1, rather than just the idea of the aftermath of any war. I think that we could have made the time period clearer to show the audience the world that our characters were created in as this could have had a larger impact on what the audience see them go through, creating a stronger connection and reaction from the audience.

I was really pleased with our performance and how it all went down as I felt that we gave it 100% by really committing to the performance and being confident in the piece that we had created.

I think that what made our performance successful was that we really connected to our characters and invested in the relationship and the emotional journey that they go on. I think that this gave our performance more theatrical and making the audience buy into and get drawn into their relationship. I think it also got across the idea of the more personal stories in the war which was an aim of ours, we wanted to show a personal story that encompassed a larger idea and I think that we were successful in this. I also think that we were able to tell clearly a complex relationship through our physicality and that we took the piece into all of our body.

I think that in the moment we rushed the performance slightly because of nerves and although we were fully invested in the performance I think it would have been better if we had relaxed into it more and taken our time to enjoy it. I think this would have allowed the audience to take the performance in more as there was many sections in it and we might have rushed over a few loosing the emotional hook of that piece. I also think for us as actors it would have been nice to have enjoyed the moment a bit more so that we could be really present on stage and not let the nerves get in the way. However over all I was really pleased with how our performance went as we had worked really hard on it and  committed to it fully to perform an effective and thought provoking piece.