Experimental Performance Evaluation

Overall, I believe we put on a very successful performance. Everyone was fully committed to our piece, we felt connected, clear and truthful throughout which gave an emotional impact whist putting across a message enough so we didn’t give everything away and allowed the audience to think.  

The overall piece was immersive and allowed the audience to experience the cabinet in their own way as well as being guided round by the group sections. This variety made the performance more interesting and engaging for an audience. 

I believed that my duet in the exhibition part of the performance was effective. Making a link between visual and performance art, we created an original concept which linked well to our chosen artist alongside our rationale which added clarity whist allowing some thought from the audience.

In our group piece, I believe we created an enjoyable, thought provoking piece.

We created a piece with a clear narrative and theme, whilst allowing room for thought and discussion. Some parts of our performance may have lacked clarity but because of the experimental nature of the piece not everything should be handed to the audience, there should be a cryptic sense to it, having the audience work out certain sections. 

I felt that we made the space as inviting and as safe as possible. Although moving the audience around the space we were careful not to push or force anyone too much to make sure no one felt too uncomfortable or got hurt. The fact that the audience followed our guidance meant that we achieved this effectively. 

Although the audience mostly felt safe in the space, in places I feel that we may have had a lack of spacial awareness. In segments such as the ‘aeroplanes’ and ‘mothers and sons’ we were taking up the whole space which very physical movement which could have been intimidating for the audience. They may have had worries that thy could have been hurt if someone came too close or with too much force and this is something we could’ve worked on. I also think that the space was not always as inviting as it could’ve been. For the ‘birth’ and ‘hands under the sheets’ segments not all members of the audience were invited to join in with the experience of the performance. Without an invitation some people may have felt that they weren't aloud to join in. We needed to make sure every single member of the audience was invited and given the chance - without force - to take part even if they didn’t want to.

Our piece used clear characters with a sense of humour in the piece. I feel the humour in our piece made it more enjoyable to watch and experience, it’s a little sigh of relief for the audience and something else to make them feel safer in the space. It also brought enjoyable variety to the piece, allowing the audience to experience the humorous and dramatic sides our our theme.

The final segment to the Cabinet of Curiosity felt very unrehearsed. There wasn’t much meaning to what we were doing and it just felt like a devise to bring us all together. The meaning was difficult to extract from what was being performed as it wasn't clear to ourselves. 

This is something that with more time we would’ve worked on harder. I would’ve liked to have led the audience out with more reason to bring the piece to a completed end. 

Devising and Rehearsal

Our group piece was based on the nature vs nurture argument.

We started with a devised section of scientists talking about the nature vs nurture argument. We moved as a solid group shuffling our feet and spoke in gibberish noises as our language. I thought this represented the complicated topics scientists talk about but that we don't understand, it should make the audience feel uncomfortable that they don't understand what's going on. 
In this section we also introduce questions related to the nature vs nurture argument, such as:

"Can the treats we are born with affect the environment we live in"
"Does genetics effect inelegance?"
"Is criminal behaviour determined by genes?"
"Is there a gay gene? Or is homosexuality determined by social forces?"

These questions are in introduction to the argument for the audience. It bring the questions into their minds and makes them initially aware. 

Next, we moved onto our representation of the reproduction cycle. We chose to physicalise it and used little speech. We wanted to get our point across whilst allowing our audience to think for themselves to work things out and question our piece.

For conception, as a group we exaggerated heavy breathing to the point of climax to the song 'Lets Get It On' by Marvin Gaye. This will be an uncomfortable moment for the audience as sex is sensitive subject matter but will also bring humour into the piece for a moment where the audience can laugh out of discomfort. 
After climax, we split into two groups of sperm and eggs. The sperm proceed to wriggle across the floor whilst the eggs rock from side to side on the authorised of the room. This section is done whilst the 'Mission Impossible' theme is being played. This represents the sperm as being programmed to fertilise the egg, in a human behaviour representation, like it's a mission. Watching humans reenact this sequence is highly amusing because of the over-physicaliation of the sexual act.
This section represents the nature argument. Two chemicals coming together and forming a new human. The chemicals cannot be change]ged or altered in anyway so the form of the child itself cannot be changed either.

After fertilisation, we move onto the birth of the conceived child. We used two sheets with people inside them to create two pairs of legs for the child to be birthed from. The rest of the scientists crowed around the scene to observe the action taking place. This is paired with the sounds of labour, which are almost similar to the sounds of conception linking the two as part of the same process. These sounds are also difficult to listen to which uses the technique of assaulting the audience using sounds.
The child is born and passed down a line of people until it is picked back up again and surrounded. This represents the nurture aspect of the argument, showing that from the minute you are born you start to be shaped by the people and environment that surround you. 

After the birth, some of us went under a sheet into foetal position and using torches created shadows of our hands on the sheet. This is meant to represent the baby inside the stomach of the mother. We plan to let the audience feel the hands on top of the sheet, this will allow the audience to feel a connection and engagement to the people inside the sheet. 
This section represents the nurture argument again. Even before you are entered into the world you can have a physical connection with a human being, in this case it's your mother who carries you while you're developing. 

As a transition, we added a section showing a speed version of learning to walk. From opening your eyes, discovering your body and what it can and can't achieve. 
We ended this section with us pretending to be aeroplanes and playing like children. In this section everyone's growing up stage is different. We all develop in different ways according to our environment and upbringing. This is part of both nature and nurture as you can't change the environment you live in and the instinctive behaviour you're born with as part of nature but your upbringing is from your parents as part of nurture. 

The next section is about the mother/son relationship. We split into male/female pairs representing the mother and son and explored the reluctance of letting children go through physical struggle. Whilst performing to 'Holdin On' by Flume the mothers task was to not let go and the sons was to get away. We focused on the 'Cost Of The Actor' by pushing ourselves to the absolute limits to achieve a truthful engaging performance. 
This represents the nurture argument. There's a saying called "Roots to grow and wings to fly" meaning that you can give your child the basics of survival, but in the end you have to let them go to fully develop. 
I felt this was the hardest part of our performance. Not only was it physically draining but physiologically it felt wrong. There were times when we hurt on another and you wouldn't think of doing that to your mother/son. Myles was particularly careful at points due to the stigma of not being aloud to hurt a girl, but we had to let those feelings go to achieve a truly believable performance. We needed to make it hard for each other.

The next section showed two groups in a devised physical piece in which we use one actor as a puppet and mould around him to create their surroundings. In our piece we focused on the nature argument, growing up and learning. You don't know that a flame in hot and you shouldn't touch it until you get burnt. You don't know that you can't breath underwater until you choke. You don't know about relationships and not to push your loved ones away until you loose one of them. We used Will as our puppet and physically controlled his body and some of his movements to portray his development. 

In the next section in small groups we created tableaux's creating moments where nature vs nurture can be argued. We used pieces such as the Lee Rigby murder, 9/11, 7/7, the James Bulger case and Daniel Kish. 
I recreated a moment of Daniel Kish on a bike using echolocation to ride successfully. It shows that even people who we don't expect to be able to achieve can do when they are allowed to do so without inhibition. 
These moments allowed the audience to reflect and relate on the argument and start to question it for themselves. 

To finish our piece, we returned to the scientist formation at the beginning and revisited the breathing and questions that we did at the start. This was to shine a new light on the questions after watching the rest of our piece and to let the audience question them once more with new found knowledge. Through the process we have shown a balanced argument of the nature vs nurture argument and have allowed the audience to decide for themselves their opinion of the subject matter.

Workshop 4

In this session we watched each others duets. Here are a few:

Kim



This piece was effective in giving every audience member an individual experience. It's involving the audience as the audience feel a part of the piece. 
It uses visual poetry by expressing emotion without words which creates a more profound emotional impact. And it uses skills of the actor as Kim in entirely emotionally involved in the piece and convinces the audience in the truth of her performance. 
I was a little concerned that the audience might not know what to do and suggested that maybe a sign would be needed to explain what was required from the audience to make the most of the piece. I also thought that Kim might want to make her responses a little bigger to make it clearer and give a little more impact. 

Ivory and Josh

This piece effectively put across a message both visually and audibly. By using two different ways their piece became far more engaging if they'd just used one. One backed up the other.  

It uses visual poetry by using movement instead of words which created a more profound emotional impact. They created a dream world for the audience by wearing the masks as they made everything slightly more odd to watch which effected the audiences emotions and subconscious, just like dreams do. It used skills of the actor through the movement as they were completely committed to their performance and portrayed the truth in their piece to the audience.

I thought that they where using exaggeration of certain sections well but needed to make it bigger so it was more obvious to differentiate between the two and therefore be more effective. 

Will and Myles

This piece was interesting to watch for the difference in painting styles between the two of them. You felt the two different emotions between them.

The piece uses visual poetry through the art they are creating on the wall. It's a different way of getting the piece across and creating emotional impact. They also used skills of the actor by putting their entire being into the performance which put across the high emotion and truth of their piece.

During the piece I started to question whether they could actually see through the blindfold. This meant that the piece lacked truth and wan't as effective. If they're going to be blindfolded, they have to be properly blindfolded otherwise it just comes across as fake.

Duets

For our duet we talked through some of the Tate Pieces we saw. We had both seen and liked Henry Wessel's piece called 'Incidents' with various pictures of members of the public. We both liked how intrusive it felt, like you we're spying on them or seeing something you maybe shouldn't. An exploration of human behaviour without them being aware they are being observed. It's in it's most organic form, untouched. And this is what we decided we wanted to achieve in our piece. 

Through movement improvisations we came across the exploration of the human body. It's probably the most organic, natural process but also the most private process. If others were watching it would contradict the entire process and give our desired effect. 

We have the idea of performing our piece behind a backlit sheet. This way it keeps some of the privacy of the moment, whist still being aloud an insight. We tried it out and it worked extremely well. The sheet looked like a sheet on a bed and worked well with the actions that happen under the sheets. The audience was able to see the outlines and shapes of our bodies and watch them come together and apart. As we moved around each other the shapes in the shadows changed as we went from being two separate shadows into one being. We also backlit the sheet with two separate light sources, which created two separate shadows which had different placement and different intensities. 
Over the top of our piece we used a song called 'All We Grow' by S.Carey to add to the overall feeling of the piece.

Some experimental techniques we used were: 

• Visual poetry - We've used movement instead of words to communicate to create an emotional impact.
• Creating a dream world - By using the sheet we've transported the audience to a bedroom, the place where dreams happen. The sheet and slow dreamy movement has stimulated their emotion and subconscious taking them to a dream state.
• Assaulting the audience - By the very nature of what the audience are seeing, it should shock the audience in some way. It's a very intimate moment.
• Skills of the actor - By using our bodies with complete commitment we became emotionally involved in the piece and played out the truth to the audience creating emotional impact.

Workshop 3

5 Pictures

The pictures I got given all looked relatively similar, which made the setting for my story relatively easy. I decided to make my story a journey or exploration of my setting because every picture seemed to link. I told my story in the first person, sort of like a diary entry. My pictures looked like they came from the point of view of a person so it made sense.
From listening to other peoples stories, I found that no one story was the same, even with people who had similar pictures. It brought variety to the stories, no ones was better than another and they weren't boring or generic. Nobody told their story in the same way either, some were told in the first person, some in the third person. Some were character driven some location driven. All the stories were very descriptive though and so were easy to picture. However, nobody chose to tell their stories with character voices so they didn't feel particularly creative.

10 Pictures

Me and my partner decided to intertwine our stories and act out the journey our characters made to make it more visually exciting. As we got through the story we moved through the pictures by lining them up on the floor and standing next to them. We thought that you don't have to be told the story by word of mouth to understand what was happening. Others performed their stories like a game of Chinese whispers, as a rap and using funny voices.
I think our performances this time round was far more engaging and interesting. We were challenging more than one of the senses which would've kept the audience more alert. It was also more interesting to tell the story as it was more of a performance.