Evaluation of devised piece
"Money don't matter tonight"
My groups performance was based on the song “Money don’t matter tonight” by Prince produced in 1992.
My group and I analysed the song lyric and brainstormed what sort of themes and concepts the song lyric was portraying to us, we came up with the ideas surrounding poverty, unemployment, gambling, child war, government corruption and homelessness. We all came to the conclusion that basing our performance on unemployment and homelessness was the best idea as it is realistic and an audience can relate to it, as the levels of unemployment and homelessness are very high in Brighton. We wanted to portray a message to the audience and make them think differently about the people you see on the streets in Brighton everyday.
When my group and I first began devising, our Stimulus was the Song lyric, which then expanded into using research, images of poverty and factual figures for our extended stimuli. My group and I also used seeing homelessness in Brighton on a daily basis as our stimulus. These stimuli inspired my group and I to create a performance that will have an effect on the audience and make them think about today’s poverty situation.
I feel the whole concept of our performance worked as it is strongly realistic and everyone who lives in Brighton can relate to the situation.
The acting techniques my group and I used worked very well as we had a mixture of mime, physical theatre, cross cutting, monologues, puppetry and tableaux. We decided to use these techniques as it enhances the concept of our performance, for example Lucy’s government character portraying the puppeteer using mime created a theatrical effect as it is interesting to watch from the audience’s perspective and conveyed how the characters were being controlled by the government without using narrative.
The stylisation of our characters worked really well as it was clear for the audience what social status each character portrayed. We each had our own individual body movements and our body language was very distinguished from one another. In order to expand our characters my group and I used improvisation, inspired by Keith Johnstone, who specialises in naturalistic improvisational theatre.
I feel that our characters emotions were very clear throughout which worked really well as the audience were able to tell how the characters were feeling in the performance, our desperation was extremely clear throughout, and our projection worked extremely well throughout the performance as this presses the urgency and creates a more powerful feel to the performance.
When watching the video of our performance back I felt our stage positions in the Office scene worked really well and it balanced out the characters, you could almost see the social hierarchy within the office from the way we were positioned. I feel ending with a freeze frame worked well as it ends on a powerful note and portrays the riots and the distress the characters were feeling, it leaves the audience with a powerful thought in their minds.
As a group we all discussed our individual ideas for the performance and tried every single idea to see if it would work, we never dismissed an idea, we always interpreted it in one way or another. My group and I were very respectful towards each other and helped each other with criticism and praise about our individual performances. We worked in complicity with each other and I feel this was portrayed in our piece, we all improvised together and kept running through the performance to make it more cleaner and sharper and to test out any ideas we had.
Collectively and individually we researchedabout homelessness and unemployment and also researched naturalistic theatre to help each other improve our acting skills as a group. We always made the most of rehearsing together and always listened to one another’s thoughts and ideas. We worked very independently during rehearsals and did not require guidance from anyone else other than ourselves, we cooperated very well with each other and I believe this shows through our performance. As a group we respected our tutor’s feedback and discussed it as a group, but we never felt that we needed help or structuring from our tutors as we had created such a strong piece ourselves.
Overall I feel our performance worked really well, but naturally there were some little things, which didn’t work so well. I think the main points in our performance that did not work quite as well were the movements and body language in some scenes. For example in the “Rain scene’ I feel the physical theatre could have been more clean, for example when our characters bumped into each other it should have been more apparent and my character’s body language could have been stronger and more shocked when seeing Unis’ character so suddenly.
Another thing that stood out to me when watching it back was Unis’ character holding his jacket in the ‘Rain scene’. For me I felt this was a little distracting and maybe he should not have taken his jacket off, I felt it just looked a little out of place and took my attention off his character for a moment.
Mainly what did not work in our performance was just the way we moved on stage in some scenes and the stage positions, in the ending scene I feel we should have been more centre stage which contrasts with the Office scene as our positions were very strong and central.
To improve on this my group and I should have rehearsed our movement more during rehearsals and also our stage positions, we should have made sure at all times we were centre and came up with a way of staying centre stage at all times. I also feel our movements could have been a lot stronger which could have been improved by stylising our characters movement more and spending more time focusing on this together. Overall our main weaknesses were our movements, I feel everyone’s acting techniques were very strong, it was just the positioning and movements that should have been improved.
Ultimately to improve our performance my group and I could have rehearsed movements more, particularly during the Rain scene and the ending ‘Riot’ scene. I feel our body language and expression could have been a lot stronger on the ending freeze frame, which would have created a more powerful effect on the audience.
Personally with my character, to improve the performance I feel I could have been more shocked and surprised when I bumped into Unis in the ‘Rain’ scene, as when watching it back I didn’t quite look as surprised as I thought I did, so I would definitely change my body language and tone of voice in that scene.
Our physical theatre use was very good, but I still feel we could have improved it. Lucy’s puppeteer movements could have been more exaggerated and powerful, and my body language could have been stronger when Unisand I are planning a riot at the end of the performance. The way we moved around the stage on the words ‘ Petition, Protest and Riot’ could have been sharper and stronger to emphasise the desperation and power the words were portraying to the audience.
To conclude I feel my group’s performance was a very well devised piece with some strong links to Brighton’s economic situation and clear characterisation of naturalistic characters, I thoroughly enjoyed working with my group and feel we were extremely mature and in complicity with each other. We had some weaknesses in our movements and stage positions but overall I am extremely happy with how our devised piece was performed and feel we delivered our message to the audience with great impact.
