320 - (2.2) Performance Evaluation

29/9/17
On this day we started by rehearsing our scene from the archers ready to be recorded. During this time I decided to adopt a northern ascent as I thought it would better portray the character. After the recording I decided to reflect on what I had done. I believed my instruction to Lily in the role of Kristy to try and say her lines in flirtatious way, which I did also. I also told Harriet in the role of Helen to sound interested after the name rob was mentioned as in the time frame of the script (mid October 2013) Rob and Helen began their relationship. However I believe my performance was not without fault; I believe I should have begun practicing the ascent more before the recording than I actually did. This way it would sound more genuine and less potentially distracting. Also, my final line in which I have a long pause in-between “then” and “Kristy” didn’t exactly work as I left the pause for too long making it feel awkward and unnatural.

28/12/17
After another break it was finally time to perform our dance piece for the first time. I will list what went wrong and what went right.

 

As I came on, I kept in my neutral pose and stared directly forward. I continued to do this for the rest of the parts I was not performing anything of my own.  I believe that this was a good thing to do, as this allowed the audience to focus on the phrases that were happening at the given time as if I hadn’t there is a possibility that they would of gotten distracted by how I was not still and composed while I was at the side.

 

When my first phrase came on, I made the intentional point of slowing my movements down, as others would have to match my speed later on. Since they were not as familiar with it as I was, due to how I created it, I cannot expect them to go at the pace of which I started with a few months ago. My choice to slow down this section was a good one as it allowed the rest of the group to synchronize up with me.

 

The next phrase I made a similar decision to slow down my movements to allow myself to match the speed of the others doing the same phrase.

 

The next phrase I did was the one when I react to being pulled by an invisible force in a line. Unfortunately, I believe that this was the worst part of my performance as I wasn’t able to make the jump everyone else was due to how I had my right leg forward. However, I did not let this mistake show too much and carried on regardless. Later on, I noticed how when all the members in the line skip and turn out of the line is not in complete unison. And as a result doesn’t look as good as it would, I rectify this I would have the skip and turn be cannon instead of unison as this would intentionally harness how we are not in turn and make it into a move that looks a lot more better.

 

During my solo I made no noticeable mistakes, however I do think I could have reached more with my limps to make my piece look more refined. Also in my reverse solo, I ended up not having any pauses between my moves and therefore they lost a bit of their impact. I believe that this was due to how I had never done a dance show before and got a bit nervous and therefore sped up without realising.

 

Overall, I do believe that I did an expectable first dance show regardless of the few mistakes I made.



06/12/17

The first showing of hope springs has been done. The general opinion from those I asked who were watching was that it was a very engaging and entertaining play. My other cast members are of the belief that this was their best run through yet, however I am not of the same mind. I stuttered on my second line in the play, as I ran offstage as staff 1 I hit a chair creating a loud noise that broke immersion, the delivery of my lines in act one wasn’t as good as they were the very same day in rehearsals. The one thing I am happy with though was my idea of the contingency plans. The one I created for the first scene with the assistant and inspector was used, and so was the one in the scene of the reinterpretation of Sam’s note. I asked two people about whether they thought anything peculiar happened in these scenes, and they said nothing of the sort as a result this part of my preparation was a success.

To avoid stuttering my second line in the play I will become more familiar with the queues before it, not learning the one directly before it but the two previous lines to that as well to allow me to be sure that it is my time to speak as the staff 1 character.

To avoid crashing into the chair as I run off stage right I will instead run off stage left, as there is enough room to go off that way. Compared to just a curtain to hide behind which is already hiding three other props.

I believe the reason that my line delivery was not as good during the first showing was due to nerves, this makes scene as my delivery in the second act was similar to how it was before and therefore satisfactory. I think this may be a problem that needs no action, due to how I have already done a run though before I believe that 

 

 

 

07/12/17

On this day, we had our final showing of Hope springs. The general belief of the cast is that last days showing was slightly better, however I again disagree with the general attitude. I personally belief that this show was leagues ahead of our former as there was no noticeable stalling points in the show and very little dialog skips.

The contingency plans I had created for some of the more problematic scenes were not nessercary as the scenes played out, as they should apart from one or two line skips. I believe that this was due to how we had run though those scenes so many times to avoid something going wrong we became more comfortable with those scenes than the other scenes that we did not focus on. This acts as an example of my classes progress through rehearsal.

From watching both the first nights play and the second’s night’s play on video, it is clear that I paraphrase the end of my lines a lot less. The reason that I had previously gotten into this habit is to keep the dialog of any of my characters alive, as saying the same line for batem every single rehearsal, does not give you as much freedom to immerse yourself with a character compared to slightly paraphrasing. However, in rehearsals for hope springs it became clear that this practice could not continue as by not having the exact same words at the end of some of my sentences others were confused and could not recall which line was next for them to say. To rectify this I have made sure that the end of my lines correspond to those in the play to allow me to engage with my characters by feeling what I say next, but also not allow this to affect other actors negatively. This is most clear in the first scene the inspector is in, the first night I took a few liberties especially in the “private company” monolog but in the second, i quoted it without fault.

In the first night, I had the problem of stuttering my second line of the play. I rectified this by doing what I planned to do, which was learn the three lines that are former to mine as this would allow me to be sure it was my time to talk. As you can imagine this plan worked and I did not repeat this flaw for the second show.

What also happened in the first night was that when I ran off stage for the first time to hide between the wall and certain on the right of the stage, I collided with a chair that was also behind the certain which created a loud noise, which broke the immersion of the audience. I voided this happening again in the second showing by having myself run off stage left instead where there is a lot more room to stand than the alternative.

Vocally, I believe that this was my best performance yet. I kept my volume consistent throughout the entire show, which was a problem I had doing in the rehearsals before the first showing. I also managed to make a clear distinction between the inspector character and the staff 1 character by using my articulation and stressing certain consonants to my advantage. I also believe the delivery of some of my lines were much better suited to my character than the first showing. In the first one i portrayed the inspector character as getting angry and frustrated with the ringleader in the fifth and sixth scene of act 2, whereas in the second one I portrayed the character as being more calm but still maintaining the same level of control. This works well as in the first showing of the play it sometimes felt like a shouting match between the ringleader and I, whereas in the second showing the contrast between the characters works well because even though the ringleader is more aggressive in speech than the inspector, they still end up being usurped by the inspector.

There were parts of our performance that I wish I could have fixed. Such as the hair nets for the pupil characters. We lost a large amount of them in the second show and they were black and therefore did not match the all-white style of the rest of everyone’s costume and the staging. To fix these I would have ordered them in white and in surplus to avoid this problem. Then again, I am not overly sold on the idea of hairnets in general; they do not seem to add anything to the performance and do not add to the tone to the play. If we were to do this all again I would have suggested not spending money on these to conserve money. Also speaking of costumes, the flip-flops of the pupils were also problematic. Some pupils did not have flip-flops whereas others did have them but were not white and therefore, did not match the rest of peoples costumes (excluding the black hair nets). What I would have done, was to prioritise costume near the start of the performance production and create a deadline for it before December. This would make sure none of these problems would arise again.