Blackout -- The Evaluation
The Long Awaited Big Day
Coming into college that day was no joke as we had to be there on time for a technical run through to make sure that everything ran sweetly and smoothly. There was a sense of nervousness in the air again but this was just the pressure of an actual live audience yet again coming to watch us, but now it died down quickly as we had done this before, the faces in the audience were also familiar which made it even less tense than before. I thought to myself that the performance would go down brilliantly and I was sending out positive vibes to my team in hopes we'd kick this play up and around like we did to Verona. The first performance was at 2pm and the second performance was at 7pm, the last one was mainly for our friends and family to come watch and support.
----- @6:30
Backstage everything was calm and cool, nobody that I can remember was panicking or frustrated with everything the atmosphere was such a thrill as our energy had stayed brimming through the whole day. We all went to our changing rooms to have one last talk and hurrah for the last performance hoping to breeze through this one as the team did the other, again Rob's voice came through our respective speakers and sounded the drums for our beginning of the show. With that we went behind curtain and our eyes followed out the girls to center stage as they awaited the audience to settle down and Rob to start them up. Watching the performance from behind I got to see everything play out and was impressed by what we had created as a group and to see it actually come to life was an amazing thing. There were tidbits here and there where our staging did go a bit awry but the audience seemed oblivious to it, as well as there being times where cues and lines were slipped. The audience again having no knowledge of it was a sign to keep going no matter what went wrong.
In addition I believe that this time I had vastly improved my projection and articulation over the term time and thank my fellow actors for that after so many hours of practice in the stage space gave me the time to do so and make it work, not seem forced or irritating to hear. A deeper understanding of my characters have been upgraded as well because now I feel like in order to better myself as an actor I need to get used to being in my character's shoes and understanding them as a person as opposed to someone's creation.
Looking back at the scenes I know now that they were nicely constructed, the sections of breaks in the fourth wall were strong as I could see the audience instantly connect during those points, I felt as if the performance was made more powerful by including the audience into James' life. Throughout the many sections there were some compelling monologues that I believe that stood out, for example the piece where James is speaking about being used by the bullies and having fake friends highlights a lot of situations happening in reality today. Furthermore the final section where James speaks about turning the lights off and "starting to talk" about his problems I feel is a pivotal point in the play as it reaches out to the audience breaking down their barriers and making them understand that anyone can go through what James did, but not everyone needs to go without help.
Articulation like I previously stated had improved on a group wise scale, I alongside my team had our words heard and felt the conviction behind them which showed how immersed we were in our twists of James and even narrating had people had different ways of doing just that. From watching the clip I believe that it shows the change in our acting via the many different methods and teachings we have picked up along the way, branching all the way back to Oedipus and until now I feel as if there has been a big jump in regards to the thought process' and characterization, the technique from Stanislavski: Magic If and Realism and Uta Hagen's: Respect for Acting chapter two 'Identity' drawing from this we learned and implemented the following in our performance:
Clip shown above is the 2pm showing of which I was unable to attend due to frustrating circumstances. However negativeness aside I'm so proud of my group for such a fantastic performance as well as simply pulling through and doing the best in the face of adversity. This alone show's how capable the group is in the case of a missing member which occurred few times within rehearsals and still as a group we carried it to the real performance which of course was a series of unfortunate circumstances that day. Although I did make the second performance which was also recorded but for the viewing of my tutor I assume.
Backstage everything was calm and cool, nobody that I can remember was panicking or frustrated with everything the atmosphere was such a thrill as our energy had stayed brimming through the whole day. We all went to our changing rooms to have one last talk and hurrah for the last performance hoping to breeze through this one as the team did the other, again Rob's voice came through our respective speakers and sounded the drums for our beginning of the show. With that we went behind curtain and our eyes followed out the girls to center stage as they awaited the audience to settle down and Rob to start them up. Watching the performance from behind I got to see everything play out and was impressed by what we had created as a group and to see it actually come to life was an amazing thing. There were tidbits here and there where our staging did go a bit awry but the audience seemed oblivious to it, as well as there being times where cues and lines were slipped. The audience again having no knowledge of it was a sign to keep going no matter what went wrong.
In addition I believe that this time I had vastly improved my projection and articulation over the term time and thank my fellow actors for that after so many hours of practice in the stage space gave me the time to do so and make it work, not seem forced or irritating to hear. A deeper understanding of my characters have been upgraded as well because now I feel like in order to better myself as an actor I need to get used to being in my character's shoes and understanding them as a person as opposed to someone's creation.
Looking back at the scenes I know now that they were nicely constructed, the sections of breaks in the fourth wall were strong as I could see the audience instantly connect during those points, I felt as if the performance was made more powerful by including the audience into James' life. Throughout the many sections there were some compelling monologues that I believe that stood out, for example the piece where James is speaking about being used by the bullies and having fake friends highlights a lot of situations happening in reality today. Furthermore the final section where James speaks about turning the lights off and "starting to talk" about his problems I feel is a pivotal point in the play as it reaches out to the audience breaking down their barriers and making them understand that anyone can go through what James did, but not everyone needs to go without help.
Articulation like I previously stated had improved on a group wise scale, I alongside my team had our words heard and felt the conviction behind them which showed how immersed we were in our twists of James and even narrating had people had different ways of doing just that. From watching the clip I believe that it shows the change in our acting via the many different methods and teachings we have picked up along the way, branching all the way back to Oedipus and until now I feel as if there has been a big jump in regards to the thought process' and characterization, the technique from Stanislavski: Magic If and Realism and Uta Hagen's: Respect for Acting chapter two 'Identity' drawing from this we learned and implemented the following in our performance:
As well as the "30 seconds before" method in which we had to think where we were before and what we were doing, how we were feeling as this was further employed in the characters we played as.
I feel as if the play went down well because of how normal and natural it was to understand what someone like James went through, and we connected with that because of how one could relate to something such as that. We asked ourselves how would we feel if that was us and what would we do.
In all honestly forging this play was easily one of the hardest projects to date, I say this because of how simple the concept was yet how complex it was to create. With complete freedom to do what we will with the play it sometimes felt odd because most of us had not been in that situation before as actors, especially considering the fact that the play had no stage directions in it nor did it have set lines for the characters. Everything. Was down to us. Though it tended to be confusing at times in regards to what some characters were saying we as a group pulled through by helping each other and projecting our own tastes into what could be portrayed and what could've been meant, ranging from a naturalistic point of view to an abstract one based off of people's ideas and collective brainstorming. Moreover the project was an incredibly fun piece to do and even though I was skeptical on doing the piece partly because of the whole "the world is yours, create it" aspect it had drawn me in by how creative everyone's plots were and made me throw my own into the mix. And as Team Blue we birthed an amazing production thanks to an amazing crew and an amazing tutor to place us in the direction and allow us to set off on our own becoming the great actors and actresses we were meant to be.
I feel as if the play went down well because of how normal and natural it was to understand what someone like James went through, and we connected with that because of how one could relate to something such as that. We asked ourselves how would we feel if that was us and what would we do.
In all honestly forging this play was easily one of the hardest projects to date, I say this because of how simple the concept was yet how complex it was to create. With complete freedom to do what we will with the play it sometimes felt odd because most of us had not been in that situation before as actors, especially considering the fact that the play had no stage directions in it nor did it have set lines for the characters. Everything. Was down to us. Though it tended to be confusing at times in regards to what some characters were saying we as a group pulled through by helping each other and projecting our own tastes into what could be portrayed and what could've been meant, ranging from a naturalistic point of view to an abstract one based off of people's ideas and collective brainstorming. Moreover the project was an incredibly fun piece to do and even though I was skeptical on doing the piece partly because of the whole "the world is yours, create it" aspect it had drawn me in by how creative everyone's plots were and made me throw my own into the mix. And as Team Blue we birthed an amazing production thanks to an amazing crew and an amazing tutor to place us in the direction and allow us to set off on our own becoming the great actors and actresses we were meant to be.
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