Show week evaluation

This week was our show and this meant high stress as we had been working hard to pull it together and wanted the shows to go well. We had three performances of the show for people to come and see, the open dress rehearsal on Wednesday afternoon for college students to attend, the Wednesday evening performance for paying public and also the Thursday evening performance for paying public.

The first show arrived and the whole company was a bit nervous about performing to a college audience due to the energy levels of teenagers. This however did not effect the way we performed the show, energy levels were up and focus was sustained throughout. The first piece I am in is A Town Called Malice, this piece involves strong characterisation, this means each person in the dance is telling a story. At the start of the dance me and Danilo open up the curtain at the back to reveal the back wall of the stage, we would usually get in position at the start of Hat dance. This piece went well and the characters came across really well.

After this piece there is a costume change in which I ditch the suit jacket, put on a red piece of ribbon as a bow tie then get into a high vis jacket and a hard hat ready for my next appearance on stage.

I then play the part of a stage hand that interrupts the compares, we felt that this fitted and added to the comedy of the little connector as it continued the theme of the play that goes wrong with Cameron and Matts characters, once the door is in place the scene begins. After a while I interrupt and make up a reason to leave the scene early with the door in order to have time to get ready and in place for the next piece.

The next piece is Dancin’ fool, this piece is all about big characters, big faces and big smiles. It’s all about entertainment it is supposed to be a show at a bar somewhere exotic. This works really nicely with the variety feel we are going for with the show as it means we have had some contrasting dances as well as acting.

At the end of DF I had to run off stage and vary out a very quick change in time to be ready for Believe, my physical theatre piece with Danilo and Jasmine. This piece went well each time we performed it and I feel that during the public performance all three of us gave 110% energy to the piece and we received positive feedback each time we performed it, the piece again worked really well with the variety element of the performance as it was something a little bit different.

After believe there is another compare moment that is interrupted by the stage hands but this time we are bringing on a table complete with door mouse and all. This went well in the final two performances however in the open dress run the runner malfunctioned and we had to improve our way out of it, this actually resulted in good humour. We then made sure the runner was fixed and ready for the rest of the performances, we were sure not to break character.

After this piece I changed into a Hawaiian shirt ready for the final few pieces in the show these were Alice 3, seasons of love and hand Jive. These pieces went well on each night and nicely rounded off the performances.

To conclude show week went well as the feedback from the audiences was good, there was a nice variety of pieces in the performances and we all had great energy throughout each night and made each night as if it was the first time we had done stuff (acting based) .

Wednesday at one review with course staff 26th September

Today was all about sharing the different pieces we had so far whether they were finished or not, it was a chance to show things off as a work in progress.

Levels 2 and three first and second years met in the theatre to watch each others work; Work varied from dance to acting to singing and in some cases all three. We were given feedback about each performance and how we can improve them.

We started with Dancin’ fool, this piece is probably our best as we have been working on it for the full time we have been on the course, this was reflected in the feedback that it was ‘very polished’, the next piece I did was a town called mallace, this was good as we have not had as much time to work on this and this was shown in the feedback we received ‘Some bits were cleaner than others’ this is just showing us that there are parts we need to work on, I know that I really need to work on the heel digs as I’m still not getting it.

We then went onto the fairytales which sadly my group could not perform due to and absence in the group and very little time to amend the gap.

The Cause Review

On Wednesday 19th September 2018 I was lucky enough to see a production called ‘The Cause’, a production by Dreadnought southwest, it was written by Natalie McGrath and directed by Josie Sutcliffe. The play features three characters only, Millicent Fawcett played by Ruth Mitchell, Emmeline Pankhurst played by Michelle Ridings and The Trumpet played by Remi Oriogun-Williams.

The play is set in 1913 and is an imagined meeting between the two great leaders of the suffragists and suffragette movement, one by means of peaceful protest and the other by bombs and hunger strikes. The meeting takes place in Millicent’s Orchard at a time in 1913 where Emmeline has been imprisoned and on hunger strike but has been let out to prevent her becoming a martyr, and she is now on the run. This was as part of the cat and mouse act and the Temporary Discharge for ill-health act. It looks at the two enemies reflecting on their childhood when they used to be friends and looks at the effect of the tragic death of Emily Wilding-Davison at the royal derby day when attempting to tie the cause’s colour to the king’s horse, in the process she was stampeded, and this resulted in her death; This affected both sides of the suffrage movement. The end of the play is the two leaders agreeing on one thing and sharing an experience before exiting the stage.

Now that I have covered the outline of the play onto my review…

Although ‘The Cause’ is not something that I would go and see just out of the blue for fun I did enjoy the overall experience, I was lucky enough to get to see it twice as I was helping as front of house on their public evening performance, I enjoyed the evening performance more as it seemed to be more relaxed however more intense. Something we learned when speaking to the cast is that they gage the audience to gage their own performance, so they tailor the show to fit with the showing, this is clear throughout the performance as there is a lot of audience interaction through the form of ‘The Trumpet’.

When looking at Trumpet there is a lot more there than you may think as she is based off the foundation of theatre in the way that she is a representation of Greek chorus this is shown in the way she seems to narrate the action and is able to jump in and out of the audience, she is also supposed to be a bright happy character this is demonstrated in her costume as it is full of colour and life, unlike the two other character who wear full white or black.

I did enjoy the simplistic set and the use of media to enhance it, the set was made up of white tiles on the floor and a white bench with a white sheet of fabric at the back, this could be taken to show purity or maybe just to help you focus on the actors. Throughout there were multiple media assists, these were in the forms of projections, audio and lighting. The projection accompanied the dialogue and at one point they were speaking of fallen women and there was an animation this I felt was very effective.

To conclude ‘The Cause’ is a different and intriguing piece of theatre that even though it is not my normal cup of tea was enjoyable and well worth the time; However there were some points that were not very clear especially when speaking of Emily Wilding-Davison, the way it came across from their side was that she deliberately killed herself to prove a point, however as I have already mentioned it was an accident, other than that though it was a mind opening production.