Evaluation of performance

Evaluation

For our performance this week we had a number of different weaknesses but for every weakness we had more strengths. Karen made a little evaluation sheet with some simple questions to help us to know what they thought of it, why they thought that and what could be improved. Well for 'Box' we got mainly positive feedback for our performance and high ratings for our energy and good (but could be better) for our vocal strength. I agree with both of these as one of our weaknesses was sometimes our projection. I think this could have been due to uncertainty in some scenes, in the order of which we spoke, for example in our final scene where we all had a line, or in the dream scene where we didn't have a lot of light so we needed to really on our vocal strength to keep the scene engaging.

One of many strengths, was that nobody forgot their lines. Well even if they did, it definitely was not noticeable by me, so wouldn't have been noticeable by the audience. I feel a weakness though was that we were not brilliantly prepared for the start of the show, for example, the drum for the first scene which I needed to use wasn't in place, so I had to get it into the right place before we started which caused a delay and took away focus from the others. Luckily I think that was our weakest point and the show went upwards from there. The timing of the piece was not affected by the previous mishap and was possibly the best we had ever ran it. The beating of the drum really brought a nice aspect as it made it seem like the pace was just right, not to slow but also not too fast.

Some of the emotions the audience felt:

-Pain
-Prejudice
-Pity
-Sorrow
-Sympathy
-Sadness
-Happiness
-Confusion
-Hope
-Tension

All the audience had their own opinion on what scene they liked best, but the majority of the vote went to 'The Race'. Some of them liked this scene because they liked the build up with the music, or just because they liked the energy. At least every scene was mentioned in this category at least once, so I feel this made all of our work worthwhile. I feel like we did well to put across the subject matter, by creating a aim to follow which was 'Through physical representation ‘Box’ presents the varying capabilities and restrictions of the human body, in order to confront the prejudice and ignorance in society today.' We used a lot of symbolism in our piece for example the puppet scene, by using the idea of puppets; it mirrors the idea of Anna having to be dependent. From the feedback we got given the audience felt as if we achieved our aim in our outcome, as the majority of the feedback was positive.

Our group worked very well as a team, it might have taken us a little while to come together but we finally did it in the end.  I think one of the reasons for this could be because I joined the group late so we had to go through the whole process of meeting and getting to know each other but I felt very welcome. We managed to come up with some very interesting and creative ideas and represent them in intriguing ways together. In the final performance we worked together as a team and reassured and reminded each other where things needed to be and what scene was next. We also worked well in the sense that we all wanted and respected the fact that we wanted to do well and so got on with rehearsals by focusing and being there as much as we could. Characterization was something that we definitely included as everyone had their own character, for example Joe and Reece both had a lot of mentions in the ‘who stood out’ question. Reece and Joe were named ‘E’ and ‘G’ for evil and good. They mirrored each other and this was effective as like the audience said, they stood out, they also wore face paint to so a smile and a frown.

Our use of dynamics and energy were both strong, we represented these throughout as we always had control of our characters and what they were doing. We used a range of dynamics, the most obvious were shown in the transition between the race and the finish line scene, very we used music to show the change in soft movements to represent Anna when she is at her happiest, and gentle and uplifting music was played, to a more sinister and troubled atmosphere where we changed to struggling and stiff movements using tense bodies. We did this when the music accented and the light turned to red. 

A good example of a strength is how focused the group was. This was probably shown most obviously in the first scene with the chairs and how focused everyone needed to be to concentrate on timing. Everyone needed to be aware of what was happening around them as I was in charge of the drum beats though we couldn't see each other and had to go by ear. As well as focusing by ear the group did well the focus on one spot whilst doing the movements, this created a more dramatic atmosphere which could of easily been taken away by just one person being distracted from the piece.