Performance Evaluation

I think that overall our performance went well. Although we performed it to the best of our abilities I don't think it was the best that we performed it as we had slight problems during the performance, which we didn't have during the rehearsals. But we also improved on some scenes as well.

On the first scene, which was 'The Hospital' scene two people overlapped each other, so they ended up talking at the same time and in this scene I could have talked a bit more louder as the audience had to strain a bit to hear, but during the performance the projection of my voice and my articulation got more stronger and clearer to understand. The audience commeted on this scene saying how they loved the physical theatre and the emotions it provoked, such as frustrastion and helplessness on Christina's behalf, as she couldn't do anything but watch her parents fight.

Our scene entrances and exits flowed really well, as we all moved in sync with each other and didn't take too long on the blackouts. However, the weakness of having the blackouts was that it was a little bit time consuming and we had to do it as quickly as possible so the audience wouldn't lose interest or the feeling of the piece. The blackouts would be one of the things I would have changed in our piece. We only used the blackout twice and both of those times was to put the blocks into position on stage and take them off to put them backstage. Instead of doing blackouts to put them on and take them off we could have done more creative ways to move them, for example kicking one of the blocks on. Because my character on that scene was angry it would have fit the characterisation.

Aftter I read the audience's commentry I concluded that their favourite scene was the 'Mirror Scene'. Some of the reasons they gave for this was; the scene on its own had great atmosphere and the piano just added to that and it was a powerful scene as it provoked emotional responses from them i.e. scared and a feeling of loneliness. The scene was a big strength to our piece, as it focused on all of our timing. Everyone was in sync throughout that scene and because of that it came off more powerful than we thought it would. Timing I think was also another strength for us. The 'Mirror' scene was a great example of the timing and 'Who's the Real Christina?' scene, where we're all trying to be in sync to show that we are one person. This ended up looking really good as we were all in time for most of the moves we did like when we moved our heads to different points in the room. We had a problem with this in the rehearsals as three people were clicking and they were going at different speeds to each other. So we just decided to have one person clicking. However, one downfall of this scene was Dan's drop at the end. We nearly dropped him which could have caused a serious accident. The reason for this was because in rehearsals we never decided how many counts we where going to do before we where going to turn around link arms and catch him. As I was in the middle I managed to get a good grip on him when he fell but the people in front got there a bit too late as they couldn't see what was going on but luckily they seemed to sense something wrong and managed to catch Dan before he fell. Unfortunately, I think this incident did take away the tension in the scene as the audience came out of the atmosphere, as they were all on edge as they could see the accident happening.

Each person in our piece showed good characterisation skills and it showed as most of the audience answered that they're favorite character was all of us. A great example of our characterisation skills was the 'Train Scene' where everyone was Christina but just had different personalities. There was a mix of personalities i.e. happy, worried, angry. Another good example was the monologues. There was me and two other girls who did monoluges and as time went on we showed Christina gradually becoming more confident in herself.

Our aim was 'Lost in sanity explores the notion of identity, isolation and freedom throughout the action of movement and to confront and challenge the perception of the 'self' and one of the questions we asked the audience was 'Do you think our performance supports our aim?' All of the replys back was yes. This felt good as we portrayed to the audience what we wanted them to feel and understand of the piece, as somebody said our piece was "thought provoking".

I think that when it came down to the final performance everyone was very supportive backstage and on with each other and focused about their performance. Which is a strong point in a group, as it helped us pull off a great perfomance.

Week 2 Additions

Problems and Solutions

The group had a problem with scene 2; Past Memory as we all felt it was too naturalistic but we couldn't decide on how to change it and make it look abstract. The first thing we did was sit down and discuss it. This was a mistake as we couldn't test out these ideas and see them developing and the group was getting frustrated as we couldn't agree on what would look better, so I came up with the idea of all of us making one big shape together and see what would come out of that. In the end we came up with the idea to instead of using chairs and a table to portray to the audience a family eating dinner, we used our bodies instead. We all sat on the floor and made a star shape with our legs, with 'Christina' in the middle. We came up with this idea by coming up with one word describing us. We picked United as we all came together as a group and a star seemed like a perfect way to show us all being connected.

Another scene we had a problem with was the 'Train scene' as it was too naturalistic and wasn't going the way I pictured it in my head. I saw the four characters having a conversation with each other but talking to the audience as well to make it look abstract. For example the character of Christina looks at another character smiles and says hello and the other character turns to the audience and says something like "Why is this girl staring at me? It makes me feel uncomfortable, don't you feel the same when somebody looks at you that way?" But the group went another way with this scene and made it more naturalstic. The other group gave us feedback and said although it was entertaining at times and has good potentital it dragged on a bit as you couldn't tell what the point of the scene was. That feedback helped us a lot as we decided to focus this scene more on the aim of our piece about finding 'oneself' and asking the audience questions making it more entertaining to watch.

The Groups Process

I think that everyone was really positive during the rehearsal process. We understandable had moments where there was some disagreements, such as what we would like the audience to get from this scene and if that point gets across. A good example of this is the 'Obstacles' scene half the group wanted the obstacles to be us; using our bodies to make the shapes while the other half wanted objects placed there instead but verbally being the obstacles. So instead of us actually stopping that person with our bodies we stop them with our words. We tried out both of these ideas and luckily came to an agreement that the idea of us being the obstacles looked better and fit the piece more, as it looked more abstract us being the objects.

Everyone added in ideas to the piece and contributed to other peoples thoughts and ideas. Everyone in the group also had a chance to become the leader and take charge of their own idea to see how it played out, with the others chipping in every now and then. I think that the group got on well together and always listened to each other, even if things did get a bit stressful and frustrating at times. But we always handled it professionally, which I see as a strength. A weakness however was that when people became tired or frustrated they would just sit out and not take part, stopping the other members of the group from getting on with the scene.

Week 4 - (14th - 20th October)

This week was all about perfecting our scenes, and devising our last three ideas. Two of the ideas was the last two end scenes that we all had ideas on but didn't know how to go about creating them. So, we kept on pushing it back until inspiration hit us. And the other idea was our first scene of the whole piece which we actually made and thought of this monday.

The first scene was called the "Hospital" scene. I was the mum and Bradly was the dad, waiting in the hospital for news on our daughter Christina who was in a coma. Although the scene starts off naturalistically it soon becomes a battle of movements between me and Bradly as we have a dance/fight number. There was a couple of lifts, i.e. the paperclip, and a clever technique which looked like Bradly was pulling my hair and dragging me across the floor, but really it was me doing all the kicking and pulling without him having to do any effort. We all came up with this scene as without it the piece wouldn't make sense and it wouldn't feel completed.

We also fixed a couple of problems the day before the performance, such as the phone scene and Dan's lift. We changed it by having only one person clicking instead of three as it confused all of us because they were all going at different speeds. Dan's lift was also a problem as when we catched him the audience couldn't have been able to see, as the angle we placed ourselves was a problem. So to fix this we tried for Dan to go on two blocks instead of one to have the extra height but that didn't work out well as we nearly dropped him. In the end we decided to move the box to be directly in front of the audience so they could see Dan falling head on and more clearly.

Then we decided to develop the bus stop scene. Before we developed it I felt it was too naturalistic so I thought of the idea to talk to the audience instead, make them feel like they were involved as our aim is to make the audience question themselves. So I thought of the idea of asking questions like; "Do you know where I am?" and "Do you know how I can get out of here?" In another scene I did a monolgue talking about time and why everyone cares so much about time; so I linked this scene with that one. We all had different emotions, i.e. happy, sad, worried. To again show different aspects of 'oneself'.

We also came up with a new scene which was accidental as someone was messing around with the curtains and poking their head out, so we thought we couple incorporate that into the scene "Who's the Real Christina?" as we thought it looked effective and interesting to watch. We all stuck our head through a different opening in the curtain and hid our bodies. We thought this could add a little humor before we crawled out and got to the next scene.

Here's us in the theatre with our heads sticking out the curtains:



Finally we devised our last scene. We already had the idea of us having the "AM I FREE?" letters on our shirts back and front. In the beginning we were going to have two words; ISOLATED and I AM FREE on two shirts. But I thought that it would be hard to do that so instead we only opted for one black shirt and the words I AM FREE. I came up with the idea of making the audience question if Christina is really free as in the beginning we were going to finish it as the person speaking as Christina saying "I am free." But then I came up with the idea of Christina saying "Am I free?" And the person playing Christina (who was Shelby at this stage) having a question mark on her top, to show her still feeling confused. At the end of the scene we all whisper "Wake up Christina", making the audiecne feel a sense of eerie and eagerness to find out what happens next.

We finished this week off rehearsing all the scenes and going through the piece over and over again to get everything perfect and in sync to make it look as neat and effective as it could be before we finally had to perform.

Week 3 - (7th - 13th October)

This week the group began by doing the same thing as last week which was revisiting some of our less developed ideas, ones that we touched but didn't really know how to carry on and develop more ideas. So we did the solution of trying out different physical aspects i.e. lifts and choreographed dance steps. For example, the movement of our heads, the sharp left, right, centre, and coming together as a group and making individual shapes and seeing how they fit together to make an abstact shape at the end with all of us used.

In the end we came up with 5 more developed and changed individual scenes. These scenes are:
Scene 1 - TrapChristina is sat in a chair surrounded by her inner demons, who stop her from escaping her own mind. We explored this by having three people on either side of whoever was playing Christina and grabbing her when she tries to escape the chair. We tried doing that in different syles. First going fast to show the franticness of her situation, then slowing it down to make her seem more sluggish and tired, with a heartbeat in the beginning gradually speeding up the more worked up she gets. I thought up the heartbeat idea to always be in the scenes to add dramatic affect. At the end of this scene Chrisitna says a monologue talking about how she's gone numb and can't feel anything anymore.
Scene 2 - Who's the Real Christina?This scene is crucial in our devising piece as it's called 'The Real Christina'. For this scene there are four of us and we are all repeating the line "I'm the real Christina". Three of us are standing on blocks to give it a change from always using chairs. Three of us are all Christina but we have different personalities of that one person. I'm the angry one telling of my past memories, my bad experiences. Another personality was a happy one, telling of their happy memories and the last one was the sad personality, telling of their sad memories. The last Christina was the "real" Christina who was confused on who she was and trying to get out of the blocks surrounding her, metaphorically showing that she's trying to escape her own mind.
Scene 3 - Circle sceneWe started this scene with me saying my Christina monologue, talking about how now I'm starting to feel things and the numbness is seeping away, but Christina doesn't want to feel these things. In this scene somebody came up with the idea of forming a circle around Christina (me) and I came up with the idea of looking out to the audience, to make the audience question everything we're saying and making it look more abstact. The group take it in turns to speak their piece and to make that transition from person to person the groups count to three beats and twirl together around the circle to make the next person speaking go in front and face the audience.

Scene 4 - Obstacles scene

In this scene I came up with the idea of working together as a team to make obstacles for Christina (who is still played by me) to climb over, to show her struggle of fighting her own mind. We did this by three people literally being the obstacles. The original idea was for all of us to be the obstacles but we soon realised that it wasn't working, as it looked and felt too messy. The three people who were the obstacles were making the obstacles with all different shapes and sizes with their bodies. We decided to do all the obstacles low, so I had to crawl and drag myself on the floor. We decided this to show more of the characters inner struggle and to show a link to the stimulus; the painting of "Christina's World".
Scene 5 - Mirror Scene
This scene links in with the obstacles scene, as it's still the characters inner struggle. This scene is what the title says it is; it's people mirroring each other by their movements. For example if I lift my hand up and touch my face the person opposite me would do exactly the same thing. The reason we did this was to show the audience that although we're all parts of the character Christina we are all still the same person.

Although we came up with new scenes this week, it was still a tough week; as we changed many of our old scenes to make the piece fit in more together. For example the first scene we ever did was the fire scene and we completely took that idea out as we had to ask ourselves as a group does it go with the piece? So even though we had some disagreements, we always managed to solve them and get scenes done.

Week 2 - (30th September - 6th October)

This week the group began by revisiting some of our less developed ideas, ones that we touched but didn't really know how to carry on and develop more ideas. So we did the solution of trying out different physical aspects i.e. lifts and choreographed dance steps. For example, the movement of our heads, the sharp left, right, centre, and coming together as a group and making individual shapes and seeing how they fit together to make an abstact shape at the end with all of us used.

In the end we came up with 5 basic individual scenes:　
Scene 1 - Fire scene

Christina is sat in a chair surronded by her inner demons, who she tries to run from in order to escape her past. We came up with the idea of her family dying in a fire and she was being haunted by her family members. I came up with the idea of using people in the background to actually speak as the family members and I also came up with the idea of her fighing off her inner demons. We did this by two people pulling her down on the chair, and making her feel the affects of the fire.

Scene 2 - Past Memory
In this scene Christina is reviewing a memory of her family eating christmas dinner, she is noting all the small but significant details of the moment, such as who's chair is who's, the arguments that went on. We started to explore this scene but left it to come to a later date, as we were just coming up with problems and no solutions.

Scene 3 - Obstacles scene

We have Christina crawling on the floor and struggling to move and we also have people becoming moving obstacles that are blocking her path making it even more difficult, this is to symbolise Christina overcoming her struggles. We did this by using three or more people together to create bigger shapes for the person playing Christina to struggle out of. For example, I came up with the idea of two people putting their legs together to make a bridge shape and another person over them using their arms to give the notion of a box and Christina trying to struggle out of that box.

Scene 4 - Trap
Christina is pushed around and held back by her inner demons again, they flip a chair over her and bring her back to where she started. The main part of this scene is the phrase T-R-A-P we use this on our costumes, which would be black shirts with everyone having one letter on their shirt. At the end we were thinking of having a word to form at the end that would involve all eight of us. Like Isolated.

Scene 5 - Train scene

In this scene Christina meets new people, we wanted this to be an insight as to how Christina saw new people having been kept away from everyone other than her family. We were using ideas to do with the chairs, but halfway through the scene we decided to change the chairs for stage blocks. This was also the scene we used the invicible phone keypad, where all the numbers are bigger and we turn our head sharply to look at each number. For example the number 1 was on the top left corner of the room, the number 5 was in the centre of the room and the number 9 was on the bottom right corner of the room. But we scrapt this idea to use on another scene or to come back and add it on to this scene later, as it didn't seem to fit in with the way the scene was going.
　
We decided as a group to split into two groups, 4 in each and work on separate scenes to speed up the process of making more scenes. The scene I worked on was labelled 'The Train Journey' but we later decided that it was too realistic and we were aiming for non-naturalistic. To update the scene we used blocks instead of chairs and decided not to make it a train but instead it being in Christina's mind. For this scene there are four of us and we are all repeating the line "I'm the real Christina". Three of us are standing on blocks to give it a change from always using chairs. Three of us are all Christina but we have different personalities of that one person. I'm the angry one speaking about my past memories, my bad experiences. Another personality was a happy one, telling of their happy memories and the last one was the sad personality, telling of their sad memories. The last Christina was the "real" Christina who was confused on who she was and trying to get out of the blocks surrounding her, metaphorically showing that she's trying to escape her own mind.

The name of our piece at the moment is now called 'Lost in Sanity' which was linked with Christina being trapped and isolated. The themes are isolation and identity and our aim is that 'Lost in sanity explores the notion of identity, isolation and freedom throughout the action of movement and to confront and challenge the perception of the 'self'.

Week One - (23rd - 29th September)

This week we where given a stimulus to look at for our devising piece. We sat and took notes of our initial thoughts and ideas about the stimulus, we did this separately so we could later get into groups and explain our ideas and thoughts on the stimulus, which was a painting. At this point we had no knowledge of what the painting was actually about or it's history, and because of this we got to make our own assumptions on what the painting was about or what it represented. At my first look at the painting I thought it looked like the woman in the painting was being chased by someone, as her posture looked like she had tripped and fallen onto her hands and knees and she was looking up at the house across the field as her sanctuary; a safe place. When I looked at her body the first thing I realised was how deathly pale and thin her arms were and the style of her dress; as I identified as from an older era. Because of this I thought maybe she wasn't going to that house for safety maybe she got disowned by her father or husband and was trying to come back. The first thing we learnt about the painting was the title, which was "Christina's World". My initial idea from the name of the painting was that it was her mental world that she had thought of and made up in her head. But then I thought maybe this was her reality and she was trying to escape from that. We later found out that the painting was from 1948, American, Maine, Cushing and that the Painter was called Andrew Wyeth. The Girl in the photo was called Anna Christina Olsen and she was found to have polio which made her unable to walk which was why she was crawling around on the ground, which would explain the drastic state of her arms.

We then discussed in our groups our thoughts and opinions about the painting and we soon realised that none of us thought that this showed happiness and that darkness, abuse and neglect was common factors in our initial thoughts. We later learnt that the Painter, Andrew Wyeth, watched Christina crawl like this everyday, to get inspiration and Christina was aware of this. We took part in a workshop which had three different stages; of looking and staring at someone, so they knew they where being looked at, not knowing they where being looked at and then blatantly staring at a person. After this workshop we were asked how we felt through that. Many people said uncomforable and awkward, but I felt unaffected as I was looking at a point on a far away wall and thinking that as my goal that I had to reach; ignoring everybody else that was there and just focusing on getting to that point. So in Christina's case her house.

As a group we came up with many ideas and started bringing some forwards to try out. One of the ideas we went with was Christina being an orphan, someone thought of her being an orphan because of a tragic fire, from this I thought of the idea of her being tormented by her inner demons, which were really her family members who died in that fire. In this scene I came up with the idea of two people either side of "Christina" trapping her into the chair; making it impossible for her to get out, while the rest of the group was in the background being the voices of the family, talking about the feeling of the fire creeping up onto them. We finished with Christina screaming, but realised it was too cliche and was done too often, so we all came up with new ways to end that scene. One person came up with the idea of a violin being played, another person came up with the sound of nails on a chalk board making the audience wince at the nosie it emits. I came up with the idea of her happily laughing at the end; promoting the audience to stare in shock at her response.

To add more physical theatre into it we did another workshop were one person was Christina and the rest of us were making obstacles around her to see how we could use our bodies to symbolise her being trapped, as we went for the idea of mental illness. We used someone's idea to put Christina back to a good time in her life with her family at christmas dinner, the twist is that we have the later Christina narrating the story when the characters are frozen. Alicia who played the Christina who narrated the story played her as a woman who was suffering from a mental illness looking back at a happy memory from her past watching the younger version of herself (who was played by me). We also added a rule that every time a certain few words where mentioned like fire or family Alicia would scream and react to the word. We also had to make the scene look more abstact so instead of having a table we used our legs to make a star shape, thus using our bodies to become the table.

In the end we took a range of ideas and thoughts that all of us had come up with from our own creativity, having looked at the stimulus and ended up experimenting with many different ideas.