Black and White - Performance Evaluation

I think that overall our performance went well. On the actual show day I think we performed it to the best of our abilities and it was a lot better than the rehearsals as everything just seemed to fall into place naturally.

 

I thought that the delivery of the lines and the clarity of them was a strength for me; I thought that everything was on cue and I said my lines clearly and confidently. I also wanted to deliver my lines using the chorus character that I thought of being mischievous and playful. I thought that throughout each of the plays everyone had more clarity with their words as we were told what words we had to work on with our diction and we got more confident being on a bigger stage. However the first time we showed the play to an audience we made a mistake in one of the chorus scenes as we said the lines in the wrong order but we managed to make it work by repeating the line one after the other; me as playful, somebody else as angry... and so on. I see this as another strength because we all worked together to fix the mistake instead of telling the audience what we did wrong by our facial expressions.

 

A weakness that we had during the rehearsals was our transitions as the performance space was two times bigger than the space we usually rehearsed at. For example the final chorus scene in act one we all had to come on with chairs but we ended up being slightly late and we all weren't spaced out evenly because we were rushing to get in our places, so this ended up looking untidy but once we figured out when to come on it ended up looking much better and the chorus was on at the correct time.

 

For the pace in the performance I thought it was very good especially on Wednesday night, because for me I thought that it was the best performance that we all did as we were all excited but more nervous as we knew our family and friends were seeing it that night so it made the energy levels pick up. I felt that within each of the chorus scenes brought the energy level up in the play and without it the play would of dragged a little bit as the chorus was a crucial part in the play. The only thing that was a problem for me on that night was in my hair I had pencils, to give off the effect of journalists but one of them slipped out and fell on the floor; I think I handled the situation really well as I just kicked it behind the block without any of the audience seeing what I was doing.

I felt that as a main member of the chorus all the chorus members worked well together and we bounced off each other with ease. Me and another main chorus member Paige, used each other to show the rivalry between the chorus members, as journalists fight to get their story on top. I think this made our characters seem more believable. The only chorus scene that I would see as a weakness was the end scene of act one. The reason I saw this as a weakness is because I think some of our movement such as when we did the ‘’Shout for joy shout’’ bits could have been clearer and we could have worked on it more as I think it was unclear as some of us were unsure of what we were doing.

As a group I felt as if we all did our best to achieve the performance style and managed to achieve it which was Greek theatre with a contemporary adaptation which the audience could relate to with some realism that brought out the tragedy in the piece. I think overall everyone worked really hard on their individual characters and their chorus characterisation so this created a believable performance with different personalities.

 

During the rehearsals we had a lot of talking backstage as nobody knew what scene was next, however on the performance day I thought that everyone backstage was very supportive with each other with for example helping people get in their costume and help moving the props backstage so they were out of the way. There was still some talking but only minor things which helped each other out if someone was confused about the scenes. I felt like everyone did their best to create the best possible performance and that everyone really concentrated on the things they needed to improve on. 

 

I think that by the end of 'Black And White' everyone really enjoyed performing it, as we all had a chance to play around with it and make it our own. Overall I think we put on a really good performance and everyone tried their best and the end result was due to team work, concentration and determination.