The Evaluation Of The Show Lost.

In this evaluation I will be explaining the process and stages of developing our performance and working as a team, including attitude towards work and punctuality.

End of November beginning of December, another module was given to our group and we were told that this performance would be done as a whole group performance and to perform it in high Barnet at The Bull Theatre. This sounded like a great idea at first but as usual didn’t go to plan because of the lack of concentration in the class and high opinions due to the big amount of strong characters in our class.  The first couple of weeks we done some exercises and spoke about different topics on how we could bring this piece together,  lots of ideas and suggestions were brought up and debates were made, finally we agreed  on the devise piece about family and family life as we could all relate to that. Due to weeks wasted with people not turning up, coming in late and generally just everyone sitting around doing nothing and being de-motivated it came to the tutors knowledge that we could not participate as a whole group so eventually the class was split and we would no longer be able to perform at the bull theatre where this show was supposed to be happening at, so as a class we ruined our chance as we didn’t deserve to perform there for all the time wasted in the previous weeks.

The following week, Michael and Nick sat us down and read the new groups out which were split into two. I was in the group that was female orientated and I think they done it purposely to see how we’d work and get along.  This turned out very well because after all the arguments and disagreements, we pulled together and gave a good devising piece.

Our first idea that we thought of and perused was about a funeral of a girl that we all went to school with. We all went our separate ways from school and lived different lives and just never really kept in contact but at the funeral it would also have become a reunion for al of us to re-unite as friends which really sounds like it was decent and had a good story line, but it didn’t and a week and a half before the date to show it and after weeks of practicing certain scenes, we all felt like it was not working and would be an embarrassment to show. So we changed it was quite risky seeing as the limited time we had left but it was a risk that paid off, because we all stepped up our game, everyone was throwing in ideas and thinking of what could happen next and everyone had their own individual story and in put in this performance which gave it that extra touch from all of us. Our show was titles lost because we each had lost either something someone or generally lost our self and came together and shared our stories with one another by show acts on what had happened and at the end united together in a group of cancelling and said one word that fully related to us at that point in time. It was an experience as every performance is but it turned out all good in the end because as usual our group work best when their under pressure therefore its last minute and great. Now awaiting the grades that are fully deserved for everyone.

Evaluation on Harold Pinter’s Play

                          

In the plays we previously performed, as a class each of us done one of Harold Pinter’s plays and my one was “Victoria Station”.  My character was the driver which was called (274), I had to play quite a confused and dumb down man who didn’t ever really know what was going on.  So even though as myself I couldn’t relate to him, personally I think I portrayed the character well and people believed I was that man driving around not knowing what was going on at anytime of the whole piece.
I feel like in this play being partnered with someone different and someone I’ve never worked with before, I got to be a different person and perform in a way I hadn’t before, my partner was Tieyler. I think we both worked well together and never really had problems during our process, most time we was both in college, and there never really a time we wasn’t, and that was a good start to our process, we continuously read over and over our lines before we decided to get up and start rehearsing them which for me was better, because that way I got to learn and be comftable with what I’m saying before trying to do something and not being able to understand the text being read. Also we both annotated our scripts, where there was long pauses and silences we would go through them and try to make them as awkward as possible because that’s what most of Pinter’s work is about.  
After about a week to a week and a half me and Tieyler new our script off by heart and that’s when it started to come together. We both had ideas of staging and kept it very simple because “Victoria station” was a simple and easily understood play so we didn’t want too much of a fuss with props. So on stage facing the audience was a table, chair and a microphone on the table which she was speaking into as the controller, at the front right of the stage was the car door facing the right wing of the audience and what I think was so nice about our staging is that at any point there was no eye contact at all with each other so it was as if we we’re in two different places, and that’s exactly what we wanted it to be like, I was in my car driving about, cruising through London and Tieyler was sitting in her office talking into something an being frustrated which she really played well. As for costumes I Wore just a shirt that wasn’t fully buttoned and sensible because a bit dopy and you could only see my top half through the car door & Tieyler wore a blazer and tie to show her status was higher than mine and that she was the professional one.    What I could have done better was made myself look a bit more comftable on stage because I times I found myself fidgeting and not knowing what to do with myself during the long speeches Tieyler had to play and pauses. Also I forgot a couple of my lines but that was due to learning other lines from “Victoria station 1” which was the play before ours. Sadly I lost my partner a day before we had to perform and from “Victoria station 1”, Chelsea & Carliie were partnered and Chelsea lost her partner too so therefore me and Chelsea partnered and played each other’s part that were missing. This knocked us down a bit but we used it to our best advantage to boost our grades even more and I think although there wasn’t our original full plan of how we wanted it to turn out, we worked well together and pulled though. In drama you have to always be ready for the best and worsted scenario’s and this experience proved it, we got put in the position to read and unknown script to us and look like were comftable with it and perform it the following Monday and although it wasn’t allot to learn it put pressure on us and I think that’s why I forgot  a couple of my lines in the second bit which was my bit, having said that Chelsea was a good partner and carried on knowing I had forgot my lines, the pauses in this play made it less obvious so it looked rather professional.

Coming to my conclusions now: I think this was one of the best performances and although it wasn't perfect, i enjoyed the process of it and the story line because it was absoloutly pointless but most of all it was a different experience to previous plays and that's what made it interesting.

16th Septemeber 2011 -

On friday we watched an hours vidio on some of Harold pinters work, performed by various actors & actresses. They done a selection of pinters work such as "The bithday party", "Celebration", "Silence" etc. On a few occations i found my self not understanding what was going on and the story line behind these short plays for watching it for the first time but by the ones i did understand and could noote about i would say the play i enjoyed and understood the most was "The Lover", it was a was a reality situation and just really interesting. But as all of pinters work i've realised that he likes to do things that are in our everyday life and thats what makes him him by doing that, taking a small scenireo & creating something with it. over all the lesson was useful and i learnt something new about acting and inventing.