Today is the performance day of our Brecht production. Before performing our piece to our peers, we spent the morning rehearsing our individual scenes, the beginning and the end sequence. After going over the song a couple of times and reinforcing some of the Brechtian techniques, we showed our piece to the other groups.
Like I said, our first performance was to our peers which I felt really energetic for as I knew the energy in the room would be alive and inspiring. Jack had reminded me before to project my voice, so I managed to do my own quick vocal warm up before the performance started. I was able to apply what I had learned in Voice over the past few months to know what exercises to do in order to make my voice heard. Jack had also reminded Eleanor, Ellesse and me to stand in the gaps of the chairs so that everyone could see us clearly. Our piece was set out In-The-Round, and therefore concealed the energy in the circle and kept the piece awake and vibrant.
I noticed during the performance that there were a lot of laughs and this encouraged all the groups (including mine) to go outside our pieces slightly and improvises some knew lines. I think laughter is key when doing a Brecht based piece as often the topics are of un-spoken quality and therefore make the audience feel un-comfortable but engaged. laughter brings everyone together and creates amazing energy which is very beneficial to have while performing a piece that is supposed to be funny. Because of the weight our piece had, laughter was essential in my opinion, otherwise we'd feel cruel and daft.
The opening sequence went fantastically in my opinion because we were all focused on what we had to do and it was straight away into the Brechtian idea of strange making and creating this awkward atmosphere for the audience. My job was to film the spectators as they entered into the space and to focus on them while Serita was asking them personal questions. The footage was projected onto the wall. I observed that a lot of the audience were getting creped out by this which was heightened when we all started looking at them and clapping. I felt this was a really good opening situation for the audience to ease them into our piece. Doing this short sequence allowed us to break the fourth wall as we were all interacting with the crowd and including them in our piece.
I believe my actions were very Brechtian as I changed character on stage (from a single girl to the lowly paid stage manager who held up the clap of boo sign) and I was over the top when coming into the space singing the Take Me Out theme tune. I think our piece improved with having a live audience reaction, because that's how we knew our piece was working. I believed I had good energy and focus which helped to contribute to the scene.
However, even though I did vocal warm ups before, I still felt like my projection wasn't amazing as I didn't think about having to speak over laugher. I hadn't prepared myself for a live audience. To stop this from happening again, I will always do a proper vocal warm up as my voice normally lets me down. I did however think I had a good connection with the audience which is a key Brecht technique. During our scene I noticed that Maya and Danny had really good energy and demonstrated their characters well. This was met with a superb reaction from our peers which helped give our scene flare.
While watching this performance, I noticed that Jackie, Shyanne, Devan and Maya's scene had fantastic energy and had lots of Brecht techniques complied into their performance. Their commitment was very high and they connected with the audience well which helped their message get across. The song at the end wasn't very effective as we forgot the words and mumbled a bit. The energy was extremely high but I think it sounded sloppy and therefore didn't have the impact we wanted.
After the performance Jack gave us some quick notes. We needed to make the transitions between each scene faster and slicker. The pace needed to be steadied and we all needed to exaggerate our gestures/ movements. These notes helped me because when you are performing you're not sure if what you are doing is enough or what it looks like to an outsider, so having someone else's opinion really helps. I think I applied these to my next performance. As the song wasn't very strong Jack cut it so we would only sing the chorus. I think this was fair as when we sang it in the later performance, it seemed a lot more vibrant and impactful.
The second performance was in front of family and friends and I felt like I had to work harder in this performance, as the first one was in front of a crowd who were open to radical comedy and outrages humour as they were studying the practitioner as well, therefore they knew what to expect. Due to this I think this particular performance lacked current energy and freshness simply because there weren't many laughs to spur us on and ignite our improvisation Brechtian skills.
Having said this, the performance still contained every ounce of energy and focus it had in the first and if not was even more significant because the audience had more to learn and experience. Even though we got an immediate reaction from the first audience, I feel like this audience will go home and think about what they saw and maybe start to look at situations in their life differently.
Brecht wanted his audience to question what they were seeing and to not expect what was going to happen next. He wanted an honest reaction from them. This was applied to our piece because at the very end Ben McDogall stood up and started slighting our piece, saying it was racist and he felt sick. To add onto that Brechtian technique, he calimed he was a black man which again applied the v effect. I think the harsh lighting was very effective as it opened up the space and kept the audience awake and vibrant.
Before our second performance, we did a vocal warm up as a whole group, focusing on our breathe and diction. We did the feather on the lip exercise to focus our breath and the cat position to connect our breath and body. We sang a son (comula comula comula bee sting) in order to open our throats and some tongue twisters to help us with our articulation. On both these exercises we moved around the room to unite our vocals and physicality and also whispered the song and the twister to work on our vocal range and clarity.
At the end of our performance we leave the room while singing. This had two different reactions relating to who was watching. Both however left the audience feeling un-comfortable and estranged. The first audience, I think expected it as they knew the techniques which we were applying. The second, in my opinion, had a different feeling. I got the sense that they were left feeling slightly baffled and confused whether it was the end or not. This was an excellent reaction because that was the purpose of this ending. I feel like I could've applied more Brechtian techniques to my own performance and made my physicality and character louder. I didn't wear much make-up in order to go along with the Brechtian idea of being bare and exposed on stage.
Overall I think both performances had immense energy and both contained Brecht techniques. I think we could've played with the question, 'Do we get more Right Wing in hard times? more, as our piece was rather posing that question rather then answering it.
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