Going through dress rehearsals today really helped me get fully into my character, as I chose clothing that would suit my type of character 'Anne Frank', and I could respond and react to other characters more truthfully, as it was more believable. The full run through allowed me to understand cues when to come on stage and where to stand. From doing this, the advice my group and I were given was to stand between the gaps in the audience, considering our performance would be performed in a round, this way the audience would be able to see each one of us. Furthermore, I was also advised that during the part where 'Anne Frank' (me) and 'Adolf Hitler' (Danny) went as a pair, there should be dialogue between the two of us rather than me saying straight away 'Oh by the way, I'm Anne Frank', but instead it should be something like- 'A': 'Hello, what is your name?' 'B': 'I'm Anne!' 'A': 'Lovely first name, and what about your last name?' 'B': 'Anne Frank...'. This way made the conversation flow organically rather than just giving away the main part straight away. Additionally, as a class we were advised to really exaggerate everything and not play characters as ourselves, it was important that we could portray this to the audience, so they get the full 'V' effect.
Also, we watched the other classes performances, which allowed me to see how they have interpreted the Brechtian idea, and what techniques they may have used that maybe another group didn't.
The response from the audience during our performance was excellent, they understood the themes of our play because in my opinion as a class we highlighted those themes so the audience could identify it for themselves. I noticed that people said they enjoyed the light humorous tone towards our performance, which made it enjoyable for them to watch. As we wanted to include Bertolt Brecht's techniques in our performance, we included plenty of audience interaction and direct address. And from observing the audience's reactions during our performance, I noticed that some people felt slightly 'weird-ed' out by it, however this technique was strongly liked by the other classmates because they understood and enjoyed the 'verfremdungseffekt' and they pointed out that this technique of breaking the fourth wall was extremely successful in our performance, for example the part where one member from our class went round interviewing the audience whilst they were live on camera on the big screen. Overall, people enjoyed our performance so it was important that as a class we kept the energy up as we did during that run through for the actual performance in front of other people who may not understand the techniques we have been learning about.
The things I enjoyed and noticed during the other two performances was that one of them included a lot of singing which almost made it seem quite like a musical. Brecht included some sort of music in all of his performances, and in this performance it was clearly obvious that they had thought of how they can include that specific technique in an effective way. In addition, I noticed that all of our performances were staged and seated in a different way, but what we all did well was acknowledge the audience at all times, therefore the audience could see us at all times. This is somewhat like the Brechtian 'harsh' theater technique, because everything is created on stage and nothing is hidden. For example, I noticed that in one of the performances, there was a radio which was being controlled by one of the actors.
The class performance that I believe got the question 'Do we become more right wing in hard times' across to the audience was probably the second group which focused more on the media side of politics. I thought this because in their performance it showed how the owners of media companies can create a biased story in order to keep the income rising, and to keep the money for themselves without share.
Overall, each class interpreted the political theater theme in a different way, as our class focused more on the racial side of politics, whereas the other class focused more on the media side to politics, and the other class focused on the internal life of the public and politicians.
Evaluation:
The overall performance went well because, as a group we all worked together and we knew all of the cues and the structure of the performance which allowed it to flow smoothly without awkward pauses. Furthermore, at all times we acknowledged where our audience was sitting, therefore we all made sure that they could see us at all times. This helped us get our point across to everyone, as nothing was hidden but it was all portrayed on stage, which should have helped them to understand the themes of our production.
One thing that I think was quite challenging was always exaggerating everything and being extremely over the top, however I made sure that during the actual thing I exaggerated my character so that it was in contrast to my actual personality, which explored the Brechtian technique. Also, this was important that the group and I did that, otherwise it wouldn't have been so clear to the audience if we were being serious or not (which probably wouldn't have ended so well)! Another thing that went well in our performance was the use of different transitions between each sketch, this kept the motions between each piece versatile, which was a good way of engaging the audience. Also, at first during our dress rehearsals, as a class we found it hard to believe in the piece that we had devised, therefore the whole performance was at one level, however, we changed this for the actual performance and we believed in our performance, and this way the energy was kept high at all times which kept it interesting for not only the audience but for us, the actors. Each different sketch included different characters which had exaggerated hyperbolic physicality, which worked well in the performance because as actors we really emphasized our choice of actions.
One thing that could have been improved or introduced to our performance was maybe a slight introduction to what we have been learning in college to give the audience an idea of Brechtian theater, this could have been done in a creative way which maybe included 'Brechtian' ideas, such as audience interaction or maybe being part of the audience or even questioning the audiences knowledge about what 'Brechtian theater' is. I noticed that sometimes the audience were quite shocked at some of the jokes made during our performances which they probably weren't expecting which is what Bertolt Brecht aimed to do, therefore we clearly did this well, however if they maybe got offended during these times maybe it would have helped if there was some sort of Brecht-styled introduction as to what we have been learning.
In conclusion, our performance was successful because as a company of actors we worked well together as a team, and individually we all knew what we had to do to make the performance run well. We all knew what we were trying to get across to the audience and we did this by believing in our production and keeping the overall energy high. We made sure the audience were part of the performance at all times, and alienated from our performance by including several Brechtian techniques, and I believe that we included all of these effectively to get across the themes of our play this term.
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