This week we had the performance of the One Act Play festival. On Tuesday we had our final rehearsal and on Wednesday we performed. Then, on Friday we got our final feedback and now we are getting ready to perform two more times for two promotions at school. In general, the audience was happy and satisfied, but we know it could have been much more better.
Analysis
On wednesday, Roberto asked us to put the 3 things we think that are important to consider before we get to perform. I wrote:
- Having clear what you want to get from this experience
- Considering the quantity of the effort on the process
- Have fun, enjoying what you are doing
We discuss these points and basically what I want to get from this experience is to learn about theatre by the creation of a play. The number 2 basically focuses on giving it all on stage to prove that all the effort was worth it. And number 3 its very important actually because if you don´t have fun you can´t play with your scene or with your character. Especially in this play, I realised that characters are a variable element of all the plays as they change and evolve in a process of searching. It is also important to play with your lines and explore ways of saying them and incorporating actions and face expressions to it.
Now I would like to summarise the feedback Roberto and miss Alicia gave us on Friday
Miss Alicia´s feedback:
- Good understanding of the audience, we got into a dialogue between the actors and the audience as we waited until they finished laughing in order for them to react
- Good use of english---> better than other OAPs (clear language, understandable)
- Characterisation: "we weren´t us, we were the characters"and this was mantained
- The style characteristics were seen clearly
- First scene: clear information that makes audience understand that the play is backwards
- 2nd scene: we play with the scene and begin with high energy
- In my case, my intentions were too repetitive and flat
- For miss alicia, the movements in the cliche phrases part make the essence of the phrases get lost
- 3rd scene: no urgency from berlinda---> no rhythm
- Eduardo dropping lines, loss of energy
- The technique of off stage talking was perfect and shows a developed skill
- The ending could have been a little stronger, like in the novels
Robbie´s feedback:
- Use the next performance to do it better
- No rhythm throughout the whole play
- No reactions
- Make-up----->horrible issue :((( we didn´t rehearse with it (my fault)
- Low light in the theatre
The main things I pick up from both feedbacks are
- the lack or loss of rhythm
- my intentions (repetitive issue)
- the make-up disaster
This are the things that affected me the most, mainly because they depend on me. The thing with rhythm was that we had a lot of rehearsals, and the rhythm varies depending on the energy you put in eacc performance. I think that the main think that stopped the rhythm was the fact that people laughed and we stopped until they finished laughing. On one hand, that was a positive thing as we establish a dialogue with the audience. But, on the other hand, we were working with fast and dynamic reactions and responses so I think that was the base of the scene´s rhythm and to me it was damaged by this "pauses" Maybe we felt it that way because it was the first time for all of us that we performed with this pauses.
When it comes to the repetitive issue of my intentions I know that its my fault because I realised how important were the intentions too late. I mean, in the end I did read the script and find the appropriate intention for each line but the thing is I did it too late to start exploring ways of saying the lines in order to show the intention.
Finally, the huge make-up disaster. The audience comments about this are were actually positive. People told me that the facial lines were seen as real as in real life and many people thought nathalie actually got a haircut. The problem was we didn´t rehearse with the make-up on, so we didn´t know how the actions were be affected by it in each case. Also, we had to solve this problems almost the same day of the OAP. However, I still have 3 more chances to make it right, even just to prove how would some things like the mother long nails will look. This will serve me as a lesson, so that it never happens again and it helped me to learn and realise how important is one part of the design of a play.
When I start thinking about why people have certain opinions about our OAP, the most interest part is that we know the whole process of it. For example, I know that our language and pronunciation were better than other years because later this year we worked with german expressionism, so we practice language exaggeration and pronunciation. Then, I think the phrases thing was because we added in the end so we didn´t rehearse and reinforce how the actions will me implemented with the phrases. I also came up with a thought after miss alicia told us that the end needed to be more like in novels, with more impact and letting the audience with curiosity as when an episode ends. The thing is that usually the audience reacts like that in novels because they don´t know what will happen in the next episode, but in this case, as the order is backwards, the audience already knows what is going to happen in the last scene so the intrigue is lost. We were also asked to loos at ourselves and see how we´ve changed during the whole process, and at least for me its a lot. I mean, I didn´t reach the peak I wanted to reache, but comparing it to how we started, I ended much better and learned a lot about melodrama and the practical and technical aspects of a play.
Connections
GERMAN EXPRESSIONISM: the base of this theatre practice helped us to understand melodrama as we learned how to work with exaggerated voice, faces, bodies everything! which is actually very similar to melodrama. This is why people notice a difference on our pronunciation, because we had been previously "trained" by GE.
THE BOSS PERFORMANCE LAST YEAR: this was a situation in which I felt the same way that now. I didn´t have clear intentions and when I found them it was too late. Now I now the importance of having them and the next time I will start from that point.
DOWN TO EARTH: I felt the same way that in my DTE scene as I worked with Nathalie in both of them. I have noticed that Nathalie and I have a very strong acting chemistry! We have a level of trust and we have fun acting together, so usually ideas just burst out of our heads. For example, in the third scene I think that was one of the problems, I noticed that renzo and ana lucia have more chemistry together than with eduardo so I felt he was kind of "ignored" in terms of reactions and relationships.
Reflections
The main thing I had reflected upon is that it is very interesting how the audience just looks at one side of the coin. It´s like the iceberg theory, the audience just see the top while we get to see the whole bottom. I found it amazing, my aunt asked me the other day "and how did you get to the plot and everything" and I start thinking on our process of creation and I can say that it actually came out of nowhere, we started with an idea, then change it, then create the inverted game, the decide on the pyramid structure, then the fact of a family being involved and just like that the plot started to born.
It was also very interesting, the fact that some people didn´t even understand it was backwards but they still liked it anyway. And, the fact that they laughed in the moments we didn´t expect them too and didn´t laugh in the moments we expect them to. I think that one of the most amazing things about theatre is to question and explore the relationship with the audience, because in the end, the art is for them to stop, watch, and think.
Why did people enjoy it even thou they didn´t understand? Every art has different audiences? How do you target an exact type of audience? what was our target? do people really think when watching theatre? or do they go just to have a good time? do the audience also think they have a relationship with the audience? why do we often think that we could do it better? for an actor, is there ever a point when you say "I´m satisfied with what I did"? or is theatre an endless cycle where you always want more from yourself?
