Single - Devised Unit (Ghost Stories) - Blog 16 - 24/03/17

Today we performed our piece to be assessed and we below is my evaluation of our performance.

Rob’s scene:

• Rob spoke with good volume when opening and narrating the scene however, I feel that he needed more diction in his speech as some words were lost for me and I was standing beside him.
• Ollie and I, again, used different leg movements when walking around the shop. While I lifted my feet up normally, Ollie dragged his foot along the ground to meet the other as he walked. Although this showed a clear difference between our characters, it looked a bit odd from the audience’s point of view in a previous runthrough so we should’ve specified which we would do!
• Ollie and I were supposed to meet at the centre at a certain point in the music as this may affect the timing of the whole piece. However, when Rob and Ollie were masking each other’s movement just before this – to make it explicitly clear that they are the same person, just in different places in time – they took too long and if we waited for Ollie to make it to where he needed to be for us to clash, it would have been out of time with the music. Still, to counter this I stepped backwards naturally so that we clashed earlier, thus resolving what could’ve been a big issue.
• The transfer of Rob’s character’s trademark notepad – another key symbolism of the character – went well this time with Ollie successfully taking it when left on the till counter by Rob and then with me taking it from the back after Ollie runs off after his necklace gets stolen and leaves it on the unused chair.
• The entire cash machine section went very well as always, the only problem we thought of was my facial expressions during the robbery. According to Ollie, I didn’t look like a man who was being held at gunpoint.
• The final torture section was very good and was extremely tense. This controversial section did well to captivate the audience.

Lorna’s scene:

• I believe the order of scenes may have been confusing as a few audience members asked questions about the plot afterwards. To make this clearer, we should’ve gone in chronological order.
• We successfully performed this scene naturistically which allowed the audience to connect effectively to the scenario.

Lewis’ scene:

• Our movement went very well and represented the emotions of my character very effectually.
• The dialogue sounded more natural than it has before but could’ve done with being more naturalistic. Also, there was no clear end to the dialogue as I had finished my movement but the others continued talking but there was some sort of awkward pause. We should’ve rehearsed this more to prevent.
• Ollie’s scene:
• Our movement at the beginning went very well and it was clear what was happening.
• Mine and Rob’s speech logs throughout the scenes could be improved as Rob spoke quite casual while I spoke very professionally. Also, I said the word progress twice in the same sentence and said it differently both times.

Ollie's scene:

• Our movement at the beginning went very well and it was clear what was happening.
• Mine and Rob’s speech logs throughout the scenes could be improved as Rob spoke quite casual while I spoke very professionally. Also, I said the word progress twice in the same sentence and said it differently both times.

General:

• Most set changes were good as everything was put in the right place however they could’ve been faster.