The two contrasting performers I chose were John and Mr Foster. I thought that John was the strongest performer and Mr Foster was the weakest performer. My key moment for John is when the strobe lights were used. I think he was a strong performer as he had really good body language; vocal skills and his facial expressions were outstanding. I think that Mr Foster was the weakest performer as there wasn’t a distinctive difference between the characters he played, at first, I only thought he played one character, then afterwards I realized he played different characters. He had quite good facial expressions but I didn’t understand his body language at all.
This is a bird’s eye view of the set. The set was quite abstract. It was very easy to change and transform into different locations. The best piece of set was the sofa-cupboard, all you had to do was turn it upside down or on its side and it had changed into something different. The use of minimal set was effective as it helped with timing.
I think the lighting in this piece was really impressive in this performance. The backlights behind the sheet were really good. It created shadows and it helped tell the story. I thought this was a really good idea. Also the use of the strobe lighting was effective. It still told the story but made it a lot quicker for the information to be told to the audience.
The sound in this performance wasn’t very good. As in some of the scenes, the screen was on and sound was coming out of that and the performers were talking at the same time.
My highlight of the performance was when John ran out of the drama studios, to look for his mum, and he was shouting `Linda, where’s Linda, have you seen Linda.’ He was saying this all to people outside. It was very comical and also he still managed to stay in role. It was also a very emotional scene for the actor to play.
If I were to make two improvements I would change the following:
- Make Mr Foster’s characters distinctively different. So that the plot can be understood better. I would encourage different use of voice and movement skills.
- I would also improve the sound by making the performers not talk as the same time as the TV is on. It was difficult to listen to the characters at the same time as listening to the message and meaning of the play.
I enjoyed this play a lot because it was different It had a futuristic edge to it. I think that this is relevant to modern society as it can show the public how we don’t want our world to become like this `Brave New World.’ The message and meaning of the play encourages us to be happy and have choices and freedom.