We painted our faces white with red lipstick and red nail polish. We each wore black clothing with some red color clothing. Some members of my group wore a red top and others wore a red belt or scurf around their waist. The red symbolized violence, passion, love, blood and death. The red symbolized every emotional or physical feeling that is within the play.
We aim to educate our audience throughout our play by mentioning some facts about the issues that concern old age whilst performing. Joyce talked directly to the audiences by mentioning some of the article headlines we found. We also walked amongst the audience saying words right in their faces. This is where we want the audience to feel intimidated. There was also a sense of realism in our play where Anastasia was talking to Jodie but was getting no response from her. Anastasia also turned to the audiences asking them to be her friend. This hopefully made the audience feel sympathy for Anastasia but also made a link between make believe and reality.
Question 4
Explore the impact of social, cultural and historical conditions in the work.
Historical conditions- The first dance we performed had the olden day dance routine to it which would also cast our audience mind back a few years where this style of dancing was fashion to their grandparents. This showed that our character is currently old at this present moment. Through the dances we portrayed the different attitudes and behavior during this time. From the beginning to end of our play we showed that the changes in attitudes are a result of modern technology developing a sense fear inside and amongst elderly people. We went to the Imperial War Museum where we studied how people lived during the time of World War 2. We did this so that we can get some sort of idea of how women in particular lived and how they felt during this time
Social content – In our play we wanted to show the isolation old people experience from the government and the lack of communication they have with modern society. We also want to show how the fast growing media brings fear to the elderly and how it affects their lives now. Throughout the development of our play I had random conversation with people of different ages.
A friend 17- During a conversation with a friend I told her that we were currently doing a play about old people and her response was ‘Old people? How boring can you get?’
Teacher middle age- One of my teachers also asked me what our play was about and I said that it is mainly about elderly people and she said ‘Oh how interesting’.
A grandparent 83 – When we went to the Darby and Joan’s club down the street from my school we had the opportunity to interview some elderly people. When we told them what we are doing, we had a range of responses from them and seem very happy to hear that there is going to be a play based on their age group. One was even very eager to come and watch the finish product.
These responses were extremely useful for us as actors. I found that the younger generations of people were less interested about elderly people situations and perceived it as ‘boring’. This is one of the reasons why we wanted audience to be mainly 16 and upwards so that we will be able to educate them about old age. I also found that middle age people and upwards seem more interested in the topic maybe because they are old themselves or are becoming old. Generally people believe that there is nothing much to be said about old age. These views helped us deepen our drama and develop it a way that it is understandable and informative.
We also looked at current newspaper articles that reported shocking stories about elderly people and their lives. For example one said ’99 year old pensioner robbed of money by 2 young males’ and ‘93 year old citizen sexually abused and batted’.
Cultural content – There are parts in the play like the dances that represent the racial awareness within the old people society and changing attitudes of elderly people. Throughout the play we constantly showed the contrasting of culture of elderly people with today’s live style. From watching the film ‘The Cream Cracker under the Settee’ it mentioned how elderly people are isolated from society compared to the past where everyone knows their neighbors well. In the age concern section in our play where we repeated words like ‘lock your door’ and ‘set your alarm’ we tried to show the growing fear within the elder due to the quick changes in the attitudes of modern society and new media technology. The tic tock sound was done to show the passing of time and other sounds like people laughing and the ambulance sirens shows the growing change in the behaviors and attitudes of modern society resulting to too much noise that elderly people may not be use to. During the noise making, the rest of my group had their backs turned to the audience as well as Katie when she played the role the old woman. This was done to show how modern society secluded elderly people today and at the same time causing fear to grow within then. This showed that today’s new culture has excluded elderly people.
Question 5
How did the group skills contribute to the development of the drama?
At the start of our devising piece we each identified our own personal skills that would help develop our drama piece. Each member also got the chance to lead the group in warm-ups.
Brain – Through our AS performance piece I find Brain as the most enthusiastic person in our group. His reliable, trustworthy, co-operative and a very helpful person. His very organized which is why we wanted him to be in charge of the music, turning it on and off at relevant times. With his on going enthusiasm we felt more motivated to come up with good ideas. He was the one who brought music to use in our play
Derya – I personally think this girl was the clown of the group (in a good way of course) which was very good for keeping us motivated. She also came up with some good ideas. She is also a talented dancer which is why she choreographed our first dance piece. She was also in charge of the costumes.
Joyce – She was the quiet one amongst us and therefore whenever she spoke, everyone was all ears. She her voice is strong and powerful and is a good singer which is why she did all the screaming that needed to be done in our play. She also came up with some good ideas for example, she suggested some ideas for the rape scene at the end of our play where I was touching her all over and invading her privacy. However we had to change this idea because we want the rape scene to be a more psychological and ours was a more physical rape. Joyce’s brilliant ideas did not stop there through; she replaced her first idea with an even better one which portrayed the psychological idea better. Her academic background also made her in charge the social, cultural and historical conditions of the play.
Katie – She is a strong actress and was always focused. She was the one who always kept us focused and always brought our minds back to concentrate on the play when our minds may sometimes wonder off into different directions. She also had a strong voice and could adapt to any sort of accent. She is very good in English and therefore also helped with the script work for our play and worked together with Anastasia. She also came up with some good ideas throughout the play.
Myself – During the development of our piece I know I was a great listener and because of this I was able to try other ideas and consider them. I was also honest so if I felt that the idea does not fit right in the piece I would say so and make other suggestions. For example when everyone was coming up with ideas at the same time, I was able to tell the others to keep quiet and try everyone’s ideas one after the other and see which fits best. I also kept reminding my group of our time limit.
Anastasia – She is a very opinionated person and always made sure that she got her ideas across before giving up. This is how she sort of took up the role of directing our play. I feel she was the most serious one amongst us and therefore kept reminding us of how serious this performance was in order to keep our minds focused. She is a very confident person and therefore did most of the direct talking to the audience at ease.
Amalia – Is another strong person and very opinionative. She is very honest and always said what was on her mind straight forward. She is a very sensitive person again because of this she was a perfect fit for some of the parts in the play that needed a sensitive person to perform it. For example, there was a part in the play where Amalia was surrounded by the rest of us and playing with her nicely in the beginning but then the game turned bad and she started to scream ‘no’. She was also always willing experiment ideas and asked questions which would help us think of reasons for our ideas.
Jodie – She is a very open a person and always brought the fun back into the rehearsal times by making jokes and sometimes over acting some of the scenes which kept us motivated. She brought the comic aspects into the play. She is a very honest person and if she did not understand why we chose to do incorporate a particular idea into our play, she would ask why. This helped us to think hard about our ideas before suggesting them and to make sure that it made sense and was understandable.
We all communicated, co-operated and contributed our ideas and thoughts into during the development of our play. At the beginning of each rehearsal, we would plan what should be accomplished at the end of the rehearsal and each member would share their opinions and ideas that they have thought of keeping Artaud theory in mind. This therefore helps us experiment different ideas which kept us focused and working together as a team. We used a lot of body movements and tones of voices in our play which is why warm-ups at the start of rehearsals were important mainly to get our bodies relaxed and stretched and our voices clear. For movements we did a lot of running about and played games that would help us flex our bodies and also sang songs to help keep our voices loud and clear.
Question 6
How did your role emerge and how was it communicated
We have one character who is an old woman called Jane born in the 1930’s and every member of my group had the chance to act as her whilst the rest of us represent what their talking about and their feelings. In the beginning we all sat down to ask, answer and discuss issues concerning our character and what exactly we want to show in the play. Antonin Artaud was the practitioner whom we chose and therefore we want to send out a range of Metaphysical response to the audiences.
When performing my parts of our play my characterization was shown a lot through the use of my body language and tone of voice to communicate what I was feeling to the audience. In the first scene each member of my group said a word that concerns elderly people. My word was dying. Whilst repeating this word I held Derya’s neck almost as if I was strangling her to show the realism of what I was saying. Jodie’s word was vulnerable and as she was repeating that word she brushed my hair back with her hands and I responded to what she was saying by moving my head slightly back which also emphasis the realism of what Jodie was saying.
In the birth scene I symbolized the pain Jodie was going through whilst giving birth. I kneeled down besides her holding her hand and screamed in pain very time she squeeze my hand. My facial expressions also helped in communicating the pain I was symbolizing to the audience. Afterwards I fell back and pretended to be a baby. I conveyed this through the use of my body language, face and voice. I kicked my legs about and started crying and screaming like a baby. Crying like a baby was particularly hard for me to do as my tone of voice wasn’t high enough and almost sounded as if I was laughing instead of crying. However with the help of my group I got the drift of it. The crying symbolized Jane as the newly born baby. Brain who was then singing to the audience at that time reached out for my hand to lift me up and turned me around slow and put me in my position ready for the next scene. This was done to show the passing of time from a baby to a teenager. When talking to the audience after the performance some said they felt sympathy for me when I was crying and one even wanted to come and pick me up from the floor. This showed that we succeed in moving the audience emotionally.
In the stringed doll dance scene Jodie and I represented the sexual behavior of people in the old age. I showed this by moving in a sexual way when walking towards her and having a big smile on my face to show how happy I am with the sexual satisfaction I was about to receive. This dance was done to bring our character back to the time when she was a teenager. It also showed the different behaviors and attitudes of teenagers. The characters we portrayed were the posh high class people, middle class casual people and the more sexual aroused people. We performed this as a stringed doll dance to show some comic aspects in our play. This is because we wanted our audience to be entertained, make them laugh but also sort of mock them through basically representing their behaviors as a society when our character was a teenager but in a ridiculous way.
The next scene was the sex scene where we show the sexual needs that elderly people wants. Amalia and I conveyed this through the use of our body language by rolling over each other and making orgasm sounds which got louder and louder. The rest of the group danced around us repeating the words ‘roll it push it’ and ‘in and out and roll it all around’ whilst Amalia and I continued with our sexual dance. The sounds and the words repeated was done to represent the sexual context of that scene show the audience that there was something sexual going on. This was also indicated through my facial expression conveying the sense of satisfaction in the scene. We wanted the audience to feel a bit uneasy and uncomfortable during this scene which is why we devised this scene in this particular way. I think we achieved our objective in this scene because after the performance I spoke to some of the audience and they said the scene made them feel weird and uncomfortable. The message in this scene was that elderly people have needs, not only survival and social needs but also sexual needs that may not be satisfied which is what we wanted to show our audience.
Through rehearsals we decided that the last scene should be a rape scene. Our aim for this scene was to show the result of the growing fear within elderly people. Joyce and I originally performed this scene by me touching and almost kissing her all over whilst she stood still with no response staring at the audience. However during rehearsals we decided to make this scene a psychological rape rather than physical rape. Therefore Joyce and I had to change our original plan because it looked more physical. What we then did was have me staring at the audience smiling with my one arm out in front of Joyce stopping her from escaping. She then responded by pretending to escape and looked like she was struggling with nothing. The fact that Joyce was moving slightly aggressively showed that there was some sort of struggle and was experiencing pain. None of our body parts were touching each other which showed that the rape was more to do with the mind rather than the body. I simply put my arm out and smiled at the audience. This gesture showed that I was taking pleasure from Joyce suffering and took part in giving the pain she was experiencing. I had my head turned to the audience smiling. This gesture was done in order to put emphasis on the society to show that they are responsible for psychologically raping elderly people.
Our costumes were plain black with some piece of red clothing on us. The red symbolizes a set of emotional feelings like love, passion, violence etc. The black clothing represents darkness and death. We chose these two colors mainly because they symbolize the different facts and emotions the play contains. Also the colors represent the words each member of my group says in the beginning of our play.
We painted our face white with red lipstick and black eyeliner with red nail polish. We painted our faces white to show that we are actors that represent the metaphysical responses and emotions not characters. It is also helps to represent us as dolls in the stringed doll dances scene. This enhanced my performance because it made it easier for me to provoke the audience so that they can look at me an actor and not a character.
My voice was a very powerful tool as it helped grab the audience’s attention. When I cried like a baby for example, I made sure my voice was as loud as possible to draw the audience’s attention which therefore helped make them feel sympathy for me. Also, in the mirror scene, we sang the song ‘one two his coming for you’ but we first hummed the words lightly and in a sympathetic tone with low volume which hopefully made the audience wonder and then after sang the words out loud to show that we were getting more aggressive when pushing Joyce around which hopefully surprised the audience.
Question 7
In what ways was acting techniques or design elements and dramatic form used to achieve the intended effect?
Acting Techniques- Antonin Artaud was a big influence in our play. Artaud was born in 1896 and was labeled a prophet, a madman, a cult figure and a drug addict due to his way of work. He believes in a method of acting where the actors are representatives of emotions and send out a range of metaphysical responses. These are expressions that have no rational explanations. He believes that the audience should be moved and shocked through the surrealism of the drama. This was important because we wanted to have a relationship with the audience and also interact with them and Artauds theory allowed us to do this. Performance style should be gestures with more use of the body and voices. This challenged us but also motivated us because we had to think of ways to express emotions and thoughts through the use our body and voice.
Artaud also believed that gestures alone would have immense power to invent and discover a mystical meaning in drama which is why used repetitive gestures in our play. For example in the rape scene, Jodie would put her hand across her face and Amaila who is standing behind her repeatedly pull her hands away from her face one after the other and almost looked like a dance. This created a sense of struggle in the atmosphere making the audience wonder and feel uncomfortable.
Artaud also said that there are no real limits to which theatre cannot accomplish and therefore we decided to push our play beyond the limit. For example, there was a point where Joyce started to cry and crawled to an audient in front of her and held his hand in comfort. This hopefully made the audience feel intimidated and uncomfortable as she invaded their space. However she then started to laugh out loud and then suddenly stopped. Her voice was used very well here as she laughed softly with low volume and then increased the pace and made her laugh louder. This hopefully shocked the audience and made them wonder. The sudden change in Joyce’s performance was brilliant in terms of changing the emotions of the audience within those few minutes.
Artaud also believe that that the actors work should with masks and puppets to give the theatre a sense of magic beauty. This is why we painted or faces and did stringed doll dance. This was also done to objectify ourselves to show the audience that we are only actors and not the character.
Dramatic Forms- We used our voices a lot in different tones. We would sometimes whisper and sometimes shout out loud. This is done when we want the audience to concentrate or really focus on what we are doing. We also sing songs, play music and said some poems. This is done when we want our audience to have different feelings and also create suspense amongst them. The use of our body languages in dances is also done to grab the audience attention and also send out signals to the audience in order to make them feel some emotions. The slow pace and motion in the opening scene created time for the audience to think and get a scene of what the play is about. There were a lot of direct eye contacts to the audience. For example in Anastasia scene, she spoke directly to the audience asking them to be her friend and another in Joyce’s scene where she stared at the audience and mentioned the headlines. This was done to address the audience personally and make them feel involved in the play.
Design Elements- Artaud believes that the actors should interact with audience and make the audience feel trapped and powerless. For our play the audience seating were on one side of the hall with their chairs scattered apart so that they have a big space around them and also were not seated next to their friends. This is done to make them feel alone as they have no friend close to them. This also allowed us to freely move amongst the audience when appropriate. Artaud theory influenced our play a lot and at the end of the play we wanted our audience to feel shocked, scared and alone. After the play I spoke to one of the audience members and she said the fact that she was not seated next to her friend made her feel alone and vulnerable because she had no one to share her emotions with which shows that we successfully achieved our objective.
Question 8
How did rehearsals and the production process contribute to the final performance?
Rehearsals were difficult at first because were not self-motivation and found it hard to start improvising. We encountered some problems such as communications amongst us as it was hard to have all members at rehearsal times. However warm ups in the beginning of rehearsals helped us open our mind to new ideas and raise our motivation levels. This helped us work together more as group and experimenting different ideas.
We looked at some of the issues we want to portray in our play and experiment ways and ideas in which to do this. Some worked and others did not.
Our original plan was to perform a Brechtian style play. We already had improvised our first five scenes before changing our practitioner to Artaud. We decided to change this because during rehearsal it felt like we hit a brick wall and had no more ideas which would help convey Brecht’s theory and style in our play. I personally found Brecht boring and hard to understand which may be why I was less motivated at rehearsal times. As a group we wanted to develop a piece where we would have the chance to interact more with audience as we have not done much of that in the past and conveying Brecht’s style and theory restricted us from doing this which is why we decided to change the style of our play to Artaud.
Even though we change our practitioner, we did not start from scratch again because our time was limited but changed the style of the scenes in order to fit Artaud’s theory and practice. Our original plan for the opening scene was to have Anastasia stand in front and recite a poem she wrote whilst the rest came out one by one hold a board with a few words written on it. We changed this by erasing the broad idea and we each repeated a word taken out of the poem whilst doing a movement or gesture. This showed a more Artaud style of theatre.
During rehearsals when we still had our practitioner as Brecht, we also created scenes where Joyce and Brain will meet and exchange love letters and another where Jodie and Derya will be getting married. Whist continuously going through the play we decide to exclude these scenes partly because they conveyed more of a Brechtian style theatre and did not fit into the tone of the piece and therefore it did not exactly flow. Also partly because we could not find ways in which to deepen the drama in those scenes to make them more Artuadian styled theatre. After leaving out those scenes the play flowed with more ease.
We also decided to perform montage genres in our play. This would create an effect that some scenes could stand alone without any links. An example is Anastasia’s scene where she expressed how lonely she was. Her monologue created its own atmosphere of sadness and sympathy within the scene needing no assistance from previous and future scenes.
Costume and technical aspects - During rehearsals we started to encounter technical problems such as lighting. We plan to use torches instead to avoid technical mistakes on the performance day. Some of the torches lights were pointed at Anastasia and Jodie so that the audience can see there facial expressions probably. We wanted the audience to feel sympathy for Anastasia and to do this we had to put a lot of emphasis on her face so that the audience can see her clearly and pay attention to what she was saying. The rest of us who were lying on the floor at this time shone our torches through the audience to unsettle them. Music in our played a major part in creating a general mood amongst the audience. An example is the fast pace music at the start of our play made the feel relaxed and entertained. For our costumes we wanted to keep it simple which would not limit us from doing our movements so we decided to wear a comfortable black top and trousers or jeans. However we found that plain black would not add anything to the play which is why we felt that we should wear something red as well which will help enhance the audiences understanding of the play and the performers.
Running time - It was suggested that the length of the play should be 35 to 40 minutes. However our play lasted 30 minutes which was our target length. During some of the rehearsal times, we sometimes rushed through our play so then it only last between 20 – 25 minutes. When we realized this problem, we chose to extend some of our scenes and slow the pace of our down in order to reach our 30 minutes target. One of the scenes we had to extent was the Joyce’s scene where she had to slow pace of her monologue which would also help create suspense amongst the audience. Another scene we also decided extended was the rape scene, the last scene and prolonged the time in which we spent performing our different acts. This was successful and we reached our target running time again.
Question 9
Indicate how the influences and ideas of other play writes and/or directors, designers and performance have been used.
Film - Last year whilst doing our AS drama and learning about Artaud, we watched a silent film called Dead dream of monarch men. The film was played by only men. We were not able to watch the whole of the film but watched sections that helped us understand Artaud’s theory in more depth. One section that we watched was where a man kept climbing a ladder and then jumping of it for another at the bottom of the ladder to catch him. Each time the man climbed the ladder he would go higher and higher so that his changes of being catch by the other man at bottom got slimmer and riskier. The one man then climbed the ladder for the last time and went to the top of it and looked at the man who’s meant to catch him at the bottom. The man at the bottom then moved back showing that he will not be able to catch him from that height. Without any monologue, we can still be able to figure out and see the story that is being told in this scene. We can argue that this may be a friendship test that man was doing asking the other man question e.g. ‘how for will you go for me?’ or ‘for how long will you stand by my side?’ so it seems like he one was testing his friends loyalty. I personally found this extremely interesting because they use their language to tell a story which made me think and kept focus on what was happening. This is something we wanted our audience to feel and to keep questioning things.
Another section of the film watched was where a man was killing another. They portrayed this though a lot of body movements that almost looked like a dance. The murderer kept jumping on top of the man and he kept pushing him off. This was repeat a couple of times until the man was too weak to push the murderer of him so he slowing starting taking deep breath as if he could not breathe and fell to he ground gently. This idea greatly influenced the rape scene of our play we tried to portray someone being rape without doing the natural and obvious movements.
During rehearsals our teacher brought a film called Enter Achilles which was launched in1996. The performers are a group of male actors called DV8. Again this a silent film with very little monologue and was very Artaudian influenced. We a watched a section of the film were the men were in a bar performing all the usually things that realistically happen at bars. There were parts where some of the men pretended to ladies dancing around the rest of men and the men would take them to a dark corner and have stylized sex. This was not graphic but however made me feel uncomfortable and disgusted. They way they stylized their sex scene was similar to our sex scene which we were particularly proud of because we wanted our audience to feel exactly how we felt whilst watching this. In the bar there was a guy man as well who isolated himself for a while until the big boss of the group went away and then went amongst the rest of the men dancing sexually around them and touching them. Slowly the men started to copy his way of dancing until the big boss surprisingly walked in. The men who saw the boss immediately stopped dancing and the guy man also quickly isolated himself from the crowd again. Only one did not notice the boss and continued to dance making sexual guy movements which made the boss extremely angry because the style of the dance was not man like. The boss then outrageously started to hit the man who was dancing and started to strip him of his cloths. Everything went chaos after this because everyone started to fight each other. This showed a time where everything good whilst everyone was having fun and then all of a sudden things were taken too far and was not funny any more. I thought it was really clever the way they stylized all this and made it look like a dance but also at the same time showed realism in what they were doing. Although there were no monologues we could still follow the story which they conveyed successfully through their use of body language and movements. I was shocked and surprised and felt uneasy when watching this because things were pushed too far for my liking. We incorporated this idea in Amalia’s scene where the rest of us started pretending to play with her until it got a point where she felt uncomfortable and did not want to play no more. In the film there was also some repetitive gestures done to show continuity. Jodie and Amalia performed some repetitive gestures where Jodie put her hand across her face and Amalia repeatedly moved her hand away to show constant struggle.
Antonin Artaud – Artaud was our main influence on the acting techniques and design elements of our play. He was born in France in 1896. His ideas and theories were bound up with his life and the style in which it was lived. This may be why he thinks theatre is a double of life and life is the double of true theatre. He was a surrealistic practitioner who totally went against the traditional boundaries between actor and audience. He is also primarily responsible for the breaking down of the audience and actors barriers and the confrontational theatre of the post war period. For Artaud rituals involved a carefully worked scenario with staging elements that presented a sense of danger in their performance. He used the actor’s bodies, gestures and voices to create as much meaning as the spoken words because he was anti-narrative. The actors should also use puppets and masks to create a sense of disorder in the play (we painted our faces and Amalia wore a mask at the sex scene). He also believed in metaphysical theatre which provokes the audience into feeling emotions they are sometimes uncomfortable with. He wanted the audience to be unsettled and shocked to its very core.
In our piece we used Artaud’s method of conveying a message to our audience. The message we tried to send was that elderly were once the same age as us and therefore deserves the same respect we give to friends and family. They also have needs and do not want society or the media to isolate them because they are constantly living in fear. We tried to make our audience think and wonder and form their conclusions to our play. Our play finished with us putting our lips to our mouth and saying ‘shhhh’. This leaves the play wide open for the audience to draw their own conclusion. Reviewing the questionnaire we asked our audience to answer, it showed that some felt shocked, traumatized, uneasy and emotional which shows that we achieved our objectives for the audience through Artaud’s methods. When asked what they feel the performance was about, some said it was about nightmares, disappointments and a journey through life which shows that we succeed in making our audience think and wonder.
Question 10
Evaluate the ways ideas were communicated o the audience.
Our ideas were communicated through the painted faces, use of voices, body movements, music, costume and acting style. After the performance we asked our audience to fill in a questionnaire we compiled and we received a range of different responses.
Q 1 – How did you feel at the end of the performance?
- One said ‘I felt like have experienced a bit of a roller coaster ride’.
- Shocked, scared, weird, traumatized, emotional, uneasy.
Q 2 – Did it affect you in any way and what emotions did you feel?
- One said ‘The first scene when we were rocking back and forward I wanted to rock too’. Felt uncomfortable at the sex scene. Sympathy and empathy.
Q 3 – Were the seating arrangements effective? Why?
- One said ‘It broke up the visual audience relationship isolating us, expecting the cast to come and challenge us’
- One said ‘ yes because you could not get distracted’
Q 4 – What did you feel the performance was about?
- Age, abuse, life, nightmares, passion, death
- A journey through fun.
Q 5 – What symbolic gesture did you feel the most?
- Stringed doll dance
- The rape scene – silent constraining gestures
- The baby crying
- The mirror scene
- The age concern scene
Q 6 – Did you sympathize with any of the characters?
- Anastasia crying for friendship
- Joyce when we was being pushed around in the mirror scene
- Ama the crying baby
Through this the results proved that our audience felt different emotions but at different parts of our play.
Costume and face masks – I feel that the costume enhanced our acting performance and enthusiasm. We were able to across that barrier between the audience and the actors without losing concentration. Our painted faces remind the audience that we are actors and not the character which created some sort of relationship between us because we looked like puppets.
Music – I feel the music helped the audience relax a bit as they noticed that was not a ‘normal’ play. The first music surprised them because it started at a high pitch volume and therefore entertained and put them at ease for a while.
Monologue – We said words that would shock and educate the audience which in turn will keep them focused. For example, Joyce said ’87 year old stabbed 8 times’. This was short and simple and she was also talking directly to the audience making eye contact. We also wanted them to think and wonder and therefore directed question at them for example, when Anastasia asked the audience to be her friend.
Lighting – The lights were directly shown on us to light up the whole stage for the audience to see the performers clearly and keep focused. We used touch to make them feel unsettled by directly shining it onto them at Anastasia scene. This was also done to make them feel lonely during Anastasia’s monologue.
Acting style – We knew that our acting style will be audience’s the main focus and because we could not use much monologue, we used our bodies, voices and gesture to show what we were trying to say.
For example at Anastasia scene we wanted to show how lonely she was to make the audience sympathize with her. The rest of us lay on the floor lifeless to show that she was alone and had no one to talk to making her the audience’s main focus at that point. Amalia and Katie were holding the touches aiming them at her face for her facial expressions are clearly seen and through this, the audience will develop sympathy for her. The tone of her voice also had her character believable which may move the audience emotionally.