All of the actors in the performance knew each other which made it easier as we all knew how each other acted and methods that suited individuals best. We evaluated our performance after every rehearsal to perfect it as much as possible, knowing that no matter what we do it will never be perfect but we can only try our hardest.
I came up with quite a few ideas but we only used about two to make it fair and so everyone could have a few of their ideas used, this helps prevent arguments and disagreements that may have occurred within the group. The teacher wanted a very high standard of performance which pushed us all but this made us stronger as a group and if the teacher didn’t then our performance would not have been as outstanding as it was.
We wanted our audience to have 100 percent of their attention directed to us in order to understand our message fully, to do this we decided to do something only high-standard actors do which is have no costumes and only dress in black and abstract clothing this means we have to act as best as we can because all of the audiences attention is on us helping are message get across. We also used music to make it more interesting, we picked certain songs for the flash backs to show certain emotions.
We considered many health and safety issues such as making sure that wires for the lights etc. were all hidden to avoid anyone tripping and getting injured. Also, we had a table and tucked the table cloth into the side of the table to prevent us slipping as we all had to climb over the table when we were saying our poems.
To put on a performance we had to understand the background of T.I.E in order for the audience to understand the performance, to do this we watched past performers to see how they acted and the layout of their performance e.g. monologues or duologues and did these help.
In order to make sure the audience were right for the performance we printed out 90 questionnaires and handed them out to Year Eleven, we included such questions as; Have you ever tried drugs? or have you ever been a victim of alcohol abuse? Because these questions were quite personal we decided to make the names on the questionnaires anonymous. We found that all of our year with the exception of a few pupils that everyone had consumed alcohol or drugs in their lives yet everyone in the year has had bad memories of alcohol or drugs whether it be their friends fighting or them being abused. We decided that Year Eleven were the perfect audience and this also helped us as they can relate to us and makes it considerably less stessful for us.
To research the theme and topic of our devised piece we used the internet and library. The internet helped because it had thousands of pages about drugs and alcohol and also told us the side effects so we knew what to act about the drug or alcohol that we were doing. The library helped because it had facts and figures about the theme and this helped us as we could interact with the audience after a gruesome scene and tell them some facts to make them think even more.
We researched how other writers dealt with the topic of drugs and alcohol e.g. the press and T.V. and movies mostly showed drugs to be sociable and glamorous and that is the reason why we acted in a club, to socialise etc. Movies such as Scarface and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas show drugs to be entertaining and unharmful fun.
There are many cultural and social aspects about the topic for example, many people between the age of twenty and thirty smoke cannabis as if it were a normal cigarette and many wealthy people such as Kate Moss take harder drugs such as cocaine because they have the money and believe it is not more harmful than other drugs.
