EVALUATION OF DEVISED PERFORMANCE

by Heta Nikula

This is an evaluation report on our site-responsive performance. I will be critically discussing the positives and negatives of the show and exploring what I've experienced during the devising process.

Overall, my groups performance piece went better than I had hoped for. There were few to none mess ups. During rehearsals we had made sure that we went over each part as much as possible, so that the performance would go smoothly and have a flow to it. Even thought we succeeded in this, it was also pointed that perhaps we rehearsed some of the parts too much, since the excitement and energy of some of the part fell a bit. Too, much rehearsals isn't necessarily the problem, but rather that we weren't able to keep the rehearsal process fresh for ourselves, and so got a little bored with the piece by the end.

During the beginning parts of devising, we were lucky enough to find our poem quite early on, which meant that we had more time to create the piece around it and learn our lines better. My group also thought, that we could use different chorus techniques, such as call and response, unison, and echoes to emphasize the important parts of the story, but also create different levels to the over all experience. Unfortunately, our devising was more focused on the movement and after changing our room, adapting our piece to the new site and so at some point we forgot about focusing on the poems potential. In hindsight, this is something I would like to change, since it would have brought so much more to our piece. It would have also used all of the voice skills we were learning last year and so showed how we are able to take in new skills and apply them into different projects with different focuses to create a piece of theatre.

Using practitioners might not be evident from the piece itself, but we had three pain sources of inspiration to our devising. We used DV8 in creating a lot of our movements in the beginning, starting from simple gestures and then broadening them to make them more effective and powerful. We also used Frantic Assembly's Chair Duet's in our piece and were inspired by their method of starting out with robot like turn in creating movement, and then by rehearsing it, giving the movement more of a flow. Michael Chekov was probably our main practitioner, since in our performance we used radiating to create silent, but powerful moments to tell the story to the audience. We also kept in mind Yoshi Oida's idea on Jo-Ha-Kuy to keep a balance between different parts of our performance.

Working in this group , I found myself in a leadership position. I initiated a lot of rehearsals and made sure we were on track, but also found myself encouraging my group members to bring out their ideas to the table. This role was hard at times, since I went trough a lot of stress in my life and this showed in my actions during rehearsals. From this I learned the importance of keeping work and personal life separate, but also to be honest to the people you work with and ask for help.

Adapting to a new space

    My group was asked to perform our piece again at the open evening, the difference being that we would be performing in the drama studio, rather than our chosen space. This presented somewhat of a challenge, since we wouldn't be able to use our shadow work anymore, because of the black walls and the projection would have to point at the wall for the piece, rather than projecting to the ceiling. Also, rather than performing a lot around the audience, we moved Chloe start so that she will come behind the curtains and me n Jenny would start near the wall, centre stage. This way, the audience didn't have to move between our and the dancers performances and everyone would be able to see clearly what was going on. Of course, after performing we did realize that the change in location took away from the emotions and mood we had created, and honestly us performers just didn't have the same connection any longer. The stark contrast of the white light with the white walls created shadows to the room that really gave the piece some layers, where as the drama studio just didn't have the same effect as a site. One part, we noticed that suffered a lot, was where we smack into the wall, as if we fell from the trapeze and smashed to the ground. Because the walls in the drama studio are padded to prevent sound from escaping the room, it didn't make the same loud sound as our previous rooms brick walls and took away from the moment.  

17.10.14

   We got to know that our room had been changed yesterday. To be hinest, me and my whole group was very bummed out about this, so we didni't do much work that day. We had a room that we were looking at to do our piece in, but this room was very small and light, which wasn't anything like our previous room, that was covered in concreat and had a industrial and dark feel to it. BY the end of the day, we found a better room. This one still isn't exactly what we wanted, but it will do in a situation like this, where we do not have a lot time to devise our piece.

So, today we started in our new room to try and adapt our already done parts of our piece. There were some problems immedietly; we didn't have the cupboard nor the glass room that we had in our earlier room. Good new was, that they were able to bring the cupborad to our room, so that the first parts of the poem with Chloe wouldn't have to be changed majorly. Still, the part with me in the glass room had to be changed and we decided to have it in a corner near the second exit(see picture below). It won't be as effective this way, since it isn't exactly responding to this room, but is something special to our previous one. We will still need to get back to this bit, since it could be a lot stronger, but for now, we decided to keep working on our devising for the rest of the poem, since we fell behind a bit because of the change in rooms.

For now we had devised the first part and second one complitely, and some of the third part of the poem. We have been stuck on this part for a bit now, since this the where we start building up for the climax of the poem, where all the movement and emotions start becoming more tense and high in energy. Why we struggled with this was probably because we didn't really know where to start devising the next movements. We didn't want to continue using the poem and depicting literally what we are saying, but rather pull movement from emotions and situations. Simply improvising movements didn't really work for us, for reason it was just hard for us to start movement from nowhere.

”and despite and army of friends

who all call him and inspiration

he remains a conversation piece between people

who can't understand

sometimes becoming drug free

has less to do with addiction

and more to do with sanity”

This parts talks about friends and how even though people try to understand and see your problems as something that are in the past, they rarely understand that it isn't the past, but something you keep fighting for every single day. To make it easier to create something, we started thinking about childhood and what kind of games would have represented unity and friendship. We thought of how as children there was a common game where everyone holds hands ind a ring and sing a song while dancing and jumping around in that ring. Since we had already possitioned ourselves a kind of a circle, it would be a easy transition to just turn towards the audience, perhaps create a more twisted version of the game we used to play as children. At this part the poem talks how the friends of the person call him an inspiration, but then there is still something wrong with this equation, because he still remains an item of conversation and perhaps even mockery. In a way this person is trapped so that he won't ever be able to escape his problems, as long as people keep talking about them. So this 'playful' circle turns into a rat race, of a sort, that ends in us all ripping ourselves free, just fall on the ground. This also scatteres us around the stage, for our next part in the poem. Unfortunately today we didn't have more time to go into the next part, apart from devising a series of movements we would use in the beginning. I will talk about in the next blog more, since we definitely need to work on it more in extra rehearsals

   In extra rehearsals, we decided to devise our ending, since we wanted it to be simple, it shouldn't take too much time. That way tomorrow we would have the whole piece to show everyone, and we can get notes for our over all piece. This is important since the show is in a about a week, and we want our performance to be as good as possible.

”why else would we still be here?
we grew up learning to cheer on the underdog
because we see ourselves in them”

We start this part with all of us three in a row down stage. Because this part talks about cheering, we thought of doing a lift at this part, since especially in sports you see the winner to be lifted up for the standing ovations. I thought to have a big lift with me and Jenny raising Chloe of the ground and taking her somewhere, but the girls pointed that we wanted the end to be not so showy, but more peaceful. Also, it would be hard for us to do a big lift with only two people lifting. So we ended up with a simple lift of the ground for a second and then putting Chloe back to her place. After this, Chloe will twirl me and Jenny in front of her.

”we stem from a root planted in the belief
that we are  not 
the faded echoes of voices crying out
names will never hurt me

of course
they did”

From in front of Chloe, me and Jenny will sort of 'launch' Chloe to the front, us facing towards the video on the wall. Again, wanting the end to be quite simple, this part we will all stay put, but the line ”names will never hurt me”, Jenny and Chloe will say it in canon, creating an echoes effect. At this point, Jenny and Chloe will also move from teir places to their end position by the wall, with the video reflecting on them.

”but our lives will only ever always
continue to be
a balancing act
that has less to do with pain
and more to do with beauty.”

We played around with end a little bit, wanting to explore different meanings for the end as well. As I say the last piece of the poem, I will walk to the girls and join them, by taking their hands. We thought that, we could face the wall, to convey the message that things don't always get better, but then thought that it would be better to end the piece in a happy note, facing the audience, with a  small smile.

4.11.14

  After half-term we really wanted to try out doing the piece with performing the lines ourselves, since now all of us were memorized and had had time to work on our parts of the poem. Beginning half-of the day we really spent on adapting ht epoem into the movement and getting the pace and rhythm right. Then it was time for us to start devising the end half of our piece, part 5 and 6 of the piece.

We thought that since we were going to be having the projector first pointing at the ceiling, after smacking on the wall the video image would turn from the ceiling to the wall in front of us. This way, after the smack we have a moment of silence, where we look at the video and give the audience time to process what has happened and see how we long for the happy memories that are presented in the video.

”but I want to tell them
that all of this shit
is just debris
leftover when we finally decide to smash all the things we thought

we used to be”

We then turn away from the video, addressing the audience again. Jenny said that it would be good for us to be scattered again, and so we decided that at the line 'is just debris' we scatter around the stage again, and switch side by running towards each other, just jump in front of the audience and briefly fall to ground, just to get back up again with confidence.

”and if you can’t see anything beautiful about yourself
get a better mirror
look a little closer
stare a little longer”

This part we wanted to address the audience directly, not making too complicated movements, but rather looking them in the eye and telling them, that the person staring back at them in the mirror, is not a monster.

”because there’s something inside you
that made you keep trying
despite everyone who told you to quit
you built a cast around your broken heart
and signed it yourself
you signed it
“they were wrong” ”

Now we wanted to pick up the pace again. Me and Chloe run to the middle to grab our hands, leaving Jenny to the other side trapped. She then tries to push herself through, only to have us trap her in the middle of us, squeezing her tighter in. To create hope, Jenny gets trough us and we go and grab our chair to the middle. I stand on the middle chair and Chloe and Jenny grab my hands, preventing me from falling off. Then I lift the two from their seat with a twirl and jump down from the chair with the last line. We created this part on the chairs to transition us to the next bit, where we really wanted to use Frantic Assembly's Chair-Duet to our advantage, since right at the beginning of our devising, we played around with the chairs, but didn't find a good place to use them yet.

”because maybe you didn’t belong to a group or a click
maybe they decided to pick you last for basketball or everything
maybe you used to bring bruises and broken teeth
to show and tell but never told
because how can you hold your ground
if everyone around you wants to bury you beneath it
you have to believe that they were wrong

they have to be wrong”

We devised this bit the same way we used this exercise before devising started. We started of by everyone creating one gesture at a time, and then tightened it and made it smoother by practice. We still need to get it way more tight and precise, but rehearsing it everyday should do the trick. We really want this to be fast movement to contrast the end we have been planning.

At the line ”you have to believe that they were wrong” we all get up on our chairs and at the last line, kick the chairs backwards to end this section with a bang, and start the end for the piece. 

   I decided it would be good to make a separate post on the light, video, music, costume, make-up and hair notes considering our piece, since we have been talking about these things during multiple different rehearsal sessions.

LIGHT, PROJECTOR & MUSIC
   In our original space, we thought about giving all the audience members their own torches, so that they would have the power, who they follow and what they see. But after changing our site, we saw the opportunity to play with shadows and decided to change it to LED-lights with white light. It is very simple but we wanted to have the focus on the movement and later on the projection.
   The video we discussed would be quite chopped up and wouldn't have a narrative, since we didn't want it to take too much of the attention, but rather work as a way to make story we are telling even stronger. We are going to also film some of our shadow works for the video, but I have found some old home videos from the internet to kind of create the happy childhood memories that the speaker in the poem misses, or never had.
   It didn't take us too long to choose the music. We had a clear idea from the beginning that we wanted to have a very simple music track in the background just to create some mood. I found David Buechner's 'Music for Strings' and played it to the rest of my group, and we all agreed that this was the song for us.

COSTUME, MAKE-UP & HAIR
   For the costumes, we thought about having it all black at first. We wanted something simple, but black wouldn't work with the projector and turned it to white shirts, to bring more attention to the video. We want to have flowy white shirt that will follow our movements and have maybe even a slight pajama-looking effect, to represent the sleepless night of someone trouble and depressed.  The make-up would be neutral, except we would make our eyes look a bit tired, even messy to follow on the sleeplessness.
   We are not yet quite sure about the hair, Chloe suggested for us to have half-up, so that we wouldn't have hair on our faces when performing, but still wouldn't just have it up.