Unit 6 - Performance workshop

Thursday 15^th June

The performance

Tonight we were performing our show ‘Broken’ which we, as a cast, have devised. The show was about 5 separate characters who all live within an institute. We didn’t tell the audience what the institute was because it left it for them to decide where the characters were. The characters meet on a daily basis in the lift of the institute but there is no communication between them. Each of the characters has a mental illness. As a cast, we wanted to explore the topic of mental disorders and include these within the performance. My character Estelle had a form of DID (dissociative identity disorder), Callum’s character James had autism, Emily’s character Katy had kleptomania Angel’s character Lily had anxiety and depression and Danielle’s character Felicity had Munchausen. The reason why we thought that mental illnesses would be a good thing to explore in this performance was because the brief for our piece was ‘confinement’ and sometimes people with mental disorders can feel confined. Our theatre company mission was also to educate an audience and including mental illnesses would educate the audience.

My character, Estelle had Dissociate Identity Disorder (DID) which is otherwise known as Split Personality Disorder. This idea for my character to have this disorder arose during one of the sessions. I came away from the session and did a lot of research on the condition. I created a mind map of the characteristics symptoms and treatments for the disorder. I also spoke to my psychology teacher and he gave me some information on the disorder. The main thing that I picked up on was that for the person to change personalities, they had to have a trigger. The trigger could be anything and therefore I decided that my trigger was going to be getting told off. I built a character profile and started to develop my character a lot more. After a few sessions I talked to my lecturer Alys about my character. We came to the conclusion that the character was becoming over complicated and that I probably wouldn’t have enough time to develop my character due to spending a lot of time studying for my upcoming exams. Therefore we decided that my character wasn’t going to have DID completely, but elements of it. This gave me more time to focus on learning the lines and at the same time working on characterisation. The 2 personalities that my character had were a girlie/intelligent side which then contrasted with the childish side. This is shown throughout the performance.

We performed the show in our performance studio at college. At the back of the stage there is a wall which we hung a clock on as most of the show focuses and includes the passing of time. Underneath the clock on the floor were 5 boxes – one for each character. Each box had coloured tape on it which then coordinated to the tape which was also on the floor. There were five different pathways marked out on the floor. Each pathway led from each of the boxes to the entrance of the lift. The lift was marked out in the middle of stage as a box. We did not make it obvious what the box was until near the end of the show. Each character had a different coloured tape – Callum had orange, Emily had green, I had pink, Angel had yellow and Danielle had blue. Also, underneath Danielle’s tape was a piece of string. This is because Danielle has very little sight and could therefore follow the tape with her foot.

Here is a video of our performance which was filmed by one of my performing arts lecturers Cara:

We started the show with the whole cast on stage. As the audience were coming in, we were sat on our blocks. We picked 3 movements which we thought represented our character. We thought that this would be a good way to start the show because it gave the audience a small insight into the 5 characters and how they were all completely different from each other. We moved throughout these 3 movements really slowly and almost in canon. The third position that we finished in was the one where we would start the performance.

The show then started by going into the grid. We were introduced to this idea when Dinos came into one of our sessions a few months ago. As I took on the role of the choreographer for this performance, I helped to choreograph this movement piece. We realised that we needed to choreograph this as it had to fit with the piece of music that we were using. The piece of music that we used for the grid was called ‘Intro’ by Alt-J. A link to this song can be found here:

We used this piece of music because we used it in one of our sessions when we were looking at stimuli. I choreographed the movement piece when all of the characters were in the lift. Looking back, I think that this looks really affective and it makes the audience wonder about what the show is going to be about. The opening that we used didn’t give too many clues away as to what the rest of the performance was going to be about but this was our aim. We didn’t want to make anything obvious and wanted to leave the audience questioning what they just watched. This movement piece then led into ‘Our day part 1’.

‘Our day part 1’ was a scene which involved all of the characters telling the audience about their daily routines. At parts in the daily routine, all of the characters say the same line which symbolises that they carry out the same task at the same time. This also makes the audience question why these characters are doing the same tasks if they don’t know each other.

This then leads into the phone calls. Each character had an individual phone call. After the ‘Our day part 1’, we had a ringtone which can be found here:

Each character then walked back to their box. Each character then delivered their phone call which revealed more about the character to the audience.

We then moved onto the individual scenes. These scenes focused on one character who was then joined by a secondary character. This then meant that we included multi-rolling within the show. For each character of which the scene was based around, they were not allowed to come out of the lift. This is because it gives a sense of confinement which the whole performance was based around. I was involved in the first individual scene as I played the role of the doctor where the main character in the scene was Felicity who was played by Danielle. To show that we were playing a different character, we put on a different item of clothing over our original costume. The scene that was focused on my character was the ‘Butterfly enclosure’. The audience had already previously seen me talking about this date during my phone call and this has now skipped time to the date. The other individual scenes included ‘Lily in the library’, ‘Shoplifting’ and ‘At the pet shop’.

After these scenes, we then repeated the grid sequence again. However this time it led into ‘Our day part 2’ where the characters talk about their daily routines but this time talking about the afternoon.

From ‘Our day part 2’, we then went into the monologues. We used the music ‘Clubbed to death’ during this scene as we walked around the grid. Here is a link to this piece of music:

All of the characters walked around the grid to start with and then when one character entered the lift to deliver their monologue, all the other characters on the grid froze. The music then died down, the lighting changed and the character delivered their monologue. When they were finished, the music would start again and the rest of the characters would carry on moving around the grid until the next character moved into the lift. When the character had delivered their monologue, they headed back to their box. Within each of our monologues we decided to use the word ‘broken’. This is because we wanted to include the title of the performance in the monologues. Callum was the only person who didn’t have a monologue. Instead, he solved a Rubiks cube because this fitted his character more than delivering a monologue. This scene carried on until I was the last person left on the grid. When I came out of the lift from delivering my monologue, I was joined by the rest of the characters and we headed into the lift.

The lift scenes were all performed in the dark however this did mean that some members of the audience could still see us. After every lift scene, we would have a clock sound effect which symbolised the time passing and the lights would come up so the audience could get a glimpse of the lift. As the lift scenes went on, they got more and more disturbing.

At the end of the lift scenes, all of the characters apart from Danielle come out of the lift. Me, Emily and Angel all leave the stage which leaves Danielle and Callum still on stage. At this point, Callum then delivers the epilogue which is an overarching piece about the feeling of confinement.

To draw the performance to a close, the whole cast came front and centre stage and took 3 bows.

Evaluation

A strength of the performance is that we all worked really well together as a team. Working as a team is very important when devising and delivering a show otherwise the show may have not worked out as well as it did. We met outside of lesson time to practice through the lines. This meant that we could rehearse the lines with everyone there and made sure that we knew the lines in time for the show. However, some people were not committed to the show and did not come to the rehearsal. This meant that when we went into the next rehearsal they didn’t know their lines as well as everyone else. Also, it made it hard for the rest of the group because we didn’t have the right cue lines to prompt us to say our line. Also during the rehearsal process there were occasions where members of the cast were on their phones. This shows that they weren’t committed to the performance and didn’t follow the rules of only looking at phones during the designated breaks. It meant that they weren’t focused which led to them missing their lines when practicing through the script which then had a knock on effect to the rest of the cast.

Another strength of the performance was that we all managed to remember our lines. This was something that I was worried about before the show because I was unsure if I was going to be able to remember all of my lines. I had a lot to remember on the night because I had a duologue to perform before the UCAN show downstairs in the foyer and then went on to perform a show which had the duration of around an hour. We originally didn’t plan for the performance to be that long but we came up with so much material and didn’t want to discard anything because it had a lot of creative potential. There were a lot of lines to learn and I had to learn everyone else’s lines briefly so that if everyone else forgot their lines, I could prompt them. However, I remembered all of my lines. During the performance, I helped other people to remember their lines if they forget theirs. I did this by giving them a slight nudge just to remind them that they had the next line.

Another strength of the performance was that we used improvisation effectively within the performance when something went wrong. During the scene where the monologues were being delivered, Danielle was the first to deliver her monologue. Before delivering her monologue, she went slightly off track. Although a small mistake was made, it was quickly fixed as Callum got her back on track. The performance then carried on as normal and the mistake was hardly noticeable.

A weakness of the rehearsal process was that I got easily distracted by another member of the cast. This meant that I kept losing focus within rehearsal which then had an effect on the rest of the group. To improve this I could have stayed more focused on rehearsing the content for the show and we may have got more done in the rehearsals and therefore not had as much to do in the week leading up to the show.

Another weakness during rehearsal is that I didn’t always project enough. This meant that I wasn’t always heard and the ends of my lines were lost. I was given this note with the dress rehearsal from one of my lecturers. However, I took on this feedback and managed to keep up my projection throughout the performance. I know this because when I watched the performance back, you can hear me clearly.

If we were to do the show again we would probably practice with the stage set earlier on in the process. We only managed to set up the stage on the Tuesday before the show. We were performing the show on the Thursday so this only gave us Tuesday and Thursday to rehearse in the studio. Unfortunately we weren’t able to put the tape on the floor sooner because we were performing the dance show the week before and this would not have fitted in with the theme of that show. When we did put the tape down we had to let everyone know that it had to stay and it couldn’t get damaged before the show. I think Danielle found following the tape quite difficult as she had to remember all of the movements as she has very little sight. Whereas the rest of the cast have a lot more sight and are able to see the tape and where the rest of the cast are at all times.

After the show I spoke to many of the audience members and they gave me lots of positive feedback about the performance. From the feedback that I received I picked up that different people picked up on different aspects of the show. Some people picked up on the thing that the tape on the floor represented corridors. Others realised that the main character within the multi-rolling scenes could not leave the lift. I am very pleased with this feedback as this is what we wanted to achieve as a cast. I was also told that throughout the performance, the square in the middle of the stage remained a mystery as we had not told the audience what it was. However towards the end of the performance, it then became clear that the square was a lift where all the characters met everyday.

Overall, I think that the performance went really well. Everyone managed to remember all of their lines and if they did forget a line, they covered it up really well. We received very positive feedback from the audience after the show. I think that all of the cast performed really well and that although we had a lot of material to remember, we managed to pull it all off.