Our Performance - Evaluation

I was very nervous about our performance this morning, but by the end of the day, I felt we had a really amazing, truthful and effective piece.

We were all a little worried this morning, but after much planning and exploring with more ideas of riffing and emotional flocking, we managed to come up with an effective middle to our piece. We came up with some good ideas before that we decided to keep in our performance. We decided to stick to the Meisner Chat, the Lust Walk, BISP and Jack and Laura's kiss-pull. We then decided to do emotional flocking, then our stories that we have about something that had happened to us that meant something - my story was applying and getting into the BRIT School.

We then did the Riffing with the clap, then pulled the audience in and turned them around and turned the light off, we then whispered in their ears something we were extremely passionate about - I spoke about M&S Meal Deals and Self Service Checkout Machines. This made quite a few people laugh, but it didn't take away from the atmosphere in the room. I think it made some audience members grateful for the emotional break because our piece could be a little overwhelming for some people.

We then read out the stories that the audience had written down at the beginning. When they walked in, we handed them a piece of paper and asked them to write down:
I'm happiest when...
It made me feel...
My greatest fear is...
Which made them have to really think. When we read them out and we were doing the body riffing around them in a circle to music, it felt really powerful. The audience seemed to be really engaged with what we were doing and it made me feel more open to go further, because the audience were, emotionally, there with me. We finished with a body ripple of discovery and a group hug in the middle at the end.

We were all a little apprehensive about our performance, but I think it went really well. If anything could have been re-done, I would have made the emotional flocking a little bit more emotional as I still thought there were too many times where it got too much and was too overwhelming. We could have kept it quiet a little more, to create more of an atmosphere, but overall, I think the rest of our piece went really well and we had some really positive feedback from our peers and our parents.

I think we effectively managed to create a believable and emotional connection with our audience and some people got really emotionally attatched to our piece. When we performed it to our peers, I think that they got into it a lot more quickly and we had some strong feedback with people saying they wanted to join in and that they were welling up and some points, which was really good to hear, because it means that we know we were doing the right thing and just feeling it on stage.

We always have to work a lot harder when performing to our parents because they are less open to things and much more reserved people, however, I think we did really well, they all seemed to be really engaged and mesmerized by the riffing. When we were reading out the audience's stories and we were riffing around them, it felt amazing. With the music and the stories, I felt so powerful being able to move how I wanted to and move how I felt in my body. The audience members that were facing me were smiling and seemed to be fixated on all of us. It felt very surreal and when the performance had ended and everyone looked up from our hug, I felt the emotional connection break and I felt spaced out, as if I didn't know what had just happened because I was so involved in the piece. It was an amazing feeling that I didn't really want to end.

I feel like I've improved and learnt so much this term and, although some bits have been very stressful, it has been amazing and I feel like every lesson, I've been on an emotional journey and come out feeling exhausted, but amazing and so much closer to, not just everyone in my group, but also every single audience member.