Notes from the audinece.

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-Ruth and Elliot before the show rehearsing.)
During the technical rehearsal, we had notes on how we could improve our performance, one of the big comment we got was how we chose to work in the round. Even though most of the audience could see the performance there were some parts where the round did not quite work for example the monologue spoken by Courtney could have been done more effectively by slowly roaring the scene so everyone saw both sides of the sheet. Also, the opening with the tea and chairs, a lot of it is performed more forward and if we could go back and change it I think we could have set the chairs up in the corners of the stage rather than in a straight line. However, we made a group decision not to change the performance last minute because of the quality if the performance would be affected because we had practiced it one way for so long. One note I had was the movement with Elliot could be a lot smoother and the next day we did improve on this. We decided to scrap one part of the movement because it was so complicated to perfect and looked out of place, instead we changed the falls so they were only myself and Elliot leaning on each other body weight and added more characterisation. We were forcing a lot on the movement and forgetting the story we were trying to tell, once we added the characterisation the movement felt more naturalistic and it looked a lot smoother.

After the show I spoke to Chris one of our tutors, I chose to get notes from him because he's never seen me perform being a new teacher. He said after the performance that we delivered a mature and Brechtian piece of theatre. Our level of skill was very advanced compared to some of the other performances and us our dedication to the show came through very clearly. He also said that a lot of Brecht's techniques were included in our performance but parts of them should be sharpened up to improve. LIke the use of humor, we use humor effectively and then as he put it “punch the audience in the face” with the seriousness. As we rehearsed this we didn't experiment a lot with humor but we definitely could have and use the contrast between the seriousness of the topic and humor. A lot of the techniques we used were very advanced, the choice to perform in the round was a brave one, props like the sheet and the overall flow of the piece. However to make our performance even better we could have abandoned the similar techniques like the coral speaking, Chris said that because the rest of the show was so advanced parts like the coral speaking felt odd and out of place and almost brought us down. As a base point is the basics are critical but I think we definitely could have changed and experimented more to advance our performances standard. Personally, I could have improved by having more definition between my characters.


“your performance was really good, and the meaning came across really well. I liked the symbolism between wanting tea and consent. Many Brecht techniques were used and the deeper message came across for the audience to take away and think about.”-Jack Kenyon

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