Post Show evaluation for 'Remote' by Stef Smith 8th May 2015

Our experience and performance at the Capitol Theatre in Horsham, went really well. I think by taking our show to a new and bigger venue, was a real change to what we knew already. The first task that we came across when we got to the theatre was our set, as it was made out to board and covered in paper it was not fire safe, so this meant that it had to be covered in this fire resistant spray. This then meant that to give it time to dry we had to do our tech, and without our set. This didn't come as much as a problem to me as I don't have much interaction with the set pieces. However I didn't get to get a feel of the distances around the stage, as the stage was bigger which would have thrown out all of the set. One thing that I came across from doing this tech run, was that I would have new cue lines on when I had to start my entrance. I found that it worked better that I entered a lot earlier, to give me time to get into my position.

One of my strengths that I thought in this performance, was my audience interaction. I think by having a bigger and wider age range, made it easier to make my lines come across and make sense. when I was performing one thing that was going through my head was how we were given the notes to direct most of our lines towards the audience, to make us come across as narrators.

When we did our first showing of the play and all of the runs that we did during the rehearsals, as a cast we all felt that the opening was the section that was lacking the most. This was due to the pace and the link that it had to the play, as it didn't really tell much about the story and the characters. We originally just all walked around the stage, being random characters, we worked as an opening but then became confusing to the audience when we became different characters when it was over.
    To change it, we came up with three short stories. This told the stories of all of the characters. The short story that I was in was Skin and Blisters. This told the story about the bullies in the park and I played a member of the gang. We came onto the stage and then spotted another character and interrogated them. We all made our movements big and over exaggerated, this gave the opening movement and pace, as we went along with the music. The ending to the opening sequence was everyone crowding round Antler, this showed everything crashing down on her, and becoming over whelming, and as the tension raised, as we closed in on her, we all broke out, away from her. This broke the tension and made it clear to the audience that the scene was beginning.
    I think that this opening worked really well and set a good pace for the start of the play, and gave us a pace to start off on. I think that this was due to putting it to a fast paced music and gave us a beat to go along with. I think my dance background gave me a chance to add some more pace to my opening and gave me the chance to make my movements more stylised, to give it a bigger impact.

 

The opening scene video

Scene One
Our first scene in the play is the opening scene, this has always worked really well and we are always really line confident in this as we had been working on this for a while. We had set a lot of physical theatre to it. This really helped my narration group to keep up the pace and bring in a strong opening. In this scene I felt that I really had a strong connection with the audience, and started to direct my lines towards them from the start. I think that this set the theme and style of the play from the start for the audience, and really made it clear that we were narrators and not part of the story with the characters. This is in contrast to Dissocia where all of our lines were directed to another actor on the stage, which gave the acting style a naturalistic style where 'Remote' was non-naturalistic. We showed this naturalistic style of 'Dissocia' from the start by having a very plain opening scene, with just Lisa and Victoria in the opening, and just having them plainly talking to each other. Where in 'Remote' we opened with a big bang, directed to the audience with non-naturalistic movements.


Scene two

When we were first given this scene we felt that this scene was a very slow paced scene and very calm through-out. We called this scene Serenity, and we wanted to keep all of our movement very calm, and keep the pace with the movement down, but the pace in the lines up. This was hard to keep the lines pace up as I found it harder to learn my lines in this scene, without the movement to attach our lines too. For this scene we all just sit in random spaces around the stage and then swap around the stage on every fourth line. This worked well for the performance I think as it didn't come across as to much movement to bring the pace up, yet by having this small movements it meant that we were kept on our toes and didn't lose all of the pace and distract from the dialogue between the characters.


Scene Three

Our third scene was fairly similar to our first scene, where we felt that the pace seemed high, so we set physical theatre to a lot of our lines. This scene starts off with all of the things that are getting to Antler, we showed this getting on top of her, by being up in the tree, and using fast movement to show it all getting on top of her. I think this really got the message across of her getting all of her problems on top of her.
   Out of all of our scenes this is the one with the highest tension, as this is the scene where Blister attacks Crystal. To show this tension we just all stood around the group and slowly closed in on the group and made it seem like we were circling them up. This then broke out when they ran off. This reflects the opening scene, where we used this to show the tension in Antlers life. Out off all of the scenes I felt the most natural as the narrator and that we really brought the scene to life for the audience, and we were there talking it through as making the violence seem bigger then it was.


Scene Four

This scene was a lot like scene two, were the tension and pace seemed very low when we read it through. So we all just sat on the bench and watched over the scene as the characters spoke. To show the scenes themes and emotions we all used subtle facial expressions to show how we felt about the characters and how the scene was going. For example when the gang came on the stage, I had tense body language and tried to keep away from eye contact with the gang. This showed the audience the fear I had for the gang and how they ruled the park. But in contrast in this scene to show when antler felt more comfortable with a character such as Oil or Desk, I had a more relaxed body language and was more open towards the audience with me lines and my interaction with the other narrators.
      One thing that did not go right for in this scene, was my exit. I left the stage to early in this scene. I got up from the bench when everyone else did  but they went over to the tree and I went off into the wings. When I got off stage I realised that I wasn't finished in the scene. So I waited for a bit that felt that I could re-enter and I walked on and started to interact with the narrators to make it seemed planned and natural. I don't think that this came obvious to the audience as I re-entered calmly and in a professional manner, and did not panic or come out of character. I will take account of what I did in this mistake on how to respond from a mistake professionally, without making it clear to an audience.


Scene Five

In this scene we used torches as we walked around the stage. This showed that it was getting dark and that time was moving on. and that they had been up the tree for a while. This is the scene that I struggle with the most, as our lines are very spaced out and most of them are a subject changer so they are harder to remember the cue lines. I think by having different staging in this scene would have worked better, as we all just sat on the floor playing with the shadows, but I think that if we had more movement it would have helped to keep the pace up, as this scene really started to drag.

Scene Six

This was my groups last scene, and we really wanted to over exaggerate our narrator status in the play, so we decided to site right at the front of the stage, and direct every one of our lines to a audience member, and make it really personal and break the fourth wall. We sat in pairs, under umbrella's to give us some purpose. this is a short scene so I think that having this simple blocking worked as this scene was mainly about the characters realisation at the end of the play.


In conclusion I think that this was one of the best performances that as a cast we have ever done. We all had great characterisation and I feel that I really responded to the notes of directing my lines to the audience to a character in person. Over all my most successful scenes were one, two and six. This is because I was happy with the levels of tension in them and I think that we kept the pace up at an interesting level for the audience. As an actor It was a great experience taking the production to a new venue and it was challenging to work out the new dimensions of the stage and working out the new timing to get to my positions.