Experimental piece evaluation:

On the 18th of February theatre strand had there performance of 'The cabinet of  curiosity's'.
The show took place in the musical theatre rooms and was set up like an exhibition where the audience could walk around as if at an art gallery. we had to perform 3 shows and as the night went by each performance became more and more challenging.

My independent piece was inspired by 5 works of art from the TATE gallery and i used each piece of art to develop my own piece. Before the show started we were asked to get into our starting positions and i was apprehensive to how the audience would respond to my piece. As the show began and people entered the space i was in neutral and the spectators had to read my artist rational to understand my piece but once on person painted me the rest followed it was very emotionally draining because each time paint was put on my i had to react with an emotion and stare into the eyes of the audience while expressing the emotion. For me the first audience was the best because they were fully participating with me and were completely engaged. But my performance changed for the other performances as the audience where not as aware of what i wanted them to do, so i had to improvise in order for my piece to still be successful so I took on the role of the audience and decided to paint my self and in body the emotion.

the challenges of my piece where that i did not know what to expect every audience members reaction was different so i had to improvise and stay on the ball with each person and create an individual experience for each spectator which was very challenging and meant i constantly had to be aware of who i was interacting with. my weaknesses where that i sometimes had to gesture the the paint or the sign behind me that said 'PAINT ME' which i feel took away from my performance and removed some emotion but it was improvised. But the strengths of my performance where that when the audience where engaged the performance was powerful and thought provoking as i stared the audience in the eyes and could feed of there reactions. The logistics of the performance were also very challenging e.g. cleaning up setting my space and getting ready to perform all posed a challenge but i over came this and the performances where successful.

Our group performance was also success i feel because of the commitment and dedication of each person in the group piece we all worked together to create a great piece of theatre that we could all be proud of. the strengths of our performance was just the pure dedication of each cast member which radiate and was obvious for the audience members but the weaknesses and challenges to over come where that the audience did not move as aspects for the sperm section to we had to make a collective instinctual choice and space that piece differently but it still worked out.

Over all the whole show i feel was a success because of the commitment of everyone in the stand and we created a great piece of theatre.

 

In our lesson today we worked on our experimental pieces of 20 minuets to then be able to perform them on loop to the class after we had done this the class gave feed back on what we had done my feed back was positive and constructive the class really responded well to the concept and idea of my piece but they were my concerned about the execution and where my piece could go, e.g. Logistics would the audience know there role so I had to think of a way of making it apparent that audiences role is to throw paint at me the paint to symbolise emotion, but i realised that this was not practical so made the decision to do this my self and cover up the pots so i did not know what colour i was putting on my self i thought this would be more practical.

What does it say to an audience so far? 
Our group piece says many things to the audience it speaks about nature Vs nurture and about the person them selfs, the start of the piece is focused on the scientists and the questions they are asking this part of the piece addresses real questions and discussions being had by scientists but it also de-humanises the individual and asks questions as a whole which then contradicts the next sequence which is the fertilisation part, where you see each sperm as a human and that they all have the potential for life but some slowly die and only one makes it to the egg this shows how delicate the human life is and is there to show the nature side to the argument. through out the piece the audience and constantly reminded of the topic of NvN and that is apparent throughout the sequences, so it says to the audience that there are many factors that play into why someone is they way they are.

What is your favourite moment of the piece so far and why?

My favourite section in the piece is the part when we are some of us are under the sheets and it is suppose to represent the womb i think its a really beautiful section and done very elegantly with the lights and it just a very creative and visually exciting way of showing the audience something.

How is it experimental? 

it is experimental way of creating theatre because it does not  follow convention and uses physical theatre and surrealism to tell a story. An example is when some of us become sperm with tights over our heads this is surreal and experimental.