Evaluation of performances

Evaluation of commedia performances:

On Wednesday 25th February, it was national commedia day which was the same day as our two performances. We finished a whole run at around half 11 before our matinee performance and figured out the show would be from 40-50 minutes. In the rehearsal Luke got injured on his eye badly which meant he needed to go hospital to check it out, we had to quickly think of what we could do if Luke was not able to do the shows, this was sorted pretty quickly. Luckily he returned in time and was able to do the matinee, he cut himself out from doing the acrobatic scene because he felt rather sick but braved doing the sword fight with Jodie. 

We had a small audience for the first show, but they was a great audience. They really supported us all and got really into the show. I wrote some notes after the show after Graham gave us all feedback, they said: 

-  Make sure to wait for the audience to stop laughing to carry on with lines

- Try not to laugh on stage (I was guilty for this)

- Easy on heavy feet across stage especially after scene 7

- Make sure props are in place as Jov lost his sword

- It was a very good show

- Be careful when coming on and off stage as a few people bumped into each other

- Careful with where people leave swords as I skidded on stage as swords where hidden by the curtain during a blackout

- Volume improved

We had a Q&A after the show and the audience was Da Vinci drama students. They mainly asked questions about what was hard and easier, then we had to get into pairs and make cool handshakes.

Then we had a break till half 5, and then done our every day normal wam up with jogging and skipping and then doing yoga and balancing tasks. Then we performed our second but last show to a much bigger audience, I was a lot more nervous for this show because my family and friends were in the audience, I felt the nerves off people more than the matinee.

The show finished and we did another Q&A and the questions were similar to the ones from the matinee but was interesting to see what they was interested in learning about what we was doing. And then I wrote notes on the second performance: 

- So much better

- Covered up mistakes well such as when Matt confused his lines

- Improvisation was better

- Volume was better

- Stances and characterisation improved lots

- Sword fights were better

- Still heavy feet but better than before

Afterwards we gave graham a card to say thank you, and he told us he thought the show and the whole process went really well. I am really glad I took part in this as it is not usually something I would do, and I have learnt so much from it. Hopefully it will come in handy in the further future. 

I think my strengths were that I improved my stance and characterisation so much. Because I didn't have any lines, it gave me the chance to show my character through my stance so much more which was a challenge but helped me out. I also feel a little more comfortable with improvisation more than I did before doing the workshop because the whole performance was improvised and non-scripted. I also think my feet were not heavy on the ground as we had to be light footed which I think I was good at. 

My weaknesses were that sometimes I did come out of character without realising but this soon was improved especially on show days. Also the masks, I have never performed with masks so this was very different for me and very challenging. I found it hard to find a mask that fitted me well and suited me because most of the masks were rather large. Another weakness was trying not to laugh on stage at funny parts, it's something I shouldn't do and I did try not too but I do get nervous giggles or when something is funny I do find it hard not to laugh.

In the experience I struggled with stage combat, but I felt as by the show day I was quite good at it. I did an unarmed scene with Michael which I feel improved by the time it came to show day even though that gave us less than two days to make it work.

I would definitely say this workshop is worth it and it's great experience if you do not usually do improvisation and physical theatre. Considering the workshop was 10 days I did learn a lot and am happy with the outcome, if we was to do this professionally we would need to have more time to rehearse and to stay out of the wings more as that became an issue in rehearsals.