Evaluation of Greek Theatre

After a few weeks of rehearsing for our Greek Theatre pieces, our performance day came and we were all excited to show off our work and our acting skills to a new audience and new teachers.

The strengths in my performance with my group was that we helped each other by directing one another to improve our performance. For example, in the beginning Zulaiha was just standing on stage throughout the play and would only step forward when she had to deliver her lines and we changed that by make her move around the stage more in order to interact with other actors in the group. In addition, a few days before our performance day Zulaiha was absent and couldn’t attend the rehearsals so as a group of 3 we managed to work hard on developing our own characters and going over our lines with each other just to be confident with ourselves and ready for our performance day. Some of the things we did to develop remembering our lines and some of the words in our script was to work on our articulation and pronunciation of some of the words for example, a few of us found it hard to remember the pronunciation of the word ‘Thebes’. This is because we don’t use those types of words in the modern day. Moreover, the weaknesses in our performance were using more facial expressions. For example, in my monologue I revealed a lot of information and in rehearsals when we worked on my monologue with the help of Rob, we cut it down and evaluated each part and noticed that my character Jokasta was revealing bits of information about who Oedipus was to Jokasta and what happened to his father, Laios. As a group we directed Jireh to using a wider range of expressions such as being confused and shocked and I would use the expression of being confused and inside feeling quite sorry for Oedipus.

Our whole drama class had done a great job working very hard during rehearsals and with remembering lines. We all enjoy what we do as aspire to be brilliant actors and very dedicated which is a very important thing in the acting industry as it helps us get work done to the best of our ability and help others succeed too. After every rehearsal we would give each group feedback on how to improve their play and some of the strengths and weaknesses in their plays which is very helpful. One of the groups didn’t really feel that they could connect with their Greek play so a really fun and interesting thing that one of the groups did (Joseph, Peter and Marion) was change their Greek play and try to make it into their own which made their performance unique to the other groups. In addition, for Joseph’s monologue he decided to use some of his own personal skill of rapping into his monologue which was a great idea as it is something that the audience of young teenagers can relate to also they could finish the induction with a fantastic finish.

The Musical Theatre class put on a great performance, you can tell this by the amount of work they put into their performance to make it in time with the music, dancing and the singing. However, at times it was obvious that they not all put in the effort as the whole group was no in sync with each other which are a weakness as it let down the group making it look quite messy. Overall, it was an enjoyable performance to watch. The level 2 drama performances were all intriguing to watch because as an actor you are able to examine the way some things were performed and you could steal some ideas for any future performances. All of the groups made it clear what the theme of their play was about. They all had great projection however some at times were quite hard to hear especially because I was sitting at the back of the theatre so I was struggling to understand what the actor on stage was saying. The whole of the stage was used well by all of the groups, not one group performed in a corner, they were all centre where the audience can see clearly. 

One of the groups had decided to show it’s a new scene by using black outs, this is a very good idea however a weakness was that the audience was confused as to what is going on and the scenes seemed too short so there would be a blackout every 1-2minutes and it lost the audience’s attention. Another weakness in another play was that some of the actors came out of character which is a very powerful thing and can be spotted immediately for example, the actor was talking about weed and got a reaction from the audience so they came out of character which affected the whole group as it lost its meaning of what it was trying to teach us. Personally, I thought that the music performances were fantastic with recreating popular song and adding originality such as their own raps which sounded amazing. However, a weakness that could be easily spotted was that not all of the groups used their popular song and play around with piece to show that they can be creative.

 Overall, all the performances, Musical Theatre class, Level 2 Acting class and the Music class, on induction were brilliant and you can tell they worked hard and worked to their ability to performance an outstanding first piece. Audience’s reaction differ on type of performance for example, at a music gig, the audience are lively and can get involved more depending on if they are familiar with the type of music being played which they can relate to, whereas for a drama performance, the audience should be quiet because noise can distract an actor on stage who is concentrating and being in their character and if someone’s phone goes off this will cause the actors on stage to lose confidence and come out of character. The engagement of the audience depends on if the audience can relate or not, if a modern piece in drama was performed then many will be able to relate in contrast to Greek Theatre which has challenging and unfamiliar words to our modern world.