Being told that our performance is on the week of 15th
May and then being changed to 8th May was something that no one
expected however we managed to do pretty well on our performance. Although we
lost an actor during the first week of rehearsal we didn’t see the point in
even performing anymore but throughout the whole rehearsal time we had we
managed to do so much which I believe showed through our performance.
Our first performance at 2pm went smoothly however there
were many mistakes which I’m pretty sure even the audience noticed. There were
less than 10 people who were in the audience watching which I think lowered our
energy and to be honest we took it as a dress run considering we had such few.
Normally before a performance I’d feel quite nervous to perform however I
didn’t feel that at all and maybe that’s because I didn’t have much motivation
to even perform the play however I managed to suck it up and perform to the
best of my ability. Our second performance at 7pm went better because I believe
we felt more confident with what we were saying and we just wanted to show our
families and our friend’s families what we’ve got for the last time. I felt as
if we had more fun because we had a nice long break before the performance and
we just had the time to calm ourselves down and be ready to enjoy ourselves on
stage.
My first performance I thought went well because I managed
to remember every action and every line. I believe I reacted well to what
Tarkan was saying by interrupting him which made it sound very realistic.
During rehearsals, Sharron helped me cut down those long monologues I had and
to in-vision the memory in my head about what I’m talking about which helped
with remembering my lines but also helped feel connected to Olivia for example
when I said ‘We’d get married, and have Jaina, and Hunter, and Cassandra, and
currently unnamed son number 2’, I imagined a big wedding with four children
running around. In addition, it helped me keep a slow steady pace so I didn’t
speak fast and trip over my words because I wanted the audience to imagine what
I’m imagining by telling a story in their head. When performing to students in
class, the main feedback that stood out to me was ‘show us that you are
Lincoln’s girlfriend because you seem like you’re just friends. Firoella seems
more like a girlfriend to Lincoln’. This was one of the challenges I had to
face because I had to think really hard about building a chemistry with
Tarkan’s character and by doing that I spent more time with Tarkan outside of
rehearsals. In order to highlight who each of the characters were to Lincoln in
the play, I thought of the idea of everyone having gestures, although in the
script it hints who each character is for example, Victor says ‘Fiorella came
out of here crying, Di was yelling her head off...I’m terrified of what will
happen to Olivia when she visits…’ Even though Victor states the order and
names of the characters, I believed that it’s quite late for the audience to
know who we are by then and realise who we are to each other so using gestures
I thought was a good idea which we ended up using. We tried out different
gestures in rehearsals for each character for example for Fiorella’s scene
their gesture was a handshake used in the Disney TV-show, The Suit Life of Zack
and Cody which really stood out that they were best friends whom have know each
other for quite a long time. Grace didn’t have a gesture for her scene because
it immediately states in the script that she is Lincoln’s sister. My gesture
with Tarkan was after a long pause I say ‘I’m going to miss you’ and that’s
when I put my hand on his hand and hold it for a while. One of the problems I had
to face was to rehearse without Tarkan for a while but I did that by just
saying the lines to myself of getting Zulaiha to read in for Lincoln. I believe
that what I needed to improve on in this performance was to be a bit louder
even though my chair was slightly tilted towards the audience, I had to keep
looking at Tarkan and I don’t think people from the side of me heard me well.
Also, during the last scene it was pitch black so I had no idea where I would
need to stand when the spotlight comes on but I remember being told that if the
light is on my face then I am able to be seen and if not then I would need to
move into the spotlight. A challenge I faced which was very last minute was
that I needed to find someone who would be able to propose to me in the last
scene of the play. The person whom was initially supposed to do it was very ill
so I asked Josiah, who performed on a different day, to ask to stay behind and
be in the last scene of my play. This was very kind of him to take the time out
of his night to stay behind for the 2pm performance and the 7pm performance.
My second performance I thought went better and flowed more
lightly because we got the chance to reflect on what we could do better in our
second performance and how. For me, I managed to speak slower so that the
audience can get every bit of detail of what I’m saying and I spoke a bit
louder so that each side of the audience was able to hear me. During the beginning
of my scene, Tarkan got the order of the lines wrong so he was slightly
improvising and there was a silence for a minute because he completely forgot
his line so in order to help him, I tried to play off the silence as if it’s an
awkward silence between Olivia and Lincoln. However, truly I was waiting to see
if he knew his line so that I can help him out by saying my line. This really
helped him because he had about a minute or so to backtrack in his mind to
remember his next line during my monologue. I believe this happened because we
didn’t have the time in rehearsals to rehearse the scenes together completely
with us knowing all our lines. The only time we had was during the morning of
the performance day or in the dressing rooms while other groups were
performing. I didn’t face any challenges or problems during my second
performance. I just know I tried my hardest to co-operate with the spotlight on
me when I walked on stage and off stage also, in the end scene, I tried to remember
where I stood in the first performance so that I’m standing in the right spot.
In rehearsals, I annotated my script to see what objectives
my character has and the action she is going to use at a specific line. In addition
to that, I needed help with working out what emotion I should use when I’m
saying a specific line so Jireh helped me by going through line after line with
me to write down what my character is feeling at that very moment.
This is my annotated script.
These pictures are my character's emotions from each line of the script.
Overall, looking at our performance videos, there were a lot
of things that the audience may have noticed but we didn’t notice during the
time. The biggest problem we faced during our first performance was the table
and chairs not being in the centre. During technical rehearsals, we had a
spotlight placed in the centre of the stage and there was a spotlight on the
actors who were walking in on stage and exiting the stage. The reason this was
our biggest problem was because the audience hardly saw Lincoln because he was
so into the dark and also, the camera couldn’t catch him either. He looked like
he blended in with the darkness. Only the actors who walked in on stage were
seen perfectly. In order to have overcome the situation and to improve on it
for next time, I believe we should’ve had more technical rehearsal time in
order to rehearse where to put the table so that it’s in the centre and in line
with the spotlight. In addition to that, I think that the tech crew could’ve at
least helped us out a bit by slightly moving the spotlight to show both
characters on stage (if possible) because looking back at the video, it looks a
bit awkward. What could’ve gotten better is if we had glow tapes to mark where
the centre was so that we could see where to put the table. A technical issue
we had whilst watching the videos, we saw that the camera man kept moving the
camera too much and the brightness intensity was so high, we all looked so
white and blended in with the table. You were unable to see our facial
expressions which was really annoying to see. I believe the college should
invest their money in buying modern professional cameras instead of using an
old camcorder.
After we were all casted for our plays, one of the actors in
our group decided he was going to leave college so that left us with 3 actors and
a character with no actor. Jireh held auditions to look for someone who could play
the character of Victor. This was one of the biggest challenges we faced as a
group because during rehearsals, we never got anyone to read in for Victor
which for a while we ended up forgetting the character even existed. We thought
of having someone from another group who doesn’t have a main role or many lines
to play Victor but Rob and Sharron wouldn’t allow it. It was until the last week
before our performance date, Jireh stepped in and played the character of
Victor. This solved our problem in finding a new actor to join our group.
Another challenge we faced towards the end of rehearsals and start of the
performance, Tarkan was absent for quite some time. This was due to his
personal injuries he had, he was unable to get out of bed or walk. Zulaiha,
Grace, Jireh and I had to keep rehearsing but without Tarkan which was hard
because Tarkan played the main character who is in every single scene of the
play. Lastly, the final big challenge we had was turning a TV/film script into
a theatrical script. Initially, Jireh had this whole idea of being in a closed
room with only two chairs, a table, a light and a door. He also wanted cameras
to show on the projector of Lincoln’s face and the other character’s faces as
CCTV cameras to create the atmosphere of a waiting room. However, we weren’t
allowed to use college cameras which was a technical issue. It was quite a
hassle to set it all up and take it back down so we had to scrap that idea and
make it very simplistic with two chairs, a table and a light. Jireh’s first
idea portrayed more of a TV/film atmosphere however by turning it theatrical we
used spotlights. We had one spotlight on the table and chairs, another
spotlight at the entrance of the door following the actor and lastly four
spotlights at the last scene. A technical issue we had with the spotlights was
that they were sometimes too dim so the actor wasn’t seen and the spotlight
following the actor was either too fast (for Grace) or too slow (for Zulaiha).
In order to solve those issues, the tech crew had to change the light intensity
and the actors had to be the first to walk on stage so that the spotlight
follows. In addition, the transitioning of the scenes took a very long time
which because tedious for the audience. The cue for the actors to walk in on
stage was when the spotlight(s) turn on and sometimes they didn’t even come on
which left everyone waiting.
To conclude this evaluation, my objective for the whole
performance was to picture the story in my head when I’m saying my lines so
that I am able to emphasise with my character. Moreover, my aim was to portray
the character and give a good performance and I believe I did a very good job
at both of those. However, it would’ve been even better if we had more time to
rehearse in the theatre and with each other as a whole group considering we
weren’t a full cast for most of the time we were rehearsing due to absences
which I believe we should all improve on next time.
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| Turning film into a play. |
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| All the challenges we faced. |
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| All the problems we had solved. |
As a group, we wanted to try out something different in rehearsals because we thought sitting down on a chair and talking to the other actor was draining and quite boring for us. So, we thought we could try using movement in our play. Knowing myself, I’m used to being able to move around on stage, in and out of scenes so sitting down was a challenge for me also, for Tarkan. We all know he fidgets quite a lot so for him to be able to try and move around on stage really helped him. We used trial and error and we saw that having movement in our piece took away from how serious the play was. Another thing we tried out in rehearsals was a handshake between Lincoln and Fiorella to show they’re friends but we later decided not to do that because it too took away the seriousness of the play.
Our performance video
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