Final Evaluation

Our first performance was to the rest of the strand. I felt that this performance went well as the audience were really engaged and we had a lot of laughs. During this performance the group's energy was high and everyone was putting their all into it. It went very smoothly but I felt my monologue could have been angrier and sexier, I also thought that our transitions could have been smoother. People commented afterwards on how Brechtian our performance was, with our songs, name badges and how we alienated the audience. People said that my performance was interesting as they felt I managed to get the message across clearly. Overall in this performance I felt we managed to put on a Brechtian show, get our message across and make the audience think. Our final performance to our friends and family was very different to that of our strand as the audience was very different in ages and humour. At the beginning of our piece we had music so we could collect our name badges, but the music system was not working so we did it without. This did not affect the performance much but it did, for me personally, throw me off a bit. Another thing that threw us off was the fact that the audience did not laugh as much as our strand did. But we all kept in mind that this audience was completely different and that each audience has different senses of humour. We all gave it our all and our energies were high throughout the performance. I felt our Bush piece went a lot smoother and the transitions between the different scenes and sections were a lot smoother. I felt that my performance was a lot better as I put my all into it and I finally felt as if I understood Blondie and what she was saying. For example when I said "I also believe in the ever active urge of humanity and in truth" I feel strongly about this and so was able to put truth into my words. Overall I enjoyed our final performance as the whole groups energy was high, everyone put everything they had into it and we got our message across. I felt this as afterwards all the people I talked to said how they realised some things about themselves and how they judge others.

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I felt that James stood out from the rest of us as he really got into his character of Thatcher. He was very successful in Gestus as he made all of his roles stereotypical and each character had clear gestures put with them. He also made his performance funny yet interesting and intriguing at the same time, which I feel is difficult to do. I feel as if he could have developed his role in the Blondie scenes more. He could have changed the pitch and tone of his voice more and maybe thought about the role of an interviewer. Overall his performance was very memorable. We used lots of Brechtian techniques in our performance. The one we used the most was alienation. We used things like song: Blondie's Call Me (Vote Me) and Hotsteppa. This was Brechtian as using song and dance alienates the audience. We used labels which is a very Brechtian technique as it makes the audience disassociate with the characters and stops them from feeling any emotional connection to them.

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I have learnt that Political Theatre is all about strong messages and putting across a clear and memorable message. You need to be able to understand what you are saying and you should be able to put some of your own views or emotions into your performance. I have also learnt that not all Political Theatre needs to be serious, it can be funny and light hearted yet still thought provoking. I have really enjoyed working on Political Theatre as it is not a genre of theatre I have heard much about before. I really enjoyed working out the political messages and discovering how I feel about events and situations in the world. I think that all theatre is political. As good theatre always has messages behind them, even if they aren't obvious political themed messages they still get people thinking and questioning things. If theatre does not have a message behind it, it seems slightly pointless, as you don't come out of the theatre changed. Theatre is a thought provoking art form as it can challenges people to think about things differently and see things in a different light. This is why I love theatre.

Theatre Workshop 5

Today was the first time we put our entire piece together. Seeing the whole thing emphasised how the media has a lot of input in the political stakes with how they portray the politicians. The most obvious message in our piece is how beauty has a huge part in politics and how we all judge people from the way they look at first glance. This is very obviously shown in Blondie's final monologue when she states "You thought you were safe because I wasn't an under sexed, over paid, unattractive, privately educated, smug middle aged man. All you saw was my face." Our piece also emphasises how, as a nation, we need a major disaster to pull us all together. I hope when the audience walk away that they realise how we are influenced so easily by what others say or do, whether it's the media or whether it's just one person. They should want to change how they look at other people and I want them to go away thinking "I sometimes do exactly that, I need to change it". I want them to discuss and wonder whether Blondie was right or not to order that genocide and I want them to think what they would do in that situation, whether they would vote for her or not.

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I think the most powerful moment of the performance is when Gavin, A, states how when he received pictures "of the scene on my desk in front on me. A small girl in pyjamas had had her head beaten in." He goes on to say how her head was caved in. The way that the Gavin presents this and the words themselves really work together well to form an emotional response within the audience. The way he spits it out as if he can't bear to say the words, he very clearly shows his disgust with her and what she has done and it makes the audience sit back and realise the extent of what she has done. The way that the Katie reacts to this really contrasts and emphasises how terrible this women is. She keeps calm, collected and almost amused. Overall the most powerful scenes are the Blondie scenes as they convey our message clearly.

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My favourite moment is the social scenes and the songs. These are enjoyable to watch for the audience and clearly show how Brechtian theatre works. During these bits in the performance there is always something for the audience to look at, which in turn makes them concentrate harder on what we are saying. I like how both the social scenes and the songs involve the whole ensemble and challenge the audience by making them work harder to find the messages. We have embedded the work of Brecht in our piece through song, creating the scene with our bodies (for the social scenes) and talking to the audience throughout the play. All of these different things are Brechtian. They alienate the audience and it stops the audience from forming an emotional response to a character.

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I need to work on the physicality of my character, the voice of my character and overall the little details to make my character more vicious yet sexy. The thing that I most need to work on is how I present my lines as I will be saying my lines to the audience. I am excited to try this out as I have never really done this before.

Theatre Worksop 4

**See Protest Section for evaluation**

Theatre Workshop 3

We started the lesson with some group story improvisations. Sections of a made up story were read to us and as a group we had to come up with a still image for each section. This was a very useful exercise as it made us work as a team, it helped us to concentrate more on a picture and how we can convey the message. It also prepared us for the Social Scenes in our play.

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To start off our play we have a song called "Vote Me". Using this song and dance helps to alienate the audience in a Brechtian way, as it distracts them from feeling an emotion for a character and it also creates humour. We go on to 3 Narrators, of which I am Narrator 1, who explain to the audience what voting consists of and what it means. This, again, helps to create a sense of alienation as it is helping the audience establish where they are and what is going on and it also brings them out of the situation. We went on to staging the Social Scenes. We bought these scenes to life by using the ensemble to create the settings. For example, in the first scene they create a house. This creates the Verfremdungseffekt as the audience are distracted by all the different components of the setting that are being made and so they find it harder to concentrate on the message and what is being said.

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In this text we want to show the audience how this women has made the different social groups vote for her. Some, the two boys in the pub, talk about her beauty or her body and some, the city office workers, talk about her policies. These social scenes also emphasises how her policies please everyone from single mothers to students to office workers. It shows how people can be 'bought' easily just from promises or beauty. These social scenes are interesting as they clearly show how the different social groups react to politicians and beauty. They are intriguing to watch as everyone has a part in making the social scenes and there is always something to look at in the scene other than the actors talking.

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Blocking the 5 sections of the Blondie Script was fun as it was interesting to see the play come to life as you get to understand the different characters more and seeing Brechtian Theatre in action was helpful. I am playing B, or Blondie, in Scene 13. Reading through the scene was helpful as I got to know her and how she would react to the different things. Blocking the scene helped me to create my Gestus for B and it also gave me lots of ideas of how I can use Brechtian Theatre. The play so far is very intriguing as I can already see the different Brechtian components and they work.

The song "Vote Me" is based on

Theatre Workshop 1

Epic Theatre is very different from anything else I have come across. Instead of involving the audience it makes them study the situation. It makes them think rather than believe, they become a critical observer. The actors cannot become attached in any way to the character other than that of Gestus. Epic Theatre does not flow through the play it jumps from 1^st person to 3^rd person and back. I am enjoying Brechtian theatre a lot as it so different from any other practitioners I have seen or heard of. It's a very different type of theatre and I think it is a lot more challenging for both the actor and the audience. It is more challenging for the actors as they cannot get attached to the characters and they have to remember every move, they also have go against all their acting principles. It is challenging for the audience as they have to follow the story whilst also thinking about the social context and what is being addressed in the play.

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Brecht and Political Theatre go very well together. Why? Because Political Theatre needs the audience to understand the context, whether social or political, that is being explored. Brecht uses this principle in his practices. Also Political Theatre can also "explore themes more universal and central to society itself". Brecht, again, uses this principle. Brecht and Political Theatre share a lot of similar needs and principles for them to work well. I am very excited to explore both Brechtian Theatre and Political Theatre in more depth.

Verfremdungseffekt

Definition of Verfremdungseffekt: Prevents the audience from losing itself passively and completely in the character created by the actor, and which consequently leads the audience to be a consciously critical observer.

Creating a naturalistic scene was interesting as it helped me to understand how different Brecht's acting tools are. In our pair we explored the reactions of someone having Cancer. Watching everyone else's pieces was interesting as it was nice to see how everyone acted differently and a lot of the performances bought out an emotional response in me. The performance that affected me the most was Charlie and Nikki's. Their scene was exploring sibling's finding out their Mum had died. This was a very emotional scene as they really put their all into it. Revisiting the most climatic moment in our piece and revising it, so we learned the stage directions, was helpful for what we had to do next. This was to recreate that moment keeping the normal dialogue but we also had to speak all of our own stage directions as well. I found this difficult as it was so different from what we usually do and it felt very unnatural. This helped me to understand the Verfremdungseffekt effect as it helped me to distance myself from the character as were taking ourselves out of the situation to say what we were doing, effectively, stopping the flow of the scene. It also gave something familiar a strange effect. As it stopped the flow of the scene it was challenging as an actor to remember what we did and how we did it and what were supposed to be feeling.

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Brecht would use this to distance the audience and remind them that the situation was not real. It also keeps the audience on their toes as they have to concentrate more on what is going on so they don't get completely lost. Distancing the audience also helps the audience to critique the play and the social context. Rather than just 'getting lost' in the situation they questioned and it made them get more involved in what was being said. I found this technique intriguing but difficult to act on.

Narrative

Moving onto how Narration can be used was interesting. We chose a Fairy Tale to retell, our group chose "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs". Whilst retelling our chosen Fairy Tale we had to include:

1. A narrator
2. An actor stepping out of character to narrate
3. An actor speaking in 3rd person
4. A singing narration

We all multi-rolled, apart from Snow White, and we chose to narrate in a sport commentary way to push the audience away even further. We found that incorporating the actor speaking in 3rd person was difficult as we were not used to doing a performance like that. We incorporated this by, whilst we were doing that action, describing what we were doing. For example, if someone was walking into a house we would then say "she walked into the house". This reminded the audience that we were actors and that we were only representing the characters not being them, it also felt very strange as it is going against what we have learned to do for years. Including a singing narration was very fun and easy to do as, personally, I felt that it fitted in nicely. We decided to use the song "Bohemian Rhapsody" as our base. We used the tune when Snow White was going to eat the apple, singing "eat the apple, don't eat the apple".  Doing this bought comedy into our scene as it unnatural. We found ourselves over exaggerating our characters even though we had not been asked to. This was because what we were doing was so against "normal" acting that we had to change from "serious" acting to melodramatic acting.

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Brecht used Narration because it alienates the audience and makes them realise that the scene they are watching is not real. Narration can also bring out a lighter side to things. For example when we sung "eat the apple, don't eat the apple" this bought a lighter side to the idea of her dying when she eats the apple. The narration can also get the audience to question what is being stated/shown. I found using Narration interesting and different to use.