Before watching the performance footage, I felt that it went well, I feel like everybody knew their characters well and gave as much energy as they could towards to the performance and managed to not slip up anywhere, for example, corpsing or messing up lines.
After watching the performance footage back I feel like their are some grey areas that still needed work on. Firstly, I feel like the opening scene with the President could’ve shown more enthusiasm as the natural feel for the performance was suppose to be joyful. I feel like the presidents character when opening the scene immediately sets the energy therefore spiralling a lot of interest throughout the audience and engaging them. However, a strength that was seen in the opening scene was that the presidents clarity and diction was really clear and their voice projection was above satisfactory standard. Also a strength in the opening scene was the character introduction to ‘Ven and ‘Jet’. I feel like the two actors carried their characters really well and showed the relationship between the two characters. Throughout the whole performance I feel that the actors playing ‘Ven and ‘Jet’ showed really good characterisations and we’re very open with being exaggerative, also they showed variety for example changing the tone of their voice. However, one thing that could’ve been improved on was at the start of the performance when they were silently walking in during the presidents speech. I noticed that they both came out of character and waited for the actor who was speaking to stop. An improvement to that could’ve been the two actors miming a conversation between the two reacting off what’s being said by the president. This improvement would’ve been beneficial because then the two actors playing ‘Ven’ and ‘Jet’ wouldn’t have to break character until it’s their turn to speak.
With my characters entrance into the scene I think that it was a great entrance as a facade to making the audience think that I am the main villain. I made my body language big and didn’t carry too much seriousness when walking onto the stage. By that I mean that I gave my character a comedic entrance by exaggerating my walk to having my leg extension longer than usual. Also with the rest of my body, I utilised a villains entrance and changed it by making everything on my body wide so that It looked like I was making fun of it instead of going with a cool entrance. This is appealing to the audience as it gives a comedic purpose and demonstrates how an unserious villain may look like in a children’s theatre play.
In the scene where we see everyone on stage together for the first time I feel like the blocking was good but could’ve been improved on more. It was good because some actors standing next to each other didn’t block each other, they used good special awareness and stood just behind or just in front of their fellow performer so that they could be seen. Also didn’t stand too side one, they opened up their body so that the audience could see their face and not just their side profile. The bad part of the blocking was that, in some scene, the actors lost their spacial awareness and completely blocked another actor out of sight. This caused the audience not being able to see whose speaking and also see the other actors reactions. Also in the end scene all characters where standing behind the chair which gave the actors and audience distance between them, making the performance stretch further away from the audience losing the immersive feel. This could’ve been worked on more in the rehearsal room to the point where we were used to not blocking out other actors so we get full sight of everyone on stage and being closer to the audience so they can feel involved with the performance as well.
With my characterisations, I feel that I had a good interpretation of my character and knew what his goal was. I feel like I studied my character well and embodied him well, being very open to using a lot of exaggeration to make my characters personality stand out. For example, when my character came rushing in to steal bad guy rabs spot light, the run in was very over dramatic as well as the jump into me pointing cluelessly everywhere. This served its comedic purpose as it took off the tension of having an evil villain and changed it to being light hearted and whacky. Also when playing my character, I was very comfortable with going above and beyond to entertain, giving every action 100% energy whenever required. However, a weakness in my performance was that, I was left standing still for the majority of the time at the start and at the ending of the play. This could’ve been worked on so that my character has a lot more to so say during these scene and not just leave me in the shadows whilst everyone else speaks. This made my character hardly serve any purpose and look awkward in stage not knowing what to do. This could’ve been worked on more in the rehearsal room by changing a few parts to having me say more lines or even possibly adding another scene where my character speaks more to increase his purpose of being in the play. Feedback that was given to me was that my character needed to do more on stage as he was very quiet and didn’t have much purpose or influence in the play. After watching the performance footage, I strongly agree with the feedback given and understand that my character was more of an extra rather than one of the main roles. With my costume that was chosen, I feel like the top half was thought out to a satisfactory standard however the bottom half looked very improvised. To improve this I could’ve taken a lot more thought and time into choosing my characters costume to give my character even more life and believable to the audience. Very little thought was put into to choosing my costume as it was last minute and I should’ve not waited for so long to chose my costume and have a set idea at the start of the project for what my character would most likely wear. A strength in my performance was that I had great voice projection, clarity and diction, I could be heard very well throughout the audience loudly and clearly.
Feedback that was given to the group as a whole was that the characters where very strong and clear, the storyline made sense but could’ve been improved on. The storyline involved conflict however didn’t perceive that conflict between the villains and the heroes enough to be satisfied with why everything is the way it is. Although the storyline was strong, we could’ve explained more at the beginning why theirs heroes and why theirs villains. Also, with the montage of ‘Ven’ and ‘Jet’, it was too long, and should’ve been cut down to only a certain amount of runs across stage because at first it was funny to the audience but then as it kept going on and on it lost its comedic purpose and started to get boring. The use of props was very limited, because my character ties us the president in the chair with nothing, so an improvement that could’ve been made is that I should’ve tied her up with an actual prop rather than mime.
Overall, I feel like the performance was a success, everybody knew their characters well and was able to portray them effectively. Everyone had a lot of energy and gave it 100% throughout the whole performance. I feel like the comedy and the storyline itself is what was good about the performance. Although the storyline needed more explanation, I feel that the plot was funny and entertaining to the audience and we were able to bring that to life on stage. The comedy was not over done, it didn’t force any of the comedic humour, we had it at the right times and made it very age appropriate. The performance and rehearsal stages were very tough and hard to come by but we all managed to pull through it by working hard together as a team.
Jordans children’s theatre 