Performance Evaluation

We performed the play 'Blackout' and I found this as a very positive experience. We all warmed up before hand by participating in a number of vocal warm ups and tongue twisters. To encourage flexibility and fluid movement we also walked around the room in different speeds to relax and feel more at ease which helped to put on the best performance possible. Our projection and vocal volume filled the whole room as we did breathing techniques from the diaphragm and tongue twisters which allowed us to confidently and clearly project our lines.

We used the whole stage space effectively by placing the characters strategically to attract the audience's attention and emphasise certain scenes which had more importance. For example, there was a scene of James on his own reflecting on his actions, with no props and he was sat in the centre of stage. This worked positively as there was no distractions on external factors and helped the audience follow James' thought process and reflections.


To portray the scene of James explaining his dark school days, where he experienced bullying, we used two characters to narrate James' thoughts and another to enact his school life. This gave the audience a visual experience of the memory and verbal to compliment this and explain the scene.
Furthermore, when I had to enter the stage as the Jail officer I kept my head held high and walked with my hands behind my back and looked down at James to show the power difference between us two. This worked well as it gave James the platform to plead and beg to me to show him his file from the arrest which helped the audience understand that he was not aware of his actions and how his anger took over him.

To portray my objective in the scene where James is having a melt down, I used a worried high pitch tone to emphasise my worry and fear over his actions as James was punching and kicking everywhere around him. This showed that others around James feared for his mental well being as well as there own safety around him.
The use of a wooden stool for James as a prop helped to differentiate the levels between the characters and highlighted how unstable James could be which is why the stool was necessary. By having a crowd of people surrounding James, emphasised that he had people around him but was inevitably alone mentally. We used red lighting during the scenes where James felt stronger emotions such as anger and a sense of being out of control and this connotes danger and a warning signal. We used blue lighting during more of the reflective scenes to express his emotions and thought trains. This helped the audience to differentiate the scenes which were more physical to the more verbal ones.
We used the Uta Hagen technique by acting truthfully to create life like characters through our thoughts and feelings which achieved a more realistic performance. To do this, I wrote down an in-depth list of my characters traits such as I played three different roles during the play so this helped me to connect from one role to the next. I also wrote down the intention and objective of each of the different characters I was playing such as the Jail officer, James's alleged friend and a friend who was worried about James. This set the tone for each scene that I performed in and helped me to be aware of what I wanted to achieve in each scene. Moreover, I used a Stanislavski technique I learnt during lessons which was the 'Magic If' and I asked myself "What would I do if I was in this situation?" This helped me to explore my own natural responses to the events in the play.

Overall, I feel the performance went well and I received positive feed back such as engaging well in each scene, using the correct amount of emotion and energy for different characters and good use of projection in the stage space. In my next project, I would like to work on expressing more ideas during rehearsals and work on doing more character improvisations to feel even more relaxed and natural in the characters I am playing.