Performance Evaluation

I personally think that our performance went really well, because we had a really strong, political message to give to the audience, also I thought that we had used Brechtian style of acting really well and that it created a strong performance.

One of the things that I thought we did really well was how we used Verfremdungseffekt or making things strange. We did this through the use of narration in Blondie’s acceptance speech. For example, “she licked her lips and swallowed,” was said and Blondie did that action. This was effective because it broke the forth wall between the audience and the action that was happening on stage, so that the audience was clear that the what was happening onstage wasn’t meant to be real or for the actors to be in another world to them, but that they are in fact in a theatre. Also because saying the stage directions was so unnatural for both the audience to hear and for the actors to be a part of, it alienated them both, making sure that the audience don’t connect to the characters on stage because they were constantly being pulled back into reality. I think that it was really important to have narration in the Blondie speech, as it is a very long speech, and the audience could quite easily get pulled into listening to it, as political speeches are something that they hear a lot, so it could be something that they relate to and connect with, this is why I think it was crucial that we had some narration put into the speech, so that the audience could be alienated, out of the speech and back into realising that they were in a theatre. Making sure that our audience was alienated and not connecting to the characters or to the emotional side to the story was essential to our performance as Brecht thought that audiences should go to the theatre to get a message, to change their own way of thinking, so by not letting the audience connect to the characters, we were making sure that their focus was on the political message of our piece at all times and that they were being made to think and to even learn form our performance.

Blondie’s political speech was not the only place that we used narration, in some of the people in power scenes, such as the Thatcher scene, there was the use of narration as well. This was to also alienate the audience, form connecting with the character and to make sure that they understood what was being said politically not emotionally with the characters. However the main form of narration that we used throughout our performance was singing narration. This is where part of the story is told through the use of song and by changing originally lyric’s of a song to fit into our performance. A lot of the people in power scenes had songs in them, for example in the Bin Laden scene the American national anthem was changed to fit in. Also we had to full songs in our performance; Call Me by Blondie, changed to Vote me, and Hot Stepper. I though that these were used really well and added a lot to our performance, because they were funny, which Brecht always thought that theatre had to be humorous otherwise there wasn’t any point going to the theatre. Also by having humorous songs it helped to alienate the audience, as the Blondie scenes were serious and it could have been easier for the audience to become involved in those scenes emotionally, so by having the songs and the dancing that was funny to watch, made the audience remember that what they were watching was a piece of theatre. It alienates them on another level as well, because they are going through a mixture of emotions, one moment its intense, the next it is really funny, this would be hard to deal with, so it is easier for the audience to turn out of the piece emotionally and watch it on another level, just concerning the message.

We also used labels and a wig to show the characters and who was playing them. Throughout our performance we had more that one person playing the majority of the characters, so it was crucial to have something that shows the audience who was playing who at what point so as not to confuse them. Also the simplicity of the costumes showed to the audience that the characters themselves are not as important as the message and the issues that are being raised in the piece, it showed them that the characters aren’t real people; they are representations of groups of people or of ideas. Also by having the change over’s of the actors playing the same characters being shown to the audience reminds them that they are in a theatre, watching a performance, which is really important because Brecht didn’t think that the performances should be realistic and he showed all of the changes to the audience so that they didn’t think that what they was watching was so far away from them and that the issues being raised weren’t in another world to them but effected them as well. Also it was important in our piece that we had more than one person playing a character because it stopped the audience and us as actors from connecting to the characters. For the audience, it stops them connecting to the character, as they as soon as they are used to one person playing the character, e.g. Blondie, then another person takes over and plays them, maybe they play them differently or even if the actors play the character similarly, it still alienates the audience as they have to readjust and get used to that actor and it becomes clear to them that the character is just a representation and not someone that you should get in depth with. For the actors, it is useful to play more than one character because in Brechtian theatre as an actor you are not supposed to connect with the character, so by having to change from one character into another you don’t have enough time to get into the emotional state of that character, so you can play them as representations as the audiences are supposed see them as.

In our piece we also used exaggeration to play our characters and like Brecht we used stereotypes to make our characters. For example Blondie was made overly sexual and everything she said could be interpreted into something sexual, this was done to show the audience just why she was voted in and how she represents why people might vote people into parliament. Also in the people in power scenes the characters such as Thatcher and Bin Laden, were based on the stereotypes of them and were then exaggerated. We did this because to get into the mindset of people like Bin Laden would have been really difficult and could have then been difficult to get out of quickly to become another character. Also it makes the audience know not to connect to them and that they aren’t supposed to be that real person just a comic representation of them. It also helps the actors not to connect to them because they are so exaggerated that they become characterisers and there is nothing relatable about them. 

The thing that I thought was most effective thing about our piece of theatre was that throughout our performance it was funny and that the audience were really enjoying the exaggeration and the songs and were laughing all the way through. But then at the end it got really serious and the audience were hit hard with the message and that they really took that away with them and were made to think.

However I think there are aspects of our performance that we could have improved on to make our piece even better. One of the things I think that we could have worked on to make it better, is the exaggeration of some of the characters. For example in the people in power scenes the people who the scenes were about, like Thatcher, were really exaggerated and huge character. I think that if we were to make all of the characters in those scenes at the same level of the main characters in those scenes, it would have made them more humorous to watch and it would have brought the energy levels up. Also if we had made them larger and exaggerated them more, the audience may not have connected with them as much as they may have done, this would enable them to know that we are just representing what happened and that the characters aren’t necessarily real or actually like what we showed them as, that we are just using stereotypes.

We then watched the other two classes that were also looking at Brecht and performing a political piece of theatre. I thought that both pieces were really good and performed really well, because they attacked some serious issues in there pieces and at the same time they used the Brechtian techniques in there performances as well.

One of the things I liked most about Will’s group is the use of gestus in their performance. This was demonstrated perfectly when they broke down one of their scenes and part of the ensemble formed a line behind one of the actors and while the actor was talking, in turn each of the people in the line copied that action and held it. This was really effective, because it showed how important gestures can be and it highlighted how much the gestures were saying to the audience and to the other actor, as they communicated the anger. Gestus was also used in Sarah’s group with the actors who were playing the check out girls; they were all doing the same repeated action, passing on things through the checkout. However they were all doing it with the same attitude, by putting this attitude onto the action that they were doing, told the audience a lot about them, this said to us that they were bored and unsatisfied with their jobs and that they didn’t really care much about the customers.  

In Sarah’s group, like ours, they also used singing narration to tell the story, however unlike ours they weren’t ensemble songs, where all the cast sang the songs. In their piece they had the different groups of characters singing the songs, for example they had all the check out girls singing one song, then all the babies singing another song. I thought that this was really good and that they used it really well, as the subject of their piece was really serious, they were buying a dead baby, but then with the singing put in, really alienated the audience. I can say that personally I felt alienated because I found myself laughing along to the songs because they and the characters were all so exaggerated, and then I realised that I laughing at a really serious subject, and it made me focus on the message of the piece, not connecting to the characters. I thought that the exaggeration of the characters, like the check out girls, was really effective, as they based it on stereotypes of what society see these people as. This makes them less relatable because they were so exaggerated that they weren’t down to earth, naturalistic characters and consequently I saw them as representations.

Will’s group also did a type of narration, where two characters are arguing really crazily, and then one of them stepped out to talk directly to the audience and giving us some background. This completely broke the forth wall between the audience and the actors, it brought us out of the argument and from connecting with either side of it or either character. It brought us back to the reality that we are watching a performance and that what we were seeing wasn’t real. This was reinforced when the ensemble spoke out loud the punctuation and the stage directions; this alienated the audience as well, as we were brought out of the world of the play and brought back into reality.