Reflection...

Our scene was able to be performed three times to three different audiences which allowed us to see how different age groups reacted to our scene. We thought it was quite successful as we were able to make the audience feel uncomfortable and slightly scared. For example whilst the ‘murder victims’ were in the dark with the audience they said that they were flinching away from them and huddling together to stop actors coming between them and getting too close.  I also noted people coming out of our scene and walking past the dead body with nervous laughter and some quite frightened faces. Speaking to an audience member in year 11, she said that she found ours quite terrifying as it was completely pitch black in the room, whilst a year 12 student said the screaming and banging on the walls outside the room was where he felt the most sickened. 

I thought that the boys group who performed first had a very effective and quite sickening scene. The way that nobody knew whether the scene had started made everyone feel nervous and awkward and the convulsions on stage were very scary because nobody was helping Sam. The performance was the simplest and shortest but for me, it exemplified the ideas Artaud wanted portrayed in his theatre! I left the room laughing a little but not because it was amusing, because I didn’t know how to react and digest the performance. All I could say was “that was weird!”

I found a very good PowerPoint presentation on Artaud and his Theatre of Cruelty, before we began to devise our scenes. The slide above proved to be especially insightful and we drew from the information and put it into our scene. The slideshow also gave me some background knowledge into the life of Artaud, which helped to make sense of why he desired madness on stage! The fact that Artaud was prescribed Opium from a young age, gave birth to the ideas of hallucinations, used in our scene as the ‘murder victims’ make their way through the audience. After having a look through Artaud's 'The Theatre & its Double' I was quite confused and found some of the concepts explored difficult to understand and make sense of it. He expresses a great deal of admiration for the Balinese theatre form throughout the book, and he seemed rather against the idea of Christianity. I also found a few pictures of Artaudian productions which influenced the choices we made regarding hair, makeup etc. The actors often wore quite grotesque and bold makeup - hence our choice of black eyes and lips. They also wore their hair quite dramatically which is why our ‘murder victims’ had theirs out crazily and mine was up in a high side pony tail with a big black bow.

I faced the challenge of having to think from the perspective of an actor but also as a member of an audience. We took it in terns and reversed roles on lesson so that we could see if we could come up with any new ideas, and also focussed on the technicality that was involved in having an audience that was moved around. It was important to see what could go wrong if an audience member walked into the wrong place or didn’t move so that we, as actors could prepare ourselves. It was a great challenge to work instinctively because of course; we were working with other actors in collaboration. The whole piece was improvised to begin with and although we had a structure, every single performance we quite different in terms of character dialogue and movements. For example sometimes I would slap Greer and run and other times I would shove her back. We played on the moment, working intuitively with the other actors and responding with true emotions and reactions; the piece was very real to us! It was also a challenge to let go of the role and scene at the end of the day. After watching the other two groups perform and performing 3 times myself, I felt physically and emotionally exhausted. Lastly, a large challenge was when during our first performance, the door; which was taped, locked on Greer and I whilst our other actors and audience was still inside the room in pitch black! It was a truly terrifying moment, in which we had to think fast without panicking, and trusting that our group members inside would keep acting until the door was able to be opened. Finally the keys worked and the audience were released; they had no idea that they had been locked inside and their only queries were why the other group returned to the DOVE stage, far quicker than they did!