TIE (Storms) Review

Performance Review

Positive points:

• Comedic timing - audience responded as we expected to the jokes that were made and if we went out to speak to them afterwards the interaction was always easier if there was a joke that had come before it as it made them feel like the atmosphere wasn't as pressuring on them.
• Pace - was majority kept up throughout the whole thing and the speed of the lines throughout was good and kept the audience engaged with the action onstage.
• Opening sequence - when showing the penises to the audience, it created a comedic atmosphere and introduced them to the topic easier and we did get a lot of laughter from the audience considering we were showing them fake penises that we then proceeded to put down our trousers. This was the response that we were expecting and it allowed us to use this to our advantage when we were talking to them because they had clearly seen the penises.
• Facilitation - majority of the facilitation was said in a clear and precise way so that when we did go out to the audience, they knew what was going on and the conversation could start and flow much easier.
• Reflective listening groups - I thought that the end groups worked really well and, specifically my group, found the 7 sins of communication very interesting to try and work out what they each were and then we intrigued to find out examples of each one and identify them in real life. We found that a lot of them identified moments in their own lives when they had seen these and that gave me a nice segway into trying to get them to realise how that made them feel and then proceeding to link that to reactions that they had seen in the piece. Also in my group one of the members came and found me towards the end of the session and told me that he was grateful for us talking about this as he was struggling with some of these things and he hoped that he would now have some of his friends to talk to him about it. This proves that in that audience of 40/50 students, we helped at least one person and that was the overall aim of the piece and it highlights the need for someone to hear what we were saying. It was an amazing feeling knowing that we had helped someone and helped them have a changed opinion on boys communicating how they are feeling with each other.
• Approaching the audience - Every time that we went out to the audience, I feel like the whole cast didn't make the atmosphere awkward and we approach the groups quite naturally and our body language was quite open reflecting the fact that we wanted them to be open to interpretation and I hope that that message came across to them as I wanted them to feel like we weren't going to judge them on what they say, we just wanted to understand their thought process and also their interpretation of the piece.

Negative points

• Murmuring during transition - For an unknown reason, when we got to the cross transition, the murmuring stopped and this therefore made the atmosphere drop, losing the effect that we wanted it to have on the audience which was for them to see the feelings building up in John's head.
• Pace - at times, the pace and speed of lines increased which meant that it was hard for the audience to catch onto what we were saying and this therefore made the continuity of the storyline and the audience's understanding of what was going on slightly harder to follow.
• Refocusing the audience - even though the facilitators had microphones, at times it was hard to understand what they were saying due to them not waiting for the audience to have fully re-focused on the piece and re-engaged with John's emotions. During the facilitation of the sliding scale, the audience hadn't finished their conversations and were still talking/laughing about some of the things that we had previously been discussing and so they lost the explanation of us wanting them to raise their hands when we got to their option and so when we proceeded to carry out the exercise, they didn't understand what to do which resulted in the exercise not getting the result that we wanted because they didn't hear what to do. We did cover it though by making the joke that everyone had broken their arms and so that allowed us to pick the atmosphere back up and carry on the piece.
• Repore with the audience during interactive sections - As expected, there were particular groups of students who weren't interested in the piece and weren't interested in giving their opinions to us which made it hard for some of the questions to be answered. To get around this we had to use some of the techniques that we had previously discussed in the lesson before when we had discussed ways to initiate the conversation. Sometimes this worked and others there was no response at all except for them laughing amongst themselves.