Becca

Overall, I think our final performance went as well as it could of gone. Our feedback from audience members has been really positive, but also constructive so we can expand on the performance incase we go on to perform again. I think one of the contributing factors on the ‘wow’ factor of the performance, was the space itself. Each room has a beautiful interior and space to explore and perform in, and I feel like this really contributed to the esscence of the performance, with it’s old, grandeur style, contrasting with the urban atmosphere of a club.

One of the main concerns and challenges for me, was the acoustics of the space. With the performance being performed in an old stone building, any sound that was produced from us was echoed around the rest of the building, and we tried incredibly hard to not let the space dwarf our vocal characterisation. I find it difficult as my character’s vocal characterisation, was to speak quitley and robotic to portray a feeling of Zen and being in control, so it took alot of work for me to just be heard.  Another response we recieved was the acosutics in the VIP room. Because the space was the smallest of the ones we used , the calming, Japanese music was just too loud and some audeince memebers felt they lost the narrative a little bit. However, with the performance being in a club, we wanted to re-create this a little abit so sometimes the music did dwarf our voices, but the visuals which dominated the performance, was enough for some audeince members to understand what was going on. This also contrasted and worked better in the junk-mail box, as we wanted to bombard the audeince senses; so it worked that the music was a distraction, as well as the profiles that were on the screens and us as performers “selling ourselves”.  Also with the idea that our performance is Postmodern, we kind of like the idea that everything was fragmented, and the audeince took what they wanted from the performance.

One thing that seemed to go well was the use of audeince particpation and the seperation of the audeince. We planned for every eventuality, which I believe came across well throughout the performance. We controlled them so they saw what we wanted them to see,  and they interpreted the performance in thier own way. The barriers that Jamie put in place really worked to help my character and his own character to move the audeince into each room sucessfully. The idea of the audeince being seperated when they left to see two different experainces also worked well. We wanted to create the idea of the audeince wanting more, but we just “chewed them up and spat them out.” I feel we really achieved that with the red profiles going dowstairs through the derelict basement, better then the audeince memebers who saw the video in the main room and left the way they came in. Some audeince members who had blue profiles and saw the video, thought there was a missing element, and that Dumi, who we know has a dance background, could have danced on the stage at the sametime as the video. This had never occured to us as a group as we belived the video would be enough, but maybe this is something we can expand on and work on as it could create a really interesting and fragmented stage picture.

One of my favourite parts to perform, was the the main room, where ther profiles got de-activated. The scene was so much fun to perform, but also had a really sad undertone, as our profiles got de-activated and we were no long relevant. This especially hit home for my character, as I was supposed to be Jamie’s helper to infiltrate the system. Him stating that ‘Your services are no longer required’ with the unsignificant profile stripping me down, was a really hard hitting blow to my character. I wanted to reflect this through the use of the water, which was improvised for the first time in the audeince, to be really gentle, especially as I smeared my makeup all over my face, to really show the disintegration of my virtual prescene.

By Rebecca Britten.