Variety show 15th March 2015

PULLING IT OUT OF THE HAT

Success? The audience made the process a success I think, without their reaction and support of the show I don't think it would feel as successful. We were very pushed for time and there was a lot of problems and negativity in the company so as a company I would say this was our least successful show. There was little time to finished off our pieces and a lot of the pieces were suggestions of what we should do and not what we wanted to do. At the beginning of the process we were asked to suggest pieces in which we wanted to do but none of them turned out how we wanted them to. The whole company were negative about the show in general until we put it in front of an audience and it got that response, we were just all scared of looking stupid. Personally I liked doing all of the workshops of puppetry and tried my best in them even though the people I was partnered with hated it. The most impressive piece was Levi's and that's because it had his stamp on it, he created the music and the physical section, which added a dramatic change to the show as a whole. I felt like there wasn't as much variety in the show as there could have been I was in dances, I did NOT speak and neither did most people. The only dance I didn't like being in was the promise. The workshops I think we're successful as I learnt a few new things I didn't know and gained new skills, not to a professional standard obviously but an understanding. The mime workshop I learnt from but I personally don't think my physicality excelled in the exercises. The beginning puppetry workshop I liked being the puppets and in pairs manipulating each other's body to see how the body works and how this relates to a puppet. I think time was wasted making our own puppets which some of us aren't artistically gifted to make these and then put on puppet shows which were just embarrassing. I thought it was a waste of time when we could been working on our pieces but I did enjoy the first section. The Laban workshop was the most beneficial out of them all because we kept relating it back to the variety show and the characters. This is something that benefited me as an actor because I can take what I learnt from this and apply it to any acting or physical work I am partaking in. The other art forms we did workshops on are more selective to the specific type of show; I felt I gained skills that I will never use again or weren't useful

to me. As a company we all doubted the showed potential and we didn't trust our director and I think we all held back and I think if we were more open to the show and what It could be then the show could have been even better. Even with our resistance we still created a good standard of production, I think it was unconventional the style and type of show that the music rarely puts on so a change was nice. The company and I would have preferred a show as there was confusion at the beginning whether this was the show we were doing for fun or if we were going to claim units. I think with little costume and no set the show was very successful because we weren't relying on anything to fall back on. I believe when carleigh came onto the piece everything started to get a lot better. The show started piecing

Variety show �1

Variety show 15th March 2015

together, there were more comical elements added in that gave the show more life and an entertainment value. It was only in the final week that the show came together and I don't think it was still fully finished when it went up and I think we did so well as a company and actors to pull of a show that had little time scale. I think the doubt and the reluctancy of the company made the process unsuccessful.

Individual Strengths and Weaknesses

Variety show �2

CREATIVITY During this process I believe that my creativity was trying to push thought all of the negativity when there were certain performances that the rest of the group were being pessimistic on I tired to posit an idea that the whole group could like and put our spin on it. I felt my creativity was blocked at some points but I felt that there was always a creative idea I had to put forward to the group I was working with and also commenting on others performances and helping them develop.

INVOLVEMENT The workshops that I took part in I tired my hardest and I immersed myself in trying to learn new skills and being open minded. I felt that this was a personal strength of mine as these workshops are something that I would voluntarily take part in but I did and I tried my best and had a positive attitude towards the learning.

FOCUS Throughout the process I feel that I have had great focus when involved in workshops I took part creativity and had focus and also when rehearsing I wanted to make the most of the time we had a happy focus not just a serious focus. I felt that my focus levels allowed me as an actor to get creativity into the work I was producing to a good standard.

Variety show 15th March 2015

Variety show �3

PHYSICAL CLARITY I felt that as I was in a lot of dances I should have been more clear with my movements and went over and really refined them so it made the dance a lot stronger physically. I felt that was something that I lacked and could have improved on. Especially in the promise dance because I kept changing all of the time it was hard to know what was going next and there was no clarity and I felt like even though we had no time to go over it that I should have done it more in my head. Also my posture and poise in this dance was lacking a lot.

SHOW READY I feel like with doing warm ups we were quite good at but half way through the day the energy would just lack and be lost and I felt like I should have got myself more prepared to be show ready. I felt that I lacked this so when it came to the show I was not as fit as I could have been and needing to keep the energy throughout the whole show. I felt like I could have prepared myself with this my doing more intense warm ups and continuing stretching at home.

ATTITUDE It was hard not to get sucked into the negativity of the company, when we had workshops I was actually quite excited about I found I couldn't show this to the rest of the company because they all had a bad attitude towards it. I felt like this really held me back when participating in the workshops and being partnered up and being dragged down.

Variety show 15th March 2015

Company Strengths and Weaknesses

Variety show �4

ENSEMBLE I felt like during this process working as an ensemble was a big strength of

ours because we had a lot of big ensemble moments and I think they were the highlights of the show. The frog scene at the end involved everyone and we all

needed to work as a company for this to work and it did.

DETERMINATION The show was all in pieces and as a company we were all a bit worried that it wasn't going to come together but we pulled together and starting creating and finalising our pieces and our determination to get the show ready in time for the performance was a challenge but we managed to do it as a company.

PLAYING I felt that this process we did really experiment with playing and creating our own pieces and were given some freedom so we took that and being actors played with the idea to produce a piece of workable art. I felt this was a real strength of our company because with all of the negativity we still found a way to play and have fun.

Variety show 15th March 2015

Tasks Successful? I don't think all of the tasks were successful because we started a task at the beginning and a whole meeting about not worrying about units and do worry and it left me all in a state of confusion. We started with the zombie task which was my idea to start off with and this was before we started the process so we felt like it was a pointless confusing task. It started off quite unsuccessful and then when the company wanted to jump on the ban wagon with my groups idea then we did it as a company which we would have liked to have done ourselves and generated our own audience, but then carleigh and Claire were saying that they had to get our audience but I don't fully understand why. After this is still think it was unsuccessful because some confusion about site specific and NWK campus being our site specific but we couldn't just use the studio. We took our audience outside which I don think suited the occasion because it was outside so there was so much space around them which feels free rather can confined like in the studio. I think we should have just stopped there to make it successful but as we carried it on we didn't know the ended and the secret garden was so silly just leaving them and they saw us walking away. I felt that the tasks in terms of rehearsals and the workshops were and weren't successful because I don't think some of them we benefited from it was just learning skill for this specific style of performance, I don't

Variety show �5

NEGATIVITY Always a weakness from when we started and will be until we leave, during this process

there was so much negativity and there was a lot from a chosen couple but I felt that the whole company were not keen on this process and the reluctancy of just getting on with it

they couldn't handle and became like stroppy teenagers moaning and not wanting to get on with it when they could do nothing about it.

ATTENTION TO DETAIL I felt the company missed all of the little details in the workshops and performances little things like in clowning; sharing with the audience I felt that this was missing from the show to make it more comedic and moments were missed and swallowed within all of the action. So I felt that we could have all picked up on this and highlighted it like the frog slow motion scene.

ENERGY The whole company lacked energy every day there are a few exclusions who were always on the edge but by the end with doing lates we all lacked the energy and motivation to keep going but we did. I felt like we needed to do more warm ups and exercises and playing

with games to keep the energy and focus up instead of lacking.

Variety show 15th March 2015

think I'll ever make a puppet again which we spend a whole morning doing. I felt that some workshop were a waste of time when we could have worked on the performances more, this is why I felt some workshops were unsuccessful as well as the companies attitude towards them. The presentations I felt were also a waste of time I felt like if we did workshops and then write ups about what we discovered in them we would have learnt a lot more than just researching because that's not what an actor is in my opinion. I felt that the delivery of the presentations were poor I felt they were boring and just loads of information I don't know if I even remember any of it! I felt that some tasks were unsuccessful because of the benefiting value we felt we got from them. As for our performances they were just what we thought the art forms would have put on but an amateur dramatic version, no costume or make up just the actors and our idea. I felt I could have gone worse but we didn't have a lot of time and the transition didn't work and I would have changed the order so we had a clearer ending instead of the carnival and ending it on that unsure note.

More time? If I had more time on the show I would have refined the movements in the dances and worked on being in sync to make the overall performance look stronger. If I had more time at the start I would have worked on a guitar piece but I didn't feel safe doing this and putting myself on the line with something so vulnerable with the company being negativity and where the show was going I don't think it could have fitted in. If we had more time on the tasks and knew what their purpose was I think we could have created something even more phenomenal with costume and makeup for the zombie invasion.

What Do You know Now? I'll be honest little from the last process because I felt like I have learnt about mime and puppetry which I probably won't use again. I know slightly more about Laban but I've done a workshop in it before so it was just exploring and experimenting being more knowledgeable in the art of physical theatre and Laban. I feel I know more about greek theatre when researching it but again researching it I only found little information compared to if we were to do a workshop but we put on a performance of what we thought greek theatre was. I have more an idea what bouffon is but I'm still not completely clued up because when Claire said the whole piece was in this style I don't see that.

Variety show �6