Evaluation

One of the things I think worked was our staging on stage, I think it worked well because there were always different levels being used.
There was always someone either sat on the floor or stood up and there was always people sat on a sofa and even people laid on top of the back of the sofa.
I think it worked because it always meant there was someone new happening and it always gave the audience something to look at. I do think that I could have got up a little bit more in our performance because I feel like I was sat down for too long. I think I could have got up when Maria got pushed next to me to show that I really don't want to be near her.

I also think we used our tones of voice well. For example, when Jake is patronising Katina he says "I didn't sleep with her you dopey cow!", he changed his voice from a high pitch, defensive tone to a slow, sarcastic tone.
Also when I'm sat on the sofa and Maria falls onto Jake my voice goes from a low, not in the mood tone to a shouting, aggressive tone.
I think this worked well as it shows what each of our characters are feeling through our voices, it's especially important because the audience at the back of the hall may not have been able to see our facial expressions so by using our voices to match our moods the audience at the back of the hall would have been able to understand what each of us are feeling. However, I think what we could have done to improve this is project a little bit more just so then the audience could have heard us a little better, but I don't think our projection was too bad.

I quite like the fact that our performance was on upper stage and we had the front half of the stage blacked out, because it showed that we were in a cramped, confined space- which we were in. This helped us a lot too because it limited the amount of space we could use to show the audience where we are.

One of the things we didn't do too well is show the audience we were on a ship, for all they know it could have been in a hotel room. So I think we could have shown we were on a ship by maybe acting a little nauseous and believing we were on a ship.
However we did show that we were in a really little room, which helped us.

In rehearsals we worked in the music booth to show us how much space we would have had if we really were in a little boat cabin. However this did come to a problem as we were not using our voices properly- not projecting- so we had to keep reminding ourselves that we have to talk a lot louder so that the audience can hear us when we did our big performance.

I liked that Michelle's character was drunk all the way through our piece and made the situation more awkward than it had to have been, however I think what could have improved was when her character first comes in and throws up she should have made the throwing up part last a little longer because drunken sick keeps coming up, you don't usually just throw up the once.

I thought it was really good when Greta's character started taking the Crystal Meth because it gave the audience an insight into her characters life and showed them what she does in her life and it shows her reaction to other character's reactions to her lifestyle.
It's annoying that she had to do it on the floor though as the audience at the back may not have been able to see what she was doing or her reaction to everything that we were saying to her. But I think she still did a great job, especially when she stood up and looked at all of the audience just after she did the Meth. I think she did great at that bit because she kept a straight face- even though the whole of the audience was laughing and she acted how someone would just after Crystals, she was doing the gerning and playing with her nose a lot but not too much.

I think at the end of our performance when the alarms are going off and Beccy-(Michelle) is knocked out on the floor with Maria and I are surrounding her trying to help her and Jake-(Harry) is trying to find a way to get out of the cabin because he's scared is pretty good because it ends of a cliffhanger so the audience are left not knowing what's happening to any of us. I also like how we changed the lights to a blueish colour so there's more of an erey feel for the audience and with all of us shouting, lost and confused just makes it more tense.
However if we made that little bit last a little longer and had a bit more to say than that would have been a lot better, because the audience would think there'd be an answer to why the alarms are going off.

While devising our performance, we used Mike Leigh's techniques.
We didn't go to quite the extremes of spending months discovering every little bit of detail about our characters, however we did do a week or two on finding out a bit about our characters and creating a history for each of them.
I find that by using Mike Leigh's technique helps me a lot because it helped us establish our relationships with the other characters we were working with.

Mike Leigh's technique

Mike Leigh's technique is him basically getting a load of actors together and spending months creating a history for each character by making them improvise it out.
By doing this he's giving the actors a greater understanding about their characters and it makes it easier for them to then act their character emotions and feelings etc.


Why I think this technique is effective

I think this technique is really unusual, however I think it's incredibly clever and well thought, it helps actors get right underneath the skin and into the core of the character they're trying to portray and it makes them truly feel what their character feels.
It's really good for when you're devising your impro piece because you know how your character would react to most things, so therefore you won't be talking rubbish while improvising as you'll have a clear idea about what your character would say to certain things as you would know their history.

Stimuli

For our new assignment, we were given lot's of stimuli to get us started for our new performance.
The stimuli we were given was;

. Two poems
  - Sea Fever
  - Brighton beach

. Three songs
  - Four sea interludes- Benjamin Britton
  - La Mer- Claude Debussy
  - La Mer- Charles Trenet

. One painting
  - The Great Wave off Kanagawa

Each stimuli related to the sea, so obviously we based it on the sea.

In my group we decided to use the painting- The Great Waves off Kanagawa, "Four sea interludes" and "La Mer"- Debussy.
We used the painting because it shows men in the middle of a storm with waves going crazy and it gave us the idea to set our performance in a boat just as the storms about to begin.
We chose to use the music, "Four sea interludes" by Benjamin Britton because it starts off slow and slowly gets faster and more exciting, we thought this would be good because we wanted our performance to start off quite early off in the storm and at the end of our performance we wanted it to be really exciting and fast and then the storm to really kick in.


All of the stimuli inspired us to come up with our ideas for our performance, however those two helped us the most.
We came up with loads of ideas with those two bits of stimuli,
some of our ideas were;

. Two have it on a party boat... We came up with this idea from the stimuli we were given because in the painting they're on a boat and also in the bit of music- "Four sea interludes" it's quite exciting and sounds quite busy, so we thought of having it on a party boat so because there's always something new happening when there's a party happening.

. We thought of our performance happening just as the storm begins because as our performance goes on the storm will get worse which means our characters moods change and all this matches the bit of music- "Four sea interludes" because as the music goes on it becomes faster and more exciting and that's what we wanted to do in our performance.


We didn't change too many of our ideas while devising our performance.
We kept our initial ideas, aka; starts calm and slow and as the piece goes on it gets more fast and exciting and we kept it just as the storm is about to begin and at the end of the performance we had it so the storms at it's worst.

However, we did change how each of our characters met.
For example;

. Harry's character- Jake met Greta's character- Maria met a few months before the boat party and had a one night stand. We changed it so then the two characters met on the boat and had the one night stand.

. We also changed mine and Harry's character's relationship. At first our two characters were close friends, but then we changed it so then we're a couple so then there could be confrontation between Greta's character- Maria and mine- Katina.

We kept Michelle's character- Beccy and Greta's character-Maria's relationship the same all the way through, so they stayed best friends all the way through devising our piece because we all felt like that was a good match to have because they're both into going out and having a good time and also so it made sense when they get pushed into the cabin together when the storms about to begin.