Evaluating Dress Rehearsal

Our rehearsal yesterday was a non-technical theatre this was not useful because in a dress rehearsal everyone should be in full costume, have all props and the sound and lighting should all be working. We found it very difficult to rehearse because we didn't have a lot of our props and our sound cue's. This meant that in the real performance we hadn't actually rehearsed it in full and it led to lots of mistakes, for example the blackout didn't happen, the piano didn't work and the butterfly nets were not what we were expecting leading to some very bad transitions and to difficulty's on stage. Next time before the performance we need to have a full dress rehearsal so that we can be familiar with all the technical points in the performance so that not as many mistakes would occur.

When we entered on stage there was a sudden burst of energy however by the time I was on stage because I had to change out of the tiger costume I felt that the energy had dropped and the audience were losing interest. Being unfamiliar to the space we began to start working towards the back leaving the front of the stage empty therefore we were not balancing the space. In the dress rehearsal it was quite difficult to see who was saying the line when we all repeat our phrases after one another, no knowing who was saying the lines and everyone moving at the same time would probably confuse the children and the stage would be too busy. We have already improved this by making everyone freeze and look at the person who it talking, this allows the audience to focus on one person on the stage and gives the actor the chance to project their phrase clearly to all sides of the audience without worrying what everyone else was doing. To improve the entrance we need to vary our dynamics and levels to interest the children and keep them engaged we should also balance the space and become confident to perform at the front of the stage. Sustaining energy in performance is extremely important otherwise the performance will be 'lifeless and empty'. In the book 'Free to Act' by Mira Felner She comments how actors must think of their emotions as a 'constant flow of energy on stage'. Vsevolod Meyer believed the energy flowed in a cycle from intention, to realization to reaction. To improve our entrance we need to follow this cycle having an intention and following through our action and then picking another intention so that our intention cannot be lost. Jason Bennet comments on how 'Audiences receive an energetic "feeding" while attending any kind of performance event' therefore throughout the performance we have to keep feeding them with new movements and new actions so that they can fully visualise our jungle scene.

Due to practising in our small theatre room we found it difficult to adapt our performance to this bigger space. I found it very difficult to try and interact with all three sides of the audience however during the performance I thought about the rapier and dagger exercise which helped me remember to keep my body to two sides of the audience. During the performance I think we were all really thinking about trying to keep our body to three sides of the audience therefore we were working really hard to try and get the results however to improve this we need to practise so that we no longer have to think about what way our body is facing and we can perform unconsciously. We needed to adapt both our spacing and our voices to the performance space, which we didn't do very well because we were unable to balance the space. Jean Sabatine talks about exploring the space and working with others around you so that you can slot in filling the space in every direction, similar to the filling the space exercise we did with at the beginning of the topic. To improve my projection of my voice I will undergo the exercise Evangeline Machlin has suggested by repeating lines moving further way from a partner, this will allow me to try out different ways of speaking and will help me relax my mouth when I am further away so that my partner will be able to hear what I am saying.

In the pyramid section I felt as though we had so much adrenaline in the dress rehearsal it made the pyramid become sloppy and wobbly. We need to be able to work better in unison to be able to achieve and safe and stable pyramid. In previous rehearsals we were able to achieve a strong pyramid however to improve this for our real performance I think we need to work better together, we can do this by doing group exercises and working with each other more often so that we can all work together as one. In the pyramid we also need to be able to keep our characters and perform which we can do by using our facial expressions and the pyramid should be further back on the stage. We can see in this video below even though it is a cartoon it still shows when working together the outcome is better:

Our tiger song did not go down well in the performance because we did not feel comfortable and also the tune still hadn't been changed, however we have already fixed the tine by making it more upbeat and child friendly. Mira Felner talks about being able to show personality through song and this is exactly what we need to do, we should not be worried or feel vulnerable when singing we should just show our character and energy through the words. Cicely Berry said 'If you can feel your breathing, and get pleasure in the sounds of the words, you can build your confidence.' so we should not be focusing on the negative points to the song we should just bring energy and perform it to the best of our ability with confidence. We also ended to tiger in the wrong position which confused everyone so we need to remember when we have set things on stage we should keep them there.

In the dress rehearsal our exit transition was awful because we didn't understand the functions of the space properly, however I believe I took direction well and I decided to go to the other side of the stage where some of the other theatre class had moved to. This made the transition a lot easier, however the transition period took up a lot of time and energy was dropped so to improve we were directed to sing a song in a lullaby way, place the children down and then shush the audience, this helped involve the audience more and it will give the children something to focus on when there is a blank stage. We also decided to creep around the children to show we did not want to wake them up.

Overall the dress rehearsal went okay even though we did make quite a few mistakes but Scott Adams once said "Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep."