Evaluation

Final Evaluation, 

Final board presentation with all information ..

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First Half: One to One

Second Half: One to One

Also, as an add on, things that went well was our set design. We worked hard on making sure that we still had a form of creepy dim lighting that would illuminate the performance as well as being creepy enough to be in keeping with the style of our performance. We did this by using pink and yellow lighting gels which went over our lamps which gave our set a very gloomy look. One thing I would change about the process is, spending more time on how we were going to make it look like it was not just a Tattoo Parlour, but a home for a weird family. I feel it would of enhanced our performance further if it looked more grotesque.

Over time, our performance changed massively, even to the point of having to change the ending to more of a scare factor just to make people leave. However as a group we were very good at changing the scene for different types of audiences. Also, we were given feedback by our extras that we were given on the day and they were telling us that the scene was too long and if we shortened it people would stay for a lot longer, which is what we did in the end. I think shortening it worked because there were so many creepy things that even with the first event where lily would show the the foetus, it would make people want to leave already, so as it was shorter they got to see the whole performance to its full effect.

Another thing that I would change about process is having more access to the site/location where we would be performing as we had never performed in the that space at anytime before the show day. If we had, this would have improved our spacial awareness, we would have experimented more with the lighting to see what effect it had on the make-up, costume and the overall set itself. I would have probably made it look more like we had taken over the shop or even making it as though they had walked in to a whole new place, and changed the look of the shop completely and not as though we had just occupied it for one evening.

Rule challenges

-Keeping it clean to respect the shop
   
* We worked well on this, because, before we left we did a big sweep up and general clean and reset their shop for when they reopen in a couple of days times. However, during the performance the audience would come in with muddy feet and leaves, so this was hard to prevent from happening as they were running around outside to begin with.

-Warm to entice the gamers in to watch our scene

* This was hard as the door was open and the participators were wearing costumes which did not necessarily promote warmth.

-Possible audience actor to keep the play realistic, red coat?

* We had marshalls, however they had not been briefed as much as they should have by the company so the majority of actors had to explain what needed doing themselves which was not their job to do.

-Lighting, wires need to be hidden and make sure all valuable/dangerous shop parts need to be as far away from where the audience are to stand once inside

*This wasn't a challenge becuase when we got to the location their plugs and wires were all away and there were no hazards. We did have lamps of our own for lighting but we prepared them in such a way whereby no one could come into contact with them.

-Safety first, doors cannot be blocked, audience need to be aware of any hazards

*Due to limited ability to give the participants information, as you would need to come out of character to give them health and safety advice, we guided them in character

-Fire doors

*The fire doors were monitored by the shop owner, which we found out on the day.

Part 2/3 - Costume Cupboard and Dress Rehearsal

Costume Cupboard and Dress Rehearsal

This is our last performance where we will be supervised and get feedback. We have also explored the costume cupboard for some outfits that we think might suit our messed up family. Elly will be wearing a bloody nighty, Lily’s wearing a very cute girly like dress, and I will be wearing an odd mixture of clothes underneath a very sparkly dress as if I have just found the dress and chucked it on.

Here is a list of props, costumes, and other things that lead to our concern –

Number of people in our Scene – 5 (Saskia, Lily, Elly, x2 artists)

Title – The Family

Props – Lamp x2, Baby, Blood Capsules, Chains, Pregnancy tests, Small Jar for heart, Napkin for baby, Fake blood, Used nappies.

Costumes –

Lily – Cute girly long dress, broken shoes

Elly – Nighty, slippers, dressing gown

Saskia – Dress over shirt and ripped trousers, biker boots, leather jacket

Zombie – As they are dressed like for the occasion

Male – As they are dressed like for the occasion

Character list –

Sister, Joy, Zombie, Becky, Daddy

Time and meeting place –

31^st of October, meeting at the Queen Mother Theatre at 2:00pm

Start of performance time is 7:30pm – finishing at 11:00pm

Final Performance feedback…

-to cover the air while Elly is writing on a notepad, have Saskia (me), eating some gross food and offering it to the audience

-Elly to have her tongue cut out, when she smiles blood gushes out

-introduce a mum to the scene, maybe a heart in a jar.

-play with my (Saskia's) dress a lot more

-the notepad needs to have more legitimate/appropriate words on it without being too obvious with what the family want to achieve sexually

We have decided to put a large trigger warning sign on the front door of our scene as there are are some distressing parts to our performance that we didn’t have in before this performance. This is because I feel our group utilised not having the limitations within the performance piece and a lot of these ideas worked well and were kept in as a result of good feedback and reactions from the audience participators.

Part 3 - Rehearsal - Performing x2

Performing part 2

We went through our piece with Lily present so that she could join in on the next performance we were doing later on in the day. We made the changes from the last feedback we were given and performed in front of everyone, whereas last time it was only a selected few to come in with us. Each group, the ones participating and the observers gave us feedback.

*video of performance

-My character needs to introduce herself

-The ending isn’t strong enough, try making it that lily and ‘daddy’ are “trying again”. Lily wants them to leave

-Elly needs to look ugly, there needs to be a reason to not want to talk to her. Elly also needs some speech, too casual

-Too much air, maybe lily could be showing someone something as I introduce the daddy character, something gruesome like something dead ( a dead baby in cloth)

For our next performance, we were told to go all out with no boundaries. We were told this so that we could perform with no limitations, as it is easier to bring performances down to a certain level but trying to make it bigger is harder, so, it was an exercise to see if we could think of extra situations outside of the box that we could add to our work.

We are going to add –

*A foetus that Lily is going to show to her audience member she has chosen

*The character of ‘Mumma’ who is going to be a heart in a jar

*We are changing the ending to Lily wanting daddy to herself

*I’m going to introduce myself

*And Becky is having no tongue, we need blood capsules
*Need to fill in where its just emptiness
*I need to shake hands with them but as if I want to stroke their hand

Part 2 - Risk assessment

Site Restrictions

- The fire doors will be behind the performance, however they were very close to the front main doors which should not be a problem to use with a marshal handy. 

- There are sterile equipment that can not just be put anywhere they need to be kept where they usually are which was in the drawers of the space that we would be using.

- There is a very big desk by the entrance which makes it difficult for people to get in, but there is a limit too how many people should come in to watch the performance each time anyway so should not be a problem to just have people coming in one by one single file.

- Tattoo chairs have to be kept on the shop floor because they are too complicated to move.

- There is a massive window wall at the front of the shop so people can see in, so we will need to ask if we can cover it or we just need to make sure that marshals are aware that there can not be any hanging around the front and watching through windows by the participators.

Part 3 - Rehearsal - Performing

Performing

Today we performed what we had got so far, it was a bit messy in places and we need to tighten up a lot of the piece so that it flows together well. Also, I have noticed there was a lot of air and pauses that need to be sharpened. Here is the footage of the performance and feedback is written below…

                                           

-Zombie and male are not really worth being there at the moment, they have got a predominant enough part.

-It didn’t last as long as we hoped

-Was creepy but could have had more, for a surprise scare factor to it, to get everyone to leave

-Elly isn’t being used much, liked the element of her being silent, but maybe she could make the person sitting next to her feel more uncomfortable by at least doing something to them, for example staring right at them

-My character needs to introduce more of the family and the family need to be more weird than “trying to scare”

-Lilys character needs to participate with the audience. (who was played by KJ as Lily was absent)#

-Stronger ending, why should they leave?

Part 2 - Process - Plot change

Plot change

Today we had a discussion about our piece with our overall Director present. My group were told that we didn’t necessarily have to have a script, as it's mainly just improvising around a scene that we have created, and the speech can vary and change, nothing has to be set in stone other than the plot and the cue lines. Also, that long speech will get lost as people are not going to want to stand there and listen for too long as they will just want to play the game. It was showing, that we were struggling to find ways about our idea as it was too simplistic and was hard to pull different things from it, so, we decided as a group to change the plot. Not completely change it, but enough so that we can have a bit more freedom to devise. So, we are thinking of loosely having the idea of repopulation attached to it. Our overall Director gave us the idea of maybe making it quite twisted, for example, maybe even having it as a twisted/perverted family.

We took this feedback on and decided to make a sort of adopted family. They are trying to get people to join their very twisted family, still in keeping with the repopulation, we decided to make it that they were a repopulation family. There will be one person, who will be me, going out and enticing people to come in and meet the family members. Elly is my unbothered cousin who doesn’t really care about this whole situation, if anything, she was more in to her games that she is playing on her phone rather than anything else. We thought this would be a really weird character as she is the normality within the freak show. Lily’s character was just basically a child almost, and she just does her own thing, like one to ones with the audience.

Next we will be performing our play to an audience. We are allowed to use extras so that our performance can come to life. We have chosen a male and a female character. We had to brief them to tell them exactly what they will be doing. The female as a Zombie and male as the dominant male character who will be winding the Zombie up to make the audience scared and making them all leave at the end by saying something like “Which one's mine?” and getting really close to the audience and making them feel uncomfortable, then dismissing them as if they are peasants. The Zombie will just get progressively more angry and noisy and making the audience feel like they need to run away.

Part 2 - Process - Developing Ideas part 2

Developing ideas Part 2

Beginning – Woman coaxing people in: saying things like “hey, we have food and shelter if that’s what you are looking for?” The coaxing speech varies for different types of audiences. We have based this particular character, however, on a character from the book/film Harry Potter. The character is called Bellatrix. She is ballsy and very creepy; it’s almost as if she has lost her mind. She has the same love for her master as we want to show in our own character toward the dominant main character. She is played by Helena Bonham-Cater compellingly, because you have to watch her, which is key for this character as she is the one trying to get people in to the scene and watch. I will be playing this character.

Bellatrix: "My Lord, it is an honour to have you here, in our family's house. There can be no higher pleasure."

Lord Voldemort: "No higher pleasure... That means a great deal, Bellatrix, from you."

Bellatrix: "My Lord knows I speak nothing but the truth!"

This quote shows that the character Bellatrix has complete respect and totally submissive to her masters, which is what we want to convey to in our created character.

The audience will come in and stand by the window where the sofas are and the dominant male character is sitting in one of the tattoo chairs like it’s his thrown. He sits there in dead silence, whilst all the dominant female can do is just keep talking, until he breaks it at the end and has a little speech of his own that we are hoping will freak the audience out so much that they will just end up leaving. This, however, can be varied with different audiences. My group and I decided that we did want to have a cliché ending where we have to scream at the to get them out.

The dominant male characters speech –

“You all seem rather confused. Almost too curious as to what I want to achieve. If you really want to know then I will tell you. I’m going to finish with them and get some more later. Right now, you all don’t really understand, but you will. Your vision will soon clear and you will understand that this needs to happen. We need to start new world order and I will be in power, this new world will be mine. You will be back… Trust me.”

That is the first draft but we want to make it more scary so we will just work on it until it’s enough to make people want to leave our site.

Part 2 - Process - Presenting to the Team

Presenting the ideas to the class

Things we need to resolve;

-Will tattooist be ok with our plot.

-How will we get the audience out of our space once we have finished

-Can we connect our performance to any others

Plot – Man is dominating the scene and wants to repopulate the earth, however, not everyone is with him on this big idea, some are unsure which makes him angry. So, the outcome is him forcing people to do things they don’t want to by threatening them with a Zombie. We will use the audience and pretend that they will be used as an object to repopulate the earth. There will be another female dominant character and her place will be there to make the audience feel uncomfortable but to mainly make the audience feel just as uncomfortable as the men. This woman will be preganant to creepily signify that she is all for repopulation of the earth.

Venue: The performance happen at: Panic Ink, 75 Hermitage Road, Hitchin, Herts, 01462455677

Opening Hours are 10:00 – 06:00, it is closed Sundays and Mondays – possible days to rehearse on site? Or can rehearse after 6.

Props needed – Camcorder, chains for zombie, pregnancy tests, baby bump.

Part 2 - Process - Scene rules and ideas

First idea

‘Man/woman predicted this day would come. Everyone thinks that the zombies are a prank, but the predictive person believes otherwise. To test the theory, one evil person kicks a weaker person out to see what is out there and report back, they throw him or her out of the back door where the audience will not be. There is an unbearable silence while they wait for the person to return. Everyone freaks out when a lot of screaming is heard and banging on the back door. The characters are in a state of shock and they don’t open the door till the last moment. When they do open the door the person falls in as if dead. There is a lot of blood and everyone now thinks the person is dead so they start to freak out again and try to think of a solution, however, the person who they think is dead wakes up.’

We wanted to make the audience stand in the middle of the scene so they can watch what is happening all around them. We wanted to make the audience feel as though they are part of the performance which would probably freak them out even more. We thought of an idea to start our interaction, by letting the psychic spray them with “disinfectant” (water), while everyone around them are getting more and more frustrated.

We decided that we are going to need more than just Lily, Elly and myself in the scene, we needed a couple of extras. This worked in our favour as we were told that there are some of the Panic Ink employees who were up for joining in, so, we could easily give them a part.

Rules

-Keeping it clean to respect the shop

-Warm to entice the gamers in to watch our scene

-Possible audience actor to keep the play realistic, red coat?

-Lighting, wires need to be hidden and make sure all valuable/dangerous shop parts need to be as far away from where the audience are to stand once inside

-Need to ask for permission to use the chairs they already have inside the shop

-Saftey first, doors cannot be blocked, audience need to be aware of any hazards

-Fire doors 

Part 2 - Process - Developing ideas

Developing ideas

Our original scene had to be cut because the tattoo artists wanted to have a certain theme to what was going to be performed on their location. They told our overall director that they would like a scene about repopulation. So, we started looking in to what sort of story line we could do instead.

Our undeveloped storyline now, is about a dominant male who has taken in women who he will try to reproduce with and it will have a very twisted/perverted theme about it. There will be some women (actors) who are all for the events and some less keen. We have decided that the reason why he has the less keen women actually around is because he uses the Zombie as a blackmail tool, and he will be playing about with the Zombie making it progressively angry. Therefore, making the audience feel uncomfortable as well, which we think we should only have women watching our scene because that would make them feel a lot more uncomfortable, however we do need to figure out how we will only get women in the shop and avoid bringing in men.

Another idea is, if we could have the male sizing up the females with horrible outfits as if it’s something he would like, and then we thought that maybe we could have a strong female character just in case our volunteer didn’t want to do some of the things that we have added to our performance. We decided to make the dominant female already pregnant and filming the audience as if they were filming to remember which ones he had been with.

We have started to try developing our idea by giving out the roles to the people we know will be involved. We are unsure as to exactly how many volunteers we have but at the moment it is looking like we only have two more new people to incorporate into our piece. The both of them work in Panic Ink, the shop we will be performing in. This works in our favour, as we need an extra few people to cover some roles. We tried to give the Panic Ink owner a call to ask if we could move any of their equipment so we can have more space and to see how many people were interested exactly and whether or not they would be comfortable playing the parts we have given them. However, he wasn’t in so we had to call back another time.

One of our volunteers wanted to be a Zombie, which is perfect for our story line. We need to find somewhere we can get chains for our zombie so that we can put it chained to the back.

Prop needed - Chains

Part 2 - Process - Who is responsible?

Who's responsible

Within our performance and the whole production itself, we need to know who is responsible for which area of preparation, so, that we know who to contact when in difficulty. Here is a list of who we need to refer back to.

Events management – Angie Baul (overall producer)

Scene Leaders – 2^nd years

Costume – We are all responsible for our own costumes

Makeup and hair – C Morrel

Set design – Will Bianchi

Props – Daniel & KJ

Budgets – Everybody in the scene must have a copy of the budget

Hospitality – The George – Marshalls

Budget – £100

No budget was available in the end, so limited access to props etc was available.

Part 2 - Process - Panic Ink

Panic Ink – 

Today we went around the different venues and chose/were given a location to create our scary scene. There were venues from the likes of roof top car parking, shops, and courtyards. All were to have a different theme. The 2^nd years are all now scene leaders and will be relied on to devise an original performance that will link to the brief of the Zombie Quest. It needs to be almost Halloween themed as the production day is the 31^st of October. Lily and I were selected to partner together and take on the location of Panic Ink.

Panic Ink is a tattoo parlour. When we went in to have a look we discovered that it has a lot of space to utilise. Depending on what particular scene we decide to create, this could either work in our favour or work against us. It is an alternative piece of theatre altogether, we were told to base it around a fringe performance and it should last 5 minutes.

Now, we have got our location we now had to create ideas, we have been given a task to create a board of explanation to put up photos of our location, plot idea, costume and prop lists etc. This will get gradually more information on it as the time passes.

Here is the scene leader list and how many actors for each scene -