Brighton performance evaluation

On Friday 20^th may our cast of Titus performed at the Brighton fringe festival, it was a good opportunity to show our piece to those who don’t necessarily see a lot of theatre. The performance was a different experience in many ways and i will talk about that in this evaluation.

This is our set in brighton

When we first arrived we got look at the set in the space, the space was much smaller that i had thought it would be, i knew it would be smaller than the new theatre but not as small as it was as there was a tree which the tta people hadn’t taken into account. The audience was also very close to the front of the stage. The floor was also concrete with small stones in this was alarming as lavinas rape scene involved her being dragged along the floor and we didn’t have time to edit the scene for the floor, furthermore there was a costume error, we were meant to have socks as the floor was hard to stand on bare foot but these forgot to be packed by costume so we had to do the performance bare footed. This was very uncomfortable however we all worked well with the conditions we were given.

Something that was part of the experience that wasn’t so great was having to get changed in public toilets however it was an experience and it all part of being an actor sometimes.

After we had arrived and gotten changed we the warmed up in costume, this was a fun experience s we got to warm up outside with people watching us, for me this made me want to work harder during the warm up. The vocal warm up was very useful as it helped me to understand how i needed to use my voice for the performance.  

Before we started the play i took a moment to walk around the stand get my bearings, we then started our performance.

Obviously we were outside so there was no lighting but we did have some sound cues. We were given our 10 minute call and we sat behind the stage so our audience wouldn’t see us, we had a bigger audience than i had expected.  We then began the play, we spent a shorter amount of time in the maggot positions on the floor as our play needed to be shorter to fit the time slot we had.

We then did the Hakka, for me the Hakka wasn’t as powerful in the outdoor space and there wasn’t as much room to do it so we didn’t go as ‘crazy’ as we could of in my opinion, during lavinas first monologue of lavina i was standing on a rock and couldn’t move off it, this was very uncomfortable however i didn’t break out of character. After getting into the play it was easier to feel the energy, the love dance was also difficult due to the small space however i felt that we achieved the right energy for it. Not having light i think might have put some of the people in the cats off as there wasn’t as much atmosphere and the lights were also used in the final scene using strobe lights and the cast didn’t have this during our Brighton performance which changes the dynamics of the space.

There was a mistake by everybody in the running after bassianus and lavina as instead of going over the platform they went around the back; this was because we never got the opportunity to rehearse in the space before the performance so during the performance we were still discovering things.

The rape scene was difficult to do, after having completed the lines and having to start the physical part I was very nervous, I was more hesitant to push her onto the floor as I didn’t want to injure Sybil so I felt the energy just wasn’t the same, furthermore when I was having to pick her up I had to drag her onto my shoulder however I found this very difficult and I could see she was in discomfort however there was no other way I could do the lift. Due to these technical difficulties i felt that the scene wasn’t as effective as it could have been.

Another thing that went wrong during the performance was during the birth of Tamoras child, there was a cut to this scene and people missed the cut, when fifi turned to scream nobody else did as they were unsure of the cut, then because the nurses cue was changed she missed her cue and didn’t come on, the next scene was with me and Chiron both in, because the nurse missed her cue i decided to go onto my line, this then cued the nurse and we went back, however i dint break character and tried to carry on as best as we could, once the nurse had come on there was no more mistakes in the scene. I made a mistake during the hand ensemble piece; I forgot to gasp however I don’t think I was the only one. 

The show was messy however I feel that we all still pulled our weight and worked as  a team to solve any of the problems we encountered.  Through the performance we were fighting 5to be heard over the noise of the park and also two bands playing not too far off, this meant we had to be even more powerful with our voices. I was worried about this whilst performing however when we spoke to Ben after he told us we could be heard. The audience seemed to enjoy the performance and we had several people ask us where we were from ect. and congratulated us and told us how much they enjoyed it.

our cast in brighton.

Personally I didn’t feel as connected to my character during this performance. I was more thinking about the technical elements as I was in a new space, however I feel that performing in Brighton has given me a  new experience and a better understanding of theatre, I appreciate the privilege of light sound and costume in performance and also worked with my vocal strengths to help me perform to my best. I feel that if we had had a second opportunity to perform in Brighton it would have been much better and compared to the first time we performed in the new theatre (during the tech) it was a performance to be proud of.