Evaluation

I think Overall our final piece went well and achieved the goals we planned .

One strength of the performance is everyone knew exactly what to do on the transitions even when music didn't start straight away we all stayed in our neutral form and sat on our chairs until the music started. This meant that the whole performance ran smoothly in the transitions and all scenes were clearly separated. This allowed the audience to understand when we had changed between different stages in history and different stories of the suppression of women. I think this was important because even though we wanted the experience to be completely immersive and for the audience to believe what they see and feel apart of what they are seeing and experiencing; we also wanted the audience to understand what was happening and what we waned to portray. This is because we did not want to transition quickly into a new scene and leave the audience thinking they are in the same story with the same characters. This is why we opted for the Brecht style transition where it brought the audience back into their reality and realising they are seeing a change of characters and will see new people with different stories and backgrounds.

Another strength was that all of our lighting was effective and fitting to our performance.
This also allowed the performance to run smoothly but mainly meant we were able to use the lighting to set atmosphere for the next scene before it even started.
This is a strength because this allowed our audience to get an idea of the type of atmosphere in the scene and prepare them for the difference, allowing them time to reflect on the past scene during the transition and the new lighting and colour will be a comformational change for them allowing them to see the new scene without trying to connect it with the previous one. I think this was important because it allows our piece to have a hard hitting effect while not confusing the audience and allowing them to not hold on to any emotional connections they gained with previous characters.

My final strength is our staging, We chose to perform our piece in traverse staging because this allowed us to perform in so many different ways for example, our human trafficking scene we had people performing to both sides in so both sides saw a different side but eventually saw the other side as well.
This was a strength because this gave our piece a little individuality and gave us a challenge as we had to consider and change our piece to dynamically fit the performance space and this helped me advance as a performer. I was able to gain new skills in acting with not only my dialogue and facial expressions but also by body language so that even if an audience member could not see my face they would understand how my character was feeling or reacting to the story and the other characters.



One weakness was that the music didn't run smoothly and some music didn't play.
This was a weakness because it slowed down our transitions or the effectiveness of some of our movement pieces and this affected the seamless illusion we tried to create.
To turn this weakness into a strength we should have as group planned our music and where it fit into our piece earlier on in the creation process.
Next time I would definitely decide on music we wanted in the scenes as we were creating them and insure we kept a list of these songs so we knew what they were even when we don't rehearse a scene for a while. This would allow us to be sure on the songs ourselves and be confident on how and where they fit into our piece, this would then allow us to give clear notes and instructions to those in charge of sound and then they would be 100 percent sure on what they were doing.
This weakness would have left the audience not knowing what was going on and this would lead to confusion. Confusion would break the illusion we wanted to create and lessen the effectiveness of our piece.

Another weakness was not everyone had all the costume we had originally planned, this because of late organisation led to miscommunication by all of the group and people forgetting or not being able to source the costume.
This was a weakness because it meant some of us were only wearing one item that was contextual to our piece and this could lead to people being misconstrued as characters that they weren't supposed to be perceived as. This lowered the affect some of our more hard hitting and emotional scenes had on the audience and this would lower the chances of the audience understanding our general theme of our piece which was the suppression of women though-out history during historical crisis' in humanity.

Overall, I think despite a few weaknesses we managed to achieve our goal for our piece and all feedback from the audience was positive and complimentary to our interpretation of the stimulus.

Staging

When we began considering what staging to have for our piece we decided we wanted the audience to be completely immersed in the experience and feel completely a part of the performance.
we all agreed on traverse staging.
I drew up a design of our performance space.

I believe that this performance space would be best for what we want to achieve with our piece as we wanted to successfully eliminate the fourth wall rule by including the audience to the point where even if we addressed them and in the traditional sense 'break' the fourth wall the audience would not loose the sense that they are apart of the lives we created.

Women in Holocaust Research

As part of our main idea for Humanity in Crisis stimulus we wanted to highlight the suffering that women were out under during times of crisis.

I decided to focus on the women during the Holocaust as history is one of my favourite subjects and Nazi Germany is one of my interests.

As you can see from my research the holocaust was not only a struggle for Jewish women but a struggle for all women alike particularly women with smaller children especially those who come from orthodox Jewish backgrounds.

what we wanted to take away from this research was how women were oppressed by men and the governing bodies that ruled above them so we could really begin to understand how women were and still are treated in some countries.