My Evaluation

Evaluation

Shadow play: We experimented with shadow play using tents and torches. The main things that worked was using the shadows to enhance our storytelling experiences, using shadows to represent creatures/ scenarios and also using them to set the mood. We performed different ideas to each other so part of the class could become the audience to give constructive criticism and see what ideas could be developed to work and what ideas that we shouldn’t continue to pursue. By using the shadows on the outside of the tent while the story was being told on the inside was really effective because it helped hold the audience’s attention and set the mood of the story for example it could help the story feel warm and welcoming or dark and scary. Here is an example of how shadow play can add atmosphere comedy and energy to a storytelling performance. ( VegasGuy357. 2010) They incorporated sound and comedy within their shadow work where as we decided to use it in a more serious way we did this by not involving comedic moments or music but using dramatic music that suited and enhanced the storytelling. Shadow Play is a short play by Noël Coward that uses shadow play but they use it differently to how we have tried using it. When we performed it worked best when the audience couldn’t see the puppeteers and it helped set a mood and kept the energy up but in the show Shadow play they allowed the audience to see them the whole time. These are two different ways of making the most out of shadows but through our practice we found we got the best reaction when we used the shadows to enhance and help the storyteller rather than overtake them as the main center of attention. Whereas we showed each other our work for feedback Cube theatre spent a whole day rehearsing in front of year 12 students so they could get feedback and listen to any ideas they had so they could continue to work and develop there work. This is a really good way of getting honest feedback and not being blinded by your love of your own work plus it can help inspire you to have different ideas and to develop your own work (Symes,B. 2012).

Storytelling:  The main theme in our performance is storytelling so to start the unit of we told each other a fictional story and a personal story we did this in a relaxed environment. I feel we did this in a relaxed environment to help everyone feel comfortable in telling their stories. It also allowed us to analyze each other’s storytelling techniques in detail and discuss in a group the comparisons and differences in each other’s styles this allowed us to take what we liked from everyone’s  storytelling performances and use them to enhance our own storytelling ability’s. We also looked at different ways of storytelling to experiment with different ideas we looked at isolation of body parts, finger puppets, movement pieces, shadow play, and the use of lights and music. We experimented with all these different forms of storytelling to help us come up with ideas for our performance plus it allowed us to develop out skills in different forms of storytelling. We filmed what we did and played around with different ideas improvising and working on short pieces for short amounts of time and watched them back to see what worked or what we could take from each performance. Some of these techniques we used to create work are also used by Forced entertainment   (Forced entertainment 2013) they also filmed sections of improvisation to look at their performances and give each other feedback. But they also worked at night or after drinking alcohol which is two things we couldn’t do it would be interesting to compare the differences in creativity between working at different times of the day and under the influences of alcohol.  

Acting techniques: we used lots of acting techniques through our development of material we used improvisation with different stimuli to quickly create ideas and allow us to test out different props such as tents and spotlights. We used comedy as it helped us not only with our improvisation but also with our creativity. I felt that we worked best this way as everyone was in a good creative mood. We also worked with small bits of script we did this as it gave us a stimulus to work off but also helped us get a better understanding of Beowulf.   

VegasGuy357. (2010). Hand Shadow - Raymond Crowe at Royal Variety Show. YouTube. Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAQxNVQF_I0  . Last accessed 9th march 2014.

Symes,B. (2012). Essential cube news. Blogger. Available: http://www.cube-theatre.blogspot.co.uk/#!http://cube-theatre.blogspot.com/2012/12/freddy-rehearsalsend-of-week-1.html. Last accessed 9th march 2014.

Forced entertainment. (2013). How we work. Forced entertainment. Available: http://www.forcedentertainment.com/page/3010/How-we-work. Last accessed 9th march 2014.

 

Jordan Matthews