Final blog submission
Sections
- In brief – What was the show?
- Aims – What did I want to achieve?
- Main influences
- Reflection and moving forward
In brief – what was the show?
My final performance was very similar to the initial ideas that I wanted to do. Things We Said Today explored the way that we love and who we choose to love in a lifetime. By using inspirations from both modern and older comedians, and the music of The Beatles, I portrayed a piece of theatre that was pure escapism from the weight of everyday living.
Aims – What did I want to achieve?
I wanted Things We Said Today to be escapism for my audience and for them to be able to have a glimpse into my life. I intended it to be humorous and entertaining, whilst immersing them into another world. This was achieved by having promenade staging. The audience were free to walk around the stage wherever they pleased whilst my performance took place. The pre-set included encouraging the audience members to dance with me and handing out drinks. During the pre-set, I gave out 10 party hats to random audience members. I then asked the people who had the hats on to sit in a circle during scene 4 to give the illusion that they were at the party playing spin the bottle. It was an important part of my performance that the audience felt included as it would not have worked if they were seated in a proscenium style audience bank: you would not sit and simply observe at a birthday party. It is an immersive experience and this is what I wanted to encourage in my performance.
Main influences
Sarah Millican
WHY? Millican’s approach to comedy is something that I wanted to try and adapt into my own performance. She has a very humble performance style and self-mocks throughout her performances, especially on accents which I can relate too very much as I have quite a strong Hull accent. During her stand-up shows, she tells stories about her real life events which is an element which was prominent in my own show. My entire performance was based upon real life situations that I had encountered. I had not dramatized them in any way, instead just simply retelling embarrassing and funny moments that had happened within my life. Millican’s way of fast paced storytelling is where I got the main inspiration for the way that I delivered my lines and how I wrote my script. I wanted it to be modest, fun and empowering which I think I managed to deliver to my audience who were laughing along throughout the show. I also like how Millican physicalizes many of her performances which is why I decided to dance with the cake from Scene 2- 3 to the Bollero when I was speaking. This broke up the speech to have something visual for the audience to engage with.
Spalding Gray
WHY? Gray’s storytelling method influenced me in a similar way to how Millican’s did. Spalding Gray used fast paced storytelling, with many details within the dialogue. I thought that details were important so I added extras which weren’t exactly necessary, but just added something extra to the imaginations of the audience.
The Beatles
WHY? The Beatles have always been my favourite band to ever grace the earth and I knew that I would have to include them in some way to my piece. I decided to break up each of my scenes with a Beatles’ song which represented what I was feeling. These songs were:
Roll over Beethoven – Pre-set
Birthday – Pre-set
I’m a loser -School Days
Getting Better – University
Help! – The bad date
The Long and Winding Road – To the future
Things We Said Today – Closing scene
I also had my own personal Beatle’s record collection on show in a box for the audience to see.
Bridget Jones
WHY? Although this may seem like a strange influence, Bridget Jones has been my doppelganger for as long as I can remember. Dating the wrong guys, having embarrassing moments, just being a general cringe: it is me. So much so, that I decided to use the opening scene lines of the first film at the end of my performance. I used this because it was very applicable to my own life. I also didn’t want to completely disregard the idea of my own diary which had influenced me so much in the early days of this process.
Reflection & moving forward
I am extremely proud of what I have achieved within this module. Looking back onto my first ever blog post that I wrote on this blog, I said that I was terrified at the prospect of writing and performing my own show. Although this feeling is still present, I think I did myself proud. The lighting, sound and set was all perfect in what I wanted to achieve. By developing the idea of the birthday party, I think the piece worked really well as I was able to story tell whilst within an immersive setting. Because the audience were engaged, it created an immersive environment and it got them all involved which is what I intended to do. I also made a last minute decision to include party bags at the end of the performance which included a small party favour (a tube of bubbles) and a print out of all of the responses that I had collected from social media a few months ago.
If I was to do this performance again, I would love to see how it could be adapted into different settings. As the script itself has nothing to do with a birthday party, it is a durable performance. If I had more time to rehearse, I would have liked to have experimented with the shadow puppetry and the projector which is where I could develop this performance further. As for the actual performance of the piece, I could have maybe been a bit too fast at some parts which I purely put down to being nervous.This is something that I would like to work on for the future.
The feedback that I received after the performance was very positive and this has made me into a much more confident performer. At the start of university, I would never have imagined that I could achieve this, and I am very proud that I chose to do the solo module.
