Me and Taudy back in the day. Love this guy xx

Evaluation

I thought our piece went brilliant and I would love to perform it again, I can’t believe it’s over! I think all of us as an ensemble worked hard and committed 100% to the final piece which I think was evident.

The lack of energy was something I had mentioned that some of the cast had previously been struggling with in rehearsals, so it was pleasant to see everybody fully committing and being completely immersed in the production. It was always going to be imperative our energy levels remained high throughout our whole performance as the audience were always going to feed off of ours. I found this was possible because of ours and as long as were completely engaged, so were they.

I enjoyed very much how we involved the audience were during various moments in our piece. Many actors were breaking the fourth wall during different parts: we had people standing outside as bouncers and ushers and greeting the audience members as they came inside. This links to the Artaudian idea of effecting the audience as I think that they were effected by just how involved we made them feel in the performance. Certainly at some points, I think we worked hard enough for them to believe they weren’t actually at a performance anymore but inside an actual club.

 

Our performance never failed to be effective for almost the entire piece. The energy was high and we as actors never kept anything inside; we threw ourselves into the action which enabled the piece to run smoothly and fluidly with a good pace. Although the order of our scenes were only determined in the moment, I think we were able to make the audience question that by just how prepared and smooth we made it appear. We had to be on our toes throughout the whole performance and that made it that much more exciting and experimental.


I have always favoured the element in which our performance used much of technology within our scenes. We never relied on it to tell the story for us but it added so much more to our performance and made it that more effective. We allowed the sounds to influence the way we were acting and our feelings. We let the technology take some of the strain of filling the audience in on what was going on so that when we did personally perform, it was given our full concentration and energy.

I think everyone’s scenes went efficiently and smooth. I enjoyed how the ensemble never stopped acting when they realised it wasn’t their scene, or their scene had already been performed ect. Everyone remained 100% focused and committed and fed off of other people’s actions. Even those who remained behind the audience still reacted to everything that was going on. The transitions from scene to scene went smoothly also despite our final dress rehearsal lacking them completely. We all worked well together to help.

So many aspects of our piece were successful but there are always going to be the un-successes of a performance. Having never performed to a proper full room of an audience, we never anticipated space to a full extent. Some audience members had moved their chairs too close to the stage so that they were closer to us but that meant we didn’t have as much space to perform in. Some of the spacing issues were down to us as performers anyway. During the final section where we performed our physical theatre movements, people were grouping in certain spaces, leaving some completely empty yet no one thought to actually move into that space, thus generating more for everyone else. If we could perform it again I would wish that we were all more a bit space aware.

Another slight problem that we experienced as an ensemble were the late comers who turned up during our performance half way. It wasn’t dramatically deterring to our performance but it did take away some of the illusion we were trying to build. The room remained dark and the night club was in full swing and I think we were beginning to hypnotise and affect the audience into really believing they really were in a nightclub. Halfway through the performance, the curtains were drawn by the door, flooding in the bright light and capturing the audience’s attention and stealing it away from what we were trying to lure them in with our performance and a few people entered the room and stood by the door awkwardly, there being no seats left for them. It sort of threw us off guard as actors but we had to just get on with it and carry on, working 10 times harder to get the audience back on track with the performance.

I personally loved Experimental term and creating Experimental theatre. I’ve learned so much about theatre as a whole, not only experimental, and I’ve learned the theories and ideas of practitioners which really challenged my own. Theatre doesn’t have to consist of speech and a linear story, but it can be stories or messages inspired by nearly anything. Create a feeling, have an audience and you’ve got the basics of theatre. I had so much fun this term and it has been my favourite so far, definitely the most interesting. I learnt how to work as an ensemble but how to be individual with both devising and acting. I’ve benefited huge amounts from this experience and I hope to create a similar piece of immersive theatre in the future. Experimental theatre term has been incredibly enjoyable for me. If I could perform our piece again a million times over I would. Actually maybe not because the songs would kill my brain cells if I had to hear them again, but I really really really did like it and thank everyone for their hard work and for pulling it off. And thank you to the amazing director of course for all her time and effort and commitment, even if it appeared we weren’t at some point. We rocked.

Grading of myself

If I was to grade myself on my participation during the rehearsal period I would give myself a 10. Joking, at the most a 7. I’d say a 7 - 7.95. I have tried my hardest to give over ideas and to participate in group discussions and feedback sessions. I’ve been committed within each performance whether it was individually or as an ensemble.

Shanon the deviser

I’ve learnt about myself as a deviser that I can be very open minded, experimental but extremely bossy! Aside from that, it was much more stressing than I first thought. I am definitely an active deviser. I appreciate the discussion within a group on what we can do and the throwing of ideas out there, but there’s only so long I can do that for. I believe, as a deviser, it’s much more effective if you get up off of your arse and get moving – physicalise your ideas. There’s no point just discussing what should be done without actually doing it. How are you going to know what works better? I need to improve on how I keep myself posed. No one likes the bossy one and sometimes I need to step back and become an observer. Listen to others instead of instructing them.

What was challenging?

I thought that the devising of my group’s piece was quite challenging as a whole. Some members of my group were absent during a few rehearsals in the beginning, which made it harder for us to set on an idea and begin developing it as their absence affected us all as a whole. I also think that the pressure we all individually felt put a strain on us and made us less time efficient. We wanted to make it so exciting and so engaging that every idea we thought of just wasn’t good enough and we always had a feeling we could develop it further. All in all our scene worked well though, it wasn’t all bad. I had a very good group and we all listened and worked from each other to create the scene we did and it was a lot of fun!

My favourite part

My favourite part of our performance is the physical theatre movements we perform at the end accompanied by the distorted lines of the poem. I think it’s so experimental and really fits the aim of this term, not forgetting it’s fun to perform. At the same time it’s difficult as there are so many separate moves bundled together, but the devising of the moves were so organic and so basic it was amazing to see just what they created. It’s a beautiful way to end the show and it’s visually interesting. Most of the performance is so very random and fast paced and in your face and then this last section just brings it all right down… brings us down from our ‘alcohol.’

One target and improvement would be how everyone needs to appear 100% committed. At the moment, some people give it all they have and some just look bored and as if they don’t wish to be there. There’s no point having 5 people committing to their hearts content but that 1 person not, because the attention will just go on them.

The development of TNM

I am very happy with our experimental piece so far and personally believe that there is much strength to 'The Nerve Metre.’ Already it’s so very experimental and there is so much Artaud featured.

My favourite piece at the moment is the opening scene. The music is so chilled and of a type you would actually play into a club and each actor as a moment to themselves… to become whatever they wish as a character. We decided to start the piece by having a group visual image to reflect the classy, sophisticated feel at the beginning. We actually constructed this through improvisation. None of us were given directions or assigned poses to do, just told to sit around the edge of the room and to close our eyes and feel the music. When we felt it was time, our only job was to get up one by one and slowly move into the centre and create a visual image which represented a sophisticated and classy character.

At first, this exercise wasn’t completely successful.. but that was good! We could learn. We didn’t consider space or levels so the image didn’t look as effective to an audience as we wished it to be. Once a few of us walked out from the image and had a moment to inspect for ourselves, we were able to improve it.

It was a relevant idea for us to appear as posh, classy and sophisticated people as that set an image to be contorted and squashed as the journey of the play progresses. What makes it so exciting is that us actors move on pure feeling and motion, and that’s also experimental. There is no set order in which we walk onto the centre stage so it’s spontaneous and different each time.

We began devising separate scenes for the piece in small groups which I think is very interesting to see what we’ve all thought of and how we choose to perform it.

 

We created the piece by assigning gestures and movements to the words of 'The Nerve Metre' poem, and as the poem will be played in a distorted and edited fashion at the end, we will perform the actions to accompany it. I think this is an incredibly strong aspect of our piece as visually, it looks interesting, and the whole point of our piece is that when people enter the room, they will be overcome by unique and obscure visual effects.

Another effective element of our piece is how the order of our separate scenes has not been set. It will be improvised on the night depending on what the audience pick. I think it’s a good idea to involve the audience as it really brings them in on our performance and makes them feel even more as if they are a part of our performance and actually in The Nerve Meter. I think that including the audience is a really clever idea, as this will allow them to feel fully engaged in the performance.


In terms of how we need to develop our piece, I just think it needs to be tightened and more rehearsed. I’m a really big fan of our piece, I can’t lie, and if we keep the energy high and stay committed throughout it should be amazing. It has the potential to be awesome and so effective if we just rehearse it some more and make it as successful as we can.