evaluation of performance

29th April
Today was our performance, it went rather well from my point of view as we performed a good show which was enjoyed by both the community arts practice strand and members of the public, my group were the first to perform on Shannon's round which was nice because our piece was all about the changes to Croydon and Real Croydonians opinion on the changes to Croydon in the last 100 years mixed with our own research which set up the theme to the audience about what the site specific performance was all about, our piece has changed quite a bit over the last couple of weeks because of many different things one being the amount of members we had from our group turning up each week on time, watching other groups performances and feedback we have received from Emma and Gruff Theatre.
The first performance went fairly well and I tried to include and remember all of the feedback we received yesterday about it and how we could improve it today. My character was fairly strong in this performance however I found the escalator section a bit embarrassing because I had to be extremely dramatic whilst coming down with two teenage girls who seemed extremely worried about my mental state! I was fairly confident in the courtyard talking and insulting but felt that I wasn't as strong and as characteristic as I could have been which is why I tried to improve this in the second performance. The transition between our performance and the next group on the benches went quite fluidly and you could see that we were all trying to keep our characterisation going however we were definitely unsure about whether we should be enjoying all of the music especially the more modern music as our characters may not however I think that was just each actors decision and I think we all just went with the music and tried to interact and engage the audience into the other groups piece.

The second performance was definitely a lot more cleaner and ran smoother, the escalator piece was a lot more engaging for the audience as I was more comfortable to look like a mad woman! The walking round seemed to be a lot better as well mainly because I knew for definite what I was saying and how an audience of that size would now react because I had the experience of the first performance. The transition between our piece and the bench group seemed cleaner and smoother as well as we were able to really get into their music as we weren't worried about having to perform again.
The second performance ended with all of us and the audience in the forum exhibition shop and us delivering our poem, this was really nice because it brought us all together and we were able to share our ideas of the site and of Croydon through Shannon's poem with our audience. However If I did this performance again I would definitely have worked more with my group on our poem because I felt that we didn't put enough feeling/meaning into what we were saying and therefore it felt like we were just saying the poem because we had to. However the audience when speaking to them about feedback they didn't feel this so perhaps it is just my view.

The audiences feedback:

• really liked the contrast between scenes because some were funny, some were more informative, some told us stories and other just insulted us!
•  it was really nice to see that you all thought so much of what is actually a really tiny area but a big story surrounds it
• I was amazed when you said that you had only been working in the site for a few months because it all fitted so well with the surroundings and made us feel included in your journey into finding out about Croydon
• I really liked the performances because they all told us something different about Croydon and the people who live here
• it really makes me proud to be living in Croydon when you find out about all of the things that have happened here
• it was nice to have the performances in Croydon about Croydon and by Croydon students - not many students at the Brit school realise that they are going to part of Croydons history.

It was really interesting listening to this feedback and discussing the project with the yr 12's especially because they are going to have to do this unit next year meaning that they were able to think about what they would do if they wee given this site.

I really enjoyed today and doing the performances, Site specific has not always been easy especially in creating my groups performance however it has been an extremely valuable unit to cover because it has taught me a lot about site specific theatre, engaging an audience in your performance and really looking at the surroundings of your performance space as well as including even simple things like context, architecture and people.