Evaluation

We began the day with a dress/tech rehearsal in the CYT. After an energetic warmup, they rehearsed it while I helped William Hall with my lighting and sound cues. I decided to have no lighting changes during the piece as I thought it may become distracting. I went through the music and the sound effects until I was satisfied that they were at the right volumes. After the first runthrough, Amy Legge gave some feedback to my cast, saying that everyone needed to be more energetic, there needed to be better pacing and that Eleanor had to project, not rush her lines and make better use of physicality.

I then did another run-through, in which my cast did their best to take on board Amy's notes. Eleanor was still however very quiet and closed in. I noticed a few small specific bits that needed work and decided to take my cast to another room to rehearse some more. The first thing I wanted to improve was the beating scene. I thought that it looked a little slow and gentle, so I tried to coach them into making it appear more aggressive and as though the abusive foster parents were enjoying it more. I did my best to make Conor and Eleanor more confident that they wouldn't hurt Chelsea if they made it appear more aggressive. Eleanor was making it difficult though as she made it clear her reluctance to rehearse. There was one instance where she walked off of the area we had designated the stage saying: "I can't, I just can't". I tried to talk to her about what was wrong, but she refused to give a clear answer.

The next thing I wanted to improve was Chelsea's delivery of the line: "No, I don't want to be like Jesus. I fucking am Jesus!". I thought that it could be a lot bigger and could work with a small gap between the two sentences. I also helped her time her line, "Hello" when the foster parents return, to be between two of Lewis' sentences so they aren't distracted by Lewis or see Chelsea's line as a distraction.

A couple of hours later, they performed they play in front of an audience. In Scene 1, Lewis began well, speaking in an unsettling voice while keeping pace. Unfortunately Eleanor still appeared to be very inexpressive physically. The audience laughed at quite a few parts in this section, such as when Conor and Eleanor become the 'Abusive Foster Parents'. It was not long after this section that Lewis got one of his lines wrong and then proceeded to jump forwards and backwards in the story until he got back on track again. One of the things lost with this mistake was the improved beating scene. The two small bits I had practiced with Chelsea I noticed had improved greatly and got large laughs from the audience.

They soon went on to Scene 2. I had trouble hearing Eleanor's lines throughout the play as her voice had become very quiet and faint. Various people told me the same thing after the play had finished. I think that the other actor's performed very well in the rest of the scene and kept it a very watchable story.

When Scene 3 began, the responsibility to tell the story became mostly Conor's. I believe that he pulled this off exceptionally well because I could tell that the audience were hanging on to his every word. They laughed at certain points of his story and were then transfixed at more serious parts of his story. I received feedback from various people after the show saying how well he had performed the story. When the play was finished, there was a large round of applause for the entire cast.

Overall, apart from a few mistakes, I think the performance went very well. It entertained the audience and hopefully immersed them in the stories to some degree, which was what I was hoping to achieve with this play. One of the things that went really well was Over-the-top portrayals of characters such as Conor's abusive foster father and Lewis' little bot. One of the things that didn't go so well was Eleanor's lack of physical and vocal performance.