Unit 2 - engaging the audience

Tuesday 10th October

Performances day one - Music lv 2 & 3

In this session we watch the Music students perform their rehearsed pieces. We looked at their energy on stage; their focus on stage; and their concentration on their pieces (F.E.C). One of the performances consisted of four young men playing either the keyboard, drums or base to create a melody. I could see their energy was low because they showed no stage presence. They also stuck to the sheet music and didn't put in their own 'jazzy' parts to the piece of music. Their focus was very good because they stayed playing the piece of music even though there may have been some disruptions in the audience. Their concentration (i think) was placed in the wrong part of playing a piece as a group. I feel they placed their concentration more into their timing than their pitch. I could see this because there were multiple incorrect notes in that piece. What I can learn from this (as an actor) is that I should focus more on how I present myself and other ensemble members on stage than on things like how I may sound (Shakespeare voice) or how I look on stag (costume wise ).

A group that was successful in showing F.E.C was the group that performed the song 'Billie Jean, by Michael Jackson. We could see that they had these qualities because they always embraced the audience and never showed a dull moment. I feel some had more energy than others but overall they had a very good amount of energy, focus and concentration. the best thing was that they made the audience feel like it was a concert because the energy and stage presence was very well planned. We could also take some of this into consideration as actors, such as embracing the audience, because these traits will allow us to keep the audience engaged throughout our performance. Our main goal as Theatrical actors should be to make sure we keep our F.E.C. up so that we can keep the audience hooked so they don't miss a thing.


Wednesday 11th October

Performances day two - Dance, Acting, Musical theatre

The rehearsal

We started off the day warming up our voices by playing some enunciation games to get all our speech related muscles working at a proper rate. We then took the time to rehearse the more important scenes and the bigger ensemble scenes, we then ran through scenes 1-5 and made sure all our parts were coming in correctly and made sure all our transitions were smooth.

Performance time!

I feel all the performances met the criteria of F.E.C. But one group that I think used it particularly well were the dancers that danced to the song 'have mercy' by Eryn Allen Kane. Their movements were all in sync and none of them showed any reaction to anything in the audience, even if they had to focus on one point in the audience. This showed a lot of discipline, focus and concentration. i especially liked how they worked as a whole ensemble, you could see that no one was following/tailing another dancer, they moved as if they had one mind. Something I, as an actor, can take away from this is the discipline of focus and concentration and also learning the ability to read other ensemble members to make sure i know what to do at any given time.  

Evaluation

I think we did quite well for a first performance because all the ensemble members knew exactly where to be at certain points, most of the transitions were quite smooth. In my opinion there was never a dull moment during our performance. There was only one moment where I felt I messed up which was the big 'first kiss' scene. I feel I messed it up because 1) I covered the actual kiss, 2) I tried to avoid the kiss ore kill posistion where as at that point I would need to embrace it and 3) I didn't have Juliet close enough to me which made the kiss look less affectionate. I also feel we could become more of a ensemble and not separate characters and some of us may need to revise our cues but otherwise i feel the performance was a success😁😁😁.


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