Second Show

For the second show, we didn't have any time to run over scenes that Sarah thought needed looking at and we went straight into the warm up and performance.

We had a bit of a larger audience than our first show and these were mainly made of of KS4 students so levels of maturity and lack of understanding was something we had to prepare for. They reacted quite differently to our first because they laughed at different moments and some moments where we had laughs at before, they didn't laugh at this time around. This worried some members of us and raised some questions on whether we were performing as well, but we needed to bare in mind that their focus shifts at different moments and parts where our last audience may have laughed are parts our current audience are concentrating on.
Our first audience were mainly made of family and friends so we might have been a bit spoilt with things such as laughs but it doesn't necessarily mean that we were any worse this time. We got positive audience feedback for this performance as well, but we had an error with Ralph's tent where it wasn't untied and didn't stay put for the first half but apparently it wasn't noticeable. Also the first audience was small enough to fit in one bank so we performed to that side for the most part but this time with a bigger audience everyone had to remember to include the side banks and project to them as well as the front so that they didn't feel left out.

I hope our next performance - and last performance - we take the experiences from our last two shows and learn from them to make our last show the best it can be. I think most importantly we need to remember not to be put off by however the audience may react and keep the energy going as much as we possibly can.

First Show

The run we had on the day before our show was worrying as people missed lines, cues, and left the stage at the wrong time, but we all put this down to a mutual case of pre-show nerves. After our break, we got into our costumes and had a half hour long vocal and physical warm-up so that we could deliver the best performance possible to our audience. I find that these really helped everyone before the show because we relaxed, released all physical tension, opened up our throats and warmed up our vocal chords and overall we began to focus.

I am very proud of how the performance went. We all remembered our cues and lines, there was so much energy and focus and the audience seemed to love it. I think this was what surprised me the most because When I first read the play I found it quite boring because I didn't know the subtext behind it but as our rehearsal process went on, I and everyone else gained understanding and knowledge for the play and could begin to enjoy it. Most of the audience however had no knowledge of the colonisation of Australia and I worried that they would get bored because of this but I was proved wrong. They laughed and sometimes applauded at the parts they enjoyed and were in silence and shock at the parts  that were supposed to shock them, especially the parts where Major Ross mistreated the convicts. The audience tended to have a general idea of how the colonisation of some countries had worked and so they were able to connect to the storyline.

Things I think should be improved for the next performance is volume. This was our first performance so it will take some getting used to projecting to the further audience but some feedback we received higlighted that this should be a focal point for us all. Another thing is the audience size. We only had one side filled with a little bit of another side but it felt so empty with such a small audience. If we had more audience we would be able to experiment with having more sides to perform to but that felt more like we were performing in an end on set. Hopefully for the next few shows - especially the final show - we will have a larger audience.