Performance Evaluation

The stimulus - Taken from google images

We have finally performed our site specific pieces, and although the night had a few hiccups, the lessons I learned from instigating a solo piece have been so important. My piece definitely had its merits, as I think my careful consideration of its aesthetics drew many audience members in. I spent a lot of time developing my ideas around how I would stage the piece, and took into account how my site would enhance its themes. I was successful in making sure that the corridor I worked in was completely darkened, and so I think my use of gently twinkling fairy lights gave the piece a siren-like quality, as it beckoned to passers by in the darkness. This both captured the warm glow of my stimulus - Roni Horn’s ‘Pink Tons’ - and therefore created a strong link between my piece and its conception, as well as serving an interesting and unsettling contrast between the inviting quality of the lighting, and the claustrophobia captured inside of the box with my plight to escape. As the aesthetic of the piece was such an important aspect of communicating the message, achieving an effective manifestation of my vision is something I’m very proud of. I think this was due to gathering props early on in the process, which allowed me to run the piece fully, and I could then critique and develop from the beginning.

The finished product - Taken by another actor

Additionally, making sure that I provided a contextual description of my piece (the legend behind ‘1000 Cranes’) meant that lots of people were given the extra information they needed to understand my commentary. As the description was tacked on the wall behind me, I was able to hear many people’s sounds of recognition after reading about the legend and applying it to my idea. Considering the fact that I was debating whether giving the audience a lens through which to see my piece would restrict the potential it had to represent lots of aspects of the mind, I’m very glad I provided them with the description in the end. This is because the kind of audience that I had (who wanted to spend the most thinking-time on their own children’s performances) may not have made the effort to really consider my show after leaving it, so at least I can be sure that they took meaning from it in the way I considered the piece.

Although I was very successful in sourcing my props and using them to create an interesting visual display, I think better organisation and consideration of space would have benefitted the show greatly. I settled on a cardboard box that was cramped to say the least, and this meant that half way through my performance my neck was under a lot of strain, and both of my legs had gone dead from squeezing into such a tight space! In some ways, this aided my acting in terms of having genuine need to escape the box. However, if I was a professional actor doing a run of this show every night, I would have to acquire a larger box to stop any long term damage to my neck or back, as well as the fact that I didn’t have sufficient room to make any more paper cranes, and so I relied mostly on the premade ones. This meant that I didn’t achieve the ultimate aesthetic of having an excessive amount of cranes outside of the box to seemingly comply with the title of ‘1000 Cranes’. The fact that I also ran out of paper to make any extra cranes meant that I was thinking too much about rationing my supplies instead of living in the moment of desperately creating as many as possible. This could easily have been solved by planning for the worst and making sure I had tons of paper in the box with me.

View from above -
taken by another actor

I also took a risk with my piece that didn’t benefit me in the end, and I know now that when creating a piece under a genre that I have never done before, I should use the guidance of my tutors before breaking conventions! I was told that having a piece that could loop continuously would be the most effective, but I decided to add a moment at the end in which I escape from the box by complete accident, due to a fit of rage caused by the tedious method of creating paper cranes. This meant that my piece looped in a way, but was building up to a crescendo that not many viewers would see. On the day of the performance, I ran out of time, and was told to pack up before I could perform my ‘finale’, which meant that there was no varying dynamic in my piece (as the part that would achieve it wasn’t performed). I know now that I should have found a way to work catharsis into the loop, so that it could be achieved every ten minutes for example. I could have done this by bursting out in the same way I had planned, but perhaps changing my commentary on the idea slightly by showing myself climbing back into the box to begin again - which would raise ideas about whether my true intention was to escape at all.

I was glad to have some feedback from an audience member when I was packing up, in which she said that my piece was ‘haunting’ and ‘delicate’. I am very pleased with this because to me it proves that my intentions with aesthetic were achieved.I think in this case they were also accentuated by my chosen site, as (I have said before) it brings a hollow feel to the piece with its echoing walls, which may not have been the case if I had stayed with my first site in the carpeted history corridor.  

Finally, as I switched off my fairy lights and chucked weeks’ worth of folded cranes into the (recycling) bin, I realised that I knew all along that my planned explosion out of the box at the very end wouldn’t work. I have learned from this that I need to be more flexible in changing my idea. This can be done by constantly developing concept at the beginning of a project, because I remember acknowledging that the idea wouldn’t work, but felt that it was too late to change anything. For the sake of achieving a complete story arc in my next endeavour, I will push myself to do this in order to grow as a creative as well. I have also learned about my own resourcefulness and my abilities as a solo artist. I was apprehensive at first about taking on a whole project by myself, but my pride in what I have created off of my own back has shown me that the most important thing is to constantly challenge your own perception of yourself as an artist.