Site Specific- Living Gallery Evaluation
I think mine and Luke’s duet piece was very successful because it was quite a simple performance that contained a conversation/ argument and a shocking game, which was more than enough to intrigue the audience to stay and watch. One thing that went well was the way we planned the argument and how it was going to end. This made it much easier to put the performance on a loop, instead of finding or improvising new ways of starting an argument. Another thing that made it successful was that we figured out how to rig the machine so it would go one specific way to what the audience would expect. This was done by having Luke synchronise and adjust his hand pressure to the machine; so it would eventually identify his hand and beep as if he was telling the truth the whole time and when my hand was on it it would shock me because it didn’t identify my hand pressure. This technique added to the fluidity of our piece. One more thing that went well was when Luke asked me a question and I would “lie” then be shocked it drew the audience in and made them stay longer and they began to kind of side with Luke knowing that I started the argument and was the person at fault the whole time. It showed how this piece changed their opinions about the couple they first saw and what they were like at the end. It made them feel sympathy, empathy, anger and confusion which was what we were aiming for.
If I had the choice to change anything I would of had more props and make it seem a bit more intense. Maybe in a way that we could have been tied or strapped to the wall with wires and lights around us to look like a machine/ experiment and have an audience member ask us a question that we had to answer. Then get shocked, signalling that we just lied so that we could quickly change our answer to the truth. This would make it more interesting to look at. It would also put more energy into the duet because of the quick Q&A. This would involve audience participation and we would be able to get more of a bold and solid reaction from an audience member when they witness us getting shocked because of an answer to a question they just asked.
Concentrating more on the audience reactions it was clear at first they would be just skimming through to see what was happening, not really taking much interest into what was going on, however, this suddenly changed once the duet started getting a bit more intense with the shocks. And this change in the audience’s attitude was mainly after the first shock that I received. This made them stay longer to see what would happen next. And every time I reacted to the shocks, a few of them would jump a bit, as if they are concerned that something went wrong in the piece and I was seriously hurt. These moments of worry died down towards the end of the argument when they started siding with Luke when realising I was the problem the whole time.
This work showed a lot of my potential when it came to devising a duet that related to the mind and I think a huge barrier for creating this work was making sure that your piece was different to everyone else’s pieces and getting what you needed in time for the performance. I learnt that from certain stimuli some people end up thinking and planning ideas that turn out to be extremely alike to another group’s idea so the best way to prevent this is by finding other things that can develop your ideas to a more original standard. This thing could be used with any genre of theatre and it all depends on the trial and error- idea process and keeping track of time. The more you take in (research and inspiration) the bigger and better your piece becomes.
