Performance Evaluation

PERFORMANCE EVALUATION

Our blurb:

SVALA (SWALLOW) 

By Benji Lord and Jimmy Chambers

"This piece is a look at the effects of aging on the brain, an insight of the slow and heartbreaking disintegration from childhood and the joy it brings to the hostile world of a mind affected by dementia. In this piece, we look at the world of play and childhood, exploring what it's like to grow up and lose the innocence of infantile experiences. We want people to feel nostalgic, and remember a simpler time, away from the mountains of stress, paperwork and tax returns." 

WHAT WENT WELL?
Overall, my piece went well. We managed to have our piece run for the entire length time of the living gallery. We had a lot of audience participation which is what we had hoped. Our physical sequences went well and I feel like we had the right amount of improvised behaviour and work for it to really engage a viewer. There were times when I would playing with toys and Jimmy would be sticking post it notes to the floor. In general, the piece really worked and it flowed really well together. The end product of all our post it's linked together, working their way up to the web looked amazing and I was extremely proud that it worked as well as it did. I think it did really well to connect with the audience and even though Jimmy and I didn't really talk during, we both also connected with them.

EVEN BETTER IF?
There were some improvements we could have made. One thing that we were worried about was if the audience were going to partake in the piece so to solve that we could have done the piece with a test audience, however we didn't have time or resources to get an audience together and try it. We didn't get as many post it notes as we wanted, however we did get enough to get a brief outline of where our piece was going. It's a shame we didn't have a bit more time and I think the issue could have also been resolved had we been in a different location. Being right near an entrance meant that the groups that came in felt like they had to walk around together so we had a massive influx of people right at the beginning and then it quickly died down and not many people saw the rest which was disappointing. This might not have been avoidable however.

Our entire piece was based on audience member's reactions so here are some pictures of the notes we had written:

Some that really resonated with me:

"Bike rides"

"Eating sweets"

"Watching video cassettes"

"Summer 1989 in Cornwall with Dad" - This one is my favourite. I love the honesty and rawness of it. 

 "Playing with my sisters in the park"

"Making showjumps out of brooms + bricks + jumping them in the garden"

"Caravan on Ballantore beach"

 "Food"

These photos really show just how well the audience connected and interacted with our piece. I couldn't have been more pleased with how it went.

Working on this piece has helped me develop differently as an actor. I've realised the importance of playing and having fun, and how that can help with exploring something as complex as the brain. To think that taking a piece of art from the Tate and creating something that we did happened so quickly is mind blowing and I am really proud of what I helped create. It was a new experience and I hope to do something like this in the future. In my experience of acting I've never done anything like this so being able to create an installment instead of a play was really insightful and eye opening. The main thing I hope is that the viewers took something away from this piece, whether that be remembering a happy time or just having that thought cross their mind .