Dissocia Performance Evaluation

The Wonderful World of Dissocia- performance evaluation

On Thursday 16^th April, my cast performed The Wonderful World of Dissocia. This is a contemporary theatrical project that we have been working on since the beginning of this calendar year, January 2015.

After going through the standard rehearsal process of learning a monologue from the play, I was cast as Lisa. She is the main protagonist who suffers from a mental illness which leads her to a breaking down of her life, friendships and relationships. For the character Lisa, I had to do extensive research in to mental illnesses such as Dissociative Identify disorder, schizophrenia and bipolar. This really helped me to understand my character and set the scene for me about how she would feel in certain situations she is faced with in the course of the play. Another technique I used to gain a better understanding of the play was to read the script through before I found out my role in the play. This allows you to take in, understand and appreciate the happenings and literature without focusing on one role. This also allows you to go in to the process of finding out the casting with an open mind as you have had the chance to appreciate the personalities of the characters; this makes it easier to find out who you are going to play as well as you have a slight insight in to that character before the rehearsal process commences.

For me personally, the biggest challenge I had to face for Dissocia and the role I was given, Lisa, was learning her lines and applying these to develop my characterisation skills. This was because Lisa is more or less in every scene of the play, as she only leaves the stage three times over the course of the 2 hour play. For any actor, this amount of lines to learn is a challenge however this was the first main role I have been faced with, so this challenge was twice as daunting for me. Despite my doubts at the beginning, I managed to confidently learn all of my lines and it wasn’t as difficult as I had originally imagined. The technique I used was remembering my lines in chunks of conversation. For example, I would see the character, the Goat and think to myself, ‘what conversation do I have with him, what state of tension is Lisa at and what are her feelings towards the situation?’ This aided me because having structure to my line learning really helped me get in my head where I needed to say lines and when.

Performance day evaluation!

The Victoria scene is the establishing scene of the play where you first get a glimpse of Lisa’s character and Victoria, who in this scene, represents the wonderful and weird character’s Lisa will meet on her travels through Dissocia. I think the way Paris and I played our characters in this first scene really aided the audience in working out their personality and what they meant to the performance. Paris did this by making a confident and bold statement as Victoria, by wearing out of the ordinary clothes, speaking to Lisa about odd happenings and delivering these lines with such purpose. I did this by expressing concern and discomfort at the fact Victoria was in my home by using strong facial expressions and body language to do so. This suggested to the audience Lisa may be insecure and not fully welcoming to the idea of someone she hasn’t met before, in her home.

If I were to do this scene again, I would make the way I changed the pace of the scene more regular and fitting to the content. As I was nervous, I think I lost the sense of pace with this scene. In the ideal world, I would have perhaps been quicker to question and dictate what Paris was saying to me, rather than the approach I took, leaving a short amount of time to represent Lisa thinking about what was being said to her.

The following scene was the Lift scene which worked perfectly as it combined humour with anxiety. This was the first time the audience got to see some of the citizens of Dissocia and they made such a bold and certain statement, by wearing outrageous clothing in barbaric colours. This suggested to the audience how odd this so called land of Lisa’s lost hour was and set the audience up for how strange the rest of the play was going to be. The only thing I would change about this scene is to add in some lift music in the background. However for the actual performance, this was technically impossible as you aren’t able to play music and a voice over recording at the same time in the theatre. We did indeed have a song prepared for this scene however we couldn’t use it. We chose a slowed down non lyrics version of lady Ga Ga’s Poker Face. In rehearsals, we felt this fit in well to the awkward atmospheric feeling and went well with the head bobbing being done by the lift passengers, excluding Lisa.

The following scene was the Guard scene. Now this was one of my favourite scenes to perform in Dissocia as the two guards were my favourite characters from the play. Jess and Max played my guards and I think they did a fantastic job of balancing their ‘insecurity’ professionalism with humour in their line delivery. The guard’s lines include a fair amount of swearing. With any piece of theatre, swear words have to be used correctly and delivered with the correct amount of passion and will otherwise they simply don’t work. In this case, the worked perfectly! This was because Jess and Max used these words to express what their character was feeling about the situation. This scene got a big audience reaction as I believe the context the guards were swearing in, to express annoyance towards themselves and other, the audience could relate to in their lives. The whole comedy element was the most effective factor of this scene as this brought the ideas and themes together.

If I were to do this scene again, there isn’t much I would change as I personally felt it went well. The only thing I would alter about the way I performed it, would just be to loosen up and fall in to Lisa as a character. I feel if I had stopped pre-empting the next line or movement and relaxed in to the role more, then the scene wold have been idea. The reason I automatically did this was because this scene requires a very accurate delivery of lines. In certain parts, if you say a word in a line out of place, you could be in danger of messing up the whole chronologies of the scene up.

The Oath taking scene was an establishing part of Dissocia as the audience realise just how realistic and series this place really is. In this scene, the audience are made aware of ideologies that Dissocia holds and how these are put in to place. This is of course done with hints of humour, as the Oath taker is quite a character, wearing a yellow clown costume and having a humorously mixed personality. What I felt went well in this scene, was the relationship and interactions between Lisa and the Oath taker. Their relationship is odd as the Oath taker is made out to be this highly respected figure in Dissocia however on a couple of occasions, Lisa manages to prove her wrong in what she’s saying. Another element that I felt really worked in this scene was the fact we had the rest of the cast, kneeling around Lisa and the Oath taker as the Oath taking was taking place. This gave the scene a more official feeling as the Dissocia citizens seemed really interested in what was happening.

Something that didn’t go so well about this scene and that I would differently was that there was an award pause after the first Dissocia attack took place. This was simply just that we as a cast collectively lost our place, which is easily done when there is so much to think about what with lines, characterisation and stage movements. We managed to recover from this by acting like we were still shocked and getting ourselves back together from the attacked and I made a comment about it to fill the space. To improve this, we should have rehearsed this transition a couple more times than we did as I think in the rehearsal process, we were more focused on other scenes that needed more of our attention and time.

In a transition between major scenes I have my phone call monologue to Vince and a song/rhyme about my thoughts towards the meaning of an hour. I feel that my monologue went well as it almost acted as a narration to the audience, informing them of what was going on in the play as it is very advanced and can be difficult to understand. I feel I delivered my monologue well however if I had the chance to redo this I would and I would slow it right down to ensure the audience could fully take in what was being said. My rhyme about an hour called ‘What’s an hour’ was basically again an aid to ensure the audience understood what was going on Lisa’s head about Dissocia and how this affected her. I saw the rhyme as a sort of thought process which she happened to be speaking, saying aloud o the audience. My target was to work on the delivery of this as in rehearsals I had been doing it incorrectly. However on the night, I feel it was the best I had done it to date as I really thought about slowing it right down and saying the lines as if I was thinking them rather than actually speaking to someone. Thinking about that, helped me deliver it in the correct fashion.

The next scene was the Goat scene, which towards the end, contains material which needs to be faced with maturity and respect. Lisa is almost raped by the goat, who represent the character Vince, who here suggestively may have raped her or abused her in the past. I feel that this scene went well because Henry and I really pushed ourselves in to this as it wouldn’t have worked half-heartedly. We had to make this seem as life like as possible and I did this by letting out an uncomfortably ear piercing scream as he approached me. He made his actions discrete to cover the uncomfortable nature. I feel that Jane entered the stage at just the right time as well, this added to helping the scene not to get too intense and explicit for the audience. The following part of this scene sees Jane taking Lisa’s position for her. You don’t see anything; we staged it so the goat and Jane go off stage for the rape to take place. By only hearing the suggested noises, I felt this was really effective and a powerful source for the audience to feed off of as at the same time on stage, Lisa has a mental break down. The lights started to change also, which changed the atmosphere. This really worked as the noises and Lisa’s mental state worked well together as this suggested well that she is mentally unstable. If I could do the scene again, I would make my character more afraid of the goat and I would work more on the relationship between the goat and Lisa in the build up to the sexual violation. I would do this as I feel I could have added more emotion through my body language towards the goat and what he was saying. I would do this by using the space in a more effective manor, perhaps by walking around more when delivering lines and being livelier when trying to accuse the goat of doing things he actually hadn’t such as stealing Lisa’s purse and fitting a mortise lock on her door.

The Jane scene, I felt went quite well. We did a good job of incorporating the comical side of the scene, Lisa and Jane repeatedly going round the stage in circles on a child’s tricycle with the sterility of killing people with a bomb. I felt Amber, who played my Jane did a really good job of portraying her character to the audience by putting emphasis on certain words to build up this wall of authority only to be broken down when her and Lisa are on the bike. This scene turns in to a comical mess of vulnerability and drunken talk. This worked well and the audience really enjoyed seeing yet another of Lisa’s many sides. If we were to do this scene again, I would again relax in to the role of Lisa and play her in more of a childish and drunken manor perhaps as the idea of incorporating drink in to the scene as such a big element was a last minute idea. I would do this by slurring my words on more of a high level and possibly raising my voice louder than I did.

The final scene of the first act was the Britney and Lost property scene, which contained the most humour out of all of the Dissocia scenes. This is because all of the cast are present on stage and the characters you see are all individually comical. Something that I feel went well with this scene was the pace. Everyone worked really well together to stop Lisa from asking any questions or getting any answers about where her hour may be. Each individual character really went over the top on their movements and noises to create an all-round humorous effect. Without this effort, the scene would lose its scene of meaning and purpose, to stop Lisa from finding her hour. Also, max, who played Biffer; I felt used strong characterisation and delivered the role of Biffer the best I had seen him do to date. This was because he used props and large body movements to represent his clumsy nature, another factor which is used to distract Lisa from finding her hour. If we were to do this scene again, all I would say to improve on was, personally for me, to be sharper on three of my lines towards the end of this scene. These three lines were delivered towards the Dissocian citizens, giving them the message that Lisa needed to find her hour. The lines were very similar and all came in a row. To improve on this, I would have spent more time revising these in detail, ensuring I knew the order they went in perfectly.

The second act of the show was very different, seeing Lisa waking up in a dull hospital room, with doctors, nurses and visitors coming in and out. One strength I felt I have personally in this act was the way I played Lisa in her fragile and angry moments. These lines and scenes were to be delivered correctly and closely thought about as acting as someone who has a mental illness can be very challenging, as you need to be accurate on the way you perform it. I felt I delivered a strong performance here as I did my research in to how Lisa wold have reacted to certain situations she was put through in this act. I used techniques such as swearing, raising my voice and making violent movements to portray Lisa’s emotions. I feel the way Lisa acts, suggests more about her true feelings than the words she says therefore I found a way to show this, through visual body language.

In this act, the sound team didn’t play a certain piece of music for a second time, where it should have been. Therefore, if I were to do this scene again, I would ideally have liked this to be included. It wasn’t a major problem as I only had a phone as a prop for the scene we missed out therefore I could easily hide the fact this happened. In fact, it happened to fit in fairly well with the content anyway.

Overall to conclude my evaluation, I am very happy with the way Dissocia was performed and how brilliantly my class mates and I used our characterisation knowledge and skills to build a fantastic piece of contemporary theatre. I felt I did the role of Lisa justice through interpreting her condition and personality in a specific way, factored by my research and personal way of acting. If we were to perform Dissocia again, it is only small and slight adjustments I would make as the majority was as I had imagined. I have learnt a lot from this play, from the truth about mental illness to how strangely and wonderfully my class mates and I can bring words from a script on paper, to life on stage through intense concentration and effort. All of our efforts paid off in the end, as we produced a really interesting, apposing and humorous piece of contemporary theatre. I couldn’t be more proud of our achievement here!

 

Thursday 16th April- Day rehearsals and Performance Day!

Today was the day of my casts performance of Dissocia! Yesterday was Izzy's cast and they did an amazing job and it all came together so well on the night. Watching the show from an audience perspective was a great opportunity to see how the other cast performed certain aspects of the play and this really helped me to develop my character, Lisa and how I play her.

Today, our cast ran through act 1 and 2.We did this to ensure we had no worries or doubts when it came to the performance this evening. As a whole cast, our main concern was the Britney scene and which order characters are meant to deliver their lines. Because of this, the Britney scene was the first scene we ran through. this run went fairly well however we still had some issues we needed to iron out at this stage. The main problem was that everyone needed a reminder of cue lines and when to move arounf the stage. The problem wasn't so much with the actual lines we have, because everyone was prompt on their lines however not so prompt on their cue lines. This made the scene loose pace, which is one of the most imporant factors of the scene as the idea is to portray that everyone involved is trying their hardest to stop Lisa from finding her hour. To improve on this, we ran through this scene again in the full run we did later on in the day. We ensured this was the focus of our rehearsals as this was the scene that needed the most attention as it is the scene where the audience start to understand the meaning and motives of this act.

Tuesday 14th April- cue to cue rehearsal

Today, we conducted a cue to cue rehearsal. This is mainly for the advantage of the technical side to the performance however also gives actors a chance to get a feel for the performance and what it will be like on the stage with the lighting, sound and effects in place.

As our class are double casted, Izzy’s cast did act 1 for the cue to cue and my cast took act 2. Each cast watched one another to ensure we could visually remember what our character was doing on stage. My production role for Dissocia, is lighting therefore I sat at the top of the staging with the lighting and sound team to direct and aid them in the lighting plan for Dissocia.

One of the most effective sections of the lighting and sound that we worked out today is during the Jane, when an explosion sounds and red light follows this. The way the tech team have intertwined these two elements really work with the dialogue being delivered on stage as these combined, really give off a sense that people are being bombed.

Working out the lighting for act 2 was the focal point of my learning today. For act 2, we are using houselights to convey an uncomfortable hospital atmosphere for the audience. Now, as house lights don’t take up any technical time as such, they do take up cue time and that was what today was about. So, for act 2, the technical side of things was more focused on cue lines for the lights to be turned on and off. This was much needed for me from an acting point of view as my cues for when to make certain gestures and get out of bed I feel, were much needed to be recapped.

Monday 13th April- show week

Today, we used the time in Lena's lesson to rehearse act 2 of Dissocia. This is the act we have done the least work on because it is fairly straight forward and doesn't require a lot attention as the content and happenings of the act are simple, limited and don't require a great amount of effort to block.

I found today really helped me to develop my characterisation and understanding of act 2 as this is something we have not spent much time on. It was also helpful for me to watch the other cast as this helps me develop how I play my character by feeding off the work of the other class. Even the little details of how the other cast perform certain parts of scenes; One example of this is that I have learnt and picked up on is how Izzy lies down on the bed. This seems like a minor detail and of not much significance to the play however I have learnt to lye on my side instead of back, making it easier for the nurses to nudge me awake at certain points. Not only do I find watching the other cast beneficial for the small details however for the larger details also such as how to deliver certain lines and how they portray certain themes and ideas to the audience.

The thing I found that went well today was firstly the level of team work our class rpoduced. We are all very supportive of each other and the other cast and I find that this makes things a lot easier in the process as positive relationships allows situations to work out and character intraction to flow nicely.

Secondly, I found that today having Katie, our learning mentor, at the fron of the class reading out stage directions to the cast on stage helped me to refresh my memory on where I need to be on stage at what time. I found that the second time my cast ran through the secondhalf, that I knew these directions and was easily able to recall my movements and actions, allowing for a more performance ready piece of theatre to be shaping.
My target for the show is to put a stop to a bad habit I have fallen in to in the Dissocia rehearsal process. This is slightly changing certain lines I deliver. This is a bad habit because if I happen to miss out an important/ending of my line which gives the character who has the next line a cue, this could sabotage the whole flow of the scene. I will put a stop to this habit this week by reading over all of my lines a few times in a thorough fashion and rehears as much as I can with my cast.

Wednesday 8th April- Dissocia Easter run through

Today was the first time that both casts had completed a full run of act 1 with no stopping. I felt that by doing this, I now know that the performance date of next Thursday 16^th April (for my cast) and Wednesday 15^th for Izzy’s cats, is perfectly achievable whereas before today, I was starting to get worries as we hadn’t get managed a full run with no glitches. By running the whole performance, it highlighted to me areas of the script I need to refine and go over to ensure I am totally line confident. The area I need to focus on here is towards the end of act 1, where Lisa finds out all of the citizens of Dissocia have been trying to keep her hour from her. I will go over these between now and Monday, the start of show week, until I am line perfect and 100% confident on my queue lines.

Another element of the performance we worked on today was the logistics of the Jane scene, where Lisa and Jane have to use children’s tricycle to move around the stage on as if they were flying in an aeroplane. When we ran this, it turned out to be more challenging than we originally first expected as the tricycle is uncomfortable when two people are sitting on it and takes a lot of power to move. There is no real way to solve this issue, we just have to bite the bullet and go for it whilst performing. By doing this, the scene also adopts a humorous affect, visually which ties in with some of the comments made by both characters on stage.

Another positive that came out from today was having the ability to go over our entrances and exits and queue lines. I see this as a vital part of any performance rehearsal process as if these are under rehearsed or poorly revised, the whole performance would fall apart and not work out. Personally as I play Lisa, my queue lines were my main focus out of these two elements as I have very few times throughout the play when I leave the stage. I remain on stage for the main bulk of the performance. I see this as effective because it almost feels like with Lisa present at most times, that Dissocia and the world she has invented is working and moving around her, metaphorically in her mind. This cleverly links in to the fact that Dissocia is in fact not real and this adds to the clues given off by the content of the performance to the audience to make this assumption.

All in all, I found today a helpful aid in our rehearsal process as it gave us a chance at a full run through for our own cast and also gave us the chance to watch the other cast run their show. This is a useful way of rehearsing due to the fact when you watch the other cast; you can pick up techniques they are using in their show which you believe may work in yours. On the other hand, when watching you get a chance to see how the other cast have a different perspective on some scenes and elements, allowing you to see some ideologies and ideas in a different light.

Dissocia- Lisa's song 'What's an hour'

Here is the links to two potential backing tracks, copyright free, that I will be singing my version of Lisa's song; What's an hour.

The third link is the original backing track which is meant for the song to be sung to however I may in fact sing the song to the second link as I feel this is more suited to the way I am playing and portraying Lisa; as a young independent woman with a passion for great things in life.

1)   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=em1dCnFNrbE

2)   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULsJZovo3r0

3)   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuqSfftaBo8

Thursday 26th March- Dissocia, run through

Today was our final lesson and rehearsal of Dissocia before the end if this term, Easter. Therefore this was a chance to clear up any worries or concerns we may have had before the lesson about the play and run through scenes we know need doing.

The main scene we focused on was the Oath taking scene. This has been staged and work on previous to this however we all felt it was the major scene in the play we needed to tweak. After we had improved parts of the scene by re arranging characters on stage and changed slightly the way they delivered certain lines, the scene automatically became more powerful and meaningful as a play on theatrical devices can really improve the way some things are portrayed.

The element that went really well for me today was how I have developed my characterisation of Lisa. My interpretation of her as a character has developed out of her stereotypical traits and has turned in to something very raw and fresh. I have decided to play Lisa as a young woman, who bottles up her emotions. She is a strong woman on the outside however underneath, she is very fragile as she is domestically abused by her boyfriend, Vince. I think I portray her character well as I play her with confidence through the way I deliver her lines to certain characters through out the play however I show her more fragile side by dimming her response and dropping her tone of voice in reply to some questions such as her reply to "Now has anyone other than yourself touched or stroked your hair today". I reply with a distant "No however use a negative tone of voice as which to suggest she is disappointed in the fact no one has touched her hair recently. This suggests rejection in her relationship with Vince, pointing towards an unhappy life.

Today highlighted to me that I need to go over my lines at the end of act 1 as I am the least confident on those. I believe when I have done this, I will be confident towards the whole of act 1.

Friday 27th March- singing- Cats

Today in our singing lesson with Kim, our year 12 musical theatre class had a joint lesson with the year 13 class who are performing Cats the musical as their main project piece for their unit. We Asa class in the year below are using this as a part of our singing and dancing unit.

By watching an extract of one of the songs from the musical really helped me to grasp the atmosphere and the classes image for the performance. This was helpful as I am going to be involved in a dance number and singing number and has now given me the correct insensible as to how to perform my roles. Their level of work ethic and the amount of effort they have out in to the piece they performed to us was inspirational and really set the standard as to where we should be aiming for next year as second year musical theatre students.

In the practical side to the lesson, we collectively learnt how to split a song into part harmonies. We were split in to two groups, I was put in to the harmony group which contained mainly year 13 students, only Taylor, Ashley and I from the year 12 class. The harmony and base line sounded really professional once placed together after we had practised in our separate groups.

'The Pekes And The Pollicles' is the title of the song our class have choreographed, learnt and will be dancing to in the musical performance. This song is all about how the journalists and paparazzi of the dog world are keen to get pictures and information from the cats staring in a current fashion show. For this, we also have to sing some parts of the song whilst dancing. This will take tremendous breathe control and stamina as singing and dancing together is a skill required to make high class musical theatre performers. 

Only Sophie, Katrina and John are singing along side us in this number aptherefore we went to sing with them and Kim in a music room today to sort out who will be singing which parts and how these will be done. It had already been decided that Sophie will be singing the main bulk of the song. Her voice is amazingling professional and really compliments the song and the lyrical meaning behind it. Our class as the journalist and paparazzi dogs is to bark and sing some of the verse and bridge lines. We are doing this due to the fact we need to vocally represent to the audience that we are in fact playing the character of dogs and how this related to the cat walk show. We have to sing the barking parts with aggression and passion behind them as the dog characters are fighting against one another for the best picture and information from the cats. 

I feel today was a very beneficial lesson as it showed me where I am going with the idea of the cats performance and how to play my character. By watching the performance from the year 13s, this also guided me through how I need to perform my character as they were certain if the way they were to perform their's.