Being part of an audience

In the performing arts industry, there are a wide range of different acts and performances put together which in turn has various audiences. Being part of audience is key as it is the key component of performance as people observe the craft being exposed and portrayed on stage. 


The difference between a drama and music audience has a big difference, yet they share the same concept, to provide entertainment. However, a music performance can be flexible as the performer may often interact with that particular audience which in result is a quality of the artist’s social skills. On the other hand, drama on its own has different audiences too. For example, musical theatre often can have an interaction with an audience in the form of a pantomime. Although this is one which does have the audience in the form of an actor itself, musical theatre can have performances which involve live music but no interaction with the audience aside from minor comedy, if included. Back to drama acting itself, there is rarely any interaction with this type of performance as it is going on just on the stage, which can be related to Stanislavski's method of the fourth wall. Furthermore this means that the actors are in their own world whereas the audience is its own entity observing the events that occur on the stage.


From personal experience, music audiences can get quite loud as audience members often support those performing. However when it comes to drama performances, audience members tend to get bored easily and are rarely engaged since they could not relate to what was being portrayed on the stage which was Greek Theatre and Our Country's Good. Although actors and performers do experience this all the time, the beauty of the arts still remain and those audiences that can relate and those that enjoy this particular art.

Evaluation of Our Country's Good

With the research I had carried out on Stanislavsky allowed me to explore my character in my own interpretation and gave me a clearer understanding on what he saw was acting in his perspective. My interpretation of his moral is to see the role through my ideas and what was discussed with my group of what the scene was trying to convey. For example, one of his useful methods was objectives where each actor had to foresee what was the aim in the scene and that this had to be accomplished by the end. However this can be changed throughout the scene as it progresses.

Before the performance began, my group had discussed to make certain parts of our performance exaggerated due to the fact that we were last and wanted to make it as natural as possible in the sense of sustaining our roles. In other words to allow our roles flow throughout our characters and use emotional memory to remind us that although this scene takes place in history, we have a part of us inside the role making it as convincing as possible, For example, my character wanting to persuade the lieutenants to go ahead with the play, I had thought of a situation where in the National Citizen Service programme we had to learn about enterprise where in result had to convince a panel of judges to pick our ideas, instead of other groups.

During rehearsal, as my group had learnt our lines efficiently, we had experimented the scene with different accents and paces to see how they effected the scene. However, one factor that I keep doing is speaking to fast. So what I decided to do was say my lines slower during my day to day activities. In result of the final performance, it was beneficial although I did return speaking fast at certain points. So i need to work on avoiding this by constantly practicing tongue twisters and make sure I pronounciate every syllable in the words I say. In addition, I watching back at my performance, I need to allow moving around the stage naturally as at some points I think I thought that I should not turn my back to the audience, However to make the scene look as convincing as possible, I must not get that factor to one side.

In the performance before Our Country's Good, we had devised a piece with the dancers with our previous project, Greek Theatre. We were taught a short routine at the end of the piece where the movement was in synchronization with the recordings of our letters acting as the form of music. Personally with the time we had to prepare this whole piece, the whole piece looked beautiful as the transitions were smooth and timing was on point, For example, I was one of the first to cue the dancers to perform their piece during my scene and I had to make sure everyone was on stage by listening to footsteps to ensure everyone was there rather than having to look back. In result, the whole piece was brilliant and it was a pleasure to work in a different field of acting and in addition, work with a larger ensemble rather than just my own drama class. This benefits me as an actor as it is essential to get used to working with other people as that is very common in the performing arts industry. In conclusion we had met the expectations  of what we were set to achieve; to provide the abstract form of music of Greek Theatre to allow the dancers to produce their pieces in harmony.

However, what could be improved was the speed of people coming on, This is because due to the fact that the whole piece is very long and with the type of audience that we have currently tend to get bored easily so in turn transitions and cues to come on still need to be sharpened up. Other than that, the voices of the actors were good, projected well and the pieces of the dancers were very well rehearsed - in result looked graceful.

If we were to take the Our Country's Good piece in to next term, I would prefer the scenes to be interpreted in the groups' own way as they felt very repetitive, especially for Stephan's scenes where he had to perform it twice after Jireh had performed it once. As I was part of the audience, I had observed that some of the audience members were getting irritated and getting restless as these scenes went on. In result I would prefer other scenes or the scenes just interpreted in the groups' own way as it gives a sense of being unique rather than the same as others before. For example, with Segun and Tarkan's scene, which was the same as Isaiah, Jamie and my scene, was interpreted quite differently to ours due to the fact that we had 3 people in our group and allowed us to alter our one although we both had the same scene. In their scene, Segun conveyed his character as very dominant, whereas I got lost in my own knowledge - two very different interpretations of Captain Phillip but the same scene.

In my opinion, I have increased confidence on the stage with different types of audiences as previously, I had performed to my high school with similar environments. However, for the previous few months in college has taught me to always put a part of me in the role as this is what engages the audience the most which in result increased my confidence. This is because in previous performances I had taken part in was performing as part as a music production or talent shows which involved me. However, studying pure acting, especially in the past, gave me a chance to learn more about different types of entertainment in different era's but always put a part of me in that role. The audience is one of the biggest factors when it comes to performing, and the engagement with them builds a relationship between the actor and audience exposing if they are really enjoying the performance.

Essay

For the first half terms of the course we had studied Greek Theatre to learn about the structure and factors that were different from current drama performances. Furthermore we had performed ‘Oedipus’ where we had made our own interpretations on the play which had also tested our ability to adapt to a different type of genre in the drama industry. In the second term we had also read over the script was ‘Our Country’s Good’, which is another genre compared to Greek Theatre.

Background to Greek Theatre

What is Greek Theatre                                                                                                                              

In Greece, there were many religious festivals which were in need of theatres. In result, in almost every Greek City, many theatres were built in order to support these festivals.

What is the Theatre of Ancient Greece?

The Theatre of Ancient Greece was built in 700BC and is located in the City of Athens. It is a significant cultural, political and military powered theatre at this period of time and is part of a festival called Dionsysus.

What is the structure of the Theatre?

The Theatre of Ancient Greece consists of a number of buildings which are called theatrons and they were very large with open air structures on the slopes of hills. The structure of the Theatre is mainly structured in to three parts. One part is the orchestra, a large circular or rectangular area at the centre part of the theatre where plays, dancing, religious rites and acting take place. Another part of the theatre is the skene, which is used as backstage. Finally, the audience is considered to be the most important part of the theatre due to the fact that they may represent an actor as well.

Elements of Theatre of Ancient Greece

The Ancient Greek term for a mask is prosopon, in other words 'face' which was seen as a significant element in the belief of Dionsysus at Athens, which is mostly used in ceremonies and celebrations. Masks are often used when they are only a few actors in the performance. The actors are usually more than one character and are needed to use masks to portray another character. The actors in these plays that had tragic roles wore boots called cothurni that elevated them above other actors. Actors with comedic roles only wore a thin soled shoe called a sock. 

Playwrights
The Theatre of Ancient Greece had many playwrights which had provided the numerous theatres with life, such as Aeschylus. Aeschylus was born in 525 BC and died in 456 BC. The plays written consisted of The Persians (472 BC), Seven Against Thebes (467 BC), The Suppliants (463 BC), The Oresteia (458 BC) and Prometheus Bound. Within these performances consisted of different actors; one of them which were considered to be an actor was called a Chorus.

What is the Greek Chorus?

The Greek Chorus acts as thoughts aloud, fears and hidden secret, which can be portrayed through singing, dance and acting. A chorus can range in size from as little as 12 people to a mass of 50. They can be argued to be an actor in itself as it normally voices on dramatic action. In addition, they can be also be considered as the audience of the play due to the fact that there are reacting to anything significant event that occurs within the performance.

Masks

In Greek performances, masks are often use for particular purposes. One is that actors may have had to learn more than one character role, masks would have been a beneficial factor and in result we knew that we had to portray each of our characters well as some of us played the same characters. Furthermore we did not have masks so we had to ensure that the people in our class with the same characters had to portray the characters consistently to make their character more convincing to the audience that although it was a different person being the character, the personality of that character must be the same.

Themes in Greek Theatre

With the play we had been given to explore and perform, during the process of rehearsal, we had to make our interpretations on the type of performances that may have taken part back in Ancient Greek. For example, due to the monologue I had to learn as the chorus myself, the main theme of it was love and relationship, especially between Haemon and Creon. Throughout the scene I had taken part in was a feud between them and it revealed the rigidness in the relationship between father and son. In addition, this may also suggest that the closest people that take care of you may also be the ones that hurt you the most; this is shown in the scene where there is an argument between Oedipus and Creon where Oedipus calls him a traitor. Another clear theme of Greek plays which is shown in this scene as well is death and tragedy due to the fact that someone had been murdered at three cross roads.

Additional themes that can be suggested is identity as Oedipus did not know who he really was as he was told that he was found as a bay in Kithairon by shepherds and was raised by King Polybus and Queen Merope in the City of Corinth.

Our Country’s Good

For our second main production for what we had to explore the techniques of Stanislavski, we had to perform Our Country’s Good. Written in 1988 play by Timberlake Wertenbaker which was also later adapted to a novel called the Playmaker by Thomas Kenally.

The play shows the different classes between people back in the 1780's. It also arises various themes such as sexuality and punishment. My part was Captain Arthur Phillip who is considered to be intellectual, understanding and authoritative who has an obvious patience and understanding towards the convicts, especially Liz Morden.

With my group, we had been asked to discuss the objectives of our character with a brief read through of the scene. So far I had understood that Ralph, who in this scene wants to stop the play, however my character wants to convince him to go ahead. Ralph's objective is to discuss reasons why he wants to go ahead with stopping the play. We had then been asked to label every line with a particular action or emotion that would make that line unique to every other line. For example, when I say 'Are you afraid?’, then we had made the interpretation of the line is imitating the joker.

After seeing all of the different scenes and the other group’s interpretation of the text, I had come up with information about my character based on what others said about them. In result this gave me a clearer understanding on what my character may be off stage and what he does clearly has an impact on other scenes. From Stanislavski’s theory, this case clearly portrays that my objectives change as the scenes progress. However, although I am only acting in the last scene, the way others portray him as, I need to successfully sustain their interpretations of him in mine as well as my own.

Themes in Our Country’s Good

Humanity plays a big part as a theme in this play as it personally affects my characters thoughts, feeling and emotions towards convicts. This means that he has a belief that convicts have the ability to change, although having what they have done to result being a convict, they can still change. Between the animal is a human with feeling, thoughts and emotions as everyone else, everyone is equal. Another of Stanislavski’s techniques, Emotional Memory, I can closely relate to this as a personal opinion or view of mine is that I see everyone as equal and this plays a key role in making putting a part of me in Captain Phillip. This results in a more convincing character due to my character development and understanding of his views that may correlate with mine.

In the play is a play put together by Lieutenant Clarke and Second Lieutenant Ralph where the play offers a view of life through symbolic events, and how each of the different types of people presented. For example it can relate to us actors, that each of us take on a new ‘perspective’ by impersonating something we read in a script, using our own interpretations to portray our ideas extracted from the text we have been given. In other words it is almost like an illusion we created after the image society defined as being “perfect” in the eyes of the generation. In the play each of the cast members receive a portraying a part of their personality through their given character, that when combined will create harmony between the role and actor, and the ‘perfection’ of blending the two together, even if done for a few scenes.