EVALUATION & REFLECTION – House of Bernarda Alba

PART 2 (at least 1,000 words)

On this page you need to evaluate and reflect on the total production from beginning to end based on YOUR experience and engagement with it. Use your blogs to help you consider each stage of the production process and be constructively critical. Pay particular attention to your own roles, contributions and responsibilities throughout this whole process and how you have worked with others (collaboration):

• Research, Blocking and Rehearsing the show
• Rehearsing and Refining the show
• Polishing the show (including production elements – costume, props, set, lighting, sound & visuals etc.)
• Actual performance

Provide an overall summary of the learning you have taken from doing this project and identification of areas you will need to develop going forwards.

 Distinction     Accomplished and professional communication of perceptive analysis and interpretation, demonstrating clarity and sophistication in thinking and maturity in decision making to progress ideas.

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The house of Bernarda Alba was a spectacular play and it was a pleasure working with such a grate script and company including the directors.

Blocking and script
I felt in this proses I understood the script and the play as a hole, as I researched and studied the plot line this made it easy for me to become attached to the play and enjoy performing something I understood and could follow. This also meant I was able to learn the script successfully and understand my characters participation throughout the play; and if I had any questions on not understanding I would always ask for help. I enjoyed learning about the finding research to ad aped into my action to show a certain persona from my character. In the developing proses i would annotate and clarify all my script and blocking notes, this mean when it came to memorising and learning the script I could relay all my staging instead of going over everything again. However something I found particularly hard and got countless notes on from my directors was sometimes throw away lines. What I mean by this is I would sometimes not think of the meaning or simply get the meaning wrong behind some lines. This is something I would like to work on in my following performances for next time. One way I would improve is by merely looking over some of the smaller lines and thinking deeper about the intension behind it.

Production elements
Costume- playing the role of Adela meant I was the only character in the show that had to fully change costume ( three times). I had a green dress, my black morning dress and then a little white nighty for them end part of the production. The costume elements I found helped my a lot with my acting as I could get a feel for how my character would move and play about to show more of a childish element. Furthermore the 1930s style of the dresses meant this was an area for the audience to notice what era the show was set in.
Props- The most used props were the fans used by all the family this was to show an effect of the Spanish heat wave that the play was set in. Another prop used in the production was a prosthetic lamb the production arts made for us, this gave grate affect as from the audience it looked real from the ligaments “moveing” .
Set- The set was all abstract setting and provided us all to be on stage at all times. This was something difficult as it aquiered intense focus for a long duration at a time howeve in the end gave grate effect to an audience member. Another major significance was how the hole set flipped in the interval, this meant the exit and entrances changed so I had to learn all the changes. During the rehearsal process how I learnt this was placing scones on the floor so we could learn where to exit and enter from.
 sound- Sound was used a lot in this play, with something as small as “the last call to Rosemary” or the church bells to bigger things such as the gun shot at the very end.

Lighting- there wasn’t any extreme lighting and big spatments of Colour used as it was very naturalistic.

Rehearsing and refining
I defiantly found there were some confidence issues that I would also like to improve on for next time, this may have been down to the fact it was my first show hear, however this problem will most likely narrow the more experience and time I am hear. This problem was something I found crept up in my notes a lot “to keep performance energy up” as you can hear Birdie say at 2:10 of the finale notes recording. Also this would then make it easier to create a good mood change and reactions as this is something I found Adela did constantly, as she was continually in a different mood like a child. Continuing on from this, this is something I defiantly tried to work on over the three show nights. How I tried to undertake this was by running on stage to build energy or really finding certain points that was high and low and extremely expand on this like a child would yet again.

Team work
I think this was one of my favourite things about the show was how well I felt I work with my fellow cast members. I feel like I participated in all the warm ups and exercises and gave requests of warm ups this meant we was working together. I also took responsibility for meeting in rehearsals outside of seasons, for instance going with Mariana to Rob at lunch on Tuesday 9th of October and rehearsing the lift. Addition to this in general just taking the responsibility of turning up to seasons and making shore I’m keeping up with blocking.

performance
The performance and final show side of things I was really happy with it is something I am proud of accomplishing, there wasn’t any dreadful mistakes witch was a bonuses however there is still may areas I would like to precede to flourish into.
Other than elements I have already spoke about like line throwing and energy, some other parts that needed work towards the beginning (tech and dress run – first show), were space at some points in the production. For example in the lighting scene this is something that we changed after the first show; we decided that I would run about childish instead of sitting at the table. This was a note that I took on board quickly in my opinion as toward the end of the week I wasn’t getting notes on this. One other thing I had problems with at the beginning of the week were some diction problems typically my “T”. This was an adjustment I made quickly during the week as I successfully sorted this out by re-reading over my lines slower one going though each pronunciation. Whilst doing this exercise I discovered some other wording difficulty’s I was pronouncing wrong; for instance I was saying “sow” instead of “saw” and “I will be the mistress of married man” when it should be “I will be a mistress of a married man”. These where changes I made to improve on my diction.

Conclusion/Action plan
In conclusion I think this has been a good first show hear at con-EAST and it makes me exited for the future productions. I believe I took this show on reasonably well there were still areas that need work for certain but over all I was pleased with this outcome. However the thing I found most difficult and I am most disappointed on is the WordPress side of the production. I really enjoyed reaching the production and writing everything up however it’s down to long it took me to figure out. Also it’s a proses I have never been though before so I found it most challenging however next time I hope to exceed in that department more.