Political Protest Evaluation

On the 25th of November myself and the rest of my political protest group including Joshua Baxter, Joshua Katembela and Kim Mccuaig, decided that we would perform a protest about the sexualisation of men and women.

As actors we were representing men in the media with the term that all men should be muscular, tanned and 'fit'. We had a actor performing as Sex slave which was Josh and two actors being described as "just an object" which was played by me and Kimberly playing the role of  ‘Owner’ in which she had control over all three actors and their bodies. Kimberly was the only female in the group and the idea of the performance was that Kim owned a company that had ownership over men like how in some countries men have ownership over women and use women as sex slaves and sell them also known as Sex Trafficking. The performance also included foul imagery and abuse.

I played the role of a man around 18-20 and who was owned by a woman and was just one of the many men that she owned but i was just a object, people such as the audience could do anything they'd like to me which included sticking, drawing and writing things over my body and they could have bought me if they pleased. The level of professional execution was high, I believe we did it in a gentle yet shocking manner. Provoking lots of different emotions in the audience/spectators we conducted ourselves professionally and made sure we got our point across.

I think our piece made an impact on the audience because it wasn’t the women that were out in that situation as we see every day, by making it a male based piece made it even more shocking because people are not familiar with seeing this on a regular basis. For example when we were performing one of the audience members said to one of the actors that “she felt sick and sad for the boys” and she was asking if the boys were okay, another person said that they were “honestly shocked and had never put themselves in a situation of empathy for woman in porn".

The weaknesses of the piece was that it was a little unorganised but that was partly due to the environment we chose for our piece, also we were restricted by the law meaning we couldn’t show pornographic images so on our behalf we should have been more prepared and less reliant on media to create a point and expressed the point we wanted to ourselves.

The strengths I felt were that we had a strong group dynamic and that came across in the piece we really felt strongly about the issue and wanted to do something that could really open people’s eyes about the issue and make people empathy’s with the situations that we were portraying I felt it was also very successful because at the moment in society I feel as woman understand more how it feels to be in that position and then replacing it with men then meant men felt what woman feel and this made the piece relatable to both sexes which was very successful. Overall I felt it was a successful message we were informing people about but also as a piece of theatre or performance art it also applies and is successful.

PERFORMANCE EVALUATION:

'THE MOST HORRIC'

On Wednesday 10th December we had our final performance of The Most Horrific by Vivienne Franzmann.

We rehearsed The Most Horrific. We divided into two groups one playing the roles A and B , and the other playing the roles C and D. Each group chose our own lines from the charcters amongst their group.

The idea behind our production is that C and D are pitching ideas for TV/entertainment projects to A and B who are disinterested media executives who have a superficial interest in contemporary news stories which they discuss languidly and with no detail or genuine engagement or understanding.

Throughout the day of the performance we rehearsed the play descussing successful points and things that needed to be worked on. D+C's where asked to slow down on lines as the important words we said sometimes got lost, we delivered our lines in a clear pronounced and slowed down way but still had the underlining quick pace of the D+C character which we decided to stick to because it expressed the emotions of characters D & C's. A+B's where asked to speak up and still have full energy even though their character portrayal is relaxed and dismissive.

The performance itself was successful as I feel we took on all the unsuccesssful points from rehearsals and run throughs and made sure we rectified them for the real thing. There were certain aspects that I felt made the performance successful such as the high energy level, the volume of vocals and also projection. These where all aspects that lacked in the rehearsals but everyone made sure they where all 100% there in the final performance. Things that went unsuccessfully was that the Ds were standing in clumps or in lines instead of spreading out and filling the space. This potentially effected the audiences view as it would have obstructed them from the performance or would have been just visually boring for them. This was one of the weaker aspects of my performance as although I did move around the stage a lot I did sometimes find myself in a clump or straight line. One of the strongest moments of the whole performance I feel was the gradual getting up and leaving of the A’s & B’s at the end, this was a really important moment of gestus during the show, as it outlined how much the A’s & B’s where uninterested in real gripping news stories pinpointing the reality of the media. The walking away also was there to show how we walk away from problems and that although we may be able to walk away a lot of people can't.

We also developed short scenes that highlighted four of the stories referred to in The Most Horrific:

·         Force feeding in Guantanamo
·         Yarlswood detention centre
·         Refugees on Christmas Island
·         Treatment of gay Ugandans  

Using a variety of articles related to these issues scenes were devleoped which were shared and critiqued by the
 the group and developed further.
These scenes were performed as an 'opener' to the whole show and they were performed outside of 'The Space'.