After listening to modern day songs, we noticed that we were singing these lyrics that made absolutely no sense, and we had never even noticed before, or really properly listened to the lyrics. We aim to pick these lyrics out of the correct songs, and fit them into context suited for each given character. This scene is set at a therapy meeting, were each character is there with a problem of their own.
This post is talking about the process of reconstructing this scene, especially after we received feedback from a fellow group.
After our first preview of this scene, we received feedback that the audience were given too much at the beginning. For instance we started out with each of us saying a line from a song, within the context of our characters story, but these lines were from a very popular song, that most people would know of. Instead of the audience understanding our intention from the very beginning, we needed subtle clues suggesting that we might be saying song lyrics. This allowed us to mess with the audiences’ heads, they might begin to think we are speaking song lyrics, and then not, questioning what is actually going on. After this feedback, we decided to work on the points given by our audience. We wanted to make this piece follow a similar structure of a song, to start off casual and collective, (quite naturalistic), and then reach that dramatic musical arch, (were our character forget about all social mannerisms, getting carried away with the moment).
After these improvements had been made, our feedback suggested that we had built the song up more. For instance, we have a section where we all loose control, and say our lines over each other, this was the remix or mash up within the piece. At this point we had a range of detailed characters, that contributed to a well rounded story. However the audience found that the piece dipped half way through, perhaps because we needed a rhythm, an arc. Furthermore it came across that we were overacting the whole way through. Although this is within our (Brechtian) style of performance, it was too much, we couldn’t all be extreme, larger than life characters’ throughout the whole scene, as it confused the audience on where their attention should be. They felt that it made the piece un-relatable, they couldn’t connect to it, partly because as human beings everyone is normal at some point. These characters’ were so extreme that the audience felt distanced and would rather have felt immersed within the piece, therefore this section lost its touch with reality.
From the previous weeks feedback we chose to focus on the characters, however after delivering these improvements the audience suggest that we should rather focus on the shape of the piece and how the audience should engage with it, to prevent further humor being lost. This isn’t our only goal for our next stage of progress, but we aim to find the right moment to come out of character and work as an orchestra.
Some Things to Think About 
- Make sure we are characters that the audience wants to spend time with.
- What is the world that we’re creating for the audience?
- The aesthetics of what we’re doing.
- How can we enhance the scene with set?
- How can we make it flow like a structure of a song?