How did the group plan for a range of audience responses? Essay

by our performance we wanted to convey a series of responses from the listening ground around the many divergent stepings you can experience if you were trapped. As the upshot didnt really allow for the dynamics you can bring on with humour, we had to modify the audience to noeticly separate their emotional response for each injection, in allege for them to feel a new emotional experience. We did this by cautiously planning the emotional voyage we wanted to take them on, by showtime easing them into feeling scared with the kidnapping gibe, and eventually taking them to the paranoia feature in the final scene.We even monitored how the audience responded to the performance by petition them to fill in a movementnaire. In the first set of scenes which revolved around the kidnapping of a teensy girl, we wanted the audience to be shocked at the fact that this can happen in gigantic daylight. We thitherfore set the scene at the end of a schooldays day, with the kidnap per stood in audiences view watching the little girl. This immediately creates unbelief within the audience as they know something is going to happen. When the girl behind follows her and reluctantly holds her hand we wanted the audience to feel shock and helplessness.The wink part of this scene was a news report on the kidnapping. This scene was one that we planned to be short, yet grasp the audiences attention and desex them realise the seriousness of the situation. Though this scene was saucer-eyed with its lighting and no sound effects, it was evident that the audience felt concerned. iodin of the scenes where we intended to emotionally shock the audience was mentioned many times through the questionnaires. It was the scene in which the mother interacts with the audience. For this we intended to role a Brechtian technique of breakout the fourth wall, and mingling with the audience.We wanted her tone of voice to be very screechy and powerless to shock the audience into really accept that she has lost her child, and the use of close eye contact makes them feel scant(p) to help. The audience said that they felt disturbed by closeness of the interaction between Laura (the mother) and themselves. We wanted to continue the Brechtian theme through the use of placards, as they create visual captions that interrupt and summarize the action. We planned to shout at the audience to make them feel uncomfortable.Another change is made when we rack up some loud and fast drum and bass music, and in corporate flashing lights. We thought that by creating something visually stimulating, we could make the audience feel vulnerable. Using physical theatre, we as a group wanted to physically represent being trapped. Charlotte (who played the girl being kidnapped), and then violently shaking and moving whilst Charlotte plan of attacks, yet fails to escape and reach out. We planned to turn on an emotion of vulnerability and powerlessness exactly in such a way, th at it would shock the audience.The use of physical theatre explicitly allows the audience to very see the scene, and leaves it open to interpretation. Also, the anorexia scene was a mixture of both reality with the character of Sophie and surrealism, in that Charlotte is physically representing anorexia. This in its own right should make the audience uncomfortable and nervous. Like Antonin Artauds theatre of cruelty, we wanted to create a character thats physical representation would shatter the mistaken reality and disturb the audience. That is how we came up with Annas character.However we firstly wanted the audience to feel sorry for Sophie (the character with anorexia, played by me), so we gave her a monologue in which she gradually became weaker as she was talking. This use of breaking the fourth wall by addressing the audience was intentional, as it would create an refer connection with the audience. I started off with a confident tone of voice, but gradually got quieter and my body language more timid as I came to the end of my monologue. We thought that the use of monologues would help to engage the audience.The emotional journey we planned to take Sophie on was to give her a range of emotions, so the scene didnt become dull and lose audience interest. The contrasts of the cheering at Anna, and then running away crying, were an attempt to take the audience on the same journey I was experiencing. When Sophie collapses at the end, it signifies her physical and mental exhaustion, that again we wanted the audience to feel after watching the performance. The exiguity scene was used, in order to show the egoishness within our society, and how we turn a blind eye to what is right in front of us.We wanted to use physical theatre to make the piece quite abstract. In order to do this we again thought a Brectian technique would work well, as we didnt want the audience to be spoon fed there emotions. This method of distancing ourselves from the audience wa s a great way of allowing the audience to question what they are seeing. We wanted them to create there own interpretation of the scene and how they really felt about the issue of poverty. As there were no words, we used music which we felt embodied a lot of feeling. At one point in the music, the rhythm changed.We decided this would be a good point to interact with the audience, so we looked up and stared at them. This was an attempt to single out the audience members, in a way as if to say you can change this. We also repeated the scene again but with masks. We wanted to represent the facelessness of society, and how people are too self involved to see what is going on around them. However, after practice the questionnaires we had asked the audience to fill in, many of them wrote down that they didnt understand the scene, particularly when with the masks.We maybe could concord thought this scene through a little more, and perhaps not have used the masks as it just seemed to un tune the audience, which we did not want to do. In conclusion, the groups plan for a range of audience responses was really dependant on what type of technique we wished to follow. As we have studied many practitioners and their theories we felt that using a variety of different acting styles and techniques, we could plan and create our desired audience responses. However, we also had to go through the genre and context of the scene, so that we could create the response that we wished the audience to have.