Final Performances

St Philomenas:

Our first performance was at St Philomenas Catholic High School for Girls. At first I was worried how the teachers might react to the themes of our performance, however I needn't have worried. The school welcomed us and we were shown to where we would be performing. The space was large and so the group would have to project their voices.

The show began and it seemed to be going rather well. I did notice however. that because a lot of the scenes involved people sitting on the floor I saw some members of the audience at the back straining to see what was going on. As I was sitting on the side, I thoughts that the cast could have spoken louder, but I'm not sure if that was just because I was at the side and maybe the audience (who were sitting in front) could actually hear.

During the question and answering session the group was very responsive. We got interesting answers back, one of which involved one of the girls getting a round of applause for her answer about the media. I was quite surprised at their responses as I thought that teenagers wouldn't want to answer questions in front of people they don't know.

The second act went well, even though Colm did forget to put the note on Tom's desk, but we improvised and I went on and placed it and it made sense as it looked like I was playing his mother. I was still nervous about the drugs scene and I wondered how everyone would react, and although there were a few gasps, it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. The party scene seemed to be the best it had been, which was good and I think it definitely makes a difference when you are performing to an audience and not just rehearsing.

The group reacted well to the small comedy bits we added in. A lot of them laughed at the SnapChat part as well as the Tashan and Faith fight. This showed that they could relate to what we had created and that our performance was for the correct target audience. We performed our show to the year 10's as the year 11's had mocks that week. Overall I thought the first performance went very well and I'm happy that we have been invited back in January to perform for the year 11's as well.

Harris Crystal Palace:

Our second performance was at Harris Crystal Palace, and even though our first performance went so well, I wasn't expecting this to go as good because I assumed the students wouldn't be as responsive to the questions we were going to give them. We were shown into the drama room where we would be performing. They'd already set up chairs and the exam tables for us, and they said that the white board would be on its way. We were told that we would be performing to year 9 and 10 students. This was the lower end of our target audience. I didn't think that the year 9's would be able to relate to our piece as they may be too young.

The audience this time, as I thought, were not as responsive as our first. They hardly laughed at the comedy parts and if they did, it only seemed like a snigger. Only a few of them spoke during the question and answer session, which wasn't very useful, and yet they all put some really interesting comments on their feed back forms. In my opinion this performance was not as successful as our first, and it made me feel slightly disheartened at the fact that that was our final performance and it didn't seem to go as well as we hoped it would.



To conclude, I am very proud of what my group and I have achieved throughout this project. Some of the rehearsals didn't go too well and yet we still managed to get two good performances. All of us have put a lot of hard work into the show and I think it shows.