Final Evaluation.
My FMP was a shadow musical theatre performance about experiencing grief, and working through the “Five Stages of Grief.” Working with my two peers, Dan Edginton and Bluebell Gilmartin we wrote, recorded, mixed and mastered two original songs along with 3 covers, each song we felt had a strong connection to a stage of grief. We created a screen out of a piece of fabric to act as our shadow screen, similar to that of a puppet show but on a much larger scale. Finally, we prepared, promoted and performed in the show we wrote, the date for the performance being the 26th of May 2022.
Firstly, evaluating the main body of the project I believe many things went well and showcased our hard work well, however other parts didn’t go as well. One of the first things I think went well was our communication, throughout the project Dan, Bluebell and I kept in constant communication via a snapchat group chat and shared documents with one another with a shared Onedrive file. Not only did we keep competent communication with one another but also with tutors, the theatre technician, Dan Fox, who we were working with closely during the construction of our screen, as well as tutors from other departments such as Art and Design when sourcing fabric and creating props. Keeping constant and informed communication with people you are working with outside your group is essential, and in the future when contacting venue owners etc concise and reliable communication will be practice and crucial. Communication within the group is not only is an example great team working, it also aided us with things like decision making. A notable decision we made on the group-chat was deciding a date for our show, our tutor, Alex, had offered us an extension until the 6th of June so we could do our show the week after we came back for half term. We had a long conversation on our snapchat group chat via voice messages discussing if we thought this extension would aid us or create problems in the future. In the end we decided not to use the extension for our show, as we had decided together after discussing positives and negatives that having a week before where we couldn’t see each other as regularly would damage our productivity. A main negative that was discussed was the lack of productivity when we weren’t regularly together, an example of that being half term.
Half term spanned from April 11th to April 24th, we had timetabled this week to be working independently except one day where we went to the fabric shop to buy the fabric for our show. Other than the day we got fabric I spent most of my half term working at my part time job or procrastinating my work, which resulted in me not finishing the research paper I had planned to do. When reflecting upon this week in my reflection diary I suggested a solution to this would’ve been planning each week out in a weekly timetable. Which I then implemented later in my project, however if I were to do a project like this again from the beginning I would plan each week out. Despite these issues, using my reflection diaries I developed my approach for each week, as in the last five weeks of the project I made a weekly timetable which I made the Sunday before which went more in detail about what I needed to do each day. Making these weekly instead of all at once also allowed me to adapt to change well. If I hadn’t completed a task from week before, I referred back to my original timetable from my proposal and create a plan for the next week so I could finish that task, even if this meant my day would carry on another hour or two. Being able to adapt and be flexible is always a good skill in teamwork as it is common for plans to change and problems to arise Having said this in the future by planning realistically and in more depth initially would help you avoid having to adapt, which is something I will utilise in the future as retrospectively I wish I had done so at the start of this project.
As a bi-product of my mistake of not planning more throughly in my proposal we worked incredibly productively. When we realised we may need to squeeze some tasks in that we hadn’t originally thought would take so long we problem solved by splitting up to tackle multiple tasks simultaneously. This is shown within the last couple of weeks where Bluebell and I were creating props and Dan was mixing and mastering songs, the ability to split up and work separately within a group is another essential skill we will need in the future. Another thing I think we dealt with well was feedback, we were in communication with our tutor regularly with tutor tutorials and general communication where he would give us feedback on our; recording, mixing and rehearsals. Some feedback we gained from not only our tutor but also each other led to changes and additions to both the script and songs which I feel enhanced the whole end product, an example of this being the dance during the Denial scene. The Denial scene originally had a repeating section where the deceased character would appear then disappear but we along with our tutor that it was becoming boring, so the addition of the dance split up the scene. It also added an alternate level in the show, as little happened towards the top of the screen but the spins we implemented added a change and stood out from the other acting. This was one of the main reasons we used a photograph of the spin during the dance in the Denial scene for our poster and programs. Working, listening and implementing feedback we received showed professionalism within our project, as in professional projects gaining and reacting to feedback is essential.
Secondly, evaluating my reflection diaries, I now understand the importance of keeping a note of actions and problems within those with potential solutions for future reference. Throughout my project my reflection diaries have been increasingly getting more detailed and focussed. In the beginning of my project my weekly diaries lacked the detail they should have, because of this the reflective element was less focussed so I didn’t learn much from early mistakes I made. If I could do this project again I would ensure all of my reflection diaries were as detailed as my final five. My reasoning for this is as I put more effort into documenting evidence such as photos and videos, and writing in a more concentrated manner I found myself not falling into the same mistakes I had made previously, or if I found myself encountering a similar problem I could rectify it sooner. A great example of this is my diaries during the recording process, within one of my first entries about recording I pointed our that our lack of short but regular breaks had left us all burnt out at the end of the day. In the following diary entries I have mentioned how I put that previous reflection into action and how it had benefitted us, not only by leaving us more energised at the end of the day but also more productive throughout the day. This resulted us getting more done some days than we had anticipated which helped us catch back up and also left us able to do individual work after working all day as we weren’t exhausted. I will definitely be keeping a reflection diary, or reflection notes during future projects so I can ensure throughout the project I will be problem solving and learning how to avoid problems.
In my final reflection diary I went into depth evaluating techniques I used whilst acting in the final show. Yet, evaluating my final show from a surface level position I am incredibly happy with how the visuals of the shadow screen worked out. When I had the initial idea the way I had it imagined in my head was almost identical to how it was presented to the audience, which I couldn’t be more ecstatic about. The sheer research we did into fabrics and lights that went into the construction of the shadow screen presented itself incredibly in the final performance. The music as a whole also displayed our initial research into the five stages of grief whilst also demonstrated all of our personal connections with the process, which brought a layer of personal communication with the audience. The show was created in a way that highlighted the music and showcased the emotions through the instrumental and lyrical choices throughout the songs. I believe we succeeded with this connection based off of the audiences reactions to the show, the show being about a sensitive and hard hitting topic caused the audience to be rather emotional. I believe the song choices along with the original songs we wrote highlighted each stage, and made the audience relate or sympathise by creating the atmosphere of that emotion. By creating this atmosphere with the music it highly aided the acting, giving it automatically more emotional value because of the associated song. This was a play on a technique I researched when researching Micheal Chekhov, a theatre practitioner, whilst his techniques influenced the way I acted on stage they also influenced the use of atmosphere created by the music. Despite from an audience perspective of the show, behind the scenes there were a few mistakes, too few rehearsals resulted in a few mistakes when acting, and some impromptu improvisation. Whilst the skill of improvisation is an essential one not only in the theatre / acting world some extra rehearsals would’ve avoided the problem altogether. This boils down to planning and time keeping skills yet again, despite problems we ran into that slowed us down improved planning in the proposal would’ve ensured us more rehearsal time. In the future I will be doubling what time I feel necessary for each part of a project as reexamining my planning period I would prefer to be ahead of target than behind.
My overall evaluation for the project is that I am incredibly proud of what Bluebell, Dan and I have achieved, in hindsight the project may have been a little unrealistic, however, we have all been exceptionally hardworking in order to complete this project. Nonetheless, if I were to challenge myself with another project like this there are a few major parts I would change. As I have mentioned before, initial planning became a large issue for us as we had allocated all the largest parts of the project to the last 4 weeks, instead of spreading them equally throughout. When we made this decision, we decided that some parts needed to be completed before the largest main parts of the project. However, now I realise we could’ve done these simultaneously, which would’ve additionally improved our time-keeping from the beginning. Definitively, Bluebell, Dan and I have worked beautifully as a team to tackle this huge project we had initially underestimated, and succeeded, creating a moving and memorable show. The project was not unrealistic, but a huge challenge that has allowed us to gain lifetime skills we may not have gained by attempting a smaller project.