Coming in to Land - RISK

With 95% of the scenes in place and with the video and sound editing near completion all that was left to do was some fine touches to our acting scenes.

Style VS Substance

From the start of the project my group had a very strong connection with the issue of Risk. From our beginning discussions about what risk meant to us, it was evident that as a group we saw Risk as an important life issue, rather than relating to silly risks or spontaneous risks. As a group we identified Risk with being life changing, challenging, and necessary.
I wanted to engage our audience on their level, and challenge them throughout our piece to consider taking risks for themselves.
To do this effectively I felt our piece had to be as real as possible. Having naturalistic scenes with naturalistic acting, so the audience would be able to relate to the characters and scenarios they where watching.

In improvising the scenes we chose settings and scenario's which we thought our mostly student audience would be able relate to such as; shopping in the supermarket, attending a freshers event, and auditioning for a musical. I wanted the risks to be risks that occur in the everyday persons lifetime.  (LO Unit 29. 1.2 & 1.3) (LO Unit 29. 3.1)

There was a scene within our piece that I thought conflicted with the pieces overall style. Jonathan and Laura, improvised then scripted the 'Proposal' scene where Jonathan's character proposes to Laura's character, but after watching the scene through the first time I had some concerns about it. It was obvious that a lot of time and effort was put into the scene, but for me that was problem, the scene was too polished. The scene contained descriptive language, following dialogue and well planned staging. It was the type of scene that would have fitted well into a classical performance, but in our piece where the emphasis was on realism, for me it stood out on it's own as a display of acting and theatrical technique. In order to stick to the message of the piece, the scene had to be changed to adopt a modern context that the audience could connect with the rest of the piece.
We did some further improvising with this scene using scenarios that would appear to be more everyday life. For instance, the couple would be meeting on a lunch break, or walking home together after work. This helped create the feeling that this was a real couple living a real life together, so then the Proposal would also be a real moment.

With a few more tweaks and adjustments the piece was ready to be performed for our audience.

Q&A was our chosen method of receiving critical feedback as we hoped our piece would challenge the audience, giving them plenty of questions to ask about the characters, stages of production and the message. (LO Unit 29. 4.1)