Marcus 2i Theatre

Collaborative Performance Portfolio analysis.

Contents:

Criterion A
1.

Presentation of my personal context, outlining my own skills, approaches,

knowledge/experience and interests in theatre.

2.

Analysis of my research into the approaches used by Forced Entertainment

Criterion B
1.

Analysis of how i identified my target audience.

2.

Analysis on the process involved in forming my collaborative group.

Criterion C
1.

Analysis on the collaborative process employed to develop, structure and prepare theatre piece
for presentation

2.

Analysis on the specific explorations i led with the group and the contribution this made to the
shaping of the performance.

Criterion D
1.

Evaluation of the presentation of my theatre piece and to which extent did it fulfil its intentions
and the intended impact on the audience?

2.

Analysis and justification of my groups artistic choices.

Criterion A

Presentation of my personal context, outlining my own skills, approaches,

knowledge/experience and interests in theatre.

I have had five years experience working with theatre, and throughout my time performing and
analysing ways of performing and perceiving performances. I feel very confident with my approach
to theatre which is a wide one. When I look into works of theatre be it in any scenario i don't
presume any of it.Until I have the essence and or personal experience to detail it. Though
presumptions can be useful at times to have expectations of a work of theatre, to assume the
outlines of a work. While through my years in learning theatre I found that performance and work

around the idea of improvisation really defied theatre for me. The idea and presentation of an actor
or actress working in a moments notice really does catch my attention. It could either make the
audience leave in amazement or disappointment. Acting on the fly really is a skill not everyone has
but it can be tamed. That's why theatre companies like Forced Entertainment real have a tight grip
on me. So work in class like the catwalk where the actor is given a stimuli have to go up right after
and present it.

Analysis of my research into the approaches used by Forced Entertainment

Their approach into collaborative creation

The Forced Entertainment theatre company has been going on since 1984, from their website we
could see that most of their work is inspired from the small nooks and crannies in life, as a reference
they said
weve made lists, played games, spoken gibberish, stayed silent, made a mess, dressed up,
stripped down, confessed to it all, performed magic tricks, told jokes, clowned around, played dead, got
drunk
From this extract we can identify that their theatre performance stimuli are taken from any
when where and how in their everyday lives.

What guides their work

They work in ways to explore theatre and performances and what it can all mean in contemporary
life, they are interested to make performances that tickle, challenge as well as entertain their
audience. They are are a contrasting theatre company so they are interested in both the ups and
downs of theatre from Slaughter to Laughter per se.

How they work

Forced Entertainment, when they work and decide on a performance I picture them to all include
something to be part of their performance. Rather than a director dictating all of the performance
through and through. Forced Theatre is only as good as the things the actors and bring into it ,and
also as good as what they show.

Exercises used

Not entirely sure on what they do but I imagine it relates to working on the go, so maybe exercises
where they have little time to react to a new situation and or an exercise where they have to
imagine and improvise a scenario to present.

Overall

Forced Entertainment from what I can gather gather their theatre material from everyday things. I
have also noted that there does not always need to be linear story when working the way Forced
Entertainment does their performances. That's why working with this has been a real pleasure, and
also confusing which is the thrill of it. Even to actors the performance can get confusing and will
sometimes forget their lines. As I have seen in the workshop first hand. When my group and i were
working out a scenario for our workshop performance. We never had an organised script. We had
given ourselves a little piece of paper and bullet points of things that need to be shown on stage.
Forced Theatre overall in the end is what the actor brings to a performance not the director.

Criterion B

Analysis of how I identified my target audience.

When identifying our target audience we would look to people similar to ourselves. Why wouldn't
we ? If we ourselves enjoy it people much like ourselves will to, be either mature or have good sense
of sarcasm. Because the thing a person can trust more than anything else in the world it would be
themselves. I know this sounds a bit superficial but when we were working on this project we didnt
have much to go on.

Analysis on the process involved in forming my collaborative group.

We were picked out from at random, at first i was skeptical and probably would have suggested we
pick our own people we find confident working along. But it wouldnt be Forced Theatre now would
it, Im happy i didnt complain seeing how in a way working with random people on the fly is part of
the essence of Forced Theatre, where you have to work with things around you and adapt it to work.
Plus i believed it all worked out in the end seeing that our audience were rather impressed.

Analysis of how my group went about exploring the starting point and intentions for the
group.

We reflected on our workshop progress, looking back at everything we have done from our invisible
ball work, where people had to act like they are throwing an invisible ball around to each other. As
well as our one line story work, where we would sit around in a circle and each say a sentence that
would add onto our story. At the end we really wanted to incorporate everything we have done.
From our confession to use of foreshadowing to sarcasm as well as unexpected change of emotion
and sudden surprise.

Criterion C

Analysis on the collaborative process employed to develop, structure and prepare theatre
piece for presentation

The group and I, we pitched all the ideas and workshop exercises we liked. We discussed many ways
that we could incorporate all these things together. Sacrifices had to be made to get the outline of
our story. But we found out while running the performance through we realised we could
incorporate more than we expected. So all the things we had to give up we could into our
performance, which was very lucky in the end.

Analysis on the specific explorations I led with the group and the contribution this made to the
shaping of the performance.

At first our performance was initially about a daughter telling her parents that she is pregnant. We
had several ideas to begin with one being that they were on a train and would be seated down
similar to our workshop exercise where we had to work only sitting down on our chairs but I
thought that would leave too much of our other ideas out. So to incorporate more or our workshop
exercises we decided to keep our initial story of a daughter telling her parents that she is pregnant
but decided to change the setting and method of confession.

We also wanted to work with some props so we added a dog for one of our characters to work with.
Which was in itself a lot of the exercises we have done in the past not only in the workshop. During
the workshop we also worked with foreshadowing where we had to show a small performance
using a piece of paper with certain things we had to include. So to incorporate this into our
performance we had a small event during the performance where the actress playing the mother
would receive a message from the doctor which would later enforce the confession from the
daughter saying she is pregnant.

We also loved the idea of rapid change of a character's emotion and state of mind. So during the
performance it is clear without a doubt that all of our characters would in an instant change the way
they act without question to fit the scene. Previously in the workshop we worked on adaptation and
improvisation in our story game. Where all everyone had to think of a new sentence to our on going
story and this is where you see in a single line a story's narrative changes and again and again.

Criterion D

Evaluation of the presentation of my theatre piece and to which extent did it fulfil its
intentions and the intended impact on the audience?

Overall I'm quite proud of the performance my group could achieved. We had used almost
everything we have learned from our workshop that day and without a doubt achieved our base
goal my collaborative had set in mind which was to humor the audience. It all went as intended and
it's intention was meet. So again overall was quite proud of my group. Though we could have added
more, we didn't have much use of mirroring and silent acting, basically miming. If given enough
time I believe we could have also incorporated these things into our performances in the end.

Analysis and justification of my groups artistic choices.

So for starters ill run through my performance from start to finish. The Story is a mother and
daughter are sitting in their home watching tv, when the mother tries to start a conversation with
her daughter about the daughter calling the daughter initially denies anything. Then when it comes
to the mother trying to call back the doctor, the daughter stops her before she makes the call and is
about to confess to her mother. The daughter was just about to confess to her mother when from the
side of the scene the father walks in with pet in tow. The father introduces the new animal to the
family and insisted to his wife and daughter that he brought it back home for dinner. The mother
and the daughter freak out and call out the dad for being mad and crazy, the dad in a panic points
the finger to his daughter who said she wanted a dog. The conversation goes on but then after some
time the father clears things through, and says that he brought the dog to have dinner with the
family and is not actually dinner. Before the stage fades to black the daughter confesses to being
pregnant and all the characters on scene hold a freeze frame. The entire performance took a little
more than 5 minutes.

Going through the first part of the performance where we had the mother and daughter on stage
sitting there silently. Throughout that first part we were inspired by some of the mimeing work we

have done in the Workshop. During the workshop some of the work we did was completely quiet
and relied on music in the background, so for our group we wanted to incorporate some of this as
well into our performance. Although it wasnt that long i believed it could have been improved with
the use of music and more synchronised acting on stage, for example both the characters can fold
their legs at the same time or yawn the same time. It would be funny while also enforcing the idea
the characters are mother and daughter since they act the same way.

Our next thing was the use of exaggerated movement from the daughter who basically almost
stepped over her mother when putting the phone down. Yet again we experimented with
exaggerated acting during the workshop course and wanted to incorporate this into our
performance not only at the beginning but later on the performance as well. We would show this big
movement given out by our character would raise a big red flag for our audience when she later
stated she wanted to confess something.

The phone call was also use of foreshadowing where without directly pointing it out, it brought
questions to the audience and raised suspicion. It was use of foreshadowing because the daughter
would later confess on being pregnant.

Just before she would go on to confess though the father of the family would go on the stage and
introduce himself to the audience, this is clear when he says Honey i'm Home and the daughter
saying father. Both the mother and daughter when then run to him for the fact he has brought home
a pet dog for dinner. The dog was a brush and we included the prop for yet again the fact we have
worked on use of props for the workshop exercise.

It was easy to include and be a simple prop to

act with without drawing too much attention away from the audience. Instead it brought even more
attention it, but in a very humoristic way and i worked really well.

After the father introduces the dog to the family and mentioned he brought it home for dinner the
mother and daughter not only use exaggeration had dramatic use of instant change of expression.
This was to catch the audience of guard and try to push them to this new scenario where the father
has brought a dog home for dinner which we learned during the workshop.

While the characters were arguing on stage there were moments of both exaggerated movements
and use of repetition. Especially repetition around the word dog, this was intended to draw more
attention towards the dog, dog, dog. Which hopefully would raise some questions as to why the
father brought the dog home, it would later be shown he said he got the dog because his daughter
wanted it. To play with the audience the actress playing the mother would assume that her daughter

was going to confess about wanting the dog which turned the audience even the father to blame the
daughter. Things would later clear up and the characters would return to sit on the couch.

This is where i was really proud with the way my group worked, we sort of included abit of
everything in our final run of the performance, where the father would command the dog to be still
and and place him next to the mother and daughter. That reflected on our use of props and the
characters all reacted to this. Synchronised acting when both the parents were sitting down and
looking at their daughter when she has something to say. We would also have a short moment of
silence which raised suspicion within the audience. The silence was then broken with the daughter
confessing to being pregnant. With more synchronised acting both mother and father on scene
laughed if off as it was some kind of joke, the mother would then yell out What ! which when
broken of the silence the father would try to leave the scene and in a fright the mother again
commanded him to Sit ! . Not only is this use of exaggeration it was also effective use of rapid
change of expression, which was intended to catch the audience of guard.

At the end and throughout our entire performance we included the use these dramatic stylistic devices
but not limited to:

I.
II.

Foreshadowing,
Exaggeration,

III.

Synchronization,

IV.

Use of Props,

V.

Use of Mime,

VI.
VII.

Use of Repetition
Rapid change of Expression.

People in my group and their roles within the performance:

I.

Me (Father)

II.

Maria (Mother)

III.

Vera (Daughter)