Monday, 12 January 2015

'Ode To Billy Joe' By Bobbie Gentry - Week 1 Entry 3: Devising Session 1 Evaluation

Scenario/Introduction:

For this third entry for the first week on this assignment, I'll be covering both the Strengths and Weaknesses that came out of the session. They will both be covering the whole group as this is a collabrative process that must be evaluated constantly to hopefully improve once the performance date is near.

The Strengths:

Strength 1 - Practical Improvisation: This has to be the strongest Strength that came out of this session since nearly the whole of it was comprised of performing practical work whilst thinking of creative ideas of our own making to help keep it going. There wasn't really a moment where we stopped doing anything which had resulted in our group to have a baseline for what kind of story we all wanted, the style of performance that we were going to have, being Commedia dell'Arte and having something that we cn build on for next weeks devising session.

Strength 2 - Positive Feedback From Group: When it came to presenting our thoughts and ideas to the group as to what we could do for this performance, we had all complimented our efforts and experimented with eachothers ideas to see if they worked or didn't work. There was never really a bad idea since all of the ideas we had is what we've implemented into our devising process so far to be built upon in next weeks session.

Strength 3 - Using Physicl Exercises To Build Focus: If there was one thing that I'd noticed from this session that every other group didn't do, or did it later on, was that we did some physical exercises to build our focus and get our blood pumping. This as well made all of us a little more pro-active but it also did help towards building all of our ideas, which we had a lot of from this session. This is something we do regularly in other lessons as it does help and I'm surprised that no-one else had thought of doing it also.

Strength 4 - Amount Of Ideas Produced In A Short Time Span: The amount of ideas that the whole group had thought of in such short time was amazing. Literally as soon as we had our groups sorted out, we all had started to present our ideas, even before using the spider-gram sheet. This would be another reason that I didn't mention in my previous entry as to why there wasn't really much recorded down on our sheet for this session.

The Weaknesses:

Weakness 1 - Not The Whole Group Was Being Practical: Even though they had presented a few ideas to build upon, whilst also agreeing with mine, Sophie and Jake's, both Milo and Frankie didn't really contribute as much as I would of liked in terms of practical work. It was only really me, Sophie and Jake again that actually got up and acted out something to build ideas whilst they sat there and spectated. I'm hoping both of them will be a little more practical for next lesson as I think they both have a few more ideas that they had kept to themselves for this one which they could present next lesson, these ideas could be the best ones yet.

What I Thought Of This Session Overall:

Seeing as this was our first session on this new assignment, doing something we've all never really done before, I felt that our group, as well as the others, had performed to their maximum potential even if there was a few that didn't contribute to the groups. My group had zero to no support from the lecturers for this session which is what we're going to be marked on for this assignment when it comes to the marking period. I thought that my group had stood out from most because of how much more practical we were in the session also inspiring others to do the same things, like the exercises, that we had done to create their own ideas.

So, overall, if I was to give a rating out of ten for this session, I would give it a 9/10 for all of these reasons that I've listed. It's not 10/10 simply because the whole of my group didn't contribute towards the session. So, again, hopefully for the next devising session, both Milo and Frankie will do this. We'll also have Brandon brought into the session as he was away and I'm sure he'll have plenty of ideas to present to the group for this devised performance.

1 comment:

  1. You have worked through your strengths and weaknesses well during this first week of devising. Clearly identifying how your response to the stimulus, imagination and positive co-operation in your approach will impact upon the end performance. It will be beneficial if you discuss what the actual ideas you had were within this blog. You need to discuss how you worked with the ideas via experimentation, how you moved forward with ideas and the group's rationale for rejecting other ideas. You will also need to discuss the way in which your work is being influenced by further stimulus (i.e. game shows format and hosts) and practitioners/devised performance work.

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