Evaluation of the performance

Our performance was successful in many ways and in some ways not so. The first performance we did at 4:30 to an audience of our peers and teachers mostly, was extremely well received, the audience were laughing and even if certain points of the plot were lost to them they gathered what was going on in each scene, laughing on cue and encouraging the cast to enjoy themselves also. Though in this run of the performance, more mistakes were made, general staging mistakes were made where people stood in-front of others but quickly corrected themselves or when Iris and Ed fell in their greeting which was not planned but they played it off and it became intended humour. There were points when I would be standing on the boys section of the stage, breaking the illusion of the separate quarters. I believe this could have been improved by ensuring the space from the female characters was larger, which would allow for more space fro the props and for us to stand in, instead of being squished and becoming hazardous. Also I believe if we had more space then we could've added some hedges to the set that are included in the script so the boys could've completed their hiding letter scene outside like the script suggests it to be. I think that could've been a funnier image and the audience would have properly understood how Boyet over heard the boys talking about their plot to woo the girls.
Another way this first performance could've been improved is enthusiasm and control of nerves. In the first one I was so nervous that I was shacking on stage so when I delivered my speeches in this 4:30 show, they weren't as strong as the 7 oclock show where I was more confident with my place on the stage and what I was saying so I felt my character then had the opportunity to come out more.

Other places the show was successful was in showing the relationships of characters throughout the entire play. I feel like the relationship nd bond of the girls was clear to the audience as I have heard from feedback. I think the work we had complete in classing working on our synchronisity and responses to one another really paid of in both of the shows, we became a unit and you could see we'd known each other for a very long time and the status of each of the characters. For example the princess only sat on the ground once in comparison to the other girls of lesser status who sat on the ground frequently, the princess lead the train of girls when they would exit and apart from when the girls asked for permission or when Rosaline was dressed as the princess, they would defer to me and Daisy for their cues.
I also think the male female relationships were strong in both of our performances with the males and females who were so in love with less to loose kept looking at one another when they were on stage, the intensity was observed clearly by the audience as when asking some people who came to see the show who was in love with who, nd could you tell from early on?  They said, they could in fact tell who was with who.

Overall our main improvements could've been more audience interaction, eg playing to the fact there are people watching as it could be easy to forget or to start playing the jokes to each other instead of the audience who were there. And also working on remembering our props, though the letters were really confusing, in our first run Daisy and me forgot the letter for when we first meet Ferdinand, and there was some confusion later on when we were doing the dance masquerade section between who should have what letter and where Chloe's drawing was i the second run. To rectify this we would need to have kept a better eye on our props so this wouldnt become an issue.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT W6: YOUR PRODUCTION

 Research your own Shakespeare play: Much Ado About Nothing, Love's Labour's Lost or Titus Andronicus. What is the play about? When was it first performed? Find a contemporary production of the play you can get an idea of and research it in terms of concept, style, design, casting. Give some attention to your own character and their role in the play.

Love's Labour's Lost

What is the play about?

Loves Labours Lost follows 3 days of tumultuous and interesting relationships between vowed men and strong willed women. The King Ferdinand vows to abstain from women just before the French envoy arrives with The Princess of Aquataine, a woman who he's been crushing on for some time, accompanied by her 3 women in waiting (for Ferdinand's 3 trusty boys) and her trusty side-kick Boyet. The boys say the women will not come into their court, so the girls set up camp outside, annoyed and frustrated. The boys after seeing the girls are hook line and sinker in love with them, but none of them will admit it. In the background Dull a simple servant gets drawn into Costard's misadventures and mishaps as he flirts with Janquenetta a country wench who he's "well acquainted with. Armado a Spanish man who keeps with Ferdinand and his boys is in love with young Janquenetta. After masquerades and a bit of trickery with the women who change their favours

 to lure the guys into their jest, the men and women confess some sincere feelings for one another, The play concludes with the promise that the 8 will part for a year and return to solidify their love.

When was it first performed?

The  play was first performed at the inns Court for Queen Elizabeth I who commissioned for it to be made (in the mid 1950's).

Modern play interpretations

http://vidzi.tv/mtmlbk8gw7zg.html

The musical I watched was very similar in  a sense to the way we have done it. Both were transposed into the first half of the 1900's, theirs in 1930, and ours in the 1940's. The main thing that brought up a difference in time period was the fact the musical was based in America and ours was placed in the UK. With the character of the princess, I believe in this performance she was played much lighter than I played it on stage, very soft and gentle in her approach, she could handle the 'banter' between her and the King but it was in a more feminine way. The singing also created a different atmosphere of comedy to the way we created comedy. In this version of the play, the female speeches are mostly cut except for the Princess, but I do not feel as though she is the driving force of the female mayhem, in this production Costard seems to over shadow all the other characters in the play comedically. Also since this was abridged differently to ours we saw the Princess fall in love more, it was clear she was a little affected by Nevarr's presence and the boys seemed more in love as well.