Evaluation on Blackout 20/2/14

Yesterday I watched Blackout which was performed by the other class. I think the ensemble piece was truly touching and the effect of the short speeches were truly captivating for an audience to watch. Everybody acted in sync with one another and altogether it created such a moving piece.


The moment of the play when Fenton walked up three bodies to looks as if he was walking up stairs was really cleverly thought through. It went with the story and had a really abstract effect for the audience to watch as the idea of the piece wasn't to just have a simple story but to make physical theatre come into action.


I also really enjoyed when Toby was lifted up because it was a small microcosm of how everybody must support each other within an ensemble piece, especially this one. The idea was also very well thought through and went in sync with the idea of the performance. Although they had dropped him (he told me this after) they made it look as if it was supposed to happen. To do this they clearly worked together to make it look natural.


My final most enjoyed part was the ending where the heads of all the actors had dropped and the simple, effective word 'blackout' was said which fitted in with the entire story and was of course the play title. It was a very classic way to end something which left a rather emotional touch on the entire performance, leaving the audience to think more deeply into the plot.


For their future performance if they were to do it again they could make bolder character choices and make every single movement they did sharp and sustained as this would make it look like an even stronger performance than it already was.


I thought Fifi played her role really well as all the lines she said had truly emotionally captivated me into wanting to carry on watching. Nobody was given full long paragraphs to say which worked so much better because the idea was to use physical theatre more that speech.


A part of the play which could of been improved was when the characters could of spoken more emotionally rather than having to shout a lot. Although it was effective, I think it could of been more interesting if the characters had spoken more than shouting as this got a bit too much for the audience to watch.