reflection

Edits, Reflection, and Audience viewpoints:

I ended up changing a lot of aspects of my performance. The things that I have changed are the following:

• Costume for Laura

• Lighting
• Audio track
• Glass prop

Costuming for Laura:

For Laura, I originally that that she should be wearing a plain cream dress, as it is seen as more “ritualistic” which was another philosophy of Artaud. I decided to change this because I realized I don't have to focus on every aspect of Artaud. To make it more authentic to what I believed Laura would be like, I put her in a light blue ruffled dress. The light blue color was pastel enough to not take away from the lighting, but also show that Laura could be in modern times.

• Audience viewpoints: The audience was able to feel for Laura more as she seemed more like a realistic person in everyday life. 

Lighting:

The lighting was originally very simplistic. I did not want much light on Laura. This was to emphasize that Laura really did blow out the candles and had to live her life in darkness. While watching my rough draft, I realized that it was very hard to see Laura’s face. As a director, I found it important for the audience to be able to see kaura’s facial expressions. It needed to be conveyed through body language that she was distraught just as much as audio conveyed that. After reflecting about this importance with my peers, I decided to add simplistic spotlight on Laura. The spotlights were the same color as the lamps so it did not take away from how color could affect the audience. Instead, it enhanced it. The ending remained the same for the lighting, only using the floor light. I was happy about this because the original “darkness” that I put Laura in remained a prominent point as it was the audience's final thought.

• Audience Viewpoints: The lighting affected the audience a lot. It made the audience want to look away. Any said that the strobing effects hurt their eyes and made them feel very uncomfortable which was my goal. I was very content with how the lighting turned out and how it affected the audience.

Audio track:

The audio track stayed relatively the same except in the end when Laura is having convulsions. At this part I added high hat and bass drum to emphasis the convulsions that Laura was having after eating the glass. 

• Audience viewpoints: the audience found the audio effective. Some thought that the audio could have been even louder. One comment that I got from the audience was that some of the audio sounds did not sync up well with the sounds on stage made by Laura. To this I say that that was not a thing I found necessary to do. The audio worked as what Laura was thinking or hearing i her head. Anything that the audience heard from Lara on stage was what was actually going on in real life. That was Director's idea for this audio track.

Glass prop:

Instead of ice for glass, I decided to use sugar. Sugar seemed like the better choice. When doing the rough draft, i realize the ice was melting away too quickly on stage. Sugar eliminated this problem. I had candles lit on stage so the ice would have melted even faster if I had decided to use it. The sugar also looked more abstract.

• Audience viewpoints:  This allowed the audience to focus more on the fact that Laura was eating sharp pieces of glass rather than glass animals. As the director of this piece, I’m glad it was taken this way. The audience also said that even though they didn’t know that Laura was with menagerie, they understood that Laura felt betrayed by the glass. Therefore, the point I wanted to convey was successfully conveyed.

I'm very happy about how my solo project was executed. I got my message across. The interesting thing I found was that a lot of the audience felt for Luara They didn’t feel as isolated. It made me wonder if Artaud’s theory is reverse psychology? By doing things that would maybe isolate the audience, you can bring them into the performance more. I think I have grown as a director for this reason. I very much enjoyed exploring Araud’s theory