It was the day of the performance today and we were all getting a little nervous. When we first arrived, we spoke to the reverend of the church and she was very helpful in telling us what we can (and can’t) do with the space provided. So we spent the first few hours moving things in the church to make way for our props and where we will be performing. Unfortunately (but not surprisingly) we weren't allowed to do much with the alter, so we spoke to the reverend and moved it out of the way – putting a table in its place. We quickly briefed the last of the extras on what they needed to do and then promptly started a run through. This went surprisingly well and so we sent the extras back to school, so we could sort out the finishing touches. We did a final run through, then were ready for the performance in the evening, so had a break. When the audience arrived, there were more than expected, but we managed to fit them all into the spaces provided – other than that, the performance went ahead with no mistakes, a near perfect performance really. It was quite emotional afterwards due to the fact that this was the last performance we would ever do together as a sixth form group – we started with about twelve people in our class and we finished with six.
What went well?
Most things in the performance process went extremely well. Due to the fact that we only had about four weeks to create the performance, we moved at an incredibly quick pace. This meant that very few ideas didn't make it to the end performance as we didn't have time to sit down and evaluate good/bad scenes and we just put them all in – making them better if we felt they needed work. We had all worked very closely together on previous productions, so we were all very open with ideas to put into the piece. This was extremely helpful as we would have many different ideas for each and every scene for the piece – meaning we could try out each idea and see which we prefer.
We were a little surprised at how accommodating the members of the clergy were when we arrived at the Church. They were happy for us to do almost anything – we had tried to keep our piece away from any blasphemous dialogue or actions due to it being a church. The extras also did extremely well – I feel we chose an extremely talented group of individuals and they managed to settle into their roles very quickly and understand their purpose in the performance extremely well.
What didn't go so well?
In a short answer – not much. If we had a little more time to get the performance ready, I think we would have an extremely good performance, but nowhere near what we actually ended up with. The short time span meant we had to experiment with things quite a lot to see if they worked – meaning our performance had a nice balance of dialogue based scenes and more physical scenes. We did have one or two scenes based around the alter which we couldn't use the same way – but we simply changed the alter for a table and used a window ledge instead. I was also ill during the day of the performance, but that couldn't be helped. Other than that, I feel the performance and rehearsals went extremely well.
If we were to do it again?
To be honest, if we were to do it again, I wouldn't know what I would change really. Maybe spend a little more time looking at venues and different concepts, but I think we talk a lot about things instead of actually doing them – so we could easily spend months on end looking at venues and concepts without actually choosing one. If we had a lot of money, we may have had a deal with Rochester Cathedral and performed in there – that would be an equally as good performance, but in a much grander space. But again, it would be a completely different performance and to be honest, I think the audience would be distracted a little by the sheer size of the rooms. It would also be extremely expensive to light the space and get the correct audio setup to perform effectively – so I still prefer our church setting that we chose.
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