Storytelling (25) (The Snow Queen)

EVALUATION

First Story:
++ Positives: 

•  Timing for movement was good and most of the movement was in clean unison.
•  Narration recording sounded good and worked well for the scene, as the backing music set the right sort of atmosphere (tense at appropriate times but calm when it suited the narrative).
• Worked well without the masks as we didn't need to worry about finding a place to take them off, thus making our transition in to the second story smoother.

-- Negatives: 

•  When we went to mime putting on a mask, some of the group reached down and put it on, whilst others of us just put out right hand on our face. This happened due to not discussing this early enough (although I did tell the group that this is what we would do, we never got to rehearse it). However, it didn't look too bad as the people SL reached down, whilst those of us SR didn't so it didn't look as messy as it could have done.

Second Story:
++Positives:

• The lifts were all successful and the dance section went really smoothly.
• The entrance of the Snow Queen silhouette was really effective due to our spacing.
• The silhouette of the sledge was effective due to good spacing.
• Our facial expressions clearly expressed the characters emotions at different points during the narrative (e.g. when Kay left Gerda and also when Kay was being kissed by the Snow Queen)

-- Negatives:

• The sheet could have been wider to hide us behind and to cover the lifts better.
• The music should have been a bit louder as I couldn't hear the introduction clearly and therefore was unsure when I was coming in.
• The silhouettes were quite hazy due to the fact that we had three lights so we ended up having multiple shadows.

Third Story:
++ Positives:

• Placards were really clear which helped the audience understand this scene better.
• We all used strong facial expressions (especially at the beginning when we told Gerda we didn't know where Kay had gone, and on "many sad tears were shed") and moved in unison.

-- Negatives:

• The river stopped moving in different places at different times. 
• Two members of the group unsure on the movement, so were not confident and had to check round for reassurance.

Fourth Story:
++ Positives:

• We stayed in character as best as we could, despite the technical difficulties during this scene.
• We knew where we had to be at certain points in the narration, therefore when a short section of narration was skipped, we could pick it up smoothly from where the narration cut back in. 
• Our facial expressions helped the audience understand the narrative better (e.g. when Gerda was told by the Crow that Kay had been spotted, also when the prince was woken up by Gerda).

-- Negatives:

• We had many technical difficulties throughout this scene due to the audio being in different sections, therefore we had long awkward pauses at times and a whole section was skipped. What we should have done was have all of the audio for this scene on one track.

Fifth Story:
++ Positives:

• We remembered the majority of the movement. Due to us being so close together, we could sense each other moving and so we knew when we needed to move.
• Our movement was really effective in helping the audience understand the narrative as it was simplistic and clear (e.g. when we jolted on the line "at length the carriage stopped").

-- Negatives: 

• The majority of us couldn't remember our lines so Rhiannon read all of our lines. Although this was obviously not planned, this actually worked really well as it was more like storytelling, as opposed to us acting out a story.

Sixth Story:
++ Positives:

• We created an unsettling atmosphere due to us all standing facing different directions in random places in the room. 

-- Negatives:

• We didn't say our allocated words over the top of Charlie's narration like we had planned. We should have rehearsed this scene more and without the scripts especially! As the first line was missed, nobody said their lines - although we obviously wanted to say our lines, we thought this was better than some people saying random lines as it would have made no sense and the meaning would be lost and it would simply look random.
• This scene seemed really static due to the fact that nobody said their lines. If we had said our lines this would have been fine. However, we should have gone with our insticts to begin walking slowly around the room  in random directions (as after discussing this scene afterwards with each other, we were all tempted to do this, but nobody started this off!) to give this story more movement.

Seventh Story:
++ Positives:

• The projection was very atmospheric and fit with the narrative really well.
• Oliver interacted with the audience throughout the scene, which therefore made him more engaging

-- Negatives:

• Oliver stumbled a couple of times on his words; however, this wasn't too much of an issue as it just made him sound more excited.
• The slideshow of pictures that formed the projection unfortunately went over to the laptop background a couple of times when the slideshow had finished. Although this was obviously not intentional and was a massive mistake, this would have been worse if the laptop background was a picture of someone or was a personal background (as opposed to just the Windows logo).

Entire Piece:
++ Positives:

• The majority of the transitions went really smoothly (e.g. the transition from the second story to the third story, where we had to take the sheet down was successful).
• We kept professional and continued with the piece during the technical diffiulties.
• We had a good focus on storytelling tecnhiques during the majority of the piece (e.g. Oliver's interaction with the audience, our varied tone of voice, emphasis of certain words, etc.)

-- Negatives:

• We had many technical difficulties during the piece with the audio (and at the end with the projection). We should have done a full tech run of the piece before we performed it so we could have solved these issues.
• We forgot our lines during Rhiannon and Charlie's scenes (but we did cover this well). We should have done a full run through without scripts earlier on in the rehearsal period to ensure we all knew our lines confidently.
• At times, we diverted away from the main focus of storytelling due to the large amount of movement we have in this piece. Although we did a lot of research into what makes a successful storyteller, we could have researched larger groups that do storytelling as to give us more ideas for what we could all do (rather than just a lot of movement).

= If we had no restrictions: 

• If we had a bigger group and more time to create this piece, we could have made more interesting movement sections (e.g. Robert's section could have more people for the line waiting to see the princess). Having a larger group would also mean we wouldn't need to multi-roll as much and therefore we would have less to learn, resulting in us being more confident and less mistakes being made.
• We could have put some thought into costumes for this piece, however, this would lead us further away from storytelling and more towards a performance of a story. 
• If money wasn't an issue, we could have a better sound system (to ensure all of the tracks were audible at all times) and a technician (to solve any problems and to mix the different tracks into one to avoid the problem of skipping sections).
• If we had more time on this piece we would have done more research into different storytelling techniques for groups (rather than just individual techniques), a thorough tech rehearsal and more rehearsals without scripts.