Performance and Evaluation

What do you think went well during the final performance?

I think that our group increased the character’s energy a lot more than we did in our rehearsals. Even though this was probably because we were in front of an audience, this improved the performance a lot because characters in children’s theatre are large and full of energy, so I felt that we represented that correctly. The theme of superheroes is appealing to children, and so I think that I feel we were to perform this in front of a young audience, it would be very successful to convey a story. I’m also pleased that the whole of our group were off script, so that we could focus more on characterisation and there were no large gaps between lines being said.

What do you think of your individual performance?

Overall, I think that my energy matches that of the rest of the group’s energy, which made the show more enjoyable to watch. I also think that my performance of the villain could have been slightly more threatening, but I think it added to the comedy to not be as threatening as a proper villain “should” be. However, my character could have had more quips between the Henchman, to show that he treats him badly and shows how much of a villain he truly can be, even if he doesn’t fully show it in front of the heroes.

What could have been improved?

The scene where Ven and Jet run on and off stage should have ended a lot quicker than it did and they should have only run off and on 3 times instead of 6. This is to make sure that the joke isn’t lost and it would keep it’s hilarity, so it doesn’t get boring – this could lose the audience’s interest, which could result in them talking to the person next to them, and this could distract both other audience members and actors. We should have also made Bad Guy Rabs conflict more with Ven and Jet, as he is supposed to be the big villain of the show, but it doesn’t truly reflect that when he isn’t on stage much and doesn’t really do anything else other than stealing the president. A suggestion of this could be that during the ‘Holding Out for a Hero’ sequence, Bad Guy Rabs puts obstacles in the way, such as the Henchman trying to fight them. This would ultimately make the scene more interesting, while still keeping the original joke. We also recognised that the Henchman doesn’t do that much either, and that he doesn’t have a backstory as to why he is working with Bad Guy Rabs. The scene between him and the President could have been longer to explain that and that could also have given the Henchman more lines as well. Costumes could also have had more attention to detail because in the performance, they looked incomplete and sometimes random. We could have changed the shoes and got rid of whatever we usually wear as ourselves, to fully get into the character and to enhance the performance for the audience.

If you had more time to work on this project, what would have you added?

The scenes could have been a lot longer because the performance is quite short and the ending is underwhelming. When Ven and Jet are trying to convince Bad Guy Rabs to let the President go, it seemed really out of character and too short when the villain agreed with the protagonists. There could have been a well choreographed fight scene, to create more conflict between the characters, and to make the performance more interesting.

Since the moral of this performance is “don’t judge a book by its cover”, we could have made the message a lot clearer at the end, with the heroes or the President acknowledging and understanding this, by apologising to Bad Guy Rabs or even telling the audience why it’s wrong to prejudge.