I have mixed emotions about how well our final performance went. I feel that some areas of the work really shined and showed off what we wanted people to see, but then I also feel that we lost momentum half way through and therefore lost the drive that was needed to push the performance and keep it going strong.
I feel that performance day itself could have gone better. The group did not seem to have the enthusiasm that you would hope for on performance day. Setting up the exhibit took longer than I had planned due to afore mentioned lack of enthusiasm. Another issue that presented us the morning of our exhibit was the weather, as our piece was outside we hoped for clear skies and glorious sunshine, instead we got the usual British rainy weather, by the time we began running our exhibition at 12pm it had stopped raining and began to warm up a bit, this meant more audience members wandered outside to see what we were up to. I feel if the weather had been sunny initially we may have had a better audience turn out than we actually did. Once we got the piece up and running I started to feel more confident about the group as a whole and the weather.
When we were in place I could see it being a slow start but as we got going the group seemed to work together as a team. As part of the window pair I feel that our performance was well noticed by the audience and received a good response. We had families waving at us for no apparent reason, I took this as a good thing as it meant that people were acknowledging what we were doing and came to get a closer look and see what it was all about. Because of this I think that the window position was a good one to use as it enabled us to attract an audience to the rest of the exhibit.
Our piece lasted for 1½ hours. We were hoping to perform for 2 but unfortunately that was interrupted by unavoidable circumstances. But the hour and a half was plenty of time to gage audience responses.
The audience reacted mostly as I hoped they would, we wanted our audience to come and experience what we had to offer. They could come along view our exhibit and make their own observations about our piece. I feel that this worked successfully due to the way that people responded whilst moving around the exhibition.
‘Audience need not be categorized, or even consider themselves, as ‘audience’’ (Pearson, 2010, pg 175) I feel this quote from Pearson applies to our piece, because we presented a gallery and not so much of a performance; our exhibition was for people to wander around and experience which people did. Therefore our audience could be described as a number of things, spectators, observers, participants, or indeed members of an audience. But because our performance was based around the actions of the public our ‘audience’ could be classed as part of the performance itself presenting everyday pedestrian actions much like we were as a group.
We did however have one couple ask the table groups to stop talking or quieten down. I think this was an interesting response as it’s not a normal response when a performance is going on. But I feel that the idea of site specific encourages these responses. We are coming into a space that is frequented by the general public and we have to be aware that these responses may be likely to occur.
In conclusion I think that our group passed on the messages that we wanted to but the delivery could have been met with more enthusiasm and commitment. If we were to develop the piece, I think that we would extend the opening times to allow more people to view it and have more exhibits for people to view.
Pearson, Mike (2010) site-specific performance, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.