Audiences are always collaborators. Without somebody watching, theatre can be no more than a faraway tree falling unheard. (Gardner, 2009)
Work In Progress events are also known as Scratch events, they are something which is becoming more popular to do throughout the development process when creating a performance. This is due to being able to present your work at any stage to an audience which is willing to critique your work and as an audience member ‘we are engaged critically, even creatively; asked to reflect on what we felt worked, what didn’t and what’s missing.‘(Gardner, 2009). This is important throughout the development phase as it gives you a feel of what will work with a larger audience and what possibly needs to be changed or maybe gotten rid of altogether due to it not working or creating the right effect.
It is even the case that theatres are starting to hold Scratch night events in which performers, comedians and dance artists can go along and perform their work to an audience who will then provide feedback afterwards in order to help the production to develop to its best potential.
As a company we felt that we would benefit from holding our own Work-In-Progress event so we carefully selected a group of 8 people to come and watch our performance, whilst it was still raw and a few scenes had only just been developed and some still under construction so that we could get an idea of what was working for the audience and what was missing. We chose the audience and limited the amount of people we invited so that we could get the best possible feedback we could. Even though there was a lot of positive feedback, it was really the negative criticism that we were interested in so we could go ahead and work head to work from the feedback to make the show even better. I believe that with all of the feedback we have been given that the work in progress benefited our company a lot, although we do have a person who has the final say, this is a little hard to do when you have created the work, watched it develop and then know what might need to change. Putting a production in front of an audience, changes it. So it was a positive for us to get really good feedback as well as things to be changed.
Looking at it from the stage managers point of view, things were not perfect, people changed movements and things changed, whether this was down to nerves or just a lack of knowing what they are doing I do not know. But it is now time to make sure everyone is confident in their actions and can show this through their movements. We need to work hard on making sure the transitions are right for the show, as I believe this could make it or break it as it could interrupt the flow of the performance if people are not confident enough when changing scenes around. I know this might seem like a minor thing but it is going to get sorted for the performance. The little details also count. I feel like I need to figure out exactly where the music and sound effects are going to go as this has not yet been clarified but shall be done in the next rehearsal.
Overall I feel proud of the company after the viewing and know that together we will continue to work hard and work together to tighten up the scenes and make all our hard work pay off. We have THREE WEEKS until our performance, that in itself is exciting.
Works Cited:
Gardner, L (2009) Keeping Work-In-Progress theatre up to scratch. Available from: http://www.theguardian.com/stage/theatreblog/2009/sep/15/work-in-progress-theatre-scratch [Accessed 6th May 2014]