Evaluation

Throughout Year 13 we have been working on this project and overall I feel I have worked hard to get our performance together. We began by creating a movement piece about shopping, which in the end we didn't use but this helped us to get an idea of what we would be doing in the performance. I missed the lesson where we talked to members of the public about Croydon, which was unhelpful as in the next lesson the group had decided on doing things without me and so I had to catch up with them. Luckily that was the only lesson I missed and so I was able to help create a good performance based around buskers in Croydon.

We decided to pick photos from The Forum about entertainment and music because everyone in my group plays an instrument and some of us sing. This made it easy for us to decide on a concept for our piece, however it did take a while for us to actually come up with an idea of what we were going to do. As we were sitting outside a watch shop we decided to use that as a way of travelling through time, and so we settled on the idea of music through time. Throughout the rehearsal process we came across the Whitgift security staff who told us on many accounts that we were not allowed to be singing and that we (and I quote) "Have to move on". This annoyed my group as it meant they clearly did not know that we were allowed to be here as we had a performance. Many times we were asked to stop singing and not be doing what we were doing, and in the end it resulted in the watch shop owners telling security that we were stopping customers going into their shop (which is untrue as we were nowhere near their doorway and clearly not many people wanted to go into their shop, and if I'm being honest, a lot of people who walked by as we were rehearsing actually enjoyed our singing and they were smiling and some even danced) and that we were not allowed to use that bench anymore. This meant that we had to cross over and use the bench outside Clas Ohlson. This wasn't exactly a problem but it did take away from the fact that we used the watch shop as a starting point and it links because our piece is about music through time. But I guess it also backs up the fact that although we weren't doing anything wrong, people of Croydon still don't want buskers back in the Whitgift Centre and so Croydon can't be like how it was in the photos in The Forum.

The final performance went well even if it did seem to go really quickly. Nothing major went wrong and so it seemed to be a success. 

I've really enjoyed doing a site specific performance, and it has widened my knowledge of performing and I hope in the future I am able to do more site specific pieces.