The Final Production

The show!
After months of blood, sweat and tears here is one of the shows of Aladdin by The Da Vinci Theatre Company.

Evaluation

It’s easy for one to dismiss reviewing their performances after the euphoria of the shows that we had however, there are quite a few things that if were done with precision would’ve worked very well.

During earlier rehearsals I gained an ankle injury which I found challenging to work with at first especially as I was still figuring out what my character was like and how she would be postured.  Although, I was able to focus on my voice and facial expressions; an example of this would be my entrance as my tone was precise and articulated rather than loud and said with poor diction. My eye line was directed at the technicians at the back of the audience, some of the younger audience turned around to have a look.  As I healed over weeks I began to incorporate both these elements with my bodily characteristics.

There was minimal practise with the microphones prior to the first show and it could be heard. I was not given a microphone for the beginning prologue where Abanazar was, this meant that I had to ensure I was projecting outward as I would not be heard otherwise. The use of the smoke machines at full power occurred for the first time on the first show as well which proved trialling as it was hard to navigate backstage without the stage lights on. I found this difficult with the first show as we were all incredibly nervous; to add to the nerves, our first audience was rather miniscule with only the floor filled, which proved hard to play against as panto is incredibly audience active. Alongside this, more than half the cast were not well and had caught the ‘panto flu/bug’ nevertheless, the show went on and we managed to plough through.

Our first evening show began with the wrong sound cue for Abanazar’s entrance which may could have put us all off as well as the fact that we had a bigger audience than earlier although still small. There was also a lacking of a lighting cue which I thought hindered Abanazar and my performance slightly as we had to exit the stage on our accord.

Our matinee show performed to an all girl’s secondary school was nerve-wrecking. An auditorium filled with 200 screaming, excited girls was hard; grabbing their attention was key to our performance especially as they were young students. As lovely an interactive as they were ‘booing’ and singing along, there were times when all speaking characters had to ensure they were speaking loud enough to be heard and understood; to improve our performance I think we should have all focused on breathing exercises prior as I personally felt that my breath control was not as perfected as it should have been. As mentioned in the beginning, panto is more for adults than younger audiences which is why many of the jokes we had they didn’t respond to in the way we thought they should. I realised that this encouraged a dip in our energy as we all had the mind-set that we weren’t doing well. Engaging in a Q&A after the show was refreshing and opened our eyes to what they paid attention to and worked well and what they didn’t quite get, the slow motion chase scene is a good example of this.

Performing in front of Barbara Windsor was definitely the highlight of the all the shows; everyone was aware of her presence and it showed as people were incredibly nervous backstage. I had to undergo excess breathing exercises and jaw movements as I became incredibly tense before going on stage. This show proved to be one of our best as the lighting and sound cues were done correctly, anything that messed up on stage was covered and we also were graced with a healthy, excitable audience.

Having reached the peak of our performances, I think the final two were still at an incredibly high standard. The final two performances were incredibly sad and there were a few tears, although we were all proud of what we had achieved. The overall process has been an overwhelming experience which I’d happily go through again.