Beyond the Front Line, performance week two and epilogue

I am condensing the evaluation of week two and the epilogue because essentially they are the same thing.

In terms of performance, this week was somewhat of a let down compared to last week, hitting a low point on wednesday when a large amount of the students in the performance did not attend. This was unfortunate in two major ways, one is that obviously we lacked the amount of people needed to achieve the effect we have been achieving in terms of how the audience react to us, which changed the general atmosphere of the piece. The second let down was that logistics dictated some people had to move around, between green company and blue company we gained roughly three or four extra people. These people obviously did not known the choreography that blue company had been using to wow the crowd, neither did we have time to drill everyone in what they had to do, simply because when on the roof it is rather important that we are not seen. In the end, the maneuvers were scrapped and we simply improved some 'lookout' positions mixed with a generally watchful stance.

We haven't finnished yet though, I am writing this now on the Thursday before the Friday which will be Alpha groups final performance evening, I am expecting tomorrows performances to be a fantastic farewell to the show for me, I will feel a sense of accomplishment having stuck it out this long where others have simply drifted from the norm.

The course of the show has inspired me, but I only see this now in the final week. After attending the workshops with the creative director of Slung Low, I am truly surprised at how much has gone into this show, this is why I was so crestfallen to hear the numbers are dipping. I appreciate art, and although there is a small amount of percieved toffery in the idea of 'theatre as art' I do genuinely thing that BtFL is such a creative, innovative contemporary piece of site-specific theatre that it is a shame that more people have not taken the oppertunity to be a part of it. I also feel that after this show, I will be studying thatre mainly in small studios and perhaps slightly larger indoor theatres at Uni which simply will not compare to the project about to come to a close at the Lowry. I guess I'm trying to say that, it will be hard to top BtFL this year, and certainly difficult to top through the course of my studies here at university. From rehearsal to performance and everything inbetween I have learned the most important thing for a project like this to work is motivation, entheusiasm and focus.

Yes I got tired, and yes there were moment when I thought of switching off and being in the performance instead of a part of it, I am so glad I did not give in to those urges. The Slung Low team have been working at this none stop for the past few weeks, not to mention all the planning beforehand, and now I hear they are going from this production streight into another one, which inspires me. How on earth can I complain that my legs are hurting when these guys have put their waking lives on hold to get this thing done?

So yes, in closing; entheusiasm, focus, motivation and perhaps a touch of insanity. Lesson learned!