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My Video Evaluation

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Video Evaluation Bullet Points

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Makeup

I was the person who focused most on makeup and I decided to let Orpheus and Eurydice stay very natural and Hades and Persephone have something different about them because I really wanted the audience to be able to see the difference between the underworld and the normal world.

For Hades I gave him black powder in places like cheekbones and eyelids as we made his character colder I felt that black was really the only colour that suited and as he was wearing all black and then a red shirt I felt the black really stick out. I was hoping the makeup would add a bit of masculinity and domination to Hades for example when he would walk into the room everyone would be on edge or scared. Sadly I have no pictures of Kane with the makeup on but as you can see in the first picture above that is the style I went for.

As you can see in the second picture for Persephone's makeup I made it very over the top so I was very bronzed and I wanted the audience to see the shimmer coming off my face as if I was glowing and this is because we made Persephone’s character more dominant and evil I wanted a similar effect for when she walked into the room as Hades gets. I didn’t add any sort of black because Persephone’s plan was secret I didn’t want to make her makeup as obvious as Hades.

I wanted their makeup to connect with the story even if only a few of the audience members realised it.

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New Tableau

As time went on we changed our story line a few times but finally we decided to make Persephone’s character evil and she had a secret plan to take over the underworld by herself because of this we had to change our last tableau to this new one as you can see in the picture above. This was the tableau for when Persephone finally tries to take the crown from Hades but fails and Hades kills her and Eurydice replaces her.

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Girl’s Costumes

Our choice for our costumes was to make tutu’s just to emphasis this feeling of being in a whole different world but as only the girls had the more mystical outfits I did feel like it sort of clashed with the boys.

My costume was the dark and light green skirt as seen in the first picture, we all chose a certain colour for our character and I chose green, at first I actually chose purple but I felt that green was a bit more to my character as we changed her from being innocent to evil. I really feel like these outfits added something to mine and Klaudia’s character Eurydice, because I think as the audience were seeing these colours and the tutu’s it made them feel more included in the world that we were creating as they could take what they wanted from the colours and create their own interpretation from it.

‘I’d like to think I am taking people on a journey; I am not just entertaining people, but giving them something to think about when they leave.’ - Madonna Ciccone. I feel like this quote emphasises what I am trying to say about taking the audience with us into this world that we have created.

The last two pictures were Eurydice’s tutu’s. The first tutu was white and when Eurydice dies and goes into the underworld her tutu changes to purple just to show that a little bit of her innocence is gone.

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What was my key learning point?

Personally my key learning point was one of the sessions I had with my lecture Ian and Kane because we did an exercise that really got me into my character. Firstly we did some research on our characters in which I found out that my character was not only Queen of the underworld but also the goddess of harvest and fertility. ‘grew up to be a lovely girl attracting the attention of many gods.’https://www.greeka.com/greece-myths/persephone.htm. This got me to think that the audience should see within my character the loveliness and the innocent. We then moved on to do an exercise in which my character asked for anything from Kane’s character Hades because he was able to get her anything. This showed the relationship that Hades and Persephone could have which is he wants to give her everything he can because he loves her and she can ask for anything. I felt myself really getting pushed into the character as I couldn’t think of many things that I wanted to I was trying to think like Persephone. We lastly moved on to making a little piece where we see Persephone coming into the room and putting Hades cape on him, we did this several times as we were trying to get rid of the realism and also trying to make the characters stand out more so as the audience was watching they felt like they were watching Hades and Persephone and not Kane and Jade.

What was my key learning block?

I think my key learning block was the fact that we changed the story line a lot so when it came to doing research to help get into my character the research that I had found couldn’t really help me that much. For example from what I have read Persephone is a sweet, little girl who possibly lives in her own little bubble for example in an article that I read it says ‘Persephone danced her way to the garden alone and tried to pluck the narcissus from the bosom of Gaia.’ https://www.greekmyths-greekmythology.com/myth-of-hades-and-persephone/.  I feel like this sort of shows her not taking notice of other things besides in her life. Although in our production we decided to make Persephone evil, for example she wants to take Hades down and become the Queen of the underworld by herself. This for me was a big struggle because I felt that I really had to make this character from scratch and define her myself or I had to challenge the feelings that Persephone would feel and unsure that this would help me create the evil side of Persephone. I researched her abduction and found a quote saying ‘Hades rises up from a dark hole in the earth, seizes Persephone, and takes her off to the underworld to be his wife.’ https://deborahking.com/the-abduction-of-persephone-the-goddess-queen-of-the-underworld-in-the-dark-days-of-winter/  and I feel like this would be Persephone key point in hating Hades as she has had no say in if she wanted to marry him or if she wanted to leave the Earth. 

With respect to devised storytelling centred on renewal of classics, what do I need to do next?

I think how me and my group could have improved would’ve been by us having a clearer view on what we wanted the story line and plot to be from the beginning. My reasons for this was because when we were doing the tableau's we had a sort of Egyptian theme to them and I feel that this really went with the original story line but as time went on we wanted to make our piece a comedy so I feel like we lost that Egyptian theme and just focused on making it extremely entertaining. When we were doing the dances I do feel like I could see a bit of an Egyptian theme within them but when it came to the script it was very naturalistic and again had a lot of comedy in it. We ended up changing the script and getting rid of the comedy so this is why I think if we would’ve not focused on the comedy and entertaining part from the beginning and maybe not changed the plot of the story we could’ve had a really interesting story that showed the true myth. We could've done this by making the script have more ancient words in them and if we chose music that was very different for example not so much songs with lyrics but music that is just a tune that went with the piece. In the pictures that I have chosen above you can see the gods and the Greek theme and I think it would've been nice to show this style within our piece.

‘Do it again. Play it again. Sing it again. Read it again. Write it again. Sketch it again. Rehearse it again. Run it again. Try it again. Because again is practice, and practice is improvement, and improvement only leads to perfection.’ ― Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway

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Black Boxes

‘You can't act alone. Use the props, the setting, the crew around you, and of course, your fellow actors.’ - Jon Polito

We have decided to use these black boxes throughout our performance, we had used them in most of our tableau’s but we’ve now decided to use them throughout because they are really good way of easily using different levels and also can be part of the set. We actually have decided to have two on sage throughout the entire performance because we seem to be using them a lot and it is easier to have two always on stage in certain places instead of bringing some on and off all of the time. In my opinion I really like that we have something on stage so that the stage isn’t completely empty the whole way through. I personally feel that having a prop on stage makes the performance more of a place for the audience rather than just having us actors on stage. Hopefully the audience will instantly see the world we are trying to create.

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Tableau’s

One of the first tasks we had for these sessions was to create tableau’s that shows the audience bits from the story. This has been a very good way of starting to create the whole piece because we have had something to go off from the beginning. 

The first tableau is called ‘The Wedding’, as you can see in the picture Klaudia and Kyle, who are playing Orpheus and Eurydice, are doing a romantic gesture which is also one of the moves that they do in their dance duet. Kane, who is playing Hades, is actually acting as the snake who kills Eurydice and my character Persephone is undercover as a priest. Obviously in this tableau it doesn’t actually show any sign of me being undercover but as we’ve created the piece it is shown been shown clearly.

Tableau two is called ‘The Royals’ and in this tableau is me and Kane playing Hades and Persephone. We actually went for an Egyptian style and structure for this tableau because we felt that this sort of style that we were all interested in and wanted to do more research into so we could bring it into our performance. 

The next tableau is called ‘Trapped’ and this is based off the part of the myth were Eurydice is dead and stuck in the underworld with Hades and Persephone. I feel that it is very important that me and Kane in this tableau show that our characters have much higher authority and status than Eurydice by making were our hands are placed a confident placement and making sure our backs are straight. This will defiantly show the audience that our characters have the control.

The fourth tableau is called ‘Stairs’ and this is the moment in the story were Orpheus has to walk through hell with out looking for Eurydice so that they can leave the underworld happily. It is really important that within this tableau you can see the hope in both their faces and the audience can feel how desperate they are.

The last tableau is called ‘Statues’ and we have both Orpheus and Hades standing in a very masculine position. When we first created these tableau’s we hadn’t really decided were we wanted the story to go and how we wanted the ending to be so we decided to make this our final tableau at this point just to show how one man has ended up with nothing and one has ending with everything. 

With our tableau’s we improved them majorly over time as we added the costumes and the scenes that were coming with them. ‘The goal is always to make a nice tableau painting with the voice. The more color I can find, the more shadow I can find - the goal is always to make more nuance and colors.’ - Cecilia Bartoli.  We also did change them because our story changed through time as we were making it more our own story than the original.