4.6 Evaluating and responding LEARNING OBJECTIVES • Explore written responses to devised work • Evaluate your own work in a useful way SPOTLIGHT ON
What makes an effective response or evaluation of your own devised work?
STARTING POINT You will need to respond to devised work in different ways. These might include: • explaining what the overall concept of the work was and how you developed it through aspects of character, space, design and staging. • supporting your explanations with detailed evidence of what you did and how the work developed. • explaining what was effective and how you or your group achieved this. Your reflective log should prove helpful here, but the notes you have made will not be sufficient in themselves. Read this response to a question about how the structure of a devised piece created impact.
Our piece was about how a group of poor villagers discover some valuable ancient coins in the village well. Some of the villagers want to destroy the well to dig up any other treasure that might be there, but others – including my character, the Chief of the village – think there is too much risk and it will lead to a lack of irrigation for the village farmers. The audience witness the conflict which leads to a vote, with the Chief being overthrown. The villagers dig up the well, but there is nothing there. The final scene is of a withered village, with the old Chief slowly burying the coins in the ground again. This created a very sad impact, and everyone understood the difficult choice the villagers had to make. The vote was an important part because the audience play the part of the villagers and they do the vote. We had two endings, but both were sad.
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1. What has the student done effectively? 2. What do you think could be improved?
Think about what you know about dramatic structure and overall concept and the extent to which the impact is explained.
EXPLORING THE SKILLS 3. Now read part of a longer response by a student from the same group, evaluating the effectiveness of the group’s use of space in the devised work: clear identification of location
The performance space we chose to use was a part of the school yard which is shaded by a cypress tree. The dimensions of the space were approximately 10 metres by 8 metres in a broadly oval shape with the limits of the acting space defined byy the final audience members’ pposition on either side. We wanted to ‘break the fourth wall’ so that the audience felt theyy were part p of the drama too – we sat the audience in a three-quarter circle, so that theyy became ppart q of the village g when theyy voted for whether to digg upp the village g well. It was meant to be intimate and ppersonal. We set it outside because we wanted to use the natural light g to make it relevant and realistic. The cypress tree was reallyy important because it was yp p a clear entrance/exit ppoint for each character – the idea was that it should look as if each villager g almost ‘grew’ out of the tree so that this stressed the connection between the ppeople p and the land.
dimensions of space technical term explained in the next sentence how this was achieved the overall effect they wanted
4. Now answer these questions:
• Why did the group decide to set the drama outside? • What was the function of the cypress tree? • What was in the centre of the acting space until the end of the piece? • What wasn’t effective about the choice of location? 5. How is this more effective as a response?
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The use of the space, the natural surroundings p g and the way we created intimacyy was effective, but there were some practical issues. Actingg outside p with bright g sunlight g and shade from the tree meant that sometimes yyou couldn’t see characters’ expressions. If we had thought p g more about this,, we could have used it for Xavier, who pplayed y a sneakyy villager, g but we didn’t, so everyone suffered from beingg caught y g in the shadows.
4.6 EVALUATING AND RESPONDING
The focal point of the drama was the centre of the dustyy yyard in front of p the audience. Here, we pplaced a large g wicker basket, which signifi g ed the well. It drew everyone’ y s eyes y and no one touched it till the final scene when it was slowlyy taken to pieces, symbolically. p y y
REFLECTIVE LOG
The key difference between explaining the impact of an aspect of your devised work and evaluating it, is that when you evaluate you make a judgement and analyse what worked and what didn't. Create a table that records both of these ideas, and the actions you took to improve.
DEVELOPING THE SKILLS It is often important that you can explain the directorial concept of your group’s devised work, particularly when evaluating it. However, as you and your group try out different ideas, your vision (the big idea you are trying to get across to the audience) is likely to change and evolve. Here are one student’s notes on the devised work about the village/ treasure discussed in this unit: Week 1
2
Structure, action and characters Villagers find valuable items in well – leads to one villager destroying well to get treasure, and leaving village. On the way, he gets lost as he tries to reach big city; he has to sell treasure for water and transport. Ends with nothing. We’ve adapted story – Jac had idea to make it more about the village being divided. Now, will be about how villagers vote whether to destroy well for promise of more treasure. Chief is against it, but he is overthrown. Well is destroyed but nothing is found.
Big idea / concept
How will it be shown
Moral/mythic story about personal consequences of greed. More stylised than realistic portrayal. Could be any time, any place.
The villager will meet three sets of people on way: each one sells him something for part of the treasure – water, food, a donkey to ride. In the end, he is back at the village but everyone has gone. By getting audience to make the vote/choice as if they were villagers, we bring home fact that villagers face impossible situation.
Now, we’ve decided story is about choices forced on a village by climate change / drought – neither choice is a real choice – shortterm gain against unlikely long-term survival? More realistic tone/style.
6. What was the original ‘big idea’ the group had in Week 1? 7. How did the focus of the story change in Week 2 when the group
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met? What was the new concept / big idea? 8. How did the style of drama that the group was devising change? It can be useful to try to express your big idea in a simple few sentences or a paragraph so that you have a general feel for what you are trying to achieve. 9. Go back to your own devised work, either work in progress or work that you have completed. What is the overall concept for the work? Write at least one paragraph trying to capture the essence of the piece.
Here are the responses of two students writing about how they applied aspects of character in their different devised pieces. Student A: To play the part of the flood survivor, I watched some videos of flood victims ppickingg through g the wreckage g of their homes. Some seemed to be ggoingg through g the motions, not reallyy beingg able to focus on the reality; y others were more ppractical. I decided to make myy character ppractical, so I decided in the first scene that a ggesture was important – she should be mendingg something, p g, in a book. pperhaps p a torn curtain,, or stickingg pages p g together g
Student B: How does the head of a village act, I wondered? I wanted my Chief to be pproud, someone who onlyy speaks when he has to. I thought p g about wise people p p I knew – theyy listen carefully. y So I developed p this idea that myy character should always before y leave a pause p he answers,, to show he is thinking. g In the first scene I decided to add a line that would be almost like a catchphrase: ‘I am ggoingg to p look at the stars...’
SOUND PROGRESS • I can identify and comment on a range of aspects of my group’s devised work and say what went well and what didn’t. EXCELLENT PROGRESS • I can comment on the effectiveness of a range of elements of our devised work, evaluating the ways in which it met the concept we had planned and the effect it had on the audience.
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CHECKLIST FOR SUCCESS ✓ Have they commented on what sort of person they wanted their character to be? ✓ Did they explain how they developed the ideas originally? ✓ Have they explained their use of speech or movement?
4.6 EVALUATING AND RESPONDING
APPLYING THE SKILLS 10. Make notes on both responses, explaining how effectively each student has explained how they developed their characters.