Evaluation
My target grade for my Final Major Project is distinction – “In depth understanding and aesthetic awareness, imaginative and flexible processes, skills and knowledge applied in extensive enquiry to develop creative solutions.”
The set, props lighting, sound, and costuming all helped to portray our story easily and effectively to the audience. The table at the back symbolises the tea party, the props and food all over it also add to this effect. The point of the set is to transport the audience into the world of the patients. The tea party set being very bright and joyful in conjunction with the opening scene, with the Dr, Cheshire Cat audio (even if the audio was played at the wrong time, therefore you couldn’t hear the beginning of it, taking away from the effect it gave) and the two asylum patients Butoh slow walking into the centre, then dropping to the floor with static noises and finally Patient A (me) running and grabbing two audience members, really create a massive contrast from one another. The overbearing lighting when the static happens was used to create that Artaud affect of ‘bombarding the audiences senses’. Our costuming was super simple, yet effective. With an all-white base, to give ode to the asylum patients uniforms, and small coloured accessories (based on the colours we had given each character) ties the two sides of the performance, the asylum, and the tea party, together. 
I believe that Sonya and I were able to show the extensive knowledge that we had put into our characters, the story behind our performance and our practitioners of choice. Characterisation is something that we have both worked very hard on throughout our rehearsal process, since we each play 5 characters (The Dormouse, The Mad Hatter, The March Hare, Alice, and Asylum Patient), having obvious poses and movements for each character was very important to us. We were adding and changing characterisation the whole rehearsal process, this was to make sure we were always implementing the facts we got about the characters from Tim Burtons adaptation, as well as implementing our own thoughts on how the characters should act; I think that the in depth understanding we had on each character really was portrayed on stage. 
I take great pride in the amount of research that went into creating the story. Extensive research was done into projects QK-Hilltop and MK-Ultra, since these were a big basis of our overarching story. There are very obvious references throughout our performance to these human experiments; for example, the asylum patients being used as test dummies for a ‘truth pill’ much like what they were trying to discover in MK-Ultra. The brainwashing techniques described in the first voice over and then that are referenced back to in other voice overs, are based around QK-Hilltop’s studies into Chinese “communist” brainwashing techniques. I have faith that our research into these experiments was obvious in the overarching story of our piece. 
Much like every other unit we have done this year a select few practitioners were massive inspirations for our performance. The main one being Antonin Artaud and his theatre of cruelty; since we did not officially learn about him this year, I had to do a lot of my own research into him and his work. When researching a lot of our ideas already fit with his techniques, for example the overbearing sound and lighting. I also loved his idea of not having space between the audience and performers, if we were in a Covis-19 free world and could have any set that I wanted, I would have the table at the front of the stage so audience members could sit at it and be really involved in the performance, getting them up and dancing, shoving food in their face and so on. In one of our final run-throughs for the performance our teaching assistant, Lily, said that our whole piece was ‘uncomfortable but in a good way’, which was amazing because that is exactly what we wanted it to be like!
There was no shortage of adaptations done to our piece; since this was a near 100% devised performance (bar the chorus of Hatter’s House), it took a lot for us to get from our beginning ideas to the final production. Up to the very last moment we were adapting to make sure we put on the best performance possible, constantly checking that we liked how it looked, and after every run through we did making sure the feedback we got was fully implemented. The voice overs that really pull the entire thing together were done the week before our final performance, in order to make sure that everything was as easily understandable as it could possibly be. 
A few things did go wrong in our final production. Since our final rehearsal before the final show, we found out that when Sonya sings Orange Juice it is hard to hear, therefore meaning she needed to wear a microphone; we did not get to do a run through with the mic, nor was there any mic tape available on the day. Without the necessary tools needed to keep the microphone on Sonya’s ear, it started to fall in our beginning sequence when she pulls me back, then completely fell off (the battery pack falling on the floor, with the batteries falling out) during the first section of Cotton Eye Joe. We were able to resolve this issue by our teacher coming and picking the lose battery off the floor; then Sonya came over to me in character (Hatter) and asked me (aka Hare) to get the microphone off of her, since it was stuck in her dress buttons. We were able to stay in character throughout the whole interaction and did manage to get the microphone off of her, even if it meant we missed out character change cue; our tutor, Katy, started clapping and we got a round of applause from the audience for sorting out the situation, without freaking out or breaking character, although it was still very stressful to experience. 
In conclusion I trust that I was able to reach my target grade of distinction. By applying many of the skills I have been taught throughout this year, including Brecht, Meyerhold, Laban and Butoh; as well as using my own knowledge and research into Antonin Artaud. Even with the few problems that arose in our final performance, I believe that Sonya and I were able to give an entertaining and mildly disturbing performance, as was our plan for the start.

Unit 8 - Research and Contextl