Ghost Light Tours Evaluation - Assignment 1: Task 5

 Evaluation

My character in The Globe was part of a duo act with Will, which was also part of a bigger act with a few other classmate’s acts. We were part of the Vaudeville piece which was around the 15-minute mark into the tour. Our piece was a comedy act where we did a little bit of dancing with umbrellas and hitting each other with them while speaking a snippet out of a part of a poem, Kelly had chosen for us. We started off with having to come up with a name for our characters and a dark secret which was incorporated into our act by Alan when he introduces us, it also gives us that feeling of that were actually part of a real immersive horror experience. We came up with the names Frank and Freddie, William was Freddie and I was Frank, our dark secret was our triplet brother was shot with a prop gun during a performance but no one knows if it was intentional or not. We focused on that backstory further between ourselves just so we could get into the mind of the characters, we didn’t share it with anyone else as it would ruin the whole point of the mystery. We dug deeper into our secret by saying that it was intentional and it was all because our third brother would get more recollection on stage then us so we plotted to kill him and came out successful. We then became a failed duo act due to all the gossip surrounding the death of our brother, this led us to motivate ourselves to despise the each other when delivering the lines since we were both to blame for our downfall since we made the plot to kill him.

We started off by slowly getting a feel of how we would stand when being introduced and how we would stand when being apart of the massive group at the beginning when the audience first see us. After we got a feel of how we would stand we moved onto what actions we would do during being introduced, we decided to take inspiration form Laurel and Hardy, by doing a funky walk on together where we would stretch our foot and lean into each step we took to make it look like we were bopping up and down into time with the music. After the walk we would stand linked up and point our right foot out with the umbrellas by our side. When Alan mentions about the prop gun death Will would point and shoot me with his fingers where I would pretend to die then giggle towards the audience. After we had practiced getting the walk on the introduction sorted, we moved onto the actual act. We started watching some old black and white slapstick comedy acts as that was what our act was. We saw while watching people hitting each other with canes and decided to use that idea but with umbrellas instead we decided to come up with a theme with how different we were now and how distant we have become with each other since we murdered our brother. I wore a white shirt with black trousers and a black top hat with some black suspenders, I also carried a white umbrella. Will wore entirely black even the shirt was black and he had a black umbrella, this was to show how opposite we had become but the fact that we are still alike when it comes to the comedy aspects of things. After watching some more old slapstick comedy acts we decided to come up with the old sort of dances they would do like kicking there feet out while also moving the umbrella with the beat. We took a couple of days to polish this act where we just kept going over and over it learning the poem lines and all the introductions and movements till we were in time with the music we had chosen. We even started staying back late and coming in during half term to get it sorted. We managed to get it sorted ready for show day.

Our show days were the 30th of October and the 31st of October. For the very first performance I was ready and not really nervous since I managed to build back my confidence for this role. After both shows we both got some laughs when doing our piece the first audience was a really hard crowd. After doing our piece we walk towards the audience as we all walk off to scare them. Then when they move away from us we go sit in the seats and get ready for when Mark starts his speech for the House of Wax so that when he says certain words we walk towards the audience and come alive. The very last performance was a breath of fresh air getting it done but also felt weird as I had a lot of fun and didn't want our tours to end. 

If I was too do it again I would try make less mistakes for example not walking into a wall when coming off the stage and not hitting Will's glasses off his face and losing our hats when doing our piece. For next time I need to work on my confidence when doing it infront of people since when we did a dress rehearsal for Kelly and Tom I was very nervous and my heart was racing because I didn't want to mess up and ruin it.