Fires in the Mirror Mini Scenes

Responses to what I saw:

 Group 1: Stella, Denny, David

I noticed that they were rolling their chairs when it was their turn to speak, so as their lines continues or came up they would use their chairs to move around the space provided to add levels and blocking.  With the chair movement, I thought that it didn't really work other than the one portion in with Denny was speaking and they made a sort of half circle around Denny and I thought that this movement really blended the fact that they were all performing the same monologue and putting all of their voices together in one cohesive. On the other side, I thought that the use of the chairs was lazy and cheesy because there would have been much more of an effect if they had stood so that I could see more body language from them. I also would have liked to avoid the fact that for them to move the chairs to move they had to pause and hunch over to get around.
Something else I noticed was that Denny had the least amount of lines by quite a bit. I am not sure why they did that but I thought that Denny had some impactful lines and I think that they might have wanted him to bee the child that comes in but I would have liked to see more from him because at the end I just wasn't sure what he was doing.
Lastly, I liked how they only used one monologue rather than mixing them up. I thought that it really pushed forward their topic which was religion. I would have liked them to do maybe one more and worked Denny into that one to aid in the progression of the story, maybe mixing two and having one go at a time but switching them intermittently so you got two stories in the same way.
Overall, I thought that they all did a really good job, especially since there wasn't really time to do much with staging and nobody learned their lines in any group. I thought that they had done a really good job with what they had but there were definitely areas where they could improve.

Group 2: Ivan, Lesley, Cassidy

First, I think that having all the members of the group would have given a totally different feel. I also think that if we had more time to work on our staging that we could have given a much stronger performance. Individually I think that there were a lot of points in which we could have improved. First I think that it was really awesome that Ivan could pick up another role and perform it so well. I also liked his ability to portray the narrator different than the other role he did, there were slight changes in his actions so that the narrator was more behind the scenes than his other role. I also liked his chair placement being fairly off camera was good for the narration lines compared to his lines that had a character attached. I would have liked some more emotion from him though when he was performing it felt static and like there wasn't really a purpose or much of a reason behind it. I personally liked being able to walk around and be int eh center of the audience so I could make eye contact with the whole audience, I thought that it gave me a better connection to what was going on, however, I thought that seeing the audience also had some of the reverse effects on me as well. Seeing people in the audience talk to another person, or point at their laptops was discouraging and made me feel self-conscious. I think that that showed that I recoiled a little bit in the middle of performance so that I had changed my whole demeanor and how I presented myself. I also think that I had the wrong emotion, I felt like my performance came off more sad and heartbroken and angry and motivated. If I could go back I would like to change this so that my emotions were projected differently and I would have liked to keep the same amount of energy as I originally came out with. I would have also liked to have my lines memorized better, I felt like I was looking at my phone a lot and it took away dramatically from my overall performance, I also thought that I was hiding from my performance. I would have liked to have actual blocking too because I felt like I was rolling around on my feet and didn't have a lot of personal actions. 

For Lesley I would have liked her to stand up and walk, I think that we should have been more clear without plans and we didn't do a lot for our movements and blocking so I think that there was a loss of communication. I think she did a good job of knowing her lines well and also spending her time wisely she practiced her lines several times before the performance so I think that helped her a lot as well. I think that since she was the father of Gavin there should have been some more emotion and I almost felt like she was sort of asleep and not into her character. I think that id Lesley really applied herself she would have done absolutely amazing but she has to be more confident. 

Overall I am really proud of my group and think that everyone worked really hard on their performances and while we have areas to improve on definitely are in the right direction of verbatim theater. 

Group 3:Jack, Jacob, Jasmin

I thought that the use of music in their performance, I thought that it was something different that they chose to do and it worked really well. The only flaw that I had was that it was a little bit to loud and I couldn't hear what Jack was saying, while I could make out the other people I still had a hard time. I think that something that might have been better would have been having riot sounds or city sounds to make it seem more realistic and set in the city. I would have liked more emotion from everyone and more blocking. I think that there was some but I'm also not sure what Jasmine was doing with her hands, I feel like that was more Jasmine rather than the character.  I thought the same thing for Jack and Jacob, they seemed like they were reading the script more than acting it out. I know that all of them are much stronger actors than what they were showing, perhaps that was the time allowed but I am not sure. I would have liked some more blocking from them because I felt like it was a little bit static in their performance. I think that they did a good job at their task and definitely had the right ideas and direction, I think that they could have used more time like the rest of us but they did a really good job and had some interesting effects.

What did the scenes acomplish?
Overall I think that not only did everyone do a good job but that we all demonstrated different pieces of Fires int eh Mirror. We all showed the main ideas of anger, sadness, and injustice just in more specific regions. This is evident in the fact that some groups had the same scene ideas. I think that we also did a good job of trying to copy our own style of verbatim theater, we stayed true to the book but all of us added something new that each of us had strengths in. I think that we showed just what the meaning of verbatim theater was combining the exact language interpretation and copying of the people and the previous acting for them that we had seen. All of us took the idea of verbatim theater that was written and made it so that we could bring it to the class and demonstrate the stories of those in Crown Heights.