On Friday 18th May 2018, I showed my final performance of Rock Chick. Overall, I believe that the experience was a positive one and I am incredibly proud of the final performance that I presented.

First of all, as I have stated in previous posts, I wanted my performance to be slightly more relaxed and open in it’s tone and therefore, I realised that I wanted this performance to be funny and enjoyable for people to watch. In terms of the humour that was featured within my piece, I was actually surprised by the amount of laughter that came from my audience. I had intentionally written the show to be funny but I believe that due to my nerves, I had begun to doubt my ability to get an audience to enjoy themselves. Therefore, actually hearing my audience laugh and interact with me was heart-warming and reassuring as a performer. Due to the personal nature of the material that I was sharing, including the photographs of me as a teenager and the memories that shaped me, I was slightly worried that this level of exposure would somehow inhibit the enjoyment. Again, it was comforting to see my audience genuinely enjoying themselves. In fact, it was quite special for me to share the photographs of my younger self with the audience and admit that I looked slightly odd in them as it helped to actually contextualise the history of my relationship with heavy metal.

In addition, I believe that my use of props and physical comedy helped to enhance the experience even more for my audience. I always knew that my piece would be quite silly and not necessarily the most serious piece of theatre to ever be created. Therefore, I realised during my devising process that in order for the use of comedy to be effective, I had to commit to it and genuinely enjoy myself whilst I was performing. This was something that was commented on by a few people after the show. They stated how because of the fact that I was visibly enjoying myself, it made the experience more engaging for them as an audience. One particular element which audience members enjoyed was the Heavy Metal Macarena which received quite a big laugh during the show.

Furthermore, the movement sequence at the start of the piece also received some nice comments from my audience. When I received compliments on my movement section, it made me incredibly happy as I have found movement sequences difficult during performances in the past. By having the opportunity to create a movement sequence that showed my emotional journey through my discovery of heavy metal, it made me proud that I had developed my physical abilities as a performer enough to choreograph a section such as this. Moreover, I was glad to have had the opportunity to develop my skills as a performer and carry out tasks which I thought I would never be able to accomplish before the start of this module.

In addition, I was proud of the fact that individuals who didn’t come from a performing arts background came to see my performance and thoroughly enjoyed it. Both my partner and his friend who study Computer Science came to watch Rock Chick and both of them found the experience a lot of fun. I was incredibly proud of this as I always wanted this show to be enjoyed by people regardless of whether they listened to heavy metal or not, or even if they didn’t necessarily have an artistic background. It was nice to see my work be appreciated by a mixture of people, and I feel as if this was one of the key points of my show: that this performance was for everybody and was never created with the intention of excluding anybody. There is no one correct way to become acquainted with the heavy metal genre and just because this show encapsulated my experience, it doesn’t mean that elements of it can’t be applied to other peoples lives.

In fact, coming off of this point, one of the nicest compliments that I received for this piece was about the concert section. One audience member stated how as I was describing the events of the day and sharing my emotional journey, they themselves were reminded of previous experiences at heavy metal concerts. It was nice to hear this as it made the performance much more of a shared experience for me. I didn’t feel as if I was alone in my enjoyment of the performance or heavy metal itself. I also feel as if this helped to establish a sense of community within my performance as there was a group of people coming together in order to just have some fun, similarly to how I experienced the concert itself.

In conclusion, I feel as if my performance was a success and as a result of all of my hard work, a performance which was funny, meaningful and unifying was created which I can always be proud to put my name on.