Evaluation of Will Rennison's Group

Will's group did a great performance using many different techniques all developed by Brecht. The fact that they performed it outside was very brave and made it clear that anything could happen, which reminds the audience constantly that they are watching a play.

The fact that they also shouted out the stage directions and punctuation in the script, such as, "Beat" and "Exclamation point" made the audience very aware that they were watching a scripted piece. This worked really well with introducing the alienation technique to the audience.

The fact that Shanon came out of character and came to the front really alienated the audience from the piece and made them realise that they were an audience watching a piece of theatre. This also makes the audience question why and how their message is getting across.

The staging also helped with being disconnected. The audience are positioned quite far away from the action. Sometimes, it can be quite difficult to hear, so you have to really focus to hear what they were saying. This made it very easy for them to get their message across to the audience.

Also the fact that all the cast were visible to the whole audience all the time and the fact that they used very over the top and repeated gestures, helped to alienate the audience and still allow them to get involved in the story.

Overall, I think this piece was very effective. It used effective techniques to dis-engage the audience, but also portrayed the message. You knew that the message got across to the audience at the end, because the audience were gasping and looking very shocked, which was their intention within the story-line.