The Performance

Nerves were extremely high last night before the Colab 'Pub Crawl'. We were well aware that our 3 pieces were unusual to say the least and that the audience may be made up of unsuspecting pub-goers who haven't bought into the performance. 
It started with our piece using the Wasted text. Unfortunately this was a tiny, cottage-like pub in the back streets of Greenwich. While it was great that it was packed with people, we had to scale down the piece to avoid injury!

Our 'Wasted' monologue, movement and music piece.

It must have been a success as we were asked to repeat it at the next pub! This had a fantastic space and audience.

The fantastic band in the Trafalgar
before our performance.

As a group we were more committed to the piece this time round and it made it much more effective. We decided not to perform the aggressive pub scene here. Our decision to do the comedic '50 Shades' piece was the right one. The audience were laughing throughout and I feel that the soundscape really captured their interest.

Our excited group outside the second pub!

The final venue, the Admiral Hardy was the busiest, loudest pub of the night. To our surprise, our opening soundscapes drew people in and both pieces held the audience's attention. We had planned to be scattered around the venue during our pub scene piece but this proved impossible on the night. It still worked, and we were pleased to be able to keep  together with all the distractions of a lively London pub!

My attempts at gauging the audience reactions were interesting. The most effective, thought provoking piece was 'Wasted'. I was really happy at this as we managed to combine music, acting and music to convey emotions, so we wanted to leave an impression. The '50 Shades' was seen as the funniest. I have to confess that a rather common reaction to our performances was the line "well that was weird". Fellow instrumentalists were also confused as to how I'd ended up in such a diverse project with musical theatre students!

I couldn't have asked for a better night and I loved being able to push myself as a performer, as well as an instrumentalist. Fantastic week.