Evaluation of the 4:30 Matinee

This performance was definitely not what I thought it would be. So many things went wrong for me from the start of the play and I found the whole performance really difficult to get through. After the first performance I felt great about it until I got a barrage of negative criticism about some elements that really affected my confidence in the show. So a lot was riding on this performance to make sure it went even better than the first night. This was not a good mentality to go into the performance with as I had an unrealistic expectation I was putting on myself; nevertheless above all else I just wanted it to be well received.

For starters my shirt went missing and I was given a new one just before we went on. As I was dressing myself in the pre-set I discovered it was too small and that I couldn't do the top button up meaning I couldn't wear a tie. This was setting off alarms in my head as I knew I needed to be wearing it for the scene 2 because we'd decided to keep in the improvised tie moment. So all throughout the first scene I was worrying about how I was going to solve this problem. This meant that I couldn't be truly present in the moment and just living through the role like I could do on the first night. I felt messy and like I couldn't deliver a polished performance because I was focusing so much on everything that was going wrong.

Another thing that went wrong was my mic was nowhere to be found for the party scene. I only a few seconds before I needed to be back on stage so I was scrambling around panicking to trying find out. This meant I didn't have any time to get back into a calm head space. I could feel all this erratic energy firing around inside of me and I just had to put it into the performance. However in the back of my mind I couldn't stop hearing this negative inner monologue saying "You're messing it up, everyone's going to think you are awful, You've let Ben down". It was so difficult to switch it off and just keep acting. I really thought this was going to effect my performance however after the show I was met with amazing feedback and comments from the audience members. I was genuinely so shocked.

This lead me to do some critical thinking about acting in general. I came to the conclusion that internal experience doesn't always equal to external action. I honestly felt like I was having a panic attack on the inside for the duration of the performance however I believe it wasn't translated into my performance. Charlie also made a point that my character has that kind of inner life anyway and because I didn't have to try find that constant trying to solve problems and change the world mentality it just already existed in how I was actually feeling. Obviously it would've been nicer for things to go right but as long as the story was communicated and the audience had a good experience does it really matter if I didn't enjoy it? This experience really reminded me that the play is about the audience not about how I feel at the end of the day. At least I get one more chance to rectify these problems before I go on stage next time.