Evaluation

Bouncers is play set in the 1980s written by John Godber to break perceptions of the theatre for middle aged men. Recently our stage company performed an adaptation of Bouncers which was, in my opinion, a huge success; the performance was strong, timings were executed and the audience reacted accordingly.

As an actor, I enjoyed playing Judd as well as the Lads and the Ladies, and the multiple other characters, as I felt it gave the show real energy which was reciprocated well with audience. The Rehearsal process was considerably smooth and successful as, despite my late entrance to the cast, we had the show blocked in maybe two weeks and so it wasn't long until we were rehearsing with scripts down and working on the finer details. Furthermore, although there were some minor issues, I feel that we all bonded well as a cast which gave the show's delivery even more power. When rehearsing, we were often in room C6 although this would not be where we would be performing, this meant that as actors, we would have to adapt to the given performance space; this is something that I think was effective, there was no apparent issues. However issues did arise during rehearsals when discussing music to use throughout the play, I especially thought that some of the music chosen was inappropriate. During the performance on the other hand, the music was a pleasant undertone that actually became one of the defining factors of the show. In terms of Audience, the turnout was moderate although when taking into account the size of the cast and the limited period of advertising, the turnout was actually quite substantial. Furthermore, the audience gave a good reaction, feed backing to us actors on stage with bursts of laughter giving more confidence and charisma. Finally, characters were really brought to life on stage.

Although I still feel like characters such as the girls could have been developed more, yet I would associate this characterisation with the other scenes that were initially cut out. It has always been my opinion that we should have performed more of, if not all of, the script; the script has so much potential and in cutting it, we missed some of John Godber's stylisation. If we given the desired opportunity to perform Bouncers again, as well as using the whole script, I would like to take it to a Club setting; a school hall will always look like a school hall and hence, will always have a presence throughout the performance despite our persisting efforts to create that specific club atmosphere. An actual club would still be an effective performance space as they usually have a stage area and in most cases, seating. With Bouncers being such a renowned show, I feel that casting should have been taken majority into consideration, especially with the casting of Lucky Eric, however it really did not feel that way throughout the any part of the process and this is because of how much of the script was cut. The characters are still defined and have different personalities but not to a point where I feel a cast reshuffle would have had much effect. Eric's character should have taken a lot of consideration because of his emotional speech, but I think the speech was deprived of it's power because the rest of Eric's speeches were cut.