Final Evaluation, Girl in the Machine

- Brii Brider
In my artistic role I took on the role of Polly who is a lady in her 30s who is dating Owen. She is hard
working and work driven, I also played the role of Voice who is a mysterious AI who is somewhat
haunting Polly and Owen’s relationship. When playing the role of Polly I often used ¹²emotional
recall, this helped me related to Polly’s character more and felt like I was living through Polly, from
my interpretation of Polly is a woman who fears being afraid of not having something to rely on
(Owen or black box), knowing she couldn’t have both she sacrificed something that could potentially
end in turmoil and chose something that would never end and she would be forever happy.

When playing the role of black box, I felt a responsibility to be creepy and mysterious which was
hard to convey as my scene after was endearing and lustful. My interpretation of black box is they are
a genderless being who is a ‘test’ to be people’s escape from reality confusing reality and imaginations
making it harder to differentiate between what's real and fake. I feel as though even though black
box is a ‘being’ in our performance they are malicious, manipulative and have no remorse for being
at fault for taking people's lives. As it gives the line “Do you want to live forever? Yes, or no?” it also
gives the line “We are the choices you have made; we came for those who felt dissatisfied' this
suggests to me that there are multiple black box’s (like portrayed in our performances) and they are a
collective being and not just one black box.

With my production roles I joined the teams I knew I had experience in, for example,
learning about lighting in GCSE and taking a makeup course and getting a ‘degree’ in
makeup. From these past experiences I felt confident in being able to help my team to be
their best efforts. The goal was to explore Owen and Polly’s career’s and what they would
wear in real life and to transform it into something flexible and comfortable enough to be
able to do physical theatre in and not feel ¹⁰gender dysphoria, as a part of the costume team
we spoke often and often about making actors feel uncomfortable and we wanted to ensure
their happiness as well as making the performance uniformed and similar. When creating
Polly, Owen and Voice’s costumes we wanted to make Polly quite feminine and Owen
masculine, looking into jeans for Owen and a casual top as he would rather comfort than
‘fancy’ while Polly is a lawyer and would wear a more ‘professional’ costume as her work
demands more of a ‘professional’ uniform. We used a black base for Polly as it was easier to
change into then a full costume and it also resembled black box always being within Polly
and she was destined to become a part of black box, we chose the colour red as she is a
liability to her and Owen’s relationship causing havoc and searching for something more
than what she already had, choosing blue for Owen seemed to be essential as he felt like a
‘mediator’ between Polly and black box being the one to pick up the pieces and helping her
when she was in need. We also chose these colours as they are polar opposites and have no
resemblance to each other at all, on the colour wheel they are opposite each other. This is
meant to signify that they were never destined to be with each other.

When exploring lighting options, I personally didn’t work on doing lighting on other
scenes. I focused on my scenes which were scenes 12, 15, 17 and 18. All these scenes were
important to me as they all showed various stages of the couple's relationship as they have
moments of tenderness and turmoil. An idea we had for scene 18 was using ¹¹UV lights with
glow in the dark paint to create an aesthetically pleasing piece to show the touch between
the characters and how often Owen touches Polly and how little Polly touches Owen. This
wasn’t possible as we didn’t have the right equipment and there had to be a lot of trust
involved which me and my partner developed as we were prepared to combat this scene.

I chose a red and blue light for scene 12 as together they make purple which (for me
personally) gives an endearing and caring atmosphere. In this scene Polly is tending to black
box as she had previously destroyed black box out of fear and frustration. This scene has a
caring nature as she is tending to black box, which is the first time, we see black box ‘weak’
and unable to effectively communicate with Polly, this is also one of the few scenes where
we see black box needing Polly instead of Polly needing black box.

In scene 15 my partner and I explored different options for our lighting choices as we cycled
through different atmospheric conditions for this scene. We ended up choosing a
combination of a silhouette and a blue hue to show Polly’s imagination and a certain
coldness making it slightly unnerving, the silhouette idea as it creates a romantic setting as
this is what Polly is imagining as the audience we cannot tell if Polly is imagining Owen or
black box as she is talking about ‘lusting’ with this image of either Owen or black box.

In scene 17 I focused on not having too much going with lighting unless it was needed as we
wanted the audience to focus on Polly and Owen as this is their final scene together and
relatively happy together. This scene used warm coloured lighting to conceal the cold nature
of the scene, in this scene we circled around black box almost if we were ready to fight, this
is to foreshadow the following scene as either Polly or Owen to survive black box.

In scene 18 we had complex ideas for this scene as we wanted multiple light changes such as
the only lighting source being candles, a flood light slowly closing in, flickering lights but
these had to be out ruled as of people having seizures, not enough light to show the actors
expressions, claustrophobia. Instead, we chose to have a warm spotlight on until the final
choreographed scene when there is a fade to black and then the red LEDs come on for the
final choreographed scene.

When costume team planned when to begin our meetings, we agreed to update every 3
weeks as we would each have enough time to talk to other groups.

Lighting only had a couple of meetings, but we communicated often over teams about what
each pair/trio wanted for their lighting, this was enough for us to figure out who wanted
what and stay up to date with each person's lighting fixtures, my role was to help with
lighting ideas if someone didn’t know what they wanted or didn’t know what would look
good.

The costume planning was simple as we started off planning when to discuss recent updates
and any innovative ideas we had, looking into what makeup to have and how it would look
on different skin tones and who was allergic to what makeup. We then planned when for the
cast to bring in their costumes to show us what they had, we drew out a sizing chart for
people's sizes and even deciding on going to Primark™ to supply costumes this ended up not
working as we would have been paying with our own money and unsure how we would be paid back
and majority of the team were not available for the days we had already planned. We had planned to
do everyone's makeup backstage during the scenes but during the first dress rehearsal we ran into the
problem of not being able to see due to the light being off and multiple cast members being black
box and then another character which made removing makeup difficult.

During the rehearsal process, we ran into multiple problems such as people forgetting costumes,
forgetting lines onstage due to pressure, lighting issues, remembering ques, making noise backstage,
people being late. These were all problems that needed to be sorted before performance week as we
wanted it to be perfect.
We started by sorting out the noise problem backstage, making a cast decision to move from the
black curtain to the green room as we could be given more privacy and be further away from the
stage, we would move to behind the black curtain 2 scenes before ours to save a rush and missing
cues.

We then decided to sort the forgetting costumes issue, we set a day on teams on what day to bring it
in and if people forgot or had an excuse, we told them to wear it the next day, if necessary, this was
not advised but accepted as people are sometimes in a rush.

Being late to rehearsals started to become an issue when cast members would come in halfway
through a run through and would have to be caught up on edits and changes, we had a group
discussion and had decided to have a physical record of who came late and why. This way we could
know if it was a legitimate reason or an excuse.

The lighting issue was quickly sorted but became stressful enough to where we were talking about
other lighting options and how this could be resolved. And cast forgetting their lines onstage was
sorted by improvisation but remembering their partner’s que line, so they didn’t mess their lines up.

During this process we had workshops to help with our physical theatre aspects and fitness from the
choreography team, this was useful as a company we felt less uncomfortable and stiff when
performing our strings of material to the rest of the company and the audience.

During PPW we focussed on making sure that lighting was perfect and if an of the cast had any
worries or concerns that they were smoothed out making sure there was no anxiety and only good
jitters for the performance.

We started the week off by doing a full run through of the scenes without stopping and then straight
into a ‘top and tails’ (this is where we look at each lighting and music que and what line or action it
is starting on) this cleared up any confusion between the actors and the lighting and sound team.

Costume and makeup had a group discussion about what was being done and a last-minute check if
everyone was comfortable and happy with what we were doing. Once that was agreed we decided as
the costume team what worked and what didn’t as the dress rehearsal helped us figure out how fast
each transition and how long each scene was, some could last from 1 minute to 5 minutes.

We then helped marketing print out tickets and hand them out to whoever wanted one and how
many they wanted. This wasn’t necessary but as a company help each other if there is a last task that
hadn't been completed.
The cast did a full run through of the performance to get rid of any final anxieties in full costume
and makeup. We did this run through as if it was the real performance to get an idea of what it will
feel like.

I think the play went well as we as a company had come across difficult events leading up to the
performance, but we prospered and managed to put on a performance that was aesthetically pleasing
and enjoyable for friends, family and ourselves. We remained calm and collected throughout the
performances, not letting mistakes ruin the show. Even though we could always improve my biggest
regret is not experimenting onstage more and having more fun, I feel as though I played it safe with
my lines and actions everything being choreographed perfectly, I wished I would have been more
explored more in my scenes for example, being more physical with Cameron or standing up in
my scenes with Ellesse. I would have also liked to have been involved in more choreography
as I thoroughly enjoyed creating and introducing my idea to the choreography team.

My conclusion is that the performance was beautiful with raw and pure emotion which was
a tearjerker for many audience members. As an actor this is amazing performance feedback
as you want to capture the emotion that the characters are feeling and portray it in the right
way, as Cameron and I were the final scenes I feel like we had a certain responsibility to
make this happen for the audience and even to us it felt real to where we wanted to pull this
off so bad and as a pair we made it happen. As a collective team we all made the plot
meaningful and a ‘narrative masterpiece’. There is always room for improvement I agree but
with many events that had happened over the past year I feel this is one of the best
performances we’ve put together.