The start of May witnessed my grand debut of the Weeping Tree on the big stage! Yes, my first attempt at a full toy theatre performance, to an audience of about 60 people at Central School of Speech and Drama's 2010 Puppet Festival. The producer and I had decided to try projecting the toy theatre's proscenium arch stage via live video feed onto the wall behind me as I performed the piece, because otherwise it seemed obvious that audience members sitting further back would not be able to watch the miniature-sized piece.
As a first attempt this performance raised a few clear issues. Judging by later feedback, no one watched the live video feed - everyone tried to watch the performance as it happened in the toy theatre. Consequently some people struggled to see the piece fully, added to by the fact that shadows cast by foreground scenery obscured some areas within the theatre, and people said the characters sometimes blended in with their surroundings a little too much.
Meanwhile, my tutor told me the piece came across as very meditative but 'lacked performance'.
Hmm, interesting.....
So from this I gather that toy theatre is either performed as toy theatre, in which case it should be performed to a small enough, sufficiently intimate audience so as to be visible to everyone, or it is performed as animation/film, in which case none of that matters and the toy theatre needn't even be present. But it needs to be one or the other, I need to decide whether I am trying to make live theatre or animation.
In terms of my next perfomance of the Weeping Tree, at the Great Small Works International Toy Theater Festival in New York, I will be aiming for the former - live theatre. I will be performing a five minute version to groups of 10-12 people approximately ten times within a one hour period. I won't be meddling around with video feeds this time. And performatively I will be heading in a different direction - previously I felt very strongly about not using any dialogue and letting the haunting medieval music do the speaking...this time I will be narrating.
I'm keeping a different blog of my experience as an intern at the Great Small Works festival here:
http://greatsmall.blogspot.com
