Jay Duggan, Final Blog

1.
All the characters of Porto entered alone, one by one they came on stage, no character appears comfortable in Porto, and therefore it could be argued that all characters share one objective; to leave. When they leave they leave together, as one, as a community that they have become thorough the journey of Porto.
The opening ensemble piece is quite a telling one, it demonstrates that together these people represent a society and that this is the way they conform, and it is powerful when we see the characters who are not conforming with the rest of the cast slowly begin to loose their individuality and become a member of the community. And then again at the end, but this time it is far more deliberate, sinister and dark maybe to suggest the wear and tear and exhaustion that they have undergone, or perhaps it could represent the community more comfortable the slow movements are almost tranquil. When Nicolas hood is revealed the whole cast leans in collaboratively, this is a nice example of the community sharing experiences with similar goals. And perhaps the strongest event to suggest that this is a community is when the entire cast works together to stop Lenya taking pictures. She is obviously is a nuisance to this society and the community works together to drive her away, this urge to remove Lenya tied the community together and ultimately it lead to the exit of Porto being found, and the ensemble leaving together as a society.

2.
When we moved to a different space it became apparent that some things needed to change some choreography wasn’t going to work and some blocking needed adjusting. But this was a really nice way of refreshing what we had done and revitalising our belief in the show, reworking some of the material reinforced its quality. Now we were in the theatre we could really begin to envisage how the show was going to look. The theatre space also offered new possibilities such as the roster at the back, this was used constantly throughout the show, yet it didn’t feature in the studio space. In the studio the space that was representing the wings was far to cluttered, but with all the space in the arena people on the peripheral really began to experiment and play with their characters engaging far more with all the new opportunities it came with. However this also meant many things wouldn’t work as well, for example people positioning was drastically rearranged on the peripheral compared to the studio and this meant that some planned interactions were no longer possible. Fortunately the freedom that we all had over our character meant that it was our responsibility to behave how we did so changing things and small details didn’t need the ok from the director unless it was a direct link to the storey of Porto. The room is the theatre was far bigger and that showed when we began rehearsals in the space because things were less cramped. However when we had been running through it in the studio a lot of the work was set downstage and because of the layout seating style in the arena much for the space could not be seen from the back of the auditorium. Therefore we had to push a lot of the work right back, so despite having what we initially thought was a lot of space, it had to be moved right back for viewing purposes meaning that more last minute rearrangements had to take place.

3.
Personally I always felt the RSVP model was continuously in motion, as our character was entirely devised by ourselves, I felt we constantly adapted with every run through, on the peripheral of the stage I was constantly finding new depths to my character the more I was in role. I would experiment with things, and then keep them for the next show if I felt they worked or scrap them if they didn’t. Some members of the cast were keen to interact with me as they felt it was true to their character, but we had done very little or perhaps no work on this whatsoever right up until the final rehearsal before the first show. We began to discuss what we had in mind, but then decided that it would be better if we simply improvised it on stage as our characters during the run through, this felt more natural to the Porto development theme. Even during the shows we were constantly creating new interactions with one another and I discovered my character found a whole new side, prior to this work my character was very dominant and aggressive, seeking the attention of a certain character and acting over protective of her, not letting others near etc. however when we began to run through the shows my characters dominance was almost lost and an incredibly venerable side was revealed, an almost child like side to my character was unfolded, and that was a huge personnel growth for my character. Other members of the cast began fighting me for the characters attention I craved, and successfully deterring me from my motives which was a development that had never took place before. The impact on the show when the audience was introduced was epic, the energy and vibe from the crowd gave the added pressure to perform and the atmosphere was completely different, it made everyone concentrate much more and I felt that the show was revitalised from the tedious repetition we had all got into the habit and routine of performing and transformed into a focused faster paced more purposeful piece of theatre. Taking that energy from the audience and transforming it into something positive was a key part of the show progressing with every performance, and I think that’s what we did. I feel that the show got better with every performance