The first draft was a fail.
After presenting the first draft of my idea The Man You Hate I got a mixture of responses. “It was too DIRECT”, “it focused too much on Hitler, which is clichéd”, “and the performance wasn’t relevant to me”. These were not reason alone the want to change my idea; however I then realised that the idea was paradoxical and juxtaposing. How could I create a performance that seemed real and intimate while presenting a character that isn’t real and isn’t intimate but direct? This is reason why I found myself to using clichés stereotypes about WW2 and Nazi’s because that was to only way to frame this character as familiar or real. I created a bad performance because I used material that the audience were used to, and bored with. Some horrific parts of the character did not come through because the audience was desensitised towards the denigration of Jewish men and women.
One Door Closes, Another One Opens
While looking over my notes for solo, I come across a few poems I wrote a while back. And as I read on a small grin turns into a large toothy smile as I realise I could do a performance about poetry – my poetry! They are intimate and personal, well written (I don’t have to write a script) and they hold topics that are relevant to my target audience of university student.
(Mighty, 2014) The poem I found 3 pages away from my solo essay notes.*
The research I did to find out how I can present The Man You Hate in an intimate and realistic manner is transferable to this idea as the poems don’t have to replicate a sense of reality as they are real, instead I can use this knowledge to better create a feeling of intimacy and community with my audience.