Watching Amanda among other Theatre Uncut performances at the Young Vic helped me enormously as I feel I really understood the simplicity of the piece far more than before. This is as the three performers only had three chairs and their voices - simple yet effective - and at times casually described what Amanda was doing in the bath tub and at other emotionally expressed her fears and anxieties and the piece had a lot of contrast. They interacted with the audience as they were breaking down the fourth wall and spoke directly to the audience. However, I feel when we perform our own version we will do this more as we are studying the Brechtian techniques including the v-effect and will go closer towards the audience. I also became aware that they did not just speak to the Amanda and the audience, but the two performers either side of her portraying her thoughts constantly interacted with one another which I thought was effective as it gave it a slight feel that it was even more surreal and brought the piece together. I feel seeing this performance will help me adapt what I am doing when I am in Amanda and the individual devised performance as I now understand the sense of group communion and ensemble of her thoughts which I think will be even more effective in our school piece as many people are taking on the role of Amanda's thoughts. The performers I saw said their words descriptively and with feeling as although it is not a naturalistic piece this still needs to be considered to create empathy for Amanda so the audience relate to her and only if this happens can we alter the general audience's perception of politicians. Lastly, I also feel we as a class need to take our time a bit more when performing Amanda and let the piece breathe and not rush unless necessary to portray heighten emotions as there are some points where silences and pauses are very effective as the radio plays and Amanda simply lies in her bath. I think these pauses will help the piece to “breathe” more where appropriate when we perform it and in these gaps of sound have an “energy” not just a silence as if the silences have energy the audience will use that time to compensate over what is happening, thinking more and being more engaged with the message.
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