My friends’ impressions:

Friend A (Stayed for the entire event)

He was unsure of how to act during the free-roaming “gallery” portions. He was expecting a much more straightforward theatrical performance with an audience bank and a narrative-based piece of sorts.

Similar to some of the other reflections that have been posted, my friend didn’t catch the themes/topics of many of the pieces (Carina’s Syrian refugee performance went way over his head, to name one).

He loved Omar’s performance. This isn’t a big shocker. He likes puns. It’s why we’re friends.

My friend refused to put his head in Bailey’s box. (I will never not love typing that sentence.)

I asked my friend whether he’d recommend the showing to another friend, and he said “Yeah, but they’d have to hit the bong pretty hard beforehand.”
… Frankly, I can’t argue there.

Friend B (Left at about 4:30 because he’s a philistine)

He was quite resistant to the very top of the show, especially being led down the hallway while blindfolded. “I kept thinking they were going to slam me into a wall!” That would have been a pretty powerful choice to start our showing with breaking their noses.

My friend heard most of Sophia’s story and thought it was hilarious. He asked me why she wrote that story about me. I told him, basically, that it was in response to some of my performance objects relating to my job-hunt anxieties. He said that made more sense than his original assumption, which was that she just really didn’t like me. (I hope that isn’t true, Sophia!)

Again, like other people have mentioned, my friend had trouble listening to some of the videos on the iPads.

My friend mentioned Bailey’s box (heh) but was too scared of the “glowing demon boy trapped inside” to stick his head inside.

Eventually, my friend peaced out because he received a txt from another friend about playing Super Smash Bros. in my common room. Guys, I just don’t see how we can compete with video games. We should focus on making those instead of making theatre. It’s a growth industry.

I asked him if he would recommend devised theatre to a friend as well, and he said “Maybe if some friend of mine was looking for some very specifically weird activity or for some horrendously bad first-date location.”
…Yeesh. That was a little harsh, Friend B.

My thoughts:

I think that Bailey’s box (heh) had its impact diminished by setting it in the middle of a crowded, busy room. I think that if we brought in 14 (or however many holes) people at a time to a side room with only the box in it, there would have been more buy-in from the audience and a more impactful experience for them.

As we discussed in class, we could have done a better job with considering the layout of the pieces. Even if we don’t go in a direction of more carefully crafting the audience’s exposure to the pieces, we could do some more logistical thinking to not put, say, two loud pieces right next to each other and to observe and try to predict the typical audience movement pattern around the room. — OH SHIT we should slap motion trackers on each audience member when the enter the gallery so we can analyze their movement patterns and see which pieces they gravitated towards and which they skipped as well as how long they spent near each! (Analytics is the future of devised theatre. Don’t fight it.)