'Lunch' 5|6|13. - 'Final Performance'

We did our performance for one night in the studio room. I think it went fairly well, and there were only a few mistakes, but they remained unnoticed to the audiences eye.

To relate it to Berkoff, we used a minimal setting to make sure there was no distraction from the main action on the stage, it also showed the characters lack of awareness for the people around the characters. We also applied this within our costumes, using monochrome colours. The black and white of Jake and Matt's shirts being reversed to show which has pure purity and the dark soul. Mine dress, black with white dots, shows the little spread of purity I have, whereas  Ciara's white top reflects her innocence.

Throughout the performance my personal tone changes within sentences. This makes the audience questions society's behaviour of how indecisive we are over problems that we should not question, in this case, cheating on the husband. We used this juxtaposition to fit into Berkoff's idea's of shocking and making the audience question instead of spoon feeding the audience into a feel good performance.

In some of Berkoff's pieces, (such as Metamorphosis) we see he uses elements of mime. We used this in scenes to replicate the images we had in our head in order to show that both characters were feeling similar things whilst I am sat with Jake. However, when I am with Matt, one usually leads the actions in order to show how the personalities clash.

Berkoff often liked to create pieces revolving around taboo subjects, but liked to keep his main themes distant. In 'Lunch' we see the theme of the beach and the sea running throughout, which is a contrast to the theme of lust of the two strangers on their chance meeting, typical of Berkoff to use a play to show social issues in society. When cutting the script, we tried to keep as much of the imagery of the beach and water within the lines, as this offered a contrasting theme to the social issue he offers, making the audience question how healthy the characters choices are to then later question their own social choices.

Breaking the fourth wall is another identifiable technique of Berkoff, in our last rehearsal, we notices many places where instead of talking to each other, we could stare into the audience. We did this when talking about selling Mary's name, by doing this we were involving the audience by making them question Mary's thoughts about being objectified by the men and letting the audience form their own opinion. By offering the woman's thoughts of being 'dissected' and 'examined' we are putting them in that position to make them feel uncomfortable and the idea of the objectification of Mary.