Final Collaborative Review

Reflections & Critique on “You Are Not Okay.”

After spending the past two weeks working on our IB Theatre Collaborative project, it’s been a wonderful process to look back and chronicle how we reached our final presentation. The group started out without much energy on the 1st, so a lot of work involved concept building. Basic emotions and premises were thrown around to be considered, and when we found the one that many of us gravitated towards and felt could be built on, that became our theme. Some of our first ideas came from the lyrics that were added into the google doc and gestures recommended from other pieces done on Tuesday and Thursday. Although we didn’t make characters (as was part of the assignment), the theme of hiding Mental Health struggles lent itself to a large contrast between the roles of the interrogative walkers and our ‘middle person’, which ended up being Aishlinn. Their levels physically on the stage and the volume of their voices intentionally overshadowed most everything else.

By the 5th of this month we had gotten a video of our full movement. It wasn’t blocked out much in the space, so instead we just went through our planned movements and saw how our levels could be formed more naturally. It took longer to think about music choices and other aspects like lighting and voiceovers after, but everyone added in their voice so that the performance could give its full impact in a comfortable manner for all actors involved. The way in which people associated different colors with unique chunks of the piece — beginning/middle/end, concerned/caring/combusting tone, and musical shifts — was entirely unique to what I had predicted. This step was one of the most exciting in the process.

Leading up to our final video on the 7th, movements became more automatic and succinct with our continued practice. A couple of changes in speaking order were made, but besides that, everyone knew their role and the timing matched almost perfectly without any editing for our final take. However, we ended up being pretty ambivalent about doing another take, as the following day we learned Geffen was sick. After discussing a multitude of things — the audibility of voices as well as positioning for the opening and closing shots being two larger points of interest — we decided that a reshoot would only cause more problems to form. everyone felt that their best effort had been put into the video we had and thought the effect was very strong.

One of my favorite things about this collaborative project was getting to see how far this shifted from our first movement with Mr. trier’s song. The only element that is visibly carried over to our final piece is the tightrope walk on the Blackbox floor lines. Besides that, Spiderpop’s calm and playful nature was nowhere to be seen. 

And though collaboration can be very difficult in spaces where you’re offering up your whole self and the ideas that come with that, I think that we had a few healthy moments of disagreement. Still, part of me would have preferred more discussion about what was being said during the movement and why. The idea is definitely there, yet part of me feels that giving Aishlinn more presence at the start of our performance could have created a greater crash for her ending. In truth, it is pretty ironic considering how much we also enjoyed the anonymity of the opening shot. I’m not renouncing that thought, i just wonder how that would have changed an audience’s perspective on her and their own emotions.