I think the final project performance was JUST about passable, mainly due to showmanship and our generall welcoming and warming attitude as a team. We shared all the knowledge of the docks that we knew, I felt that our progress defined and hindered the performance as a whole and the space wasn’t our place of choice. But the thought process of creating the performance and the discussions as a group were really productive, and our idea was very creative as we worked on past and present day docklands and not just focused on the past as some of our peers had done.
I have learnt a lot about the truth in what really happened in the docklands around the 18^th century, we tried to show this and make the piece as authentic as possible but improvising the whole thing was not a good take. My personal views on how this has affected me on the future have been the fact that this has been a test on my part to show that I can do better in performance and with trying one can create ideas unimaginable; I say this because as some people had a week or even two weeks to immediately change their performances, I believe me and my partner did the most we could to create something in hours before the performance was to take place. I think that this has been an exhilarating experience for me in the sense that I have learnt so much about myself, in the quick thinking department and also working within a team.
I found that, from researching into the docklands and the way of life then; I believe that it was a hard life and they had no other choice but to provide for themselves and their families. It was manual labour of the highest degree, as most of the machines used were of manual mechanisms and nothing around the docks in that period was electrically powered.
I think by doing this timeline, we were taking a side of the story that is rarely shown and depicting it in a way that showed the  passengers thoughts and feelings. Although we never had a large audience I feel that those who did see the video began to understand the meaning behind it. Our lecturer Mark Hunter highlighted the point we were was trying to make about the bias advertising and the contradictory points being brought forward around poverty and tourism.
I think by creating this performance I have gained a satisfaction within myself, of self achievement of learning about the lives of the local people in the 18^th century, and how people don’t understand how they felt and how they lived back then. Our tutor had told us he had enjoyed the performance as the final performance took a more comedic approach to the idealistic views of past and present day docklands life and highlighted that we had a good choice of prop use.

After the performance, I feel that I have failed myself in delivering worthy content for our final; but inn turn I feel that within myself I have created a new insight of the docklands, having learnt a lot about the area and the history, and to me I feel that it means just as much as being successful in the module.

In the Future

As well as suffering a disastrously bad performance nd just about everything going wrong, there is a good amount of learning that took place here as this has prepared me for future tasks, in hindsight we as a group put far too much importance on someone who wasn't IN the group and therefore had no obligation to get it finished. so next time i will make sure that we have a backup plan on something so important as the feature of our peice, for example have another guitarist on call incase one floppes or even pay for one to come and perform, which was somethinfg we never even considered at the time.

The Final Straw

Sorry it has been so long since my last post but we nearly gave up on the idea of doing our final performance as everything went wrong at the last hurdle.

We decided to go to uni and just explain to mark what had happened but figured that the mercy option was out of the picture given that we had both been absent from quite a few lessons.

We ended up doing  makeshift performance on the day, grabbing things that we could use to make something that vaguely resembled our previous idea and managed to do this on a sub par level which our audiences saw as little more than a joke, however we continued and gradually throughout the day made our performance a little better each time.

I was in charge of designing the props and giving it the feel of a performance and raz was in charge of the lines and information given to the audience.

I made an origami boat and used some blue tissue paper to imitate the sea and gave the audience a lecture bout my valuable 'cargo'

BIG Problem

Ok so my friend who was meant to be playing guitar for us has had to go and visit a relative in poland who is very ill and he is unsure of weather he'll be back in time for the performance...

i have spoken to raz and he assures me that he'll find someone to play guitar no problem, and if not he'll learn guitar in time fo our final performance.

Lecture

This lecture was an independant research session and no one from my group was in so i just went over what notes I already had in my bag and exchanged ideas about the project with people from class.

This lesson was very unproductive and apart from a few opinions on my ideas i didn't get much done at all.

Update on project idea

Everythings going very well at the moment plans falling into place and now we can see where improvements have to be made as our performance would like to connect a bit more closely with the docks and dock life in the late 1800's - early 1900's.

We decided that we would ourselves play the role of workers at convenience stand selling fruit, newspapers and generall produce to the public.

We decided to do a bit more research into what came in and what was traded at the docks in order to be covincing salesmen and make good songs that would show we had done our research.

here is a list of some of those things:

Spices

Canned Food

Dried Fruit

Rice

Grain

Alchahol

Sugar

Tea

Coffee

Bread

Meat

Swords

Chocolate

Antiques

Reserch findings

I found this picture of a weathermen, bargemen and lightermen workers union photo which gives valuble insight into what the dress sense was like back in those days.