For our performance, we decided to do it based on carbon pollution. Carbon pollution is pretty big ans serous global issue, that we hear very little about. So we decided to bring more awareness and maybe try to get people talking about this very serious issue. Plus it is an issue that literally anyone can help. Even just doing some simple things, like disconnecting your phone, when it’s done charging, can help a lot. Even if 10, or 20, or even 100+ people did this one simple task, it can really help.
When it was the day of the performance, we were all trying our best of doing making it through, the cold, while staying in character. It was externally freezing, but I believe that we gave a convincing and effective performance. One expectation that we expected was probably people to ask us, what are we doing? We had multiple answers ready for these type of questions, because we wanted them to at least know of the issue and make them aware of the ongoing problem. However, this was half true, because only about 1 or 2 people asked us this question. Another expectation that we expected was that if people did stay until the end, that they would immediately leave. Once it was over, they might take the brochure, and leave. However, this was also proved to be wrong, as I talk about more below.
If we were able to travel back in time, and try our performance again, some things that we would change are probably our amount of preparation. I believe that we did enough time to prepare for our performance, but their was some parts that we kind of forgot. It probably would have helped to mention some more information. Another thing that we would have changed if to say more information on reduce carbon pollution during the performance. At the end, we handed out brochures, that had information on reducing pollution, but a lot of people didn’t take the brochure and kept walking. If we had information like that in the performance, then our audience might’ve walked away with new information.
At the end of our performance, not only were we freezing, we were also relief. We expected things to go down hill pretty fast, but lucky, it didn’t. We were able to hold our ground and get through the whole performance. However, some unexpected things did happen. One unexpected thing that happened was that we actually got some people to stop and watch our performance. Before we even started rehearsals, we didn’t expect anyone to watch our performance. We were just expecting people to get a quick glance at us, as they were walking. But we were actually able to get a few people to stop and watch our performance. During the middle of our performance, around the part where, the Building and Business Man enters the scene, I saw 2 men about to enter the subway station, but they were standing at the top of the stairs, watching some of the performance. But, they ended up leaving. However, when I entered the scene, I saw a woman stop by and started watching. This was another unexpected thing, because she seemed pretty interested, since she was still there,at the end of the performance, as shown in the 1st picture below. As shown in the 2nd picture, she was asking multiple questions, about what we doing and even asking questions about carbon pollution. We told her our situation and even handed her one of our brochures. After she left, we were actually surprised that someone actually wanted to know more information, about reducing her own carbon footprint.
One of the biggest challenges that we faced was probably the weather. On the day of the performance, it was about 40 degrees cold. There was wind, cold air, and we were outside for about an hour. When watching the other groups perform, it wasn’t cold or just how cold. Our second biggest challenge was probably the amount of noise. We were performing on Borough Hall, which is a pretty busy street. There was cars, trains, and bus noises being heard every second. We were thinking about getting a mic or speaker, or something like that, but no one in the group had any of that stuff available to them. So we just decided on using our own voices. However, little did we know just how nosy, the street was going to be. Even during our rehearsals, the amount of noise was pretty loud. And it was quite challenging for about half of our group, because half of us weren’t really consider “loud”. But in the end, we believed that we did a pretty decent job. It wasn’t as bad as we probably expected it to be, but it also wasn’t as good and excellent that we have hoped.
