For my piece I have considered different aspects of social, historical and cultural aspects that have affected my performance and the impact that these things will have on an audience. This includes the part of my piece where all three characters explore the Victorian era, specifically the invention of the automobile. We show this era theatrically and vocally by altering our accents for this piece by making them a very over the top received pronunciation accent/ typical actor voice which greatly contrasts with the accents we were using in previous scenes where we were using playful but had hints of losing our minds. Posture was also a key element when trying to portray the Victorian era in this scene to the audience as the posture for each character switched from almost childlike to upright which presented that the characters are of a high class and of some kind of authority which again contrasts with the authority "ladder" in the rest of the performance between characters.
Another point that I explored was the idea of being held in captivity by someone/something of a higher authority. This is shown in my overall story of two characters, OBM and OBF who are being held in a lab environment and are being experimented on by someone/something called 'Eros'. The idea of captivity is shown mainly by showing my performance in the round. By doing this, it gives the feel to the audience that they are closely observing the characters experience and by being around them, keeping them trapped within the 'enclosure' that they're in. Having the performance in the round also helps the audience to connect with the characters as well as having them share the feeling of claustrophobia and the coming of insanity as if they've been sharing this experience with them. Another way that I showed the idea of being held in captivity was by having the two characters who are being observed 'OBF' and 'OBM' use different accents throughout the piece. Firstly, the characters used playful and peculiar accents which they came back to frequently throughout, then we use a northern accent, a received pronunciation/typical actor voice as well as a 'normal' voice at times. This shows how long the characters have been held in this enclosure, that they've picked up different accents from stimuli that they might've been given and how these are used instead of their original accents as they've been away from their normal lives long enough to forget their own. The many different accents also suggest mentally unstable characters. Another theatrical technique I used was more production based as it involved projections. I used a projection of the 'Eros' (the 'being' controlling this experiment) logo which was projected to the far back wall of the performance area. In the character 'check ins', the actors would stand in front of the projection so it would be showing on their body. This gave the impression that 'Eros' has completely taken over their own bodies and identities.
I also took into consideration how the piece is set in the future (2051 to be exact) and how certain details in the performance would be affected by this. For example, technology is heavily used in our piece. We have used this aspect theatrically by having an 'over-voice' (Eros) speak to the characters inside 'The Glasshouse' and who also speaks to the audience at the beginning of the performance to debrief the audience on what they are about to witness. This voice-over 'robotic' sounding 'being' seems to have great authority over the characters which is shown in the check in's when all three characters respond to Eros. For this I have taken inspiration from current technological products such as 'Siri' and Amazon's 'Alexa' who have access to your private life or however much you tell it and the idea is that 'Eros' can have access to any information about you it wants, even if it has to force it out of you. This is shown theatrically by the characters going into a sort of 'trance' when Eros is speaking to them making them completely vulnerable, which the audience can see. And we also show the idea of technology taking over through the use of light by having a bright blue light (which is usually seen as a futuristic colour which is also thought of as a technological colour like the blue light on a computer screen) for whenever Eros is communicating with the characters which shows a big contrast between when the characters are left on what they believe is their own and when they are talking to Eros.
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