So, this morning, I performed my show. My family came to visit and watch my show and found it to be very moving, or so they told me. I am somewhat in awe of how quickly it went by. I’ll break down my feelings on it in three sections: Audience, Performance, and Improvements to Make.

• Audience –

My audience far surpassed what I expected for 10 am on a Wednesday morning, about 24 in total. I spoke to some of them afterwards and they told me that they liked it and also found it to be moving. I’m very pleased that none of them felt it was poorly written, or that the message became muddied by sentiment. It seemed like they came away with the feelings I wanted to convey. Some responses during the performance where not what I wanted, however. In a section meant to replicate people suffering from dementia returning to a state of second childhood, which was meant to be quite distressing, I could hear a couple of people laughing, which is definitely not what I wanted from it. In future, I would like to ensure this moment feels more distressing and overwhelming. However, overall, I am satisfied with the audience response I received.

• Performance –

In my performance, there were a few mistakes here and there, which comes as a result of my being unable to rehearse them without spending a fair amount of my money on books with pages I can tear out, and my having written some lines a few days ago, as well as some tech going wrong – some lights went off sooner than they were supposed to – but overall, I am satisfied with the way it went. Ideally, I should have rehearsed with books more to ensure that I knew the kind of timings to expect with this kind of thing, and my lines should have been on point.

• Improvements to Make –

To improve my show, I feel like I could have spent more time on the visual of memory. The facial memory part of the mirror was something that my audience seemed to enjoy, and I would like to if I carry this show forward, add more visual elements to it – perhaps creating images similar to that of the electric signals going through our nervous systems, perhaps projecting that onto my body, as I know a few other people did in my class – the results of which I am looking forward to seeing. Going forwards, I suppose the one thing I should focus on more is creating a more interactive show. I’d like to create a show where I involve the audience in scenarios that they might find themselves in, should their loved one have dementia, in order to break the fourth wall.

Overall, I think back to where this process started – a show inspired by humanity, and by the exploration of empathy in a neoliberalist country where empathy no longer seems to be something of concern to those in power, as a means of satirising what we understand of humankind today. However, I still think some of this still exists in the show I performed today. After all, a large portion of Roy Batty’s final speech is about memory and the nature of it in a life that is so fleeting. I feel as if my show had some presence of that – and earlier drafts made direct reference to it – through the idea that as we grow older, we cannot pass on the lives that we have lived – after all, there is currently no way of living my Granddad’s life to its exact specifications. We exist through the stories we tell, and the stories told about us. If my Granddad were alive today, I would have included recordings of me having a conversation with him about his life, and what his experiences have been, to add to the sentimentality that this performance had to me. Most of all, I wanted to write a show that I will remember – one that will make me proud to have written and performed in my future. I feel that I have achieved that. I am proud of what I made, and I would like to expand upon it further to see the limits I can take it to.