Evaluation:

Our piece focused heavily on the use of visual poetry. I really liked this because this meant that the audience focused on the emotions rather than the story plot. However, i also found this effective because it meant that the piece meant something different to every person, and everyone had their own interpretation on the piece. However, I do not think some people were 100% committed, and so the visual poetry did not work as well as it could have. Some of us were out of time and so the visual poetry looked it like it wasn't serious, and so the audience weren't as emotionally connected as they could have been.
One thing that Artaud focuses on is commitment from the actor too. Because of his other desires (such as theatre of cruelty), only a committed actor can pull this off. One needs to be living in his characters in order to effect the audience. After all, if the actor doesn't believe in himself, why should the audience? So, the actor must commit fully, not only because of that, but because of his theatre of cruelty, an actor must return to animal instincts and have physical ability in order to look visually scary, which can only be achieved through living through the characters. We used theatre of cruelty fairly often in our piece. My personal favourite examples of this are when taking shots and a certain moment in one specific group's piece. When taking the shots, the audience also took a shot, of lemon juice. When this had happened, assaulting the audience (Artaudian) with music started playing, and the actors started reacting very in a raw manner. This scared the audience because they assumed there was water in their shot glasses, so when they took the shot, they had a sense of sympathy, but lost trust, and realising what we had done to them, making their minds wander as to what else we had the guts to do to them. In one groups piece, actors told the audience to close their eyes, and repeatedly did so until everyone did. This was a difficult task because it was natural instinct to open their eyes, and because we were so persistent, they were scared as to what we would do to them, not only because of the shots, but because it's a natural thing to do, and being forced to do something in order for a performance to work which goes against human instinct, is very difficult and psychologically challenging for both the audience and the actors.
Artaud also focuses on skilled actors, which we showed in our piece. There were balloons tied to the ceiling,  each with the title of the groups sub performances written on a piece of paper within. Then, an audience member would be made to walk up on stage and pop a balloon, and read out the title. This shows off the skills of the actors because different pieces were set up so uniquely, that everyone had to be thinking on their feet. Not only the actors involved in that specific piece, but everyone around them, as every actor was involved as a whole in every piece. This again, shocked the audience, because it was unexpected that an audience member would determine the order of the show. However, this showed to the audience too, that anything could happen, putting everyone on edge. I think this was really effective because it really fit in with the Artaudian theme of skilled actors and even creating a dream world. No one knew what was going to happen and so the audience had no idea what was going to happen yet they had all control. I also think the video in the background helped. The video consisted of unrecognisable shapes and colours with trance like music, and actors were forced to watch this, being held back by fellow actors, screaming like primates, as if this video was their biggest nightmare. It was done so because not one persons biggest fears are the same, so this video summarised everyone's fears, by the actors reaction, not by the thing he was reacting to, as was demonstrated by the fact that the audience had previously written their own personal fears, both an invasion of privacy but also a person and unique dream world

Strengths:
I believe that there were many strengths because of the constant referal to Artaud's objectives. For example, theatre of cruelty was achieved through lighting, video images and interaction with the audience. We spoke to the audience and allowed them to become involved with the use of shot glasses etc. This was succesful because they were completely unaware of everything, so that all the suprises that were put upon them allowed them to experience the rawest emotions without being emotionally detached from the actors. I believe that the use of string also helped because they were literally involved. This was used to demonstrate and educate them about nerves, and allowed the audience to feel the nerves all around them, but in diffrenet way. These things were effective because the common misconception of drama is that an audience goes to watch actors. This however, is false, because audience members play a huge part in drama, and so our piece really played with that. The contrast also made this piece succesful going from energetic to really slow which made the audience's emotions go through a journey. This was because of the really energtic intro, they expected the whole performance to be like that, but changing everything so that nothing was what the audience thought would happen, allowed again, the emotions to be totally true, because if they expect something, they already prejudge their emotions and prepare themselves to handle them, but doing the opposite, allows the audience to watch instead of guess.

Weaknesses:
There are some weaknesses however. Even though we had the Artaudian intentions as such, some of them were not applied. These weaknesses were often due to the individual actor rather than the performance and it's objectives as a whole. I believe this weakened the performance because of theatre of cruelty and Artaud's desires, requires full commitment in order to achieve so, but had not happened. Even though this was not achieved, the audience still felt emotionally violated because of the overall applications of Artaud's intentions and so the audience focused on the emotions as a whole, rather than the actor's commmitement.

Overall, i think the piece was fairly successful. I think this because we used many Artaudian techniques within our piece, not only in generally, but we interepreted the differently and applied them to our pieces, making it unique too. However, the one issue was being fully committed. This was not much of a big issue since Artaud focuses on the performance as a whole, rather than the actor and his emotions, he focuses on how the performance in general can effect the audience and their emotions and interpretations of the piece. This on its own affected a few other factors, such as timing, interest and fluidity, but that was personal to the actor, but the piece as a whole, went very well in my opinion.