Review of Blackout

Blackout is a play written by Davey Anderson. The play was inspired stories of a young offender from Glasgow. The play is based on a young teenage boy named James who goes through many struggles and traumas in his life. 

Working as an ensemble

In the play Blackout, it is performed with an ensemble cast and staged as a thrust focusing on a stream of consciousness that tells the character James' story. Blackout focuses on one person: James (the narrator of the play). There is not a set nor are props used which adds more effect by only having the characters on stage alone. Throughout the play, you go forward and backward in time. Moreover, different actions within the play can be paused whilst another action is happening. This play breaks the three unities of Aristotle who was a Greek philosopher: time, place and action. 

I got the impression that the play is an ensemble because as a class, they worked together by incorporating different levels of energy, saying lines in unison and performing physical theatre collectively. Working together is effective because instead of one person just performing, all performers performing together will increase the amount of effect and feel of the play as a whole! For example, being in a chorus on stage and saying and acting things out as one, it adds so much more of an emotional and creative effect. However, working as one in the play can be quite difficult as so much can be happening and it's hard to try and make sure you're working at the same time as your group. What's also challenging about this play is the rapid changes of locations within different scenes. Nonetheless, the Blackout cast tackled this well by working together. By working as an ensemble, every person involved in the play equally plays a key part. When one person does a mistake, it's good to move on from it and just carry on. By doing this, you can make more progress when rehearsing the play. When it comes to performing, you'll be more than ready! 

Thrust staging

Blackout is performed by an ensemble cast in the configuration of thrust. Thrust is a clever configuration to use for the play as Blackout contains a lot of physical theatre elements. If the play was to be performed in a round configuration or immersive, it would create less of an impact for the play and the audience wouldn't be able to understand it as some might not see some of the movements and actions when performing the play. If it was immersive, the audience would just clash with the cast as there is a lot of fast movement incorporated. Thrust configuration allows the audience to be able to see every action and movement of the play. This means they'll get the full experience of Blackout and not miss a thing! 

To conclude, I believe the cast of Blackout have performed the play to a very high standard. They remembered a high amount of physical movement, worked in sync with one another and tackled such emotional and mature themes presented in the play e.g. skinheads, assault, bullying and psychological issues. Despite the play behind predominantly focused on physical theatre, they really did demonstrate that actions do speak louder than words. They showed that your body can tell a story just as much as your mouth and tongue can.