End of Day 16. The first showing.

Well, that was different.

As soon as the audience started turning up, I realised I'd been too inside my own head with this project. I had a strong sense of foreboding.

I still didn't really know how to start it, so I had put some candles in the house and left the lit lanterns by the door to the stairs down to the garage.

When I let the audience in they looked around the lounge for a while, confused. Then they started going down the stairs without the lanterns so I had to tell them to take thme with them.

Then I waited outside. And waited and waited.

It felt extremely long and boring. And I could hear that they were confused about what to expect and were looking for something to happen. Some of them even wandered back up the stairs.

The ending was awful, with me just opening the door.

It did not feel very successful at all.

We had a good chat afterwards, and people said they were confused about what was to happen. They felt like there was a mystery to be solved. That says to me that although I don't want to explain everything, I have not given them enough information about what to expect.

I realised that if I want the audience to be more contemplative then I need to signal that better. I still don't want to have to explain everything before they go in though. But I might be able to create a feeling so they understand it better and understand what is expected of them.

And I'll make it a bit shorter. 15 minutes was much too long.

There was some positive feedback though. The way the light worked was very interesting to them, having their own lightsource to carry around. And the liked the soundscape, the delicacy of it. It just needs something more at the end to feel like its going somewhere.

One part of the sound did not work, the line of dialogue that comes from the side room. I think that would have helped make it feel like it was going somewhere, but we'll see tomorrow night.

I will  make as many changes as a I can, but ultimately, the work has some fundamental flaws. It does not have enough movement, so you don't feel like anything is developing. And it is much darker in terms of mood than I expected.