Contrast between my roles when performing to an audience

When performing Dr Faustus and my Shakespearen monologue in shoreham, they were both very similar, where they are infront of an audience, however the difference was the different audiences that we are performing too.

When we were performing Dr Faustus we are performing to an audience that has paid to come and watch us perform, and who is mostly made up with people that are our friends and family. During this performance the audience would be seated, and would be spread around the performance space evenly. This type of audience have then chosen to be at this performance so they are going to be more likely to respond form the performance, either in a positive way, by clapping or sometimes in a negitive light. As an actor I prefer to perform to this type of audience as i would finder it easier to get an audience like this involved in the scene, whether it being a comedic scene like seven deadly sins in Dr Faustus or a deep, serious scene, like my character being dragged to hell. And as the audeince are seated when watching I can directly bring them into the scene, by eye contact, directing lines to certain members or breaking the forth wall

All of the key features of performing to a static audience like we are at the open air theatre, everything seems very different when performing at the shoreham Shakespeare festival. During this type of performance, I was placed in the middle of a busy high street, on a rostrum. Then the audience would not be paying for a ticket, or expecting to see me perform and would just be walking past and either stop to listen or hear only snipets. When performing to this type of audience I would make extra effort to invovle an audience member into the character and the mood of the scene. One way that I did this was to speak directly at them as the walked past, and raise my volume to make them seem involved, this worked in two ways, either it would incourage them to stop or it would make them feel uncomfortable and carry on walking.

Out of the two performance situations as an actor I felt a lot more safe when performing to the audience at the open air theatre, as I felt safe knowing that no matter what I had their attention throughout the scenes, however I felt it interesting in not knowing any of the audience in the street performance, as people would just walk past. This I could then link to an Elizabethan performance, where actors were really challenge to perform over what else was going on in the groundlings of the theatre, in order to get the audiences attention.