25/09/23 - 27/09/23

 Week 36 of Milly’s acting journey 

 On Monday, we were introduced to a new warm-up game by Kelly, where you had to listen carefully and remember when you would speak and what you would say. The game began quite confusing, but I slowly got it as I was watching others and picking it up as we all went. Kelly kept adding new words you would have to say in order so making sure you said the correct word was crucial. The majority of the morning was spent knowing the importance of clarity and listening, with the help of gibberish. We got into partners and were given subjects to talk about with one another, but only speaking in gibberish. I was with Millie, and really found it quite interesting how we weirdly knew what we were talking about without saying the words in english. We had the topic of airports and how to get on an airplane and also how to use a washing machine. We then got into groups of four and had to improvise a scene on a holiday gone wrong, so in my partnership with Millie, along with Adam and Emily, we came up, only using gibberish communication, to have an affair on the airplane and we end up loosing all of our luggage as a sort of karma. I found it quite funny having to tell our ideas in gibberish, and we had to repeat multiple times our ideas as it doesn't make sense in gibberish. I was really glad that we had done this however, as it allowed us to realise how important listening to teach other and the good use of clarity is, as we found when speaking in gibberish we were really loud and clear whereas when we spoke in english, we turned our volume right down and spoke a little slower so it showed that we need to use how we project and speak in gibberish, and use it in how we speak on stage in english. Afterwards, we got into new partners with the help of a warm-up game so that we would work with someone new, and I worked with Keira which I haven't done before. We got given four duologues and we could choose which one we wanted to work on, so we chose a scene called 'The Photo'. It was a scene where person A had a photo and they were hiding it from person B, and in the end the photo is shown and it's a heart-warming scene between two best friends. We didn't have time to show it in class, so we had to wait like the majority of the class to show it in Wednesday's lesson. 

On Tuesday, I spent the morning catching up on university prep and my blogger as I felt like it was something I needed to do. In our lesson with Tom, we worked hugely on our Shakespeare script, and the night prior I had translated mine into English nowadays, so I had a clearer understanding of what Phebe is saying in the monologue. I loved getting time to recite my monologue, and after speaking with Tom, he told me since I speak angry in distain at times and then suddenly in love and awe, I would need to highlight this in my acting so to turn in different directions to show the difference. I also found out that since I'm speaking to someone called Silvius, I need to pinpoint where Silvius would be, and because it's not a soliquy to the audience, I shouldn't. be speaking out in front of me. I found this amazing to know as it turned my monologue into something a lot more powerful. Our lesson in Kelly was productive, as I got back into my partnering with Elliott as we dived deeper into our Dear Evan Hansen scene. We had lots of questions like Why did Evan lie to his mam, and we both thought that it's obvious he wasn't embarrassed as he in a way rubbed it in his mum's face, but at the same time, he realizes how hard she works and perhaps feels bad that he is living a luxurious life whilst his mums not. We also had a look at the facts in the script, like how Evan leaves after the fight and he does drugs to make him feel better mentally. It gave us lots of ideas in how to deliever the scene, and afterwards we were allowed three chance to act out the scene. The first way we acted it out consisted of me as the mam speaking it calmly and sort of understandingly and Elliott as Evan performed it angrily. The second way I performed it angrily and Elliott performed it more scared and shamed. The third way I feel we performed it very differently, as I performed it jealous and Elliott performed it confused. We liked our third one a lot as it's not what you think of straight away upon reading the scene. The following week we are performing our duologues so I'm excited to see everyone else's.

On Wednesday, we carried on with our duologues where I was with Keira. We practiced beforehand and felt really good about it, so we offered to go first to perform it. We had two pieces of feedback, one was good, and one was something to keep an eye on. Laura had said that we had good clarity which I was pleased to hear, and Gracie mentioned that we need to slow it down. I thought that because we went first meaning we were probably a little bit nervous to be performing in front of the first years for the first time. However, even though it was a long morning I was grateful for it as it meant I could see how the first years perform and they all did amazingly. I can't wait to perform with them this year as the amount of talent everyone has is immense. 

On Thursday, we were able to do our work at home or college as the first years were all at the Globe looking around and learning all about its history which we had done the year previous. I stayed at college and got lots of work done so that I all caught up as much as possible. On the night, if we wanted to, we were allowed to go and see the woman in black which I wanted to and I found it very well written and quite horrifying. I'm so glad I was able to watch it, and it allowed us to think for that scare factor for our Halloween piece at the Globe.