Unit 9 - Developing Production and Performance Skills

 Unit 9 - Developing Production and Performance Skills 

Task 1 - Developing Skills 

a.) Throughout my blog in Year 1, I have highlighted clearly my progress from ‘Ghost Light Tours’ working with Stockton Globe, all the way to our final show ‘Little Women’. This includes auditions days and even weeks, any information and advice I picked up and used in my journey, all of my assignments and a thought out evaluation further explaining the challenges I made sure to put myself through, and more importantly how I will use that to improve my performing next time. I believe the main goal I set for myself was to put myself forward for everything, and I really feel like I’ve achieved this. Personally, I joined the course feeling shy and not wanting to interact much in activities, and slowly ended up going for roles that challenged me and took me out of comfort zone. I remember the role of Dorothy, which was only 4 months after beginning my journey with Acting for Stage and Screen, was a huge challenge for me due to the amount of lines to learn, the amount of blocking notes to remember and making sure to embody the beloved character everyone knows. However, despite it's challenges, it pushed me to not hide in the background and go for smaller roles, and gave me the ability to go for the main female role in my first Connections show ‘Old Times’. I loved performing as Older Stefi in ‘Old Times’ as the themes surrounding the show were so serious and had to be handled with caution, which was another challenge for myself, in that of performing naturalistic and playing a selfish character, who had no sympathy for others in the situation. I was able to work with actors I’ve not worked with before, and was able to see the way they take on tricky roles and portray them, and I was also able to work with actors I’ve worked with before and build that acting relationship and understand clearly how we act against one another. I specifically remember working with Callum Gordon in Wizard of Oz - myself playing Dorothy, himself playing the Wizard - and enjoying the way we acted together, and being able to bounce off of him once again as brother and sister in ‘Old Times’ saw how we work together under a different performance. My final show of first year was ‘Little Women’ which allowed me to push myself even further and nicely complete my first year journey. I was fortunate enough to play Marmee, and played that character for all 3 casts, allowing me to once again work with different actors, and play a more mature character differing from the younger characters I’ve took on before. My first year has allowed me to build my confidence, which is perfect for entering into my second year and the next shows I’m apart of. For more detail, my blog entails my entire year 1 journey. 

b.) Due to the amount of opportunities I was given in my first year, there’s only a small amount of gaps which is a credit to the course I am on. I believe my next step going into Year 2, is performing an evil character since the majority of the characters I’ve played have been light hearted and caring, and playing a wicked role would test my how I play that kind of character. I believe another gap would be singing in a role. I understand we have Peter Pan the Musical coming up, which consists of singing multiple songs on stage. The thought of singing in front of other people scares me a little bit, so I understand this is something I need to do to push myself further out of my comfort zone.

Task 2 - Be able to use a range of skills, knowledge and understanding in the context of a performing and production arts activity

My detailed production diaries for productions I have been apart of are under these blog names:

- Unit 9 - Peter Pan Evaluation

- 29/01/24 - 02/02/24 Zest Show Week + Unit 9 Evaluation 

- 05/02/24 - 09/02/24 incl. Snowdrop Performance 

- Unit 9 - Feature Film ‘Tides’ Evaluation 

- Unit 9 - STUFF Evaluation 

Task 3 - Performing 

My performances were always performed to the best of my ability and any notes given during rehearsals, I made sure to use to build on top of my performance. 

Task 4 - Evaluation

I truly believe my skills as a performer have improved slowly over time during each production I’ve been apart of. Since starting my journey in September 2022, being apart of the ‘Ghost Light Tours’ working with Stockton Globe to looking forward to my final end of year show ‘One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest’. I have been very fortunate in the productions I’ve been apart of that they pushed my skills as a performer in different ways. For example, whilst Wendy Darling and Dorothy Gale are the same type of character, both innocent, kind hearted young girls, Dorothy gave me the confidence to go for bigger roles and understand what it’s like to learn lots of lines alongside detailed monologues, and on the other hand, Wendy gave me the chance to sing on stage, both as part of an ensemble song and a solo on my own. Thinking back to my first day, those two aims would have been in mind to achieve at some point but I know I wouldn’t have ever thought I’d complete it and bring it to fruition. This highlights why I’ve made sure every character I’ve went for during my two years on this course, have been to push me further and build my skills and most importantly confidence as a performer. 

An important skill as a performer is being able to perform on your own in front of a group of people. This could be a monologue or even a song, and through auditions and daily acting activities in class, I’ve been able to showcase this and make it the new normal for myself. In Year One, being able to perform or even improvise in front of my class mates sounded like my worst nightmare, and as much as I didn’t ever want to have to do it unless it was apart of a show, I know it was inevitable in my journey as a performer. During the early stages in Year One, I wasn’t someone that would shout and ask everyone if they wanted to do a group warm up, and in improvisational games, I wasn’t someone that would go first and begin a random scene, and volunteer ideas in group sessions. This came down to being around new and much larger personalities than myself and also coming from a secondary school where going full out during drama lessons was seen as something to be embarrassed about, which I believe is so incredibly wrong. With all this holding me back, I knew I needed to quickly get out of my own head and embrace my new home for two years, and let myself go full out during scenes and games. One of my teachers Kane Smith set a monologue challenge in the first few weeks at college, where we would have to pick a monologue from a film we admired and perform it in front of the class. When I first heard about the assignment, I remember feeling really nervous and hoping I wouldn’t have to end up doing it, and as a performer, that’s not the greatest reaction to have to a monologue challenge. However, I knew to make the situation comfortable for myself, I had to choose a monologue I loved and would definitely want to share with the class so that they could take a glimpse into what movies I love. I chose the Mia ‘Audition’ Monologue from La La Land, originally performed by Emma Stone, and practised it all the time until I felt like it was to the standard I wanted it to be at. I used an American accent, and tried to hit the right lines with the right emotions, as she goes from fast paced and angry to slower and emotional. La La Land is an important film to me, and I knew I wanted to show a small piece of myself through this monologue. I remember I couldn’t perform it in the first lesson, as there were a few eager people who wanted to perform theirs first, but in our second lesson, I remember no one wanted to go first, and I took the leap and put my hand up to show I wouldn’t mind going first. This was a huge step for me, as I’m normally someone who would have left it to the last few people, but with Second Years also in the room with us, I wanted to make a great first impression and show them a little bit of my acting range. Performing my monologue felt so freeing and I genuinely enjoyed performing it informs of everyone, as I looked forward and didn’t really acknowledge them being there watching me. It really boosted my confidence when people around me including Second Years were saying how much they loved my monologue, and they probably didn’t understand at the time, how much that stuck with me. Since then, I’ve performed monologues during auditions in front of either one person or even multiple people at one point and during class activities in our theatre. Recently, I’ve performed my Shakespeare monologue for university auditions in front of my peers and our teacher Tom Guest, where he helped me push it to a higher level. I also expanded on performing in front of my peers, by singing in front of them, which was another thing I was initially nervous about but I used those nerves to push myself, and show that I enjoy singing and can do it. By being so open and putting myself out there early on in my first year, it allowed me to not feel negative towards performing on my own in front of my peers, and now I believe it’s a skill of mine to perform a monologue in front of my peers, and even people I don’t know confidently.