Monologues Evaluation

On the 23 rd of April was our Monologue assessment. Me and my class mates had to perform two monologues one classic and one modern, our teacher Sharon assessed us. For preparing for this assessment ,the way I practised these monologues to myself in the mirror which is always the way I like to practise constantly watching myself. We done a lot of various techniques upon this performance in Sharon's lessons to get the characterisation to perfection. One of the main exercises was to close our eyes and think of our characters, walk around the room in our characters doing gestures and facial expressions to Sharon's command.

For me my performance was successful, I believed that I didn't make any mistakes and performed to my maximum quality which is expected to be high. I Found the classic text the hardest to learn it was a Shakespeare monologue from King Lear. I find Shakespeare text very hard to learn, its the language due to not being modern is very hard to adapt to. My modern monologue was easy to learn , it was called Mr Deeds goes to town , I played Mr Deeds a man helping people to reach the top of a hill he lives next to. The character for this monologue was challenging his emotions were everywhere to help those make the top of the hill.


This modern monologue was very different to any other monologue I have ever performed the emotions where at the point of struggling to make speech about helping others to get up a steep hill outside his house. The emotions for this monologue were also stress behind when I was performing it, due to the fact it was saying that no one apart from Mr deeds help people get up the hill.


The emotions for the Shakespeare monologue I performed where anger , my character was stressing his words coming out his mouth, this was hard to put together and make it performance ready.   

Evaulation of Shakepeare Performance

My performance went well, I felt that I had stayed very in role and thought I'd put on a pleasant show. My aim was to make the show engaging and enjoyable to watch which I believe I did, this is due to the reactions from my peers and teachers. For this role, In my free time I worked on learning the emotions and thought processes of my character to understand them more. By doing this, it would help me portray my character better during the play. For example, in the scene where my character really wanted his money back, I had to make the audience believe that my character was going to do anything to get it back. The main thing that was successful during the play was the built up tension, because of this it kept the audience hooked which led to my performance flourishing. I believe I performed the show to the best of my ability and met the standards for which I set myself , which is  the highest level it can be. I thought the jesters I used to show my anger were good and really engaged the audience to pay extra attention to the tension constantly rising which was very key. The whole point of you acting is to make the audience intrigued by what's going on and make them constantly ask themselves in the head what's happening next. I thought the pitch of my voice really stood out to show the anger and hostility of my character. All the voice work we did in our rehearsals really helped me to get it right for my character. The hand jesters I did I thought showed the urgency of my character wanting his money back asap. I thought the chemistry between me and my partner Stephan worked very well some parts went from being serious to comedic the reaction from the audience proved it.

 Just one main improvement I need to work on is being less nervous. Recently I have been too anxious which is unlike me, I am usually nervous before a performance, however for this particular performance my nerves were on fire  they peaked to another level. I've done this a hundred times It shouldn't be any different. So I need to work on controlling it better, another improvement for me  is when I'm standing if its not for the character then to stand neutral and no standing in an awkward stance if it doesn't suit the character I'm playing.

Overall I thought the whole production went very successful ,I believe me and my class all performed to there full potential  which at this time in the year very high. I would like to praise everyone who performed I was very impressed by everyone's commitment  put into  the project Shakepeare in da house. All credits to Rob as usual of him directing us to his full potential to bring the best out of us for this production.

Shakepeare project part 4

Been almost 2 weeks back at college, first week back there was much due to our  day of on Tuesday and a strike on Wednesday. The day we started the 22 ND of February , we just went over our Shakespeare   pieces for our performances coming up at peoples houses in the next few weeks. I performed to Rob my piece with my partner Stephan it didn't go to well my biggest challenge is doing Shakespeare because I have never properly done a Shakespeare  play. I find it very hard to speak the Shakespearian English , after this I hope to overcome that challenge and perform the piece on a high note. On the Thursday we came back from the two days off we did a lot of voice work such as working on projection , tongue twisters , physical exercises to really nail our roles in our Shakespeare pieces this was very helpful for me to feel my role more then ever. On Friday we had a workshop a production company by the name of the Broken hearted theatre , who came in and occupied us with a load of physical games for 4 hours. This was really fun this reminded me of how much you must concentrate in these physical games to stay on top. We played a lot of games were you must use eye contact to get someone's attention. The whole workshop was based on using your physical skills and movements to tell a story to the audience.  For example one of the games was in a circle were if you wanted to swap places with someone you would have to show direct eye contact to them to move to there places. The Workshop helped me develop my physical skills to the maximum level they could be.