Unit 12- Full year Evaluation & The Railway Children.

 What was the aim?

The aim for this year was to grow my skills to be able to perform the most accurate emotional performance I can for end of year. I will conduct research on the different techniques and put them into my work, to improve it. 

Ghost Light Tours.

Ghost Light Tours, is the first show we do when we got back for our second year at college, last year I used this to get back into the swing of acting again after the 6 weeks off. Which I thought was helpful so I did; I did not enter this first project with the intention of drastically changing my skills as an actor. I knew I would improve myself as I do with every project I do inside college. 

•  I was aware at this point that I needed to begin the final push to the finish line as early into the year as this. After achieving a merit at the end of last year, I knew I had specific areas I needed to improve on; and this was the first of many checks on a to do list.

 

After learning the theme for this years Ghost light tours, I ultimately decided upon using this project to widen my skills in writing and creating a character from scratch. I knew the themes and understood we needed different characters to fill in gaps of the play. 

   ~The last two times I have done this project I have not had much Audience interaction, I've simply been an attraction in the walk around experience. Which I knew it my evaluation for last year I wanted to change.

I wrote the Stage manager to start with as a small character who would sort of pop up quietly in different part of the plays; but that soon changed as I gave my character to my tutor. She knew the character brief and what I had wrote, and gave it a bigger role in the show. Which ultimately challenged me more, as I had to constantly be Infront of the Audience and interact with them while staying in character

Below is My strengths for the Ghost light Tours from my tutor Kelly. Overall I achieved a Merit. 

Here you can see the feedback I received from it. Beginning with A strong Character Commitment. I made a believable and engaging version of the stage manager, balancing authority and unease, which helped immerse the audience in the horror atmosphere. I achieved this from writing my own character. Since I had been working with this character since the beginning of the project and since I created him, I had a vague idea of how it would work. I knew how my character would be stressed and paranoid about a audience walking around in dangerous parts of the theatre, which ultimately helped create that atmosphere of uneasiness. I was also praised on my ability to adapt to the unexpected audience reactions, which showed my confidence and a good understanding of Immersive theatre techniques.

I was also given feedback on how I should improve which I will focus on in this evaluation. So beginning with Slowing down with my delivery. I knew at the time I was delivering my parts very quickly, especially in high tension moments. Which mainly has to do with the way I react personally in high tension, I always act quicker and rushed- my plan was-

       ~ In the future, I will always look out for these moments before rehearsals when reading through a script and during rehearsals, so I can change the way I approach these High tension scenes so that I am slowing down, and using Silence to my advantage. 

Now that I am at the end of the year, I have seen the high tense moments in scripts, for example In Normalised I played a character which was in a tense moment almost the entire way through. One major moment is the opening scene for Clarke where he argues with Jay. I intentionally used silence, and taking a moment before speaking my lines, to increase the tension between two characters. 

Another Improvement I was given was my confidence in improvised sections of the piece, where time needed to be filled with audience interactions. There was moments that I rushed and panicked through Improvised dialogue. I need to remember to take a moment, breathe and let my instincts guide me during them.

~To achieve this I will research more techniques and games which I can do to improve my improvisation. One thing that I have gone through at my time at college is to get out of my head when it comes to improvisation. Using practitioners to research ways to help with my improv. 

Now that I am at the end of the year, I can say that I looked back over the practitioners I researched at college, Including Augusto Boal and Viola Spolin. I learnt some of their techniques which included making sure to open myself up before we begin a rehearsal by playing a theatrical game which include improvisation, or being a bit silly. 

 Pinocchio

Pinocchio was my Last Christmas show, I knew from the beginning of this project, I either wanted to push to play a bit more of a villainous character, or a character which was younger. To begin with I was going to audition for Junior, however, I ultimately decided to stay away from a named character as I wanted to explore more of creating a character from scratch. 

After figuring out what I wanted to do, I knew I wanted to work on playing a younger character as it will help me break out of the bubble of my mind and overthinking about being silly. 

My aim for this project was to work my way up to a distinction. I would follow the feedback I got from last years Christmas shows and from the Ghost Light Tour. (Which is above).

For this project I received feedback from my tutor Kelly, and received a Distinction for this project.

Here is the first lot of feedback I received as you can see my fist strength was; I displayed a comprehensive understanding of the different character arcs I portrayed. I achieved this by having very different character goals for the different personas I had to portray. I knew these goals inside out for every show. All my characters had different ways of Movement and vocal qualities, for example For mother fox I spoke very softly, as I would as a child, I was very calm in my Movements, while still being strict and protective. The next strength I portrayed was the research I put into the characters. My performance reflected thorough and Insightful research into the styles movement and vocal qualities for each role. I knew once I had received my characters for Pinocchio I would have to changed characters very quickly as I was many ensemble characters so exploring different voices that would fit the personas would help me majorly and it was the same with movements.

The way achieved these strengths to do with Problem solving, practical skills and reflection was to make sure I was always metaphorically in the room when rehearsing and performing, nothing else mattered other than what happened Infront of me and around me. Nothing from outside of college mattered to me. This helped me to see where I needed to improve in rehearsals and in my actual performance. What is nice about Christmas is that we do multiple shows with different casts, which means that I could find improve every show.

I knew going on from Pinocchio that I needed to work towards playing a more emotional character which had troubles. I knew this would come with the connections project and the end of year project, which would both be naturalistic and have emotional characters to chose from.

~Looking into the future I will continue with what I am doing research wise and when it comes to multiple looking in depth when it comes to emotions and how it tracks during a show. I will also aim to explore ways I can push my decisions without letting my overthinking hold me back.

Now we are at the end of my second year, I can see the growth I have made when it comes to Just letting go and letting my instincts work. In the final show as Bobbie there was a lot of moments where I added little improvised lines to fill space when it was quiet, but I also knew there was moments I need to stay silence, and let the moment pass, with tension or moments where there needed to be a lot of emotions.

Looking back on all these achievements and feedback I've received over the year I knew there was specific tasks I wanted to complete before the end of the year, Below are these tasks and a short explanation on how I planned to complete them , then an evaluation on how I did complete them.

•  Context & Research: I aim to show a clear display of my understanding of my characters arcs, and how they are effected by the context of the show and the context of the time period.                   
• To achieve this I will conduct In depth research upon auditioning and receiving my character and also upon the time period and etiquette. Collecting all this research will ultimately help me with my acting choices and also how my character of Bobbie would feel in the scenarios due to the context.

Evaluating the context and research aspect of the final project, I understood the level I needed to work at to give Bobbie the emotional connection she needed for the story. I Initionally researched the time period so I knew the etiquette and how children were treat in that period. Quite quickly I realised specific knowledge which I could link to Bobbies emotions. I used this information and quite heavily used Magic If (Stanislavski) and Emotional memory so in scenes I can ask myself questions that show this context. When re-looking at this aspect of my plan, I can say I was pleased on how I used context and research in the show; as in moments of problems or when it was quiet and it needed to be filled I could confidently Improvise dialogue. In the future at University or out in the industry I will always try and enter first rehearsals with a minimal level of Context, which can be built up once I know more of what I need to know. I will also do research even without a show coming up so I have information readily available for auditions.

• Problem solving: I aim in this project to work independently when it comes to solving problems with backstage and with blocking and rehearsals.
• To achieve this I will effectively plan my days while rehearsing and blocking, ensuring that I write down any problems I can see occurring and making plans to ensure if these Issues happen I can face them confidently or prevent them happening at all.

Now at the end of this project I can now evaluate how well I completed this task. I know I didn't end up planning my days on what I would achieve, mainly as it depended on who we had in the rehearsal room and which cast we would be primarily working with. However I did plan tasks for my production role, and tasks for my team on production. What I did do successfully was facing issues and solving them independently and with the help from my cast. As siblings (Me, Delroy and Imogen) we planned ways we could help each other if we lost lines; which we all struggled with. These plans also expanded to the rest of the cast as well. Other problems I faced was the production aspect of this show, we had to be very creative when it came to changing location and getting props on stage. For the most part we had props on tables in the four corners of stage. However I worked with Emily and Tom to find ways for specific props that needed to be in suitcases from the smart, and to help solve this issue I completed a excel sheet of all the props and where they needed to be so there was no confusion.

• Planning and Production: I aim in this project to work independently to complete my production role of Prop design and lead my team. Researching context to gather the props that match the time period of the play.
• To achieve this Goal I will start the research early and gather all the information I need to help my team run effectively, and plan what needs to be done by what week of the production. 

Evaluating this aspect of the plan starts with discussing my team with production, this was one of the hardest aspects of this show with the limited time I had as I was constantly blocking during rehearsal period and when it came to running through the shows, so helping my team which was only one first year I knew I had to plan specific goals for both of us to complete by a deadline. If I could go back and improve how I planned for this show, I would've held mini meetings each week with the prop teams to stay on track and so we had a set time to progress with these goals.

• Practical Skills: I aim to showcase all of the skills I have learnt in this end of year project. Showcasing the growth I have made through the 3 years I have been at college. 

•  To achieve this I will look over the main three skills, which are, movement, Voice and Emotional connections. All of them major aspects to the show, as we have to be very creative when it comes to the characters and how we work to change locations during the show.

This aspect of the final project was the biggest for me to complete, and while evaluation myself I know that there is always going to be ways to improve my practical skills, as in this industry I will always be developing and learning new things with characters and shows I visit. However I am pleased with the level I showcased my skills in this project. I knew from the start I needed to plan how I was going to do it. Emotional connections was the massive task for me. I used the research and context I had gathered and attached them to scenes to give Bobbie the emotion she needed. I used the methods I have learnt about from practitioners such as Stanislavski and Brecht to attach the emotions to questions and lines which triggered the emotions to make it easier. For more emotional connection to Bobbie, I should of taken the time to build connections with the actors I was working with and asking them how they felt so I could bounce of them. This majorly would of made the final scene of Bobbie and father reunited feel more emotional; but due to there being two shows going on my father was involved in both rehearsal rooms so had to manage his time. 

Completing the next skill I wanted to showcase was the movement and physicality aspect of this show. This was important as the show is minimalistic as we had to be creative eon what we could take as we had to travel and take everything on a bus. Transitioning from scenes and to make the audience believe we had changed locations was one way I showcased my skill. However when it comes to Physicality for characters the main worry was the change between adult Bobbie and her child self, this changed came with voice and with movement, I ensured the energy for Bobbie as a child was more, and she was more unaware of changes and didn't have many worries. This changed during the show and I had planned this so I could find ways to change. The way I changed my movement after she found out about her father was to make her posture and voice more adult like but in the fun parts she was still a child. When re-visiting these two skills I will continue to find more ways to change my voice and movement to fit characters using practitioners techniques to help. Research for context was the most important part for this show and year as a whole, and in the industry this will always be the first thing I visit when a audition will come through.