Evaluation

On October 11th, my cast and I performed our final piece for "The Seagull" as part of our workshop process to our friends and family, and I think it was pretty successful for our first sort-of show together as a cast.

I think I did quite well seeing as I wasn't present for quite a lot of sessions, I always made sure to try my best and learn whatever I could, whenever I could. I think one of my strengths that night was my listening and responding skills. I know that Callum and I were listening to each other during the whole scene, which meant that our delivery of dialogue would be realistic and completely natural. I also think that my facial expressions and body language really fit into Arkadina's character and I made sure to use a lot of detail. When acting you're not meant to just put on a facade as that character, you're supposed to actually be the character, and that's what I did, I allowed myself to fully become Arkadina, thus why my face was full of detail and clear but also secret emotions for the audience to guess. 

If I was able to develop and rehearse this scene further, I would definitely work on my staging and overall presence. The audience were sitting all around me so I found it tricky to make sure I wasn't standing in a bad place, during rehearsals I hadn't really thought about where I would stand all the time because the audience weren't there. I think I also need to work on my voice when raising it. I have definitely developed my voice a lot since joining Brit in Year 10 but I know that it still needs work, especially when there's parts of dialogue with shouting, I just don't feel like my shouting voice ever sounds angry or upset like I want it to, I feel like it sounds very sheepish or even monotonous. 

Naturalism and realism has been a very fun topic to learn about, I have enjoyed it thoroughly and I just find Stanislavski's work overall fascinating. I know that although they may sound similar, they are slightly different. Naturalistic theatre is acting out everything to its exact detail, and not skipping out on anything, so it is the most neutral and natural it has ever been. Realistic theatre is acting out the most important parts so that it still makes sense and it's relevant, but it skips out on all the excessive details. Stanislavski started on naturalism but in the end he favoured realism, whereas I on the other hand, prefer naturalism because the act of it I just find so interesting, I feel like it could really help you understand what someone else's life is like.

I feel that the techniques did help my performance because it taught me new ways to focus and characterise. I felt a deeper connection with my character then any other character I've ever been given. All the ideas and exercises aided me in delving deep into the world and mind of Stanislavski and I will definitely remember all of these techniques for future characterisation. I think I did play my objectives quite well but if I could go back and work on them again, I definitely would. I feel that as I progressed more with my character development, the objectives altered slightly, but I never really went back to change them.