Monologues

Today, we started our new project, we had to firstly choose a monologue from Shakespeare's play. I choose a monologue from Macbeth on the scene where Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are talking in their chamber. I cut the part Macbeth is talking and left the part where Lady Macbeth is talking. This is my monologue
''He has almost supped. Why have you left the chamber?
Know you not he has?
Was the hope drunk

Wherein you dressed yourself? Hath it slept since?

And wakes it now, to look so green and pale

At what it did so freely? From this time

Such I account thy love. Art thou afeard

To be the same in thine own act and valor

As thou art in desire? Wouldst thou have that

Which thou esteem’st the ornament of life,

And live a coward in thine own esteem,

Letting “I dare not” wait upon “I would, ”

Like the poor cat i' th' adage?

What beast was ’t, then,

That made you break this enterprise to me?

When you durst do it, then you were a man;

And to be more than what you were, you would

Be so much more the man. Nor time nor place''

For my next lesson I will look through my monologue in a detailed way so I could understand the monologue and understand my character.  

Evaluation

Today we had our performance, we firstly had to set out the stage for the first group and to clarify who is changing the set for the next scene. Tayo and I was the 3rd group to perform. We went through our lines before our performance, this was a good way to refresh our minds to the scene and our characters. When it was our turn to perform we had set out the staging having the table in the middle if the stage and two chairs. We only had 3 props so it was easy to get on stage and on time, we had: two glasses and a bottle of wine. During the performance I believe that I as a character did not put in the effort I have put in during the rehearsal period. I believe that one of the main reason for not doing as well as we should have was because we had a long period before doing the performance and we had gotten out of character. The quick rehearsal and recap was useful before we performed. We could have made our character relationship a bit more obvious by making clear actions such as being close whilst we was sitting. Some of the good sides were that we had kept in character throughout the whole performance, there was a part when I hit the plastic plait by accident and it flew, I still tried my best to keep in character as everyone was laughing, I tried to not giggle.

Looking much more into my character gave me a better understanding of my character and the scene made me feel so much secured with myself whilst acting. Looking at http://www.gradesaver.com/top-girls/study-guide/character-list the character views on Joyce is ‘Angie’s adoptive mother and Marlene’s sister. Joyce and Marlene do not get along well. Joyce raised Angie because Marlene wanted to escape Ipswich and pursue a career. Joyce represents the perspective of the working class. However, she is not a particularly sympathetic character and is very resentful of her sister.’ This gave me a base to set my character circumstances, so who my character is, where are they, what are they doing, why are they doing it and when is it. Looking at the circumstances who is Joyce, she is a 46 year-old female who does not work so she is a housewife which looks after her younger sisters child since the baby was born, for when we planned with Tayo to do it in the evening after her character has come from work, this is shown when my character is making dinner in Joyce’s house. The part we done was from a scene where Angie the 16 year-old was talking to Marlene (her actual mum) and Joyce, after Angie goes off my character and Marlene carries on talking, it leads to an argument about Angie’s life and also their parents. The tone, pace, volume and speed in our voice showed our anger we had towards each other. My character blames Marlene’s character for leaving her own child, and Marlene’s character blames my character for accepting to look after her. Marlene’s character and my character are sisters, my character is older but Marlene has more power as she is the manager of a company called ‘Top Girls’. Both characters still show that they care for each other but still blame each other for being in the state they are in.

Our rehearsal process was at points difficult as we found it difficult to get in together a lot of the times so this really made it difficult to improve our character relationship, we could have shown our sister relationship much more clearer than we did in our performance. This could have been with our actions, being a bit closer to make it clear. We also could have developed with the scene as we needed to make the lines easier to understand by ethicize certain words to allow the audience to know what our character is trying to tell them.

Overall I believe that my performance skills have improved throughout my AS performing arts and A2. I have been much more involved with this project than the group performance we had to do. I believe that this is because it was easier to work with a small group of 2. Our next project would be monologues, I think that I could do a better performance because that I'll be working alone and I'll have a better understanding of the monologue than a play. This will give me a chance to work on myself and my performance.

18/03/2016

For the whole week my partner and I rehearsed through our scene. We decided during the rehearsal that we will do a bit more character research, so we watched the scene again, this helped refresh our characters intentions and beliefs in this scene.  

11/03/2016

Today was another rehearsal day. We looked at the Top Girl performance again to make it clear to how they performed their characters.

03/03/2016

For this lesson we went through our scene and made our scene improved by carrying on with the feedback we got in our last performance we done to our class. We developed our characters actions and made our sister relationship with the way we used our acting.

24/02/2016

This lesson we went through the feedback we got last Friday. I added more energy to my character and also made my movements much more suitable for my character. I also try to make my vocals cle by makin my rojections better. Next lesson we'll carry on improving the scene.

19/02/2016

Today we went through our scenes and showed our group so we could get some feedback from them. We used props which made it better because we didn't need to mim the glass. Some of the feedback my character got was mainly in between good and needing some work to do. For my vocal my articulation, pace and tone was good. My modulation and projection needs extra work to do. I personally believe that my vocal is good overall. I believe that I project my voice well for the audience to hear. For my physical my posture, gesture and characteristics was good. My movement was okay and my energy and tempo-rhythm needed some work on them. I personally agree with my energy and also my movement, I need to have more energy as a character and make my movement clear. In general my communication with other characters and my communication with audience is okay. Which I do not agree because I think that I am very good with communicating with my partner. My effective listening and response is good. For next lesson I will take this on board and use this feedback to make my acting better.