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.
