After a few weeks of rehearsing for our Greek Theatre
pieces, our performance day came and we were all excited to show off our work
and our acting skills to a new audience and new teachers.
The strengths in my performance with my group was that we
helped each other by directing one another to improve our performance. For example,
in the beginning Zulaiha was just standing on stage throughout the play and would
only step forward when she had to deliver her lines and we changed that by make
her move around the stage more in order to interact with other actors in the
group. In addition, a few days before our performance day Zulaiha was absent
and couldn’t attend the rehearsals so as a group of 3 we managed to work hard
on developing our own characters and going over our lines with each other just
to be confident with ourselves and ready for our performance day. Some of the
things we did to develop remembering our lines and some of the words in our
script was to work on our articulation and pronunciation of some of the words
for example, a few of us found it hard to remember the pronunciation of the
word ‘Thebes’. This is because we don’t use those types of words in the modern
day. Moreover, the weaknesses in our performance were using more facial expressions.
For example, in my monologue I revealed a lot of information and in rehearsals
when we worked on my monologue with the help of Rob, we cut it down and
evaluated each part and noticed that my character Jokasta was revealing bits of
information about who Oedipus was to Jokasta and what happened to his father,
Laios. As a group we directed Jireh to using a wider range of expressions such
as being confused and shocked and I would use the expression of being confused
and inside feeling quite sorry for Oedipus.
Our whole drama class had done a great job working very hard
during rehearsals and with remembering lines. We all enjoy what we do as aspire
to be brilliant actors and very dedicated which is a very important thing in
the acting industry as it helps us get work done to the best of our ability and
help others succeed too. After every rehearsal we would give each group
feedback on how to improve their play and some of the strengths and weaknesses in
their plays which is very helpful. One of the groups didn’t really feel that
they could connect with their Greek play so a really fun and interesting thing
that one of the groups did (Joseph, Peter and Marion) was change their Greek
play and try to make it into their own which made their performance unique to
the other groups. In addition, for Joseph’s monologue he decided to use some of
his own personal skill of rapping into his monologue which was a great idea as
it is something that the audience of young teenagers can relate to also they
could finish the induction with a fantastic finish.
The Musical Theatre class put on a great performance, you
can tell this by the amount of work they put into their performance to make it
in time with the music, dancing and the singing. However, at times it was
obvious that they not all put in the effort as the whole group was no in sync
with each other which are a weakness as it let down the group making it look
quite messy. Overall, it was an enjoyable performance to watch. The level 2
drama performances were all intriguing to watch because as an actor you are
able to examine the way some things were performed and you could steal some
ideas for any future performances. All of the groups made it clear what the
theme of their play was about. They all had great projection however some at
times were quite hard to hear especially because I was sitting at the back of
the theatre so I was struggling to understand what the actor on stage was
saying. The whole of the stage was used well by all of the groups, not one
group performed in a corner, they were all centre where the audience can see
clearly.
One of the groups had decided to show it’s a new scene by using black
outs, this is a very good idea however a weakness was that the audience was
confused as to what is going on and the scenes seemed too short so there would
be a blackout every 1-2minutes and it lost the audience’s attention. Another weakness
in another play was that some of the actors came out of character which is a
very powerful thing and can be spotted immediately for example, the actor was
talking about weed and got a reaction from the audience so they came out of
character which affected the whole group as it lost its meaning of what it was
trying to teach us. Personally, I thought that the music performances were
fantastic with recreating popular song and adding originality such as their own
raps which sounded amazing. However, a weakness that could be easily spotted
was that not all of the groups used their popular song and play around with
piece to show that they can be creative.
Overall, all the performances, Musical Theatre class, Level
2 Acting class and the Music class, on induction were brilliant and you can
tell they worked hard and worked to their ability to performance an outstanding
first piece. Audience’s reaction differ on type of performance for example, at
a music gig, the audience are lively and can get involved more depending on if
they are familiar with the type of music being played which they can relate to,
whereas for a drama performance, the audience should be quiet because noise can
distract an actor on stage who is concentrating and being in their character
and if someone’s phone goes off this will cause the actors on stage to lose
confidence and come out of character. The engagement of the audience depends on
if the audience can relate or not, if a modern piece in drama was performed
then many will be able to relate in contrast to Greek Theatre which has
challenging and unfamiliar words to our modern world.
