Evaulation of Last Summer performance

The 19^th of May was our performance and we were all really excited about it. We had two performances that night, one at 2pm for college students and the other at 7pm for family and friends from outside college. I’ve never performed for a full hour, I’ve always performed for 10-20 minutes so this was a challenge for me especially because I was the main character and I was on stage throughout the whole performance excluding 2 scenes that I wasn’t in. My initial thoughts on both of the plays was that they both explored quite sensitive topics that are not spoken about because not many people agree with it or are embarrassed to speak out, especially the topic of FGM. However, my initial thought of ‘Last Summer’ as a play was that it’s hard to share something so personal to your family or your closest friends as we can see from both Sareeya and Jas keeping things from each other and Maisie because they’re scared of the outcome. People are afraid to be judged and that lowers their self-esteem to speak out and change things. As I read through the script, I noticed that there were hints and clues slowly being revealed about Sareeya and Jas after scenes.

Before the performance started, I had a feeling that we would all perform really well and no one would stumble on their lines and I believe that overall the performance went spectacularly well however I felt as if we could hurry up the cues more because it felt as if some of the scenes were dragging. Also, I thought that Grace and Donna were unprepared even though they knew what to do, I felt as if they weren’t clear with their task for example, in scene 2 I was supposed to talk to pedestrians walking by as if it was a shopping centre and they came on really late so I had to improvise and I spoke to the audience. To add to that, there was an awkward moment where they didn’t know how to push the podium into the centre ready for scene 17. It created a weird mood with the audience because I didn’t know whether I should stay in character and wait for them to place the podium in front of me or break out of character and help them so it wasn’t so awkward. In order to seem more professional, I stayed in character and improvised my actions. In conclusion, I thought that everyone did really well and they all maintained their character, nobody slurred any of their words and improvised well when they had forgotten their words. However, from the feedback given by the audience, they felt that we should be louder and position ourselves differently so that all areas of the audience can hear what we’re saying. I didn’t expect for us to get any laughs from the audience because it was quite a serious play whereas if you were to compare it to Pronoun then that play has humour added on purpose to get a reaction from the audience. Also, I wasn’t expecting people to shed a tear in the last scene where Maisie speaks her monologue so I was quite astounded that happened.

From the point of view of being on stage, I felt a bit nervous and shaky because this was the first time I did a big production in the college so I didn’t know how the audience would treat the performance i.e. would they be respectful? Laugh at the right moments? Understand the story?                                I was very focused and put 100% concentration into the performance. I felt as if I knew my lines so well that I didn’t have to think about what the next line was, but I would just say it automatically. I was very confident because this wasn’t the first time I had performed in front of an audience. I think I portrayed the character of Maisie really well; she seemed like a very bubbly and caring person which really suited well with my personality so it felt like I was actually Maisie in real life. Moreover, I think that the play went extremely well and I can’t wait for next year’s final project. I really enjoyed being a main character even though I’ve usually been a main character in all of my other productions outside of college, but I felt that it was a challenge to maintain the confidence to go on stage and perform for a whole hour and remember every single line in the script.

Here's the video to my performance. Enjoy!