Unit 1 - Skills development in performing arts

Monday 31^st October

The aim of this lecture was to look at my poem and to carry on learning it. 

We started today’s lesson with a quick warmup. We patted our muscles gently, starting from the feet and slowly working our way up to our head. Then we carried out our intercostal diaphragmatic breathing exercise. I carried this out a few times and then my lecturer told me that she is starting to see a difference from when I first started doing this exercise to now. After the breathing exercise, we carried out some travelling exercises such as pah, tah, kah and mah, nah, lah. These exercises are called travelling exercises because they travel through the mouth and use all of the articulators such as the tongue, teeth and lips. 

Next we moved onto looking at my poem. During half term I got tonsillitis and when I came back to college, I still had not recovered so during this lesson I was in poor voice. Although I had a sore throat and I had a bad cough, I still decided to get on and say my poem through a few times just so I was starting to get familiar with it. My target from the session before half term was to learn the first 8 lines. I had already achieved the target of 4 lines before we left for half term. Unfortunately I was unable to remember the next 4 lines of the poem however, I could remember the middle section of the poem. I currently know the poem in small chunks with some missing at the start and some missing at the end. When I spoke to my lecturer she said this was very unusual and although I had not learnt the next 4 lines, I had remembered about 6 lines towards the middle of the poem. This meant that the target that she set me for the session in a week’s time, on Monday 7^th November, was to make sure that the middle section of the poem was secure.