Thursday 26th April
In the session this afternoon, I will be performing my audition piece to my peers. This then gave me a chance to work on any last minute amendments before I performed it to the group.
This morning I ran through my contemporary monologue. As I was running through the speech, I made an adjustment to one of the lines. The adjustment was to do with my movement. On the line ‘Okay, so you’re standing with your backs to the audience, feet apart and absolutely perfectly still’. At present, I turned to face the back after I had said “Okay”, however my lecturer told me to change it slightly so that I turned after the word “audience”. When I practiced the piece again from the beginning using this new moment of movement, the piece seemed to flow better and movement fitted in better with the script.
In the afternoon I arrived to the lesson ready to perform my piece. For my piece I wore a black leotard with leggings, tap shoes and a hat. In my lectures, I have been practicing with the hat and my tap shoes to help me with my characterisation. These really helped me to connect with the character.
After a diction warmup, I was ready to perform my piece. Here is a video of me performing the piece:
Here is a video of me receiving feedback from my peers and from my lecturer, Cara:
Overall, I am really happy with how I performed this piece. I managed to stay in character all the way through the piece, I kept my projection up and I remembered all of the notes that my lecturer had given me during rehearsals. When I first started learning the piece, I was worried that I was never going to connect with the character but over time I have found a connection with her and I was able to draw on my personal experiences to help portray the character of Mavis.
On reflection, I have had a look back at the video of my starting point and I have realised that the piece has improved a lot since beginning to work on it. To begin with, my movement wasn't very bold and I didn't move like a dance teacher. However, throughout the rehearsal process, I have worked on the way that I move during the piece and during the final piece, you can see that my movement is more fluid and more 'dance teacher like'. Another refinement that I have made during the rehearsal process was to my tone of voice without the piece. There are several times throughout the piece where Mavis makes a sarcastic comment to one of the other characters, Geoffrey. At the beginning of the rehearsal process, I did not grasp the intonation of these parts but progressed with them over time. There are also several other parts in the piece where she makes sarcastic comments to the other members in the group. Something that also really helped me with my characterisation was wearing my leotard, leggings, hat and tap shoes for the performance. This made me really think about my character as this is what a typical dance teacher would wear in the 1980's which was when the play was set.
On reflection, I have had a look back at the video of my starting point and I have realised that the piece has improved a lot since beginning to work on it. To begin with, my movement wasn't very bold and I didn't move like a dance teacher. However, throughout the rehearsal process, I have worked on the way that I move during the piece and during the final piece, you can see that my movement is more fluid and more 'dance teacher like'. Another refinement that I have made during the rehearsal process was to my tone of voice without the piece. There are several times throughout the piece where Mavis makes a sarcastic comment to one of the other characters, Geoffrey. At the beginning of the rehearsal process, I did not grasp the intonation of these parts but progressed with them over time. There are also several other parts in the piece where she makes sarcastic comments to the other members in the group. Something that also really helped me with my characterisation was wearing my leotard, leggings, hat and tap shoes for the performance. This made me really think about my character as this is what a typical dance teacher would wear in the 1980's which was when the play was set.
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