Unit 9 Task 4 - 2 Year Evaluation

In my year one journey I mentioned about things that I could work on / improve and range of which roles I haven't really had to express yet. We started off the second year with a bunch of improvisation warm-ups to get us ready for ghost light tours: a night with Burke and Hare. For this year of ghost light we started off strong, by devising and researching for the show, we were in groups and would have to get our own information that we could incorporate into the show. This was already more than what we did last year as we came up with our own ideas but we didn't go into the level of detail like this year. We worked on duologues and started off with looking for Shakespeare monologues for Universities and we all had our own directing projects we were apart of. We also got told that for our Christmas show this year it would be a musical, so already what I wanted to work on / improve in second year was underway. For our duologues since we hadn't done them in first year we were given a scene from "Dear Evan Hansen," and we were paired up with someone of the opposite gender. I got paired up with Millie Trodden and we got given the scene and we had to annotate it and see the deeper meaning behind what we can see is happening but also what we infer is happening in this scene since we get no context. It was the scene with Evan and his mum when they're arguing. We have done duologues in the past, but not to the extent of picking apart the scene and finding out what we think the context is, the duologue is also a dramatic scene where the tension starts off high and gradually starts building more, I hadn't really done dramatic in the past so it broadens my variety as an actor to start the year off with something new. For our directing project, we were in groups and would have to choose a couple of scenes from a show, I was in "The curious incident of the dog in the nighttime group," for this project we would have to direct and also act in it. We assigned a main director who was Jess, but also we would help direct since we it was part of what we needed to do. I never really took part in anything backstage apart from helping out with props last year for our shows, so this year it was nice to direct a few scenes of a show to get the feeling of what it is like. We used the analysis lesson that we had learnt for our duologues here to analyse the scenes. We held mini auditions for everyone who wanted to act in it, and when casting was given to everyone we took the project on and spent a couple of weeks directing a these few scenes. Our Shakespeare monologue lessons were taught by Tom, we had studied monologues in the past but never Shakespeare monologues. We got taught how to look for them, that we should just use our own accents when it comes to auditions as they aren't looking for anything fancy. We had to perform these in front of everyone and a camera, we also got taught the rhythm which Shakespeare uses in his plays, iambic pentameter. 

For auditions for this years ghost light tours. I originally was going to audition for one of the tour guides, since this year I felt ready to start off with something bigger because of how much I had grown from last year. What turned me away from auditioning for them in the end was the pressure of answering audience questions, I felt like I would have been able to have done the tour and stick to the script. So I asked Kelly if there was another role that had quite a bit to say and was different from last years. Since in last years I took on a more comedic ensemble piece (still made sure it was scary) in the tour and had to come up with  the choreography with Will on our slapstick movement. Kelly had told me the insurance broker for the Mary Ann Cotton section of the tour seemed like a good role that had enough to say and only interacts with the audience when giving out the information. For out auditions this year, instead of going away and learning an audition piece that Kelly had made we were tasked with writing our own monologues based on the character that we would like to go for. So I did a lot of research on Mary Ann Cotton and made sure to fit it into my monologue but keep it so that it flows nicely. I found out that there was a nursery rhyme for her so I added that in the start of my monologue as I thought it would creep the audience out to begin with. Instead of singing the nursery rhyme though I decided to speak it as I thought it added a bit more of an eerie depth to it. I linked back to the rhyme right at the end of my monologue as well, also mentioning how she poisoned all her husbands. When I went into the audition I had my monologue prepared and tried to be off script as much as possible, I added an accent to my character and managed not to stumble over any of the words and it went quite smoothly without me rushing as well, showing that I have gotten better. This was my first narrator role during my two years of being on this course so already starting off the year with our first show with a different feel of a character. During, my performance I foreshadowed to the husband a lot showing that he was going to be killed right in front of the audience but he never caught on till he was poisoned to which I gave a little chuckle each time since I had called it. I knew that this character would be very factual so I spent more of my time learning facts, when it came to Mary Ann Cotton, just so I didn't get anything wrong and someone points it out. I was closer to the audience this year rather than last year, since I was in the downstairs bar. The downstairs is more of an enclosed space, instead of being on the stage like I was last year this meant the audience were closer to me. I also worked with a more people this year as well other than just working with one person. I think the challenge for this show was the preparation and doing the facts research, as there is so much that I could have included but I needed to have something snappy that would get the point across but was also correct and I feel like my performance and the knowledge I put into my monologue (which most of it was used in the end script) showed I knew what I was talking about when it came to it. I think if given another chance in the future to do another immersive tour piece like this I would love to push myself further and try and go for a tour guide. 

In the lead up to our Christmas show we had been doing auditions and singing lessons since we were doing "Peter Pan: The British Musical." This was a stretch in itself as this will be the first show where we do singing, we had done some singing in the past in the form a Christmas Community Concert where we sang a song from the muppets Christmas carol. So this was different since it was a full length musical, not just one wrong. So we had Tom as our singing teacher and spent the first few weeks of the start of the year during globe as well doing singing lessons and analysing the script. At first when hearing about this show and hearing it was a musical, I was so happy since I see singing as a skill I am strong at. From the start i had it in my mind that I wanted to audition for Captain Hook, but I had other people telling me I should audition for Peter so I was lost. In the end after going over the songs in my own free time I made the decision to go for Hook. Our auditions for Peter Pan spanned over the course of a week, our first part of the audition were scenes from the show, people auditioning for Hook were given a monologue that he has towards the back end of the show. I took inspiration for my interpretation of Hook from the 1991 film "Hook." After working on the voice and finding where it felt powerful enough for me and where it didn't hurt my throat I started to tackle the monologue ready for the audition. I struggled quite a bit with this monologue as he goes Shakespearean so I started panicking a little thinking maybe this was the wrong role and I should have auditioned for Pan instead, I continued on with the challenge though and in the end I felt like I had picked up on rhythm that felt nice for me. His emotions were another thing I struggled with as he's a big over the top character and changes emotions all the time, throughout the piece we were doing. I worked a lot on my characteristics for this role as well as he is very flowy in movement I think with his hook. The next part of the audition was callbacks / chemistry reads where we were split into different groups with at least 1 Hook, Wendy and Peter and we would choose a scene to go through and perform it in front of everyone. I noticed when doing this my Hook was a lot more terrifying than the other Hooks, there's nothing wrong with that it was just how I interpreted it. I also helped direct bits of our groups performances to show back and gave tips on how they could improve on their characteristics or movement of their character. Our last auditions were movement / dance and singing, the song for Captain Hook was rich damp cake, which I think I did really well in, adding in little chuckles when talking about killing the lost boys and the way I interacted with Smee during the song. My main mess up for the song was when it came to a certain part after a pause I started to early and you could hear the track behind me so I had to stop and wait to get myself back on track other than that I think it went well. For movement auditions we had to be in character the entire audition, we had to get into groups of three and I lucked out by getting into groups with two Peter's since it meant that I could bounce off of them when adding in our own movements and it looked really good as we had added a little bit at the end where I got to swing for one of the Peters and I get kicked in the back and they both run off laughing. 

I got the role of John Darling in the end of the audition process because Kelly had told me she felt like recently I had played too many mature roles, so she wanted to stretch me some more by giving me a character that still sings but is also lively. I had also decided to be a lost boy for ensemble instead of a pirate as it would show that I can do over the top lively roles and they had more singing and movement to them. For the lost boys I became the head of prop department, where I had to have a list of props they would be using for fight scenes. When the roles had got casted as well we did combat lessons since we couldn't do the show without learning stage combat as it was a big part of it. My character of John Darling was already a change from Tinman with it not being a mature character, I stayed as energetic as possible and used my facial expressions a lot to show that childlike nature of the role. My portrayal of this character was different to the other John's since I was more overprotective of Michael, making sure Michael was by my side if we needed to hide from danger or when Peter was upset and arguing with Wendy I covered Michael's ears so he didn't need to hear it. I had done research on John to understand him more and see bits where I could play off on the excitement nature more. It was said that he was fascinated with piracy and adventure so I made sure to be more expressive when it came to the sense of adventure and pirates lurking around. For my lost boy character, I made my costume myself out of old dried up leaves and charity clothes that I had ripped up, to use some as bandannas or using old socks to wear as a glove. I was always never matching when it came to socks to give off the feeling of wild. I made my lost boy backstory be a hunter that loves to have fun with his friends and pretend he's trying to hunt them, which is why I went with the leaves since he can blend in with the land of Neverland. I have sang on stage before but that was in front of people that I knew for ages so it felt less nerve wracking, whereas this was in front of tons of people I had never met and it was part of a show so I didn't want to mess it up or get any of the song lines or movements wrong. I felt like I didn't mess any of this up and it went quite smoothly for our first time doing a musical. I felt like in places I could have been more energetic with my characters but other than that it was great. We got told that we had great chemistry on stage as a whole cast and that there was something to us when performing together. My improvement for next time would be that when I go to audition to try and find that variety that I haven't done yet when it comes to shows so that way I can choose the right character out when auditioning. I still need to work on vocal performance with range and diction, which has always been a battle for me on this course but you can definitely see the improvement from my first time being on a stage to now. 

We had a wave of projects come in after Peter Pan, we had 3 student directed projects which im apart of two of them, we had auditions for our feature film and last, national theatre connections again this year and to end it of we have a professional company that us second years worked with to premier a show that they had written based on our words and stories we had given them last year. This taught me how to act professional and what the structure was like working with a professional company. For our feature film audition it was an emotional role that I was auditioning for since I haven't done anything emotional or vulnerable in a character yet, I didn't end up getting the role but I fell in love with the audition process of screen once again since it was my first time doing something screen related this year. For our three student led projects we had Hunt, Teachers and Stuff. Hunt and stuff are both old national theatre scripts. I auditioned for AJ in stuff since the character appealed to me, I haven't played a troubled character who has a lot to uncover about himself and that added to the challenge as he has some really hard scenes that need to be done right otherwise it just feels lack lustre and unsatisfying to the audience. We haven't done the show yet but we have been undergoing the rehearsal process, since I got casted for AJ. This role has been my hardest challenge yet as there is a lot of layers to the character and he is the most naturalistic character I have had which links back to when I said that I needed a more natural character. This show also has a bit of romance which was also what I was looking for but its not done cringy, AJ basically likes this guy but is in the closet with being gay and so treats the other lad bad and makes a lie up about him, but they become friends again with two of the hardest natural scenes I have to do of them two talking it out. For hunt I auditioned for Fra and got a callback where I ended up directing the scene we had been given for the callbacks and Callum said I had done a good job with it. I got casted as Fra and up to now we have only done two rehearsals of, and in one of them we used the stage combat we had learnt from before and used it for the show.

Our most recent show was 'Shout' which is part of national theatre connections, my character in this years connections was different to my last year and was more of a fun challenge for me. I was sort of in the middle of both roles this year as I played a teenagers text message around the same age as me. So I wasn't as mature as what the police officer role was and I wasn't too childish like younger Kobi was. It was a balance between them both but still my own character that was different to them. I struggled trying to read through the lines and analyse this role as much isn't given to the character so I had to talk to the person who played Tristan on how we could bring Tristan's text message to life. We managed to do it by outfit, having the text message wear a different outfit to what Tristan would wear since the text message is the more introverted and free version of Tristan. I also struggled with what to do in the scene since I was just always standing around listening, but Kelly mentioned it looked nice since it showed that Tristan does listen. We did some warm-ups moving as one to get ready for this show as well and it really helped with moving as one with Tristan and the message and it gave a sense of realism and notified the audience that we were the same person we just had our differences. 

For the end of year show we are doing "One flew over the cuckoo's nest" this gives me the chance to show off a raw and gritty emotional performance no matter what role I get. This is what I had been missing throughout the two years of being on this course and I think being on this course has prepared me for this show. I have been preparing myself by getting my own monologue ready and looking into people who suffer with stutters, since my wish is to play Billy Bibbit. I see him as a very vulnerable character so I also based my monologue that I found on him making sure that I chose one of someone at their weak time in life opening up showing how vulnerable they can be. I have overcome every challenge being on this course and it has led me to improve on my talent that I believe I didn't have much of when joining the course. I have grew as a person and as an actor, just by being around the people who make performing so good. I can't wait for the audition process to start for this show and to see how it plays out, because just being in the show is going to be a challenge no matter what role I get.