Acting Profile

Finding a story to write a play about isn’t an easy task, but news stories can really help. When you read the news story you put your own view point to it and use it as the foundation for your script. I learned that once you find your news story to use you will want to change it and add or take things away. Working in a group we all had our say and all brought different ideas to the story.

When it comes to the input we had from our tutor although he did give us a few suggestions I feel that the help in that area was lacking. During the devising of our play our tutor was focussing on a play that he was putting on in the college and this came in the way of our writing process. There were also other areas of distraction for our tutor and this did not help our group’s final script. I felt that our tutor concentrated on the other group rather than our script and when it came to performance the lack of help was apparent. Whilst the other group knew what they were doing and had help in deciding things like how to make a scene more effective our group did not. The other group was told to turn the light off during a scene to make it more effective and yet one of the major parts in our scene looked messy which could have been avoided if our tutor had of helped us. It was all a learning process but, it made me realise how important it is to have a director or someone that gives you advise and suggestions on how to make the scene more effective.

I got on very well with Elaine in my group and we got together during the writing of the play and helped each other learn the lines and write the play. I really liked the narration at the beginning that was my idea and I think it started the play off very well. The still picture, tableaux was also my idea and again I think it introduced others to the play and helped set the scene. I had the idea for the false teeth that set the opening of the scene on a high note. I wanted the play to have a theme of dark and light all the way through. Using a combination of techniques can make the play interesting and varied.

I wish we had longer practising the play because I think it could have been so much better. I personally felt disappointed in my own performance and think it was due to feeling nervous. Had I been a bit more relaxed and taken things slower then I think I would have produced a better performance. The play flowed and even when I forgot my lines I carried on, but I know I forgot a lot and was disappointed. There was a lot of scope for our play to become something bigger and had we had more time I would have liked to work some more on developing it further.

I think what affected my performance the most was the nerves I was feeling. When I perform in front of a live audience I don’t feel as nervous, but when it comes to being filmed it is something that I do not like. When we watched the plays back I didn’t like looking at myself on the screen. Next time I will try to relax more and give a better performance. I would also aim to get the script written sooner so I can learn my lines earlier. Next time I would aim for more practising of the final play that would hopefully lead to a better result of the final performance.