Acting Profile

During the first weeks whilst I was meeting at college with my class to discuss the play we were going to put on it, it was very difficult to find ideas that everyone agreed on. Some of my friends suggested ideas, but it seemed that writing a script was a long way ahead.

We had discussions and Anthony came up with the idea for Britain’s Got Talent .Originally he was going to be performing a break dancing routine and we would have other performances with the judges. Tom and I decided to go away and write down a short script for consideration the following week.

When we met the following week we showed our scripts to the class, Elaine and Nicky preferred the script that I had written. There were a mixture of emotions during the first weeks as we seemed indecisive, but realised that we needed to make a decision. Once we had a copy of the first draft of the original script we felt a lot happier. It suddenly seemed like all the ideas we had talked about were getting into some order. It was then that we were able to read the script and come up with more ideas. That was when I went home and typed the ideas into the script.

Writing a script is not easy but, the way I found it easier was to look at the script as a process and take it step by step. I would advise anyone writing a script not to fall in love with it and decide that nothing is to be changed. To get the best out of devising a play you have to be flexible and allow everyone to have their say. A script can only grow when it is allowed to develop and breathe as it were. Although people left the course during the writing of the script and characters had to be dropped I found the whole process a learning experience. At first there was a totally different dynamic to the play, but after people left the dynamic changed. Writing a script that you are going to perform is definitely a learning process where you have to be open to change.

When we first performed part of the play in front of the rest of the group I was pleasantly surprised that they all enjoyed it and even my tutor said that it was advanced for our level. We were given a hand out and I remember reading about tabloids and using narration that gave me the idea for the narration at the beginning of the play which set the scene. I wanted to do a tabloid as soon as the narration was being read and the play began. I think that was very effective and would recommend to anyone writing a play to run with it, be enthusiastic and experiment with different techniques. Although a play can be straight forward using different techniques can give it that edge it needs to impress an audience.

Writing the script was a group experience that I think everyone of us enjoyed although some more than others put more work into it everyone developed their own character. I must admit that I wrote the majority of the play though I was inspired by Tom’s ideas and Elaine contributed a lot to the play as well. I think if you have more heads than one it is better because you all have different ideas. Never be closed to just one idea because that limits the scope of the play. When you are open to different ideas the play can be stretched further and take on new dimensions. My tutor even told me that it was good to be flexible with script writing and not too clingy. Sometimes you might need to edit many pages of a script for it to flow better whilst other times cutting big parts of the script can be a bad decision. However you never know if you don’t try and it is all a learning experience. It also teaches you what goes into the writing of a script so that you don’t take for granted the writer’s who have put the work into the production. If I was to write a script again I would me more organised and plan ahead of time. I would work on a page at a time until I felt that it was the best it could be then I would ask people to read the script and during rehearsal’s changes can be made.

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