I recently completed my GCSEÂ Drama Devised Performance. The whole process was about a month long and was filmed on October 2nd, 2017. The creative process of making the piece and executing it was an incredible learning experience, a great way to begin my year in Grade 10 Drama.
Firstly, a moment of triumph was taking the first performance we did in front of an audience, which was not something we all particularly loved, and being able to shape it into something to be proud of towards the end of the creative process, especially with time strains and the pressure of the exam coming up building on us.
We were able to both develop physicality in terms of using the space effectively in our movements and form distinctive and structured characters. Using the criteria and working through my lines at home, I was able to form the bitterness and pent-up anger in my character in a way that I thought was successful.
However, there were definite challenges laced into the assignment. The main difficulty we overcame was not using our time effectively and productively when we began crafting our piece, leaving all of the heavy lifting being done during the time we were meant to refine. Because of this, there were incredible time strains being pressed onto us, leading us to spend an entire afternoon at school, creating our new project. We met on weekends, in the morning, afterschool, only really feeling the stress of the looming deadline of our exam when it was looking right at our faces.
Ultimately, we were able to create and perform a fairly well-constructed and complete piece to perform for our exam. The most exciting part about it was how it changed and matured monumentally between our first class and our last.
