Scripted Performance Reflection

This, now concluded, scripted performance has been, by far, the most impactful assessment in Drama thus far, and has, in the process of working on it, opened my eyes to the strengths and weaknesses that I have, as a Drama student. For example, I learned that one of my greatest difficulties in Drama was not only my lack of organisation (I often found myself behind in comparison to my group partners on learning lines and blocking scenes), but also the challenge I had to overcome in “entering” my character. I found it extremely daunting to really “get into” Christian as a character; I had to be him on stage. That meant I had to renounce everything that I had grown so accustomed to. I couldn’t shuffle my feet or fidget, as I was used to on stage (mostly as a symptom of nervousness); I had to remain confident, steadfast, and arrogant to a fault. Every single one of my actions needed to communicate the traits that defined Christian. This entailed heavy research into Christian as a character. However, by “entering” Christian, I actually managed to discover some very interesting and crucial details about me as an actor, which, until that point, I had been largely unaware of. An example of this was how I didn’t realise how much I fidgeted and shuffled; the real problem wasn’t just overcoming those subconscious motions. The real problem was realising that I had always practiced them, even when I was unaware of it. The result of this was me gaining a deeper understanding of myself on stage, and as an actor. The logical next step for me is to focus more on body language (which, I could argue, was the real focus of our Cyrano De Bergerac performance); I need to fully enter my character, and begin to devise and plan certain motions or body positions that define the character I am playing. This will, undoubtedly, be an incredibly useful and crucial skill to have in our upcoming “Monologues” task, and I hope that I will be able to fully master it and gain a greater awareness of what it means to understand, and, perhaps more importantly, to play a character.