Feedback on Shakespeare Performance

On Monday, we had been set the task of giving ourselves objectives to work on in our scenes. I had set myself the objectives:
-to complete the scene off script.
-to react off lines naturally.
-to keep going through the scene until confident - has been performed to the best of my ability.

Throughout performing the scene, I had received the feedback that my exaggerated actions and movement suited the scene. Furthermore, in my scene I had conveyed the obsession of my character towards Katherine efficiently. An improvement that was given to me is to slow down as sometimes I tend to slip over my words and since the scene is based in the Shakespeare Era, the audience could possibly get confused as the may not have understood what I had said; in result missing a key component to the scenes structure.

Shakespeare in Da House - Rehearsals

As we had been given a new script to learn, in one rehearsal, we had been set to do some improvisation on what we thought our characters favourite food, past time/hobby and favourite country they have been to. As my character is obsessed with Katherine, a past time I had interpreted was that he kept thinking about her and that I had wrote poems about her and could not stop having a fetish for her.

In order to develop my character, Petruchio, we were set the task of Improvising our characters lives. In turn what I did outside the class was watch various interpretations of his character to help form my own. He is a very clumsy yet open minded person who loves money but yet in the end falls for the Shrew in the play who was in this case was Katherine. This then allowed my character to look like he wanted to impress Katherine yet he did not know how to approach the situation, making things up as he goes along. My partner, Grace, also did the same so as we got in to the rehearsal space, we were ready to discuss our ideas and research, then apply it to our scene. We had also analysed the script and translated t to modern language using the source 'No Fear Shakespeare'.

Why I chose the role I chose?

The two plays we have been studying are generally based around similar factors. Both portray the problems that can arise when having to face these problems in real life scenarios. First of all, Pronoun describes the life of being a transgender in the perspective of Dean and how others around are impacted by that. Whereas the play Last Summer is based around Female Genital Mutilation and how a fact about someone can deeply affect the friendship you have had for years. Similarly, both plays are based in modern times and when first approached can be sensitive matters to certain audiences, therefore making this a challenge to convey to youth audiences.

However it can also be said that the moral of both plays is that you can be who you want to be and you can make your own decisions. Although these factors in both plays can be overlooked in real life scenarios, but in the end it is about whom you are and the people who care about you offering support. We live in a world where people can be influenced by others, but the factor should not direct you to hide things to avoid judgement.

Especially in Pronoun, the character of Josh and James Dean got me an interest in the way they were placed in the performance throughout. Josh is seen as an outgoing person with a charismatic personality which impacts his relationships with his fellow mates. Whereas James Dean provides help toward the core factor throughout the whole play – being a transgender. The reason why I had grown a sudden interest whilst these characters were introduced was that I could closely relate to both their personalities with a slight challenge of some altered thoughts of life. For example, James Dean has a very confident side to him, whereas I prefer to stay on the opposite side of the table. In addition, having to put on a slight American accent to be as close to the character as possible is something that may increase my experience in performing a different accent other than my own on stage.

The way I relate to Josh is that being outgoing is something I ought to stress with myself since helping others and being there for others is better, rather than just being a bystander. In addition, the fact that he does not allow himself to break down, he does a lot to influence others in a positive way. In conclusion, I had been chosen to portray James Dean. I think this is because during the script reading, I had attempted to read as if I was James Dean already and that helping people is my primary objective throughout the whole play. My initial interpretation on how to portray this character has to closely inter twine with the actual James Dean where it requires research and understanding to come up with the final character.

Shakespeare in Da House Evaluation

Over the course of this term, I feel that Grace and I had interpretated the scene so that although spoken in an altered version of the english language, it can still be understood by the audience; in this case, it was Segun's parents. Acting can take you to many different locations just to provide entertainment to those willing to see the production. In turn, my initial thoughts of entering another member of the class living room made me cautious of my surroundings resulting in having to adapt the scene to the space available.

Although this had limited the movement of the scene, it had managed to flow since we had rehearsed our scene with different scenarios such as standing next to each other with slight movements, another where we change position from time to time, and the free flowing one, which is our main performance. All we kept in mind was always balancing the stage while sticking to our character's personality.