Unit 8: Task Four

 Task 4: Evaluation

 Through out my time rehearsing and preparing for this performance I have learnt a great deal that has allowed me to really develop as an actor. To state that the character I had chosen called AJ was a totally different person to who I am in real life is an understatement. The character of AJ is someone who would annoy most people, he's arrogant and attention seeking. He wants to be the centre of attention 24/7 and loves making his brothers life a living hell. He is also a graffiti artist and gets in to trouble a lot. This is totally different to me as a person, usually I can be quite quiet and not really look for attention. I am usually nice to everyone I meet, unless they are not nice to me. This was the first obstacle I had to overcome with this character. My very first challenging role I had put myself up for, in acting I usually gravitate towards smaller roles. I don’t audition for the larger ones. I tend to worry that I wont remember lines or I could do all that needed to be done and still won't get it right.  Eventually I managed to work up the courage and strength to just go for it. I needed and wanted to have a larger role for this performance, it's my end of year performance and how I do goes towards my final grade. I really couldn’t just hide in the shadows on this one. 

So,I managed to land the part, this big role, I was excited and also worried. This was my first main role in anything, I felt like I was under a lot of pressure. However, I soon realised this was one of the best decisions I have made in a long time because as we did more rehearsals, the more I developed the character the better I felt. During this time my tutor gave me a lot of advice, in order to help me with my performance. Directing me towards new techniques that they have learnt in the past. They helped me not only in my performance but with other things; like learning lines, movement and also blocking.  In this performance I really thought I came out my shell. In other performances I have been performing smaller roles, not really challenging myself. In contrast to this my role in 'Stuff' did challenge me and it has helped me so much! I have learnt I can actually do larger roles, it's not as difficult of a task as I had once thought. Yes, of course it can be challenging. Yet once I had learnt my lines I was really starting to feel fine, like everything was really coming together. As I got more confident with my role, I started to noticed people laughing at what I was doing. I was actually performing the comedic lines really well and everyone was liking how I was playing my character. The cast was expressing that I was truly embodying AJ. This feedback was really encouraging and I was proud of my work, that I was doing so well that even my tutors were really happy with my work and how far I had come.

 From this one performance I had learnt so much just. By going for a main role and just jumping headfirst into things allowing myself to put in my full effort. All the different little bits I learnt to help me develop my character. The different techniques to help my reactions on stage to different people. The work I did on developing my facial expressions on stage, as my character becomes quite emotional at times. To be honest, my character probably shows the most emotion in the entire play, so it was important that I developed all these different aspects of him. My tutors and my cast mates really helped me with this, especially when highlighting the softer side of the character AJ.

 

The final full rehearsals we did went amazingly well. We all did the best we could, and it looked phenomenal! Everything was right and perfect, we all knew exactly what we were doing, and our performances were spot on. As a cast we were all really proud. Everything was fleshed out and put together.  Every line was delivered perfectly and everyone was feeling naturally like they were that character.  The blocking was working on stage and projection to the audience seemed good. To me the chemistry between actors was visible. The cast, the teachers, everyone was just so happy that after all this hard work we had put in, we finally made this amazing piece. We were ready to go on that stage and like our tutor said to just continue what we were doing and leave it all on the stage and our live performance would be just as good.