Evaluation

 Candidate Declaration - I confirm that the attached portfolio is all my own workjourney throughout college has shown to me many fascinating characters with hidden of depths. I have had a wonderful experience from start to finish. My first production was ‘Stuff’, where I played a bully called ‘Kobie’, he was a character with depth as he comes across as a bully but is secretly gay. At this point in time in my career I didn't know much about acting, and to take on a main role, with so many lines was both inspiring and a lot to take in. I had never had a role like that before, I had only done very short roles with barely any lines. For Kelly to offer me this opportunity was unexpected and remarkable. As I performed on that stage, I learned I had what it takes to be an actor, I felt that love for acting and the confidence this role gave me led me to where I am today. The role was a challenge for me, as I needed to come out my comfort zone and it showed me, I had the ability to learn all those lines, something I had found to be quite daunting. 

The next roles I gained were smaller and Kelly allowed me to understand why she gave me these roles. The reason being that they were to help me with my overall acting, even when I wasn't always speaking, I was to be always immersed in the world. This is such a massive part of acting, it was integral that I learnt this skill. So, as I performed in these smaller roles such as: ‘Mr Salt’ in ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ really helped me focus on other aspects of acting like, facial expressions while on stage and my reaction to things happening around me. While this role wasn't much of a challenge in terms of learning my lines, it did challenge me to always stay focused, even when I wasn't speaking. I learnt the value of accepting that I will not always get the roles I want or audition for, which is a big lesson to accept in the world of acting. 

My next large role was ‘Mickey’ in ‘Blood Brothers’, this role was life changing. The challenges this character provided me was like no other, not only did it have the pressure of being a main character and therefore lots of lines to learn, but also there are so many different layers to ‘Mickey’. From playing him as a child to transitioning him into a traumatic adult life that left him nearly for dead. He changed so much over the years. I had to do so much research and knuckle down for this role. I put my heart and soul into this role, I had to make it right and perfect. This role truly showed me what I was capable of as an actor, my confidence went through the roof, and I was so happy with the role. I was having fun working on it every day. The childish aspect of ‘Mickey’ was extremely difficult at first to get to grips with, but once I let go and gave in fully to the role, I could fully immerse myself in the world of ‘Mickey’ and grasp him being a child. The change from being a child to a depressed adult was another challenge. It was a very different time in his life, and I had to be able to change instantly. I thought I rose to the occasion very well. I was able to learn so much from this role, in terms of acting and it was such a diverse and interesting character to play, and I loved every second of it.   

My next role was that of the bar tender, when we performed in our Ghost Light Tour in the Globe Theatre, which was an incredibly different experience. Acting in front of so many people and not knowing what was going to happen next, having to improvise on the fly was quite stressful. The crowd could say anything to me, at any point. Nevertheless the stress managed to fade away and it ended up being an exceedingly fun and fantastic experience, which once again managed to take me out of my comfort zone.

‘Little Women’ was my final performance at Stockton Riverside College, and I was looking forward to ending on not only such a big character, but such a famous play and book. My feelings before the show were good, I had done a lot of research on the character and felt prepared. I had watched the movies and read the script, even read a bit of the book and I loved ‘Laurie’ as a character. He was so exciting and fun to play and I really wanted to highlight all the different sides to ‘Laurie’. In order to prepare I had worked hard to learn all my lines, while rehearsing and in every spare moment I had I was looking through my script, making sure I understood each scene fully and that my cast and I would work together to nail the scene down. Millie and I would often work together, even after college to just run a scene a couple of times to make sure we had the right chemistry and to experiment with what we wanted to do with the scene. We often went through the ball room scenes, where Millie would often criticize me on my dancing skills. This would become an ongoing joke as the production went on. I also worked a lot with Phoebe this time around as my ‘Amy’ and this was our first time working together in anything, so we took a bit of time getting the chemistry right between us. We also were trying to figure out the right things to do with ‘Amy’ and ‘Laurie’ as their feelings changed quite a lot over the duration of the play. We felt we didn't have a much of a chance to show this change, but we made best of the scenes we did have. Furthermore, I also worked with other casts quite a bit, this was a good occurrence for me as it gave me ideas of what I could do better. Besides just seeing how other people were playing their characters is always a terrific opportunity. As time went on, I managed to see my cast grow, they started off a little shy, then as time went on, they got more comfortable. They were really coming into their own and making their characters realistic, funny and dynamic. By the end you could see the difference in each sister and what each one brought to the table. I was very proud of my cast and how far they had come, now we just needed to put it all together and own the stage. 

The night of the show was never wracking, we had only had our very first run through on the morning, which went well. We felt like we had fully mastered each scene and knew exactly what we were doing. However, I did think that knowing scene after scene was going to be an issue as we had never fully run it through before and put it all together. Nonetheless, I felt confident in myself, I knew all my lines, I deemed that I had really mastered the character and I knew exactly what I wanted to do for each scene. My cast was amazing, and I had seen them work together and I loved what I had seen. Millie and I especially had worked hard together, to get as much out of our scenes as possible, so we were looking forward to doing performing our scenes together. During our dress run we ironed out anything we needed, and we went through the play scene by scene making sure we were all standing in the right spots with the lights and that we knew exactly where to move to on stage. My feedback after the dress run was about projection, I hadn’t even realized I was being quiet. I think it’s due to the American accent for some reason, as I am never usually too quiet on stage, it’s not my usual feedback. As the night of the performance came around, we were all starting to become much more nervous, that’s one thing I have noticed that doesn't go away is the nerves before performing. On the other hand we were all very excited to get on stage and show everyone what we had.  My first scene went exceptionally well, I felt that ‘Jo’s’ and ‘Laurie’s’ chemistry was brilliant. I thought the play was flowing well just like we had rehearsed it and the dance, well the dance was perfect. The timing went perfectly, and it just felt amazing. As an actor I believer we always know when a scene is going well for ourselves, and it was perfect. The moment felt real between me and Millie and was beautiful, I couldn't be happier and prouder of that scene. The chemistry was great, the movement was timed well, and it was the best we had ever performed it. You could just tell in that moment it was marvellous. After this is where things started to go a little wrong. Behind the curtain I knew I was about to go on stage to perform a scene with Millie, but everyone was saying to me that it was a different scene. So, this confused me, and everyone was shouting at me and Phoebe to get on stage, which was for a different scene and we ended up running onto stage doing the wrong scene. I had realized what scene it truly was, but we had to commit to what we were doing, so we did. Thankfully Millie saved me by improvising and bringing me back to her and starting the correct scene and I knew exactly what scene it was meant to be, so we saved it. My heart was racing a thousand miles per hour, however we needed to remain calm and appear to the audience as if nothing had gone wrong, so we went straight back into performing the correct scene like nothing was amiss. This improvisation went well, we both made it work and the scene went well after that. Despite this after I got back off stage into the wings everyone was still panicking, which wasn't helping anything. Everyone was staying different things to me all at once and it was stressing me out, it wasn't helping anything. I was trying to get my head in the game again. Once more my feedback during the interval was about my projection, I had tried to work on this so much and it was a bit disheartening to know that it hadn’t worked. I had a good talk with Millie and Kelly, and we got our heads back in the game for the second act. Millie and I went on that stage thinking we could own it; we would come back better than ever. Which we did. The following love scene went well, I thought it could have gone better, maybe it was just because I was still feeling off footed from the first act and it did truly go well. Yet, I thought I had performed it better earlier in the day and I couldn’t quite shake that feeling. Nevertheless, I pulled myself together and acted out the rest of the second half admirably. I managed to put everything else aside. I needed to finish this play off and make it end perfectly and so we did. The rest of the play went swimmingly, and everyone was happy. 

The production of ‘Little Women’ taught me a lot about myself as an actor. To play a character may seem easy to start with, you think you know what to do by just the scene that they are in, but that may not be true. You must understand everything in their life that has happened up until that moment, what has shaped them because that is going to change how they react to different situations. For example like for the placement of the confession of ‘Laurie’s’ love with ‘Jo’, it wasn't just ‘Laurie’ being denied by a girl. To him it was his last chance at happiness with someone who he thought he could be himself with, turning away from his family that are letting him down and everyone who looks down upon him for the way he acts. So, when the only person whom he felt he could be himself around does not feel the same way, it destroys him. No matter what the scene may seem to be about on the surface, it is all about the context. ‘Little Women’ has taught me to believe in myself more, when I was backstage and everyone was panicking, I panicked too, I should have focused, made sure I was right and stood my ground before going on that stage. Overall the production went well, even after the mess up, but every mistake is an opportunity to learn from and can only make me better for the future. My entire time at college has taught me more than I have ever thought it would and has fully prepared me for things I will face in the future. Every show had a different lesson and a different achievement for me, which has built my foundations of being an actor and I can now look forward to the future.