2/10/14 - Peer assessments

In today's lesson, we got into groups so that me and my partner, Rory, were with another two groups (Harmony and Benji, Connor and Taffy). In these groups we had to watch each other's performances and then write about one of them on a peer assessment sheet. On the sheet was the performance marking criteria, that explained what a pass, merit and distinction was. There was also a 'student friendly' box that just watered down the technical language so we could easily understand what we had to do to achieve the goal we wanted. There was a space for us to write where we thought the peer was at level-wise. Finally, at the back of the sheet was a big box to write in advice for your peer if you had any. 

I assessed Connor and Taffy's scene. Their scene was the very simple phone call scene. I found it very hard to assess this as the scene was so simple, but in the end they gave a pretty good performance and I was able to write both good comments and what they would need to improve on. 

Rory and I were the first pair in our group to perform and Harmony assessed me and Benji assessed Rory. I know during that I didn't give it my all that time around because my voice was playing up and I had to keep clearing my throat! (I've been very ill the past week and I'm recovering XD) Harmony's feedback is really helpful and I thank her for taking the time to write it so detailed. 

Everything that Harmony wrote I totally agree on. My hand gestures and movements are on point but I need more facial expressions and tone in my voice to compliment it. My character is Lynette and I think she is a hard role to play because of her mental illness and traumatic past/experiences. To help me perfect my gestures, I'm going to refer back to my audition role. 

To get into the Brit School, I performed a monologue from 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time'. You may be wondering why I'm referring back to this but I feel, personally, that Christopher and Lynette are quite similar. Christopher has aspergers so my monologue was of me standing there with my shoulders hunched, not really looking anywhere specific and my tone of voice was the same, almost monotone. The hand gestures and little movements I did during my scene really reminds me of what I have to do with Lynette. 

Finally, from all of this, I have figured that I need to show that Lynette is very distant from reality so she needs to be staring off into space and I think that, in my opinion, she would sound quite monotone at times to show emphasis on her spacey/dreamy personality. However, I need to be able to show this without people thinking I'm just bad at acting and that I can't use facial expressions.

I hope this all makes sense, it's just been in my head and I had to write it down somewhere, so why not on my theatre blog xD!   

- Matilda ^_^