Reflect on the process of devising and performing

Reflect on the process of devising and performing.

What did you personally contribute to the group?

My teammates and I were planning on having a male main character and have all other characters relate to him. However, I pointed out that we don’t need to stick to the relation type of male to female. We can have two girls in a relationship. Therefore, we can more creative about the story.

I also made a lot of suggestions about the scripts to my teammates and helped them to determine the most effective emotion expression for each scene.

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Reflect also on your group as a whole.

What went well so far?

For our group, the whole process was very smooth because of our great cooperation. We thought about the story together so that we didn’t argue about what we should do. We also did a fantastic job of having a positive attitude throughout the whole process. We worked hard together even when Jack was not in class. When we know that Jack was not able to join us, we stayed calm and made an alternative story quickly. It was a great teamwork experience.

What was hard so far and what do you need to improve?

The things that we need to improve is to think more lines to memorize and do less improvisation. I read the comments that our classmates made after watching our raw performance. One of it mentioned that we should be more prepared for the show. Even though we didn’t plan out the whole thing completely yet, we should have the parts that we discussed look more smoothly,

What’s hard for me is that I don’t really know how I look like when I perform. Sometimes, I think I tried my best to show my facial expression and I thought the audience could see it, but when I practiced facing the mirror, I don’t seem to have a lot of change with my facial expression. I have to pay more attention to it and try harder to show my emotions using body language too. And lastly, I HAVE TO STOP SWINGING! It shows my nervousness to the audience and is absolutely distracting them from my performance.

What have you learned?

I learned that speaking loudly really helps people to understand my scripts. Especially the complicated scenes. Lots reflections that people sent to me was that I should speak louder. And when I asked them if they were able to understand our story, the answer was “NO.”. Form that, I also noticed the importance of staging. During our practice, we didn’t really consider the audiences’ viewing points and covered almost every single one of each other's’ facial expression. Therefore, the audience could not hear us, and they couldn’t understand what we were doing too.

What did you notice from watching others?

From watching others, I learned a lot. Firstly, maybe because we are still shy and not open to the whole class yet, lots classmates were quiet on stage. I had a really hard time understanding them. Their voice was somehow even quieter than it is when we were just talking normally. Also, some people tend to speak fastly and not fully pronounce the words. Maybe that is not a big problem for the audience who has English as their first languages or the people who are good at English. But I’m not one of them. Therefore, even if I could hear the lines, I will not understand the words. And as the show goes on, I will be too tired to try to understand and eventually lose the interest to the show. Secondly, even performing is more about movements and expressions, having a clear storyline and character set is also really important too. A sudden transition, an unclear character, and a weak ending can simply make the show not as successful.