Performance Log
To do a thing is always harder to think about it in mind. This week is my first week working on the coming performance of Romeo and Juliet scene, it is a very new experience for me. I used to stand in the boost and watch actors in drama do their rehearsal, and now I am the actor who is doing rehearsal! In this week, I and Yichen mainly focus on getting familiar with our lines, thinking about stage directions, and having some basic ideas for the performance. I learn that acting is harder than I thought before and there are a lot of things I need to work on.
For an actor, everything starts from reading scripts. I have learned and read through Romeo and Juliet in the past several weeks. But until I looked at the lines in Monday, I realized that I never pay my attention to the words in the lines. Because when I was reading, I focus on understanding the concepts of the script more than words. Then I had no idea how to pronounce a lot of words in my lines. I know that the lines are in old English and also in Shakespeare's style, but reading them out allows me to feel how hard it is for real. So during Monday, I and Yichen first worked on listening to our lines from the audiobook we have. Then we practiced speaking our lines out. By doing this, we wanted to check our lines, have some basic ideas of the entire performance, and knowing what lines are the most difficult for us. It turned out that I have to work on pronounce words like “harlotry” “knot knit” and many others. Another thing is I will feel awkward during the coming performance. I feel very nervous when I have to present myself to other people. To act during other people is never easy to me, because acting needs to expressive yourself to audiences, and I am very shy to do that. These will be my main focus in the next week, to overcome my fair in performance as well as knowing how to pronounce my lines.
On the other hand, I and Yichen improve our lines a lot, especially in stage directions. During the second practice, we thought about some ways we should present our scene. We decided our blocking depend on the concept in the script. For example, my character Lord Capulet will ask the nurse, who we pretended in the Stage Left about where is Juliet. Because of this, we decided to let Juliet enter the stage from Stage Left, where the nurse can “see” she is coming earlier than Lord Capulet. Also, there are more stage directions in our scripts. The stage directions are about some actions, emotions, and face appearances of our character to do. Before this, there was nothing but our lines in, but now we have more stage directions. As result, both of us feel better during the performance when we know what we should do. By knowing my character will have a significant emotion change, which from angry to happy during the scene, it is easier for me to act out my character.
After 2 classes of practices, both I and Yichen feel much better about acting. We have more ideas about our characters, both of us improve in speaking lines, and understanding more stage directions. Because of this, we decide to act out the whole scene without stop. And I am surprised by we can actually go through the scene. It is much better than the first day. By going through the whole scene, we have more details to discuss. For example, we talk about how Juliet kneel down and how should Capulet let Juliet stand up. We consider how the emotion of the characters and have clearer ideas for the acting in the future. It is a very well down rehearsal.
I feel much better after these practices, especially I and Yichen have many similar ideas which help us improve our performance a lot. I am very happy about this group. Also, the I know that to know the theory of acting is not enough for performance. After several practices, I feel I know more about acting. I hope I will improve more and have a great performance next week.
