personal performance response

1. The most important lesson I learned about acting was the significance of the audience and the impact of them. Because these were site specific and because a good portion of the student body did not understand this was going on, the audience was radically different than an audience who has willingly paid to come see a performance in a theatre. I found it very difficult to perform in front of people who clearly did not know about the 365 project and were simply trying to get to their next class. The times when people did come to watch, whether it was the class or friends, just exemplified how acting can be affected by the reaction of the audience. For example, during my first performance of the 3rd Constant I simply shut everyone out because I was in possibly the busiest area of campus at the busiest time and frankly, I just felt frustrated and silly. And it is difficult to make me feel silly.

2. In my final Acting project, I would like to make sure that I only let the audience impact me positively. I have a feeling there will be a good amount of people I know who will come to watch, whether it be friends or staff, and I know this will make me nervous and I will want to shut them out for the entirety of the performance. It will be difficult to do, but I would like to try to take the energy of the audience and put it into my performance.

3. I actually thought my most effective acting moment was probably in 7-11. I felt the most present in that play because I really enjoyed the character and the playfulness of the piece. I do not think I slipped in and out of character, which I did in Intermission when people asked us about the piece. I think my gestures, vocal specificity, and spatial relationships were the most apparent in 7-11.

4. For my final project I would like to be much more specific with my gestures and the spatial relationship with my scene partner since we will have a very minimal set.

5. My most apparent weakness throughout the performances was just the fact that I was not entirely comfortable performing for an audience that did not always know they were watching a performance. Because of this I was often not focused on the play or my scene partners. This was particularly exemplified in Intermission since people blatantly asked us what was going on while we were performing. I wound up letting Kira address all of these questions because I was not sure how to handle it. I felt bad ignoring all of these people but I also didn’t know what to do without breaking character and fully explaining what was going on. If we could go back in time, I would have possibly rehearsed this more in the actual space so I could get used to the atmosphere of confusion. I also would have liked to make it much more clear that we were doing a play, because we never put up a sign or made an announcement or anything of that nature. I think that would have helped me and the audience quite a bit.