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I think my performance went okay, but I know it could have gone better. This was because even though before I went in to the auditions I knew both my monologues, the nerves got the better of me and I forgot parts of my classical one and had to start again, so that bought my performance down a lot.

I think I was prepared to a certain extent but not enough. I only just knew my lines and at some point whilst rehearsing I would forget and stumble, I left it too much to the last minute, therefore it wasn't as good as it could have been.

I think the strongest points were my entrance into the audition as I feel I did hat very confidently and professionally. I also feel like I did a lot better with the characterization in my contemporary  than my classical as I liked that one more and had a lot more practice at it and dealt with the emotions of the piece better. I think my projection was a strong point as I believe I was loud and clear

The weakest element of my performance was remembering lines, as nerves got the better of me and i stuttered and stumbled a bit, as well as this I also wasn't prepared enough, which just made things worse. Also when forgetting lines or stumbling, I didn't cover it up very well, I got into a state and just stood there thinking about what the line was, rather than just staying in character or moving onto the next line I could remember.

If I were to perform my monologue again, I would make sure I knew the lines 100% as that meant that I could focus more on the characterization rather than remembering lines, which is what happened in my classical. I would also try and remain confident all the way through and not show that I am nervous, as I do little mannerisms that I do when I am anxious, and I want to know like I look what i'm doing.

The most challenging part of the preparation of the performance was remembering lines and also properly understanding my classical monologue. It is very hard to learn a Shakespearean monologue as the lines just sounds like a gobbledygook language , and if I cant remember what each line means, then it is very hard for me to relate it to anything in the monologue, therefor is very hard for me to remember. At first I found it very difficult to get to grips with my monologue as I only had the basic story line to go with it, then we found this website which let you translate Shakespearean into modern day language which was a great help as it actually showed me what each line actually meant, so I slowly started to make sense of it all and find out the right way to act it.

The most challenging part of the actual performance was to not let nerves show, and also to not let it ruin your performance, especially if you're not completely confident on your lines, like me. As soon as I first started my monologue I went completely blank due to nerves and for got the lines and I felt like it blew my confidence for the whole rest of the performance, and I think that showed in my questions I had to answer at the end as I stuttered and paused a lot, finding it difficult to find answers, and blabbering on a bit.

This assessment has taught me a lot of things for the future auditions, such as to make sure that you are 100% prepared and confident before going in, to plan everything out, so stand confidently and don't let nerves show, and to come back stronger when something goes wrong, not to hide behind your mistakes.

Overall, I am a bit disappointed with how my performance went. I was happiest with my contemporary as I knew that a lot better and had more practice, as well as understanding it more and getting to grips with the character and her emotions a bit more.Although it was my first time doing an audition so I do feel like I have learnt a lot from it, which is a positive.

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As for our character development, we did a lot of different things to improve the portrayal of our characters. These include just researching more about our characters, getting to know them better as knowing more about them and getting to know their past would help you find out the best way to become them. We also took our characters out of the scene they were in and put them in different situations, for example we did an exercise where we were all passengers on a bus, and had to act and socialize how we thought our characeters would. This helped us to be able to look at our characeters a different way, and to be able to think about and make decisions about how they would react in all sorts of different situations. We also created character profiles to get to know our characeters as much as we could, so that we knew every single but about them and felt like we could really become the characeter. Here is a bit of mine:

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Overview of Contemporary monologue - Vera Vera - Emily:

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Overview of Contemporary monologue - Vera Vera - Emily:

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This play is based on a death that happened in Emilys family. Emilys brother, Bobbie who was a soldier , and another boy, Lee were best mates. Bobbie has no idea about this, but shortly before a terrible tragedy took place, Bobbie best mate and his sister, Emily had sex together. They never told him, but this fact seemed like a heavy weight on their shoulders and a guilt they would feel for the rest of their lives when Bobbie was killed in the war.  The whole monologue is Emily very upset and ranting to Lee about the truth, that just because her brother and his best friend dies for their country, it doesnt make good them people. Explaining to him why they are bad people and Emily chatting about how she really feels about bobbies death and letting all her feelings out to Lee.

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Overview of Classical Monologue - Twelfth Night - Viola:

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Overview of Classical Monologue - Twelfth Night - Viola:

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The play is based around 3 people. one man called Orsino who is in love with Olivia, one girl called Olivia who in love with Casario, and one girl called Viola who is in love with Orsino. Casario is really just Viola in disguise as a man, who made up the name Casario. The reason for this is that before Viola started working for Orsino, she was involved in a shipwreck, this caused her to lose everything and she needed to start fresh and to look for a job. It was hard finding work, but she finally found work with Orsino, in which was a mans role, and for that reason she disguised herself as a man and called herself Casario. Since then she fell deeply in love with Orsino, Orsino was still in love with Olivia, although Olivia had fallen for Casario, which was very problematic as she had no idea Casario was actually a girl. So, this monologue is Viola realising what shes done and that Olivias in love with her, and letting out al these feelings off sadness, regret and confusion, as she rants about how she must sort all of this mess out.

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Contrast between the two materials chosen:

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Contrast between the two materials chosen:

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My two monologues both contrast in very different ways, for example, my classical monologue, although Viola is very stressed out, is very upbeat and fast, and includes a bit of humor. On the other hand, my contemporary monologue is very downbeat with no humor, or happiness about it, it is purely full of sadness and anger. Also, my classical monologue is full of energy, and lines go from one to another very quickly as Viola is expressing her thoughts as they come into her head, whereas, on the other hand, in my contemporary a lot of what Emily says contains a lot of pauses for thought, as she is grieving and has a lot on her mind and to cope with, so she isn't as lively or chatty. Also, as both are set in different eras, there are huge differences in the language and expression used. In the classical one it is all in Shakespearean so is all very delicate and dainty language, whereas the anger in the contemporary piece comes with a lot of swearing, shouting and bad language, as well as all the sadness. Physical techbuiques in Emily's monologue is quite subtle as most of the emotion of what she is saying is portrayed purely in her voice. In the monologue she is sat down, but she does use some physical techniques such as drying her tears when she gets emotional, or tapping her foot when she starts to get agrivated with Lee. In her voice she starts of to talk very fast and she was anger in her tone but she us trying to stay calm, so it stays quiet, towards the middle she stops getting angry and it turns to sadness, her voice starts to crumble as she focuses talking on her dead brother a bit more. On the other hand, in the classical monologue, Viola uses a lot of gestures when she is talking, as she is jumping from sentence to sentence very quickly through realisation of what has been happening to her. She is on her feet for the whole monologue so a lot of past pacing and gestures are used, including stopping pacing and turning to face the audience when a new idea pops into her head, or crossing her arms at the end when she is fed up and realises something needs to be done. Her voice is very loud at the time and very quick paced, she also has a sense of hopelessness in her tone as well as disbelief and realisation.

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Choice of Audition Material for Classical Monologue: 

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Choice of Audition Material for Classical Monologue: 

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Twelth Night - Viola

I chose to work with this monologue as I have seen the film of twelfth night before and the whole plot is very different and really interests me. As well as this, the piece also includes quite a variety of different emotions, including regret, confusion,sadness, a bit of humour. This would make it very interesting for me to experiment with, as all these emotions are just bursting out into one speech, and she has so much emotion to deal with at one time. It will also be interesting for me as it contrasts a lot with the other one, which is only a few emotions the whole way through and includes no way of making any part of it humerus, unlike this one. I thought that this would be suitable for audition material as it potreys a lot of emotion, so I would be able to show a variety of different skills in my audition, which is initially what I want. I think it also suits me as an actor as a lot of the time I can choose quite simple pieces which I understand fully at the start, so I think I would perform well doing something which involves a lot of the different technuiques that ive parcticed all in one.

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Choice of Audition Material for contemporary and why:

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Choice of Audition Material for contemporary and why:

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Vera Vera - Emily - By Hayley Squires:

I chose to do this monologue out of all of my choices as I thought it would be the most challenging one for me to do. As well as this, I also saw so much variety on how to approach it and was excited to be challenged on the many different ways I could perform it. It was also what I was looking for, very emotional and the story line followed a tragedy, which was a theme I hadn't really done, so it would be an exciting experience. I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book and after this I felt like I could portray the character of Emily as I knew her very well. I think this would be suitable audition material as obviously it gets very emotional, which results in crying, so it would be able to show off that skill and to show that I am capable of doing that, as well as the piece showing a lot of emotion anyway. I think this would be good for me as an actor as I dont often get a chance to do a piece that was such a deep meaning and that is very emotional, it is also a piece performed sitting down, so it relies a lot more on voice and tone to portray emotion, which I think is one of my strong points

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I was indecisive about which contemporaneity and classical monologues to use as I found a lot of ones which captured my attention, the main themes which I was looking for were either humor or tragedies, two themes which contrast a lot, here are some I found:
Contemporary:                                                                                                       Classical:

Phone calls - By Joseph Arnone                                                                          Twelth Night scene 2 act 2                                    Next in Line - By Joseph Arnone                                                                          A Midsummer Nights dream - Helena                 Mom Mom, Im not punishing you, im not... - By Leslye Headland                  Alls Well that ends well - King
I cant Win - By Joseph Arnone                                                                              Antigone - Creon
A Broken Heart - D.M Larson
Vera Vera - Hayley Squires

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Today me, Mia and Ellie began to work on a script called Leaves, by Lucy Caldwell. Rehearsing and building up this piece helped us in character development, which we would need later on for our auditions piece. This was a very heart warming script about three sisters, one of which was packing her bags in preparation for college. This was very helpful to us as it helped to give us experience and practice within a scene with a lot of emotion, which we could be given for our monologues. Throughout the script there are a few times where we had to go from one emotion to the other very quickly, e.g. there's a bit in it where my character is calm and then gets very angry very quickly and then gets calm again. Practicing this helped me to experiment with emotions more and how they can vary very profusely in certain scenes.