It's over, it's done.

Today, June 11th marks the completion of my performance of the prologue of William Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet".

One week ago, I performed my rough draft of my final performance in class to get feedback and find out where I needed to improve. I didn't have my lines completely memorized, and so I missed one line (oops) which was kind of embarrassing, but I realized that I needed to practice my lines a lot more. Otherwise I think I was pretty well prepared, I had a basic idea of what I was going to say, and probably forgot due to nerves. I knew my blocking and what I was going to do in the scene, so I think it wasn't too bad. My feedback was that I needed to talk slower and be more questioning on the word "unclean". I took all of my feedback into account and tried to be more emotional. I think the audience understood the language of my scene, as it was relatively simple and I think I pronounced it clearly. Also, to make "unclean" seem more questioning, I lifted my hands, and paused before I said it.

Today was the big day. After performing my final draft I was really afraid that I had forgot some things, and wasn't sure exactly what (kind of like an instinctive gut feeling, you know?) so I freaked out for a bit. I think my final draft was an improvement from my rough draft, because I knew exactly where I was walking to, what posture I should have, and I remembered to talk slowly, with pauses often enough, so that it didn't seem like one big blob. I feel that I did communicate the emotions and circumstances of the scene really well. I remembered all of my actions and felt confident. I spoke loudly and clearly, and I am sure the whole audience was able to understand what I was saying. The prologue is supposed to be an introductory thing for the audience who hasn't seen Romeo and Juliet before. I think I showed this well through a talk show form because it seemed like a good introduction to me, and I think it went quite smoothly.

I now know and understand Shakespearean theatre way more than I did in the beginning of the unit. Especially in terms of the technical aspects and how important the dialogue was. Shakespeare would, a lot of the time, make up his own words, and so it was up to the actors to perform his play using good inflection, projection and emotion. Otherwise, the audience wouldn't know what was happening as they didn't know the language. This is kind of a way that Shakespearean specifically was like Commedia, because there wasn't a language that everyone could comprehend, but it was how the actors showed it that allowed the audience to understand. Although I didn't face this problem as everyone could understand the language, I still had to give emotion, and ensure everyone could understand, so this was still extremely important. The main acting skills that helped me succeed were my preparation and rehearsal. I learned most of my lines early on so that was really good preparation and rehearsing it made me that much better. In future, these are two skills that will be really important for me.