Sadie Gardner BTEC Performing arts evaluation of practical work

Evaluation

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I chose Musical Theatre as mypathway for performing arts as thisconsists of a mixture of 3 disciplines in performing arts; acting, singing and dancing. During this unit of work I have focused on certain skills that I have wanted to develop in each discipline, I have then showed the improvement of these skills by completing rehearsal logs or skill audit sheets to keep a track of my progress.

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The skills I have been wanting to improve on in acting are:emphasis, use of facial expression to communicate meaning, pace and tempo, vocal skills/ breath control, learning lines, developing a character and exploring relationships with other characters. I decided I wanted to focus on these skills after we filled in review sheets from the Christmas performance of ‘a Christmas carol’/ the start of this unit. The skills I chose to focus on for singinginclude:communication the meaning of a song, phrasing, interpreting lyrics, characterisation and expression. These were again chosen after reviewing singing skills from the performance ‘a Christmas carol’. Finally the skills I chose to work on in dance were:posture and alignement,musicality andrhythm and timing, chosen from the dance work done in ‘a Christmas carol’.

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In my final assesmentperformances,the skillsthat Ihad been on working had nearly all been demonstrated clearly, for instance in the play ‘The Exam’ I performed the role of a studentcalled ‘Bea’. Bea had a relationship with a character named ‘Chas’ that was a friendship thatwouldneverprogress. Theybothgetannoyed at eachother for the tiniestlittlething, therefore I clearlyshowed how I had developed the skill of exploringrelationshipswithothercharacters by portrayingthisrelationship to the audience through various skills such as the changing of body language and tone colour. One example of thisis in the scenewhereChas has just asked Bea if she would want to go on a date with him and Bea reacts in a way where she is annoyed that he has just asked that question, as they will never be anything more han extremely good friends; sheisalmost‘weirded out’ by the thought of anything more than a friendship. I showed that Bea was annoyed by changingmy body language, turning at an angle to him and closingmy body up by crossingmy legs and studyingmyrevision notes further. I alsoadjusted the pitch and tone of myvoicesoinstead of itbeing warm and friendlyitbecame short and curt. This ensured the audience knew that my character Bea was annoyed with the question / topic that Chas had brought up. In SMIKE the musicalextract I showedthat Ihaddeveloped a schoolstudent character that was one of your typical class clowns who wasn’t really bothered about being at school and was not much for rules. I clearly demonstrated the development of a character in the acting scene justafter the ‘Daily Test Chant’ where the Head master was talking about how ‘smoothly’ the school runs and my character had fallen asleep on a fellowstudent. This showed the audience that my character didn’t really want to be in school and was not bothered by anything around them. The song ‘One Perfect Moment’ from the musical ‘Bring It On’, which is a cheerleading musical, was used in a script called ‘The Exam’, which has nothing to do with cheerleading. In order to make the song fit mycharacter Bea, therefore, I had to interpret the lyrics in order to communicate the meaning of a song fit for the situation mycharacterwas in. I made the decisionthatas the pressures of examinationswerenearing and Bea just wanted ‘one perfect moment’ in which everything went to plan. In the song ‘DoingThings by Numbers’, whichwasincluded in our extract from SMIKE, I worked hard at combining acting and vocal skillstogether by usingcharacterisationwhilstsinging. Mycharacterwasfed up of rules and was a bit of a class clown. I demonstrated this when the second verse started with, ‘sit up straight, and never talk with your mouthful’, I jumped onto a fellow students lap and was mocking the rules set by teachers by not sitting up straight and pretending to talk with my mouthful. In the contemporary dance to Sias’ song ‘ElasticHeart’ I demonstratedmusicality, rhythm and timing, I showed this by keeping in time with the music choreographing the music making it easy to show musicality by keeping in time with the music and counting in sets of 8. My musicality was also shown by the fact I could listen to the music and dance on the beat not off the beat, which also demonstrates that I have good rhythm and timing skills in dance. In the dance for ‘Doingthings by Numbers’ from SMIKE i showed that i had good posture and alignement by keeping my shoulders back and also moving/being in positions where i will not damage myself, for examplewhen I jumped off the chair in the bridge after the second verse in the song my feet and knees pointed in the same direction / they should be in the correct alignement which means I can land the jump safely.

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I feel as if my musical theatre skills have progressedmassively in some aspects, but in other aspects Ifeel as if there is still quite a bit of progression to be made in order to be completly satisfied I can strongly demonstrate the skill. The skills that I will continue to further develop in the latter part of my course are:learninglines (acting), pace and tempo (acting), emphasis (acting), vocal skills/ breath control (acting), phrasing (singing), expression (singing) and combining, withease and flair, the 3 disciplines of dance, acting and singing. Learning linesis a skill that I need to master in acting to ensure my performance will run as smoothly as it can and I am relaxed and know my cues, this also ensures my fellow actors are as relaxed as possible knowing everyone knows there lines and cues and you only have to focus on yourself. Pace and tempo in my acting needs improving in order to show full characterisation as if I am getting angry my pace would be a lot faster than if I wascalm.This skillhelps the audience understand your character and the relationships your character has with other characters. Emphasis in acting will help the actor communicate key details of information to the audience to ensure they remember that certain piece of information that will be meaningful. Vocal skills in acting are key as a vocal skill such as tone colour could be the difference between an angry message coming across calm and happy or angry and harsh. Breath control in acting allows you to control your phrases and you can control the amount of air coming in to your body in comparaison to how long yournext line isi.e short line = shorter/ shallower breath, long line = longer/ deeper breath. Phrasing in singing is a skill that needs improving on as it helps you split the song into shorter sections which makes it easier to sing and to decidewhenitisappropriate to breatheready for yournext phrase. Expression is a skill in singing that needs improving as it will take my characterisation skill to the next level from an amber where I am doing it in some of my songs that are easier to characterise and moving it up to a green where I am constantly showing characterisation even in the tougher songs where facial reactions are needed to help communicate the meaning of the song itself.

If I was to perform the pieces again i would improve on how fast I pick cues up, because in the piece ‘ASchoolPlay’ I was abit slow in picking my cues up in areas where Iwas not 100% confident with my lines. As a result this slowed the overal performance down and meant I couldn’t 100% commit to myrole as I had to think about my lines instead of them coming naturally to me as I am the character. I would also like to have improved on my facial expressions during the song ‘One PerfectMoment’ as I tended to show a blank face or a face which was hard to determine the emotion/ hard to communicate a message. During my solo song ‘one perfect moment’ i feel like movement that occured was very boring and wasimprovised.If I had the chance to re-do thissong I would roughly block out some movement even if it isjust on what lyrics do I walk to a certain area and on which lyrics to I stay on the spot or move an object just to make the song a performance and not just a song. I also feel like some of movements in the contemporary dance were not as projected and clean as I would have liked them to have been for example, when I stretched my arm some times I did not stretch it fully which caused that section of movement to look messy.

Beginning of the unit / Middle of the unit / Latter part of the unit
At the beginning of the unit my attendance was extremly good and I demonstrated great attendance by showing up to all of my lesson even when ill, not being late for lessons, and not leaving lessons early. This is important as if I am not there for lessons I will miss out of certain things that could be extremly important and I will have to play catch up, which is time consuming and difficult if you are struggling. / Time management- in the middle of the unit time management was at a level green, because all of the groups were always on task ad were always making progression. I always keeping to my schedules for rehearsal logs and for review sheet which meant the rate of progression was high and in some cases I was ahead of my rehearsal schedules. / Observing safe working practises- during the latter part of the unit I think that I was a green for observing safe working practises as I made sure the area that I worked in along side people was safe for them and me to work in. I also made sure that if people were dancing they had hair up and apropriate foot wear and were warm up to prevent injury this is the same with singing I made sure my vocal cordes were warmed up before singing or acting to prevent any strains in my vocal cordes.
Willingness to try things out- at the beginning of the unit my willingness to try things was at a green level, because in order to create a good piece of drama you have to try multiple things and you have to understand it takes more than one adaptation of an idea or more than one completly seperate idea to fond one that works. Therefore it is extremly important that you show willingness to try new things in lessons otherwise you will be stuck and will not want to move one which will limit the amount of progress you can make in a lesson. / Readiness to work- during the middle of the unit I was always bringing in my equipment that was needed for the lesson i.e. character shoes, portfolio, any homework or scripts. However, I did not bring my character skirt into every lesson only on lessons that I knew I needed it, but some lessons I did not know I needed my skirt and therefore was not prepared for the lesson as well as I should have been. / Apropriate interaction with other (trust and cooperation) - I believe I had apropriate interaction with others during the latter part of the unit as I believe everyone knew what they need to do and therefore got on with the job in hand. There was one hic up where I did no cooperate with other student as I was trying to lead them to do the right thing to keep us on task with time mangement but they did not want to and therefore did not cooperate, but other than that I believe I cooperated with my peers as well as I possibly could have done.
Concentration and focus within the tasks- during the beginning of the course concentration and focus within the task was an amber skill for me. I found this was because in period 5 lessons I found it harder to concentrate as I had already had a full day of éducation and was getting tired and irritable and I very quickly lost focus, which limted the progression I could make during the lessons and sometimes limit the progress the class could make. This did not occur all of the time, but let my progression slip when it did occur / Listening to instructions/direction- during the middle of the unit I feel I was a green for this rehearsal discipline as it is respect for your peers and for the teacher to listen to the intructions/direction from them. The intruction could be very important and therefore if you are not listening you miss the information and may not understand a certain task which means the peer or teacher who in the first place gave the instruction/direction has to waste more time explaining to you, not because you dont understand but because you did not listen in the first place. / Rehearsal discipline- in the latter stages of the unit my overal rehearsal discipline was at a high standard, because I knew what was expected of me and I knew what I needed to be doing therefore I did not have a reason to not be on task or to get distracted. I feel as the unit went on my general rehearsal skills improved as I matured but also the more seriously I took the course and the more I realised what had to be done had a time scale. Even though my rehearsal skills are not yet perfect I will carry on to improve certain ones such as bringing all equipment even if i do not think it will be needed