Dear Evan Hansen Duologue Project

For part of Unit 11, we had to focus on doing a duologue, which was chosen from the musical "Dear Evan Hansen".  Me and Layla chose to be partners as the scene depicted Evan and his mother during an "argument".


Part 1:

In this scene, Evan is confronted by his mother for always sneaking out under the excuse of him staying at his friends, however he fires back during the argument, believing she doesn't spend enough time with him.  This takes place in their living room after Evans lies were revealed to Heidi, his mother, showing moments of anger between the mother and son.  Heidi intends to get Evan to explain why he snuck out to see another family, and is hurt by his actions and tries to convey that to him, however, Evan doesn't want to hear what his mothers saying, so eventually lashes out and purposely says things he knows will hurt her.  This is a very emotional scene as Heidi is very clear on her opinions about the situation, where as it seems Evan struggles to put his thoughts into words, with the scene ending on Evan leaving after he upsets his mother. 


Part 2:

Since we had a lot of time to rehearse before we filmed the scene, I used this time to gain context on the scene by watching Dear Evan Hansen, aswell as reading the whole script.  This helped me further understand the character of Evan a lot more due to seeing what he went through and how he ended up in the situation explained in the scene.  During the scene, I believe that most of what Evan is saying he says without thinking about it, getting a thought in his head and immediately blurting it out, evident when he goes to say "Their my-" before Heidi cuts him off, where he reveals he didn't even know what he was going to say.  However, this is changed by the end of the scene, where he thinks for a moment, before saying something he knew would 'win' him the argument.  Me and Layla made lots of changes during the rehearsal phase, from changing how the characters would be stood, to how they would change their volume when they wanted to be more intimate with each other. At first, we wanted Evan to be shouting at Heidi by the end of it, however we decided that it would be a lot more in character for him if he still remained quite meek throughout, yet having more malice in his voice as the scene went on.  


Part 3:

During filming, I felt very connected to the character of Evan, as knowing Evans complete character since I'd seen the whole musical, I felt myself relating to Evan in some ways, with his awkwardness and struggling to put his thoughts into words.  I believe mine and Layla's scene was quite believable as since we spent so much time rehearsing together, we had a lot of chemistry with a great understanding of the scene and the motivation of our characters.  We conveyed the emotions of our characters perfectly, using not only our voices, but by having Evan shuffling awkwardly in his seat, or Heidi putting her hand on Evans arm.  


Part 4:

While I feel this duologue went incredibly well, there are still some things I feel I could improve on.  One of these was overcoming the feeling of having the camera so close to me, as despite not breaking character, I found it quite distracting and sometimes struggled to stay in the scene.

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