Year 1 Projects Evaluation

Throughout my first year on the acting course at Stockton Riverside, I have had my acting skills challenged and have been stretched in every project I've taken on.  During this year, I have had the pleasure to portray a range of characters, with differing ages, ideas and mentalities, all of them being incredibly fun to perform and helped me grow an incredible amount from the beginning of the year.  My growth in this year was also assisted in the numerous extra curricular projects I took part in, from writing my very own script for New Views to participating in student films.   

From the start of the year, our very first project was already taking place in a proper theatre, The Globe, which already was the most professional place I could only of dreamt at performing in before this.  This project was called "Ghost Light Tours" an interactive piece of theatre where guides led the audience through The Globe, showing them pieces of history involving horror elements, utilising characters such as Jack The Ripper and Guy Fawkes.  Since this was my first project and I was still quite anxious, I chose to audience for the role of one of Guy Fawkes lackeys, ultimately getting the role.  During the rehearsal process, I was able to get out of my shell of awkwardness and worked incredibly well with my classmates to put together a short piece that we hoped would unnerve the audience due to how we played it to be quite unsettling.  While we were putting together the execution scene involving the whole cast in the finale, I was offered to play the role of Robert Catesby, meaning I would be the same character I was in the scene my group made, but I would have a much larger role in the ending.  For the ending, I cut through the audience, rescuing Guy, killing one of the guides and intimidating the audience.  I was incredibly excited for this as I knew it would be a great boost in confidence for me despite not originally wanting to do something too major, while at the same time being incredibly anxious because it is my first professional performance and I knew there would be no room to fail especially since I was the only one playing him.  During every show, my confidence kept improving, and for the final show I was so excited to be ending the production with a bang.  Overall this project has to be the one I'm most attached to, as I know if I had not done the role of Robert in this show, I would not have the levels of confidence I have now, which has allowed me to push myself out my comfort zone more and more.

After our performance at The Globe, we began to start our production of Peter Pan, a Disney film that greatly interested me.  From my first read through, I was immediately connected to John, one of the three Darling children.  I felt this character would be suitable for me as I could see myself in him, however I knew not to get my hopes up, which is a good mindset to have as an actor.  Once I had my audition, I was still quite confident, however, I ended up with the role of Nibs The Lost Boy.  Despite seemingly being a small role, throughout the rehearsal process I built the character to be my own, fully immersing myself in the world of Neverland and the mind of Nibs.  During rehearsals, I mainly worked with ensemble, building up the chaotic and childish nature of The Lost Boys, as well as working on the songs that involved our group.  As this show was a musical and a Disney show, we had to be incredibly animated with our movements, which I felt helped me get out of my comfort zone.  Aswell as this, I felt confident with the fact it was a musical, as I had experience performing in musicals previously before I joined the course, which I found to be incredibly useful as I found it quite easy to learn dances for all the musical numbers.  For our performance, we performed infront of multiple audience types, allowing me to get a feel for all the things that may happen in the audience during the show.  Because of this show and the Ghost Light Tours, I felt more than ready to take on the rest of the year, as we already were performing at such a professional level and I had grown so much as an actor and as a person in general.

Once we returned from our winter break, we immediately started working on "Shout" a script given to us by The National Theatre to perform for the Connections festival.  This show handled many themes such as Mental health, bullying, and Neurodivergence, which definitely was a sharp contrast to our two pieces we performed at the start of the year.  During the audition process, I chose to audition for the athletic rugby student, Tristan, a vital part of the shows message of not judging a book by its cover.  While mostly knowing I wasn't going to get the role because, quite frankly, some of my peers were a lot more fitting for the role, I still chose to audition for him as I knew he would be a challenge due to the scenes we would be performing as it was quite awkward.  I felt the audition went very well, and helped me overcome my worry of embarrassing myself, due to the fact my audition ended with me stood on a chair howling.  While in the end I didn't get the role of Tristan, I played the role of a Freak and Geek, a member of the group of outcasts, which allowed me to choose how I wanted to play him, since he wasn't a speaking role.  Due to the quality of our performance, we got to show our performance of Shout on the National Theatre stage in London.  This had been the highlight of my acting career as I never expected to perform somewhere so prestigious, even if I may not have had a speaking role.

During the time I wasn't rehearsing Shout, I spent my time writing a completely original script from scratch for the New Views writing competition.  This competition forced me to come up with an interesting concept for a script, yet having to condense it into 5000 words despite probably being able to write a lot more.  I was very excited for this as I love writing stories yet I struggle to find motivation to do so, as well as maybe getting the chance for it to be read by real professional script writers.  When I came up with my concept, I immediately began writing it, however, I often struggle to put my thoughts  into words and effectively portray the ideas I came up with into the script.  As well as this, I felt I could've have expanded my story a lot more and felt quite limited by the 5000 word count.  Overall, this was an amazing opportunity as it gave me the confidence to fully unleash my creativity as I still am working on the script I wrote for this competition.

To complete my year, I took part in our end of year show, "One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest", which would be a completely new challenge for me to attempt, due to the depiction of those struggling with mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia and Depression, as well as its heavy themes of suicide.  Since I had already seen the film, I was already enamoured by the character of Billy Bibbit, a shy young lad who throughout the play struggles with his stutter, which I felt would be an incredible challenge due to his prominent stutter as it would be a whole new thing to focus on during the performance.  However, while I didn't receive this role, I was instead given 2 roles I originally overlooked, the two Aides on the ward.  These roles helped me build a bond and chemistry with my counterpart as the Aides were always together, making them a double act of sorts.  This show improved my abilities as an actor as despite seeing my friends who were acutes doing quite wacky things, I remained in character throughout, as the Aides obviously see stuff like that everyday.  As well as this, I had to make clear distinctions between the two characters, as I was worried I would fall into the trap of playing them the exact same, when they are two completely different characters, their only connection being the job.  This show ended my year with a bang, tackling such a difficult script and bringing it to life on stage was a challenge for everyone, and making it something the audience would remember.

Overall, this year has been constantly testing me with different challenges linked to roles and performances.  Furthermore, this year has boosted my confidence to much higher levels than I thought it could be, aswell as allowing me to perform in different venues at a professional level.  Despite this however, I believe there are still gaps in my acting which I would like to try and fill and goals for in this second year. One of these goals is to play a more prominent comedic role, as while I have portrayed comedic characters before, they are often in the ensemble.  Another one of my goals is to portray a character struggling with mental health, as I would find it interesting to look into the intricacies of a characters mental state.  All in all though, I am more than ready for what my next year at Stockton Riverside College brings me next.