Development Tutorial With Dianne

Development Tutorial With Dianne

Before entering this tutorial i had very little confidence in the material that i had, i felt some sections were considerably stronger and i was struggling with the ending. As part of my character development i had tried being the character and just talking about anything and seeing where the conversation lead. I recorded the conversation incase anything of use came about. From this i ended up with a monolgue full of emotion and the character was litterally sobbing. The problem that i had then was i felt i was not confident enough to portray that much emotion again in front of an audience. So, this i where my tutorial started. I expressed to my tutor the issues i were having and even contemplated just playing the recording. However, my tutor felt it would be more effective to do it as a live performance. She highlighted my passion for the subject as it is a personal topic and believed that i was strong enough to pull it off. We went through the last scene and she helped me work on a technique to cry. Although i didn't reach the point of uncontrolable sobbing i did feel my breathing change and my body shaking. We repeated this, but this time my tutor told me to work with the change of breathing to help aid tears. This did work effectively but it was only a subtle tear. After discussing this with my tutor she pointed out that the subtle tear was perhaps more meaning full to an audience and i shouldn't focus on the idea of making the audience cry.

We also discussed the humour of my piece. After working on the intensity of the rest of the performance it was becoming increasingly difficult to 'be funny'. As this was something that had always come natural to me, i was starting to feel the humour was cheesy and forced. My tutor highlighted the idea that i have demonstrated that i am a good technical performer and working on this piece and pushed me out of that comfort zone and in turn has developed my acting abilities and techniques.

After this tutorial i left feeling confident in my abilities and the development of the piece. My intentions for the piece were to take the audience on a journey and in creating this piece i feel as an actor i too have taken a journey of discovery.