Paula’s DRAMA JOURNAL
Monday 14th Nov,
I liked don’t stare because it’s a game where you would think that no one would ever look at each other since there are so many people but it was really fun because you have to constantly think about who you’re going to look at next and if that person would look back at you or not. It’s fun because it’s unpredictable, but also it requires a lot of thinking.
I found the 1, 2, 3 game difficult because 2 and 3 were especially hard to perform, you had to squat walk while touching someone else’s nose. Also, 2 was especially hard to do because I have bad knees and it was hard to walk like that.
I want to get better at expressing my feelings through body language (walking, facial expressions, etc) because I would think that making sure your movements are understood is an important part of acting and drama. When we do exercises like walking with our shoulders back and head up, I think it’s supposed to and it helps with confidence and opening yourself up to people which is 1 of my goals for this class.
The teacher mentioned that we needed to get better at just stopping when she says stop and touching someone else’s nose to break down barriers and not just to find our bestfriend, I will work work on that by trying to find new classmates to work with each time. I want to be able to work with all my classmates and be able to feel comfortable around them by the end of the trimester.
Wednesday 16th Nov,
Today in class we played Bang which was really fun. I really liked the game because you had to react fast and it’s exciting. You rely on your instincts to help you stay in the game and hopefully you don’t shoot too late. I got to the final 3 on the first round we played but then I shot too late so I was out. I think I need to improve on learning the names of the people next to me so that I know when I should shoot because whenever someone gets out and I get a new partner besides me, I keep forgetting that they have a different name. I also kept ducking down sometimes when the person beside me’s names were called and I don’t know why, so that was a bit confusing and frustrating. So I guess one of my mini goals for this class is to win a game of bang. We also started a google slides presentation on why we should take drama which I thought was an interesting topic. Also, shockingly, we had to restrict it to 5 slides, which was surprising because most teachers want you to have more slides but for this, we had a maximum limit of 5. It was an interesting topic because although we’re required to take this class, you have to think about if you were a kid signing up for electives or whatever, why would you choose drama. I had to think about the positive benefits of taking drama class and what skill sets it will help you develop for other classes or other areas of your life.
Thursday 17th Nov,
I accomplished the mini goal that I set for myself Wednesday of winning a game of bang! A lot of the other people got out from getting shot this time instead of not shooting fast enough which was interesting because it was almost the opposite on Wednesday. I didn’t really like the game where we had to make shapes with our bodies and partners. It felt really weird and awkward because we basically got uncomfortably close to each other just to make a shape. I also felt kind of stupid while doing it because it’s just such an awkward thing when you’re that close to someone making a shape so I didn’t like that activity. I felt like it was a little bit hard to communicate with your teammates because in the game they only give you a certain amount of time to make the shape and that makes it a lot more frustrating. You have to think about how you’re going to make that shape in your head and then tell it to your teammates. Not to mention, your teammates also have different ideas of how to make that shape so it gets confusing.
Friday 18th Nov,
On Friday we played the 1,2,3 Stop game again which was, again, awkward. We had another person join our group with made it easier for us to create the shapes because there were more bodies to help, but it made communication harder because there was one extra person who also had their own ideas and capabilities. I think what we’ve been doing with these exercises is trying to get people to open up and be more confident because I think a lot of drama is just having confidence to say what you’re going to say and say it with conviction. These exercises are helping us to step out of our comfort zones and explore other things which basically goes along with gaining confidence to do new things. So even though I don’t necessarily like the 1,2,3 stop game, I understand why it’s important for us to play it. I think the most nerve wracking part about being in drama is that you have to do all these weird things and you’re so worried that other people are going to judge you (they really don’t) so you don’t do them and you stay in your safe little bubble of repetitiveness forever. Drama wants you to do weird things and most of the time you can’t explain to the rest of the class why you’re doing that silly action or whatever and you just look plain weird. That, I think is the most nerve wracking thing about drama. I’ll probably look back at these things later on in the journal and see if my opinions on these matters have changed.
Wednesday 23RD Nov,
I was intrigued by today’s class because it was quite different than the usual classes. We had a communication exercise that was very frustrating because when I knew what the picture was, I thought it was so obvious and I couldn’t understand why they didn’t know how to draw the picture. When I was the person drawing though, I realised that there were so many questions and so many things that were not explained and I had no idea what I was supposed to draw. Instructions seem so easy when you have the final product in mind but when you give the directions that seem so obvious to you, other people might not know what to do or so it a different way because we all have our different interpretations of things. We also started to do a little bit of acting on Wednesday. It was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. When I was watching other people do it I thought it looked really easy and that they could do a better job but when it was my turn to act my morning routine, I realised how hard it actually was. I think the main problem was that I felt really embarrassed when I was performing even though I was acting in front of someone I was comfortable with and I knew they wouldn’t judge me, but it was still really weird.
Wednesday 30th Nov,
Today was fun because we got to watch a lot of performances from our classmates and they were really funny. They used a lot of good gestures so the audience could clearly tell what they were trying to do. I really liked how everyone had a different idea of how to lose their pets and each script was very creative. I think one of my weaknesses was breaking character while performing because while my partner Janet was supposed to be sad about losing her goldfish and I was supposed to be comforting her, I laughed a little bit while talking about the fish’s funeral and I made her laugh. Although she was supposed to be happier at the end, we weren’t really supposed to laugh at that moment and I think it set the energy off. I need to improve on making the mood believable for the audience because like I said before, when I laughed, it was at the wrong moment and the audience was focused on that instead of the rest of the scene and I think it ruined the sketch. A classmate pointed out that I should work on being sad when talking about the funeral (conveying right emotions to fit with the scene) and I agree because it made the scene humourous instead of slightly sad, which I guess we did try to make it funny, but the scene flowed a bit too fast from sadness to happiness and it made it not believable.
Friday 2nd Dec,
I found that it’s difficult to find pictures that communicate that emotion/phrase with only facial expressions. A lot of the time, the person uses a lot of gestures along with the facial expression to communicate the expression. I found the expressions worksheet pretty easy to do because we have a lot of classmates that are very expressive. They all show their emotions very well because they use all parts of their face, eyebrows, mouth, and it made it easier to understand what kind of mood they’re trying to show. Today was fun because I thought the worksheet was fairly easy; the people’s emotions weren’t too hard to tell because they made it so that their face clearly demonstrated the emotion. I also found out from my classmates that I’m usually not very expressive with my face although I can be if I want to. I agree with that because I don’t often show my emotions, verbally or with my face because it’s not that important to me. I can be expressive with my face though and often I do so by using my eyebrows. I’ve figured out how to show different emotions by the way I place my eyebrows so I tend to use that to my advantage.
Monday 5th Dec,
We did something very different in class today and did vocal exercises. I felt that the exercises were kind of weird because they weren’t normal things you would say like “red lorry yellow lorry” or we would never just practice our breathing. I think the exercise that was hardest for me to do was the one where we had to use our intercostal muscles and not our voice box to project our voices because I don’t think I’ve ever noticed using or even used those muscles before so I wasn’t sure if I was doing it right or not. We also did a lot of tongue twisters which I had to concentrate really hard on in order not to mess up. I had to imagine what sentence in my head and then concentrate on reading the sentence because if I just tried repeating the sentence over and over, I would mess up. My words would slur together and I couldn’t hear myself talking which also made it easier to lose track of where I was which was frustrating.
Wednesday 6th Dec,
Today was fun because we played a new game called The King (or Queen). I went through a range of different gifts that I could get Paul, first I thought of a magic colored pencil that could draw any color you want, if you think about in your mind and then it just appears onto the pencil. Then I remembered that Paul was the King and he might not like that. In the end, I was trying to decide between whether to get Paul the ability to have every piece of Nike clothing in world or the right to change my name so we don’t get killed in Bang. I went with the name gift because I felt it was funnier and he would enjoy the humor in it. I found that it was hard to get the courage to go up and talk to the King because all your classmates are watching you. It’s also really nerve wracking because your gift might get rejected from the king and you will get executed. I guess in life, no one really wants to be rejected because it might mean your idea doesn’t fit the criteria or it’s not good enough at the moment so it’s scary when you’re put into a position where your success depends solely on others.
I quite liked writing a monologue. It was actually not as hard as I thought, you just had to get into the mindset of your character and the rest kind of just flows out. As soon as she said we were supposed the write a monologue from the perspective of a teacher, I had an idea of a teacher who was really bitter about his middle school math days because he had bad grades in math and was getting his revenge by giving his students bad grades as well. The actual monologue sort of split from my original idea of the teacher though because I found it a little bit hard to inconspicuously sneak that he was really snobby and his middle school life so I sort of slipped it in by using facial expressions or tone.
I could understand what Mr. Bean was trying to communicate in his stories because he exaggerated everything. Movements that are normally subtle became big, gigantic gestures of putting the candy in his mouth or whatever he was doing. Also, just when you think he would be done trying, he seems to do something that would mess up his plan. He also not only exaggerates his body movements, but also his facial expressions. He is really obvious with his actions and likes to do things unconventionally. For example, he didn’t have to make a big show of putting the candy in his mouth but he did it on a larger scale in order to let the audience see what he’s doing and so that something could go wrong.
------------------- END OF SEMESTER 1 --------------------
SEMESTER TWO, 2017
Reflection
Thursday 12th Jan,
I really liked how we played the categories game in class today because it really makes you think. There’s a bit of strategy involved in the game as well, which I liked. You don’t want to make your answer really obvious so that other people also get it, but at the same time, sometimes you can’t think of a “unique” one so you just have to be creative which is pretty cool. I didn’t like how sometimes there’s no boundaries to what someone can say so their answers are sometimes a bit controversial but you can’t really say anything because it doesn’t technically break any rules. I need to improve on thinking of some better answers in the time frame we’re given because a lot of the times, the answers that I think are really good and different are actually used by another group, so I need to work on saving some time to change my answers at the end.
Friday 13th Jan,
Today was fun because we spent the whole time working on our alphabet scripts. Since my partner Allison and I finished writing our scripts the day before, we were able to just work on reading and acting out our scripts today. It was really fun because I found it really nice to try and act like a different character, however, I noticed that during my performance, I kept rocking back and forth. I was trying to make it seem like I was casual and tried to walk back and forth a little but it turns out, it apparently looks like I’m really nervous because the movement wasn’t big enough so the audience didn’t know if it was voluntary or subconscious. Also, I need to work on my voice. Since I’m acting like a king, I need to sound more like a guy, but during some parts when the king is shocked, his voice goes up. I found that it was really hard to keep a low voice whilst trying to go higher in order to sound shocked.
Monday 16th Jan, Drama Performance
Today we did the drama performance and it was actually really fun. I really like how everyone was really creative with their scripts and how there was a whole lot of variety in our performances. For example, one that I really liked was the script where William and Luca used split stage to act out agent toothpaste because it was really funny and none of the words sounded like they were just saying that to follow the alphabet script and they were just following it because it’s what they need to say.
Wednesday 18th Jan,
I really liked today’s class because we went over A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It was actually really interesting how everything was interconnected with each other and somehow everything came together in the end. I really enjoyed the story and the plot of it, surprisingly. We also started to take notes on the whole story and I guess since I found the story so captivating, I actually managed to recall the story pretty well which is surprising, but pretty cool. I have to work on getting the finer details stuck in my mind because sometimes I forget the exact order of events, not that it matters much because it basically all happens at the same time, but it’s still important.
Thursday 26th Jan,
Today’s was our performance with a partner. I did my 7 lines or less script with Olivia and it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. The class was pretty fun actually because it was really enjoyable to watch everyone else’s performance and to see what they had in their heads being brought to life through acting. One thing that I think we can work on though, is our voices, I thought that although we didn’t really do the nervous dance with our feet (which is good) we also didn’t really bring the energy and bring the mood with our voices and our acting. The scene was supposed to be an angry one, the mom and the daughter were both mad, they’re both shocked and it was basically just kind of supposed to be like the climax of a well built up story. In our performance though, we didn’t really connect with the audience and you could tell that this wasn’t real because if it was, then we would be slightly more mad instead of just sort of talking it out and slight shoving, so I’ll keep that in mind for next time.
Jan 24th - 31st
Exempt: Chinese New Year
Feb 1st-7th.
Friday 3rd feb,
In today’s class, we shared our spells with a group and it was pretty interesting. Everyone seemed to take their potions into different routes which was cool, since everyone’s ideas ranged so vastly. I think I might’ve made my spell a little too complicated however, because it took a pretty long time to read and I felt like it got boring after a while. I need to try and work on adding more description and creativity into my spells because I think that my spell was trying too hard to the point where you can kind of expect what’s coming next. We also played the word at a time game which was fun because you don’t know what’s coming next and even though you have an idea of what story you’re trying to make, other people also have their ideas and one thing leads to another until the story in your head is long gone.
Thursday 9th Feb,
Today in class we played ninja and then finished our creative test. The creative test was not as hard as I thought it was going to be, but at the same time, it was harder than I thought it would be. I didn’t really have any expectations for the test going in because I wasn’t sure how much we had to write. I think I need to do a better job of not repeating information on the test because most of my words were just the same thing repeated in different words. Ninja however, was fun. It’s a pretty fast reaction game so you have to constantly be focused and ready to move. I thought the game was a lot of fun because you never know if someone’s going to go for you, or someone else so you have to always be ready.
Wednesday 15th Feb: Pyramus and Thisbe reflection
I thought that the play Pyramus and Thisbe was actually pretty fun to act out. We didn’t have to memorise any lines, which I think makes a huge difference to the quality of our performance because instead of focusing on what we have to say next, we can focus more on our actions and if our way of acting is clear enough that it communicates the information to the audience clearly. The silence of just acting also made the mood more serious which works if you’re acting something sad (it worked in the case of Pyramus and Thisbe). However, I feel like although this play didn’t necessarily need the dialogue and actually worked better without it, that you sometimes do need to speak in order to tell the story to the audience. Why I thought this play worked better without the dialogue though is because I think that the sad air surrounding the silence created an artistic view of the play. The original play is a lot more sad and serious than the Shakespeare version. I guess Shakespeare knew that the acting troupe didn’t get enough practice so the Pyramus and Thisbe that he wrote was more comedic and less “professional.” There were several key differences in the Shakespearean version of Pyramus and Thisbe that made it more comedic; the “die, die, die” part, the lack of the mulberry tree’s symbolism, Thisbe being played by a guy, and Nick Bottom breaking character. Pyramus and Thisbe was a really interesting story to learn about. I like how it told a (possible) myth of how the mulberry fruit got its color, but at the same time, it told the story in a very well planned and unlikely manner. Instead of just saying something like the mulberry fruit’s color is in remembrance of someone who died there, they made up a whole story with how Pyramus was going to meet Thisbe there, their families were fighting, and that Thisbe also killed herself because she couldn’t live without Pyramus.
Monday 20th Feb,
Today we played a new game where we had 4 people in a line and we had to act out the actions; sort of like a relay race. It was very different from what we usually do and it was actually really nerve wracking having to go up in front of everybody and perform ridiculous actions. Though I’m not sure if I was embarrassed to do the actions because it was a new warm up game and I’m not used to having all the attention on a silly action or if it was because I’m not confident enough to do the actions without worrying about others. I think I need to work on that because a lot of the time I feel like I can perform more extravagant or big gestures and I’m just too shy to do them so I settle on something less. In drama, I think you need to be able to have the courage to act without worrying about other people and just focus on making your performance as good as possible. To be honest though, I think I have gotten better at expressing my thoughts through my actions since the beginning of drama where I was really timid and afraid to act. So anyways, we also looked over our summative scripts and revised a bit to make it more understandable for the audience and modernised. There were a lot of old english sayings in there that didn’t make the most sense at the start, but for the most part I thought the script was an enjoyable read because of the way it was constructed brought a lot of drama, and at the same time, humor.
Thursday 23rd Feb,
Recently, we’ve been practicing our summative performances in class. I’ve been surprisingly having a lot of fun with these scripts because we don’t have to stick directly to the words, and we have a lot of freedom in what we want to do with it. Our performance has been coming along pretty well, I really like the direction it’s going in, but I feel like we don’t have our spacing and directions down yet. It seems like every time we perform again, the characters change their positioning on stage, so we really need to work on getting our positions set up and memorizing them. We also need to work on making the scenes look more realistic by using our voice. We really want to bring out a lot of emotion and drama in each scene and a lot of it is by using our voice because it’s not just acting, it’s also a lot of dialogue, and right now, we can’t put as much emotion into our voices because we don’t completely know our lines yet, which is also why we need to memorize our scripts sooner. As of right now, I feel surprisingly fine with how our performance is coming along, which I’m sure will change as we approach the deadline, but I think we have a good understanding of what our characters need to do and the emotion they need to bring in that scene.
Wednesday 1st Mar,
One thing I need to work work harder at is finding/acting out the perfect facial expression for the scene. Puck is a very strange and playful character and he is really expressive when he is talking which he achieves by copying other people’s movements, or prancing around aimlessly. As of right now, I feel like my facial expressions are not conveying the same emotion as what I say. I can kind of tell that my expressions are one or 2 seconds late because I think I’m trying too hard to memories the lines and I’m not really in the moment. I also think I’ve been using a lot of the same emotions so I want to expand the range. Facial expressions are especially important to the character of Puck because a lot of his emotions aren’t shown throughout his dialogue, but through his actions. By doing this, I will achieve well in my summative.
Friday 3rd Mar,
Today, it was our 2nd to last rehearsal, so it was a bit hectic. We ran through our play once or twice and really tried to work on making each scene perfect by focusing in on the flaws in that scene. To do that, we practiced the full play once and then selected one part that we especially thought we needed to practice, and then we just kept working on that scene and adding comments about how we thought the scene could be improved. I still feel like we have a lot of things to improve on, like our spacing and voices because I think every time that we do the play again, we change our positioning, which, if we do in the summative, might be bad since we don’t know how to adjust to the new positions especially in front of a crowd. Also, we need to work on our volume/voices because in our group, we have a large range of different voices, some people have really dominant speaking voices and are really loud, while others are quieter, so we have to work on balancing that out. I need to work on facing the audience while I’m speaking to try and make that extra connection with the audience, but at the same time, still make it clear that I’m talking to Oberon or whichever character.
Monday 7th Mar,
Today was our last rehearsal day, which is equal parts sad and nerve wracking because drama has been really fun. However, I felt like that this was one of our worst rehearsals yet because everyone kept forgetting their lines and stumbling over them. It seemed like we’d suddenly gotten nervous the day before the performance which I guess is better than getting nervous the day of the performance. I’m still trying to work on perfecting the tone of Puck because there are some lines where I have no idea how to fit my voice to make it seem playful, like Puck, but at the same time, still remaining in the intensity and mood of the scene. This leads to me sometimes changing the way I talk or act every time we rehearse, so it’s not beneficial if we keep having to change our performance every time. I really think that our group has a lot to work on in terms of making the scene authentic because although we have some scenes where you totally believe that we’re the characters, but then we’ll have some scenes where we seem totally fake and you snap back to reality. It really takes away from the seriousness of our performance and the intensity of the moment which is why I think we need to work on that.
Friday 10th Mar,
Today was the last day of drama and it was very strange. We didn’t have any work to do so unlike all the other classes, we didn’t rehearse or perform a skit like we usually do. It’s a weird feeling not having any work to do because you feel like you’re forgetting something. The last day was really sad because if you really think about it, it’s the last time we’re going to have a winner for bang, or murder, or whatever game we played. Reflecting now on the first few drama classes, we’ve really improved so much. At the beginning, we were really afraid to do anything, I know I was kind of quiet and not talkative, but now, I feel at home and comfortable to speak loudly or act. I’ve think I’ve learned to come out of my shell as this drama class has progressed and it’s truly been able to help me become more confident not only in this class, but others as well.