Hello my darlings and welcome back to another Coffee Chats. I hope you're all well and are enjoying a week off if you've got one. I'm currently at home for development/ reading week; which is where you get a week off from uni, usually after assessments.
So currently I've had two assessments this term which were Drama and Theatre Studies - Presentation and Approaches to Performance.
The presentation was really easy - we just had two talk for two - four minutes analysing a specific scene or an element of a play we've seen. I'm not going to go into loads of detail as it's a pretty standard assessment. Essentially like a part of an essay but shorter and a bit like a snippet. I'm not worried about that one.
Secondly, Approaches to Performance; as a class we learned different techniques from a specific practitioner to then apply to a play text and perform it later in the module.
Our practitioner was Stanislavski and if you don't know who he is, he's a realism practitioner who's approach to theatre is to have a real portrayal of a character through observations, objectives, and obstacles of your specific character in each moment of the play.
The play we were given to apply these techniques to was, The Crucible by Arthur Miller which is all about the Salem Witch Trails in 1692. As events like that were taken completely seriously in those times you can see why our lecturers chose Stanislavski and The Crucible to combine together. I was playing a character called Elizabeth who went through a lot of internal feelings during the play. An example is regarding her husband John as he cheated on her with a young girl called Abigail who used to be the maid of their house. She was an interesting character for me to play, as I don't do a lot of realism/ naturalism performances and I've also not learned about Stanislavski until I came to uni and I actually really enjoyed the unit now that I look back.
We also had to do a commentary to say what techniques we've used to build up to the performance now (ie. the day we did the assessment) - talk about what we've used, how we used it in the rehearsal process, include quotes from An Actor Prepares by Stanislavski to link to our points and back up our knowledge etc. The commentary was the element of that uni that I was most worried about because I'd never done a commentary before and we also got asked questions to expand our commentary. But, it actually wasn't that scary at all. I feel like I've done really well for that unit and as far as my class all know, we've passed that module as our lecturer has said we have! WAHEY!... we just need to pass the essay now!
Speaking of passing assessments, we got our grades back for our Technical Devised assessment as I passed! THANK GOD! I'm just so happy to have passed it as I wouldn't want to come back in August to redo that as it wasn't fun the first time, therefore, I doubt I'd enjoy it a second time round.
Another super exciting moment for me this term, is the drama society. Now you guys remember from the first Coffee Chats I told you about the Christmas show we put on and that the spring musical was going to be Rock of Ages. At that point in time I had no idea what Rock of Ages was about, who the characters were, what songs were in it etc. But since then I've become obsessed with it and it is hands down my favourite musical ever now - I can't wait to direct it myself one day.
So, we had the auditions and I auditioned with song called 'We're Not Gonna Take It' which is sang by Regina in the musical, but her name is actually pronounced Regyna, yes it is how you're imagining it. But she was who I wanted to play because she is a massive character - fun, bubbly, passionate, crazy, happy, sassy, which is just me rolled into one character.
In the musical she is the new assistant of the Mayor and she is a hippie who is determined to keep the cities current Rock and Roll life style with her team of protesters against Hertz and Franz, two German developers (father and son) who want to have the city's new look on 'clean and efficient living'. However, she changes Franz way of thinking as he is only going along with his dad's plans to please him and she finally opens him up to his own dreams and desires. And, of course, in good old musical fashion, they fall in love! Eventually, she becomes the new Mayor of the city whilst Franz is living his dream of running his confectionery store in Germany. Eventually, Hertz supports Franz decisions and realises what he has done wrong and also changes. She's a character who is 100% up my street, and due all of this massive build up, I am proud to say, SHE'S WHO I AM PLAYING IN THE MUSICAL!!!!!!
I'm so happy as she is the best role I've ever gotten and for once I got a role I wanted to play and I'm going to love and appreciate every single minute of it. Also, it was also the best audition for a musical I have ever done and I am so proud of myself for that. Any type of performer never does their best work in auditions, but this is the one time I feel like I did, and that is one amazing feeling to me. All of my friends who are also doing Rock of Ages and are in my year at uni said to me, "Your audition was digustingly amazing!" and "You've hands down got that role, there's no one else who can play her like you can" and just to feel that love and support is massive. It is also means the world to know I get to portray all of my talent through a character I'm so in love with playing. I'm not being big headed when I say this but I am really talented at what I do and we all should be able to say were brilliant at whatever it is we pursue our careers to be because otherwise, why would we do it? I love what I get to do every day of my life and I wouldn't change one bit.
Everything right now is just really good and I'm feeling good vibes as of right now and I'm loving that I'm so happy.
Thank you so much for reading this post guys and I will talk to you all again soon!
Love,
Katie
