Final Reflection

Research & Development Stage:

During the research process, I developed ideas when we were split into groups
to do the ensemble work and see how the dynamics of the scenes would work
and how we could possibly have made them. What surprised me is that the
difference in ideas that came from different groups was amazing for everyone.

I think a problem I encountered during this stage was not knowing my

I learnt that actually using real life experiences and childhood memories can
actually help with creating a scene fully. The way that you can incorporate the
emotions and feeling and energy of being out in the snow when you were a kid
into the context of the play can massively help a scene seem more realistic and
I thoroughly enjoyed doing that.

I think I succeeded at bringing the energy and child-like fun to the snow scenes
when developing those specific scenes. I’m also really good at injuring myself
but making it seem part of the scene.

My areas of development are to just put my all into any task I’m given no
matter the role I have to partake in in order to make it seem realistic. I also
think an area to develop is I need to consider others ideas over mine and not
be so stubborn on one idea all the time. I also need to work on my focus cos I
have a lack of focus most of the time.

Rehearsal Phase:

So a rehearsal room technique that our director brought into the rehearsal
room is focus games so we could get ourselves focused ready for the day
ahead of us and to make sure we stayed on target with making the scenes for
the play. I think they definitely helped me stay focused during the rehearsals as
I’m one to get unfocused frequently.
My rehearsal room work ethic I think was completely fine. I did what was
asked of me and I tried my best to stay on target for what we were doing
during rehearsals. I would get a bit giggly here and there but I did what was
asked and needed from me. I came in with the idea that I would take lots of
notes but that fell apart pretty quickly since I lost my notepad and always
forgot to make notes during rehearsals.

Moments that I found challenging was not injuring myself during rehearsals as
it turns out I’m more accident prone then I thought. I also struggled trying to
play so many different characters for the different scenes and definitely saw
myself getting attached to Cameron Huntley as a character. Some of the
specific scene bits didn’t work but they were very small and minuscule and a
very easy fix for rehearsals. We overcame this by just taking the advice and
feedback from Kate.

I think what surprised me the most was how much fun it would be to create
any of the scenes no matter what. Also working with different people even
people I was in a group with for the first time proved to be so much fun and I
enjoyed it throughly. I reacted appropriately and just had a huge smile on my
face and just loads of energy towards this surprise.

A key moment was getting my characters and being able to finally develop
what would be a boring ensemble character and giving them personality and a
backstory for how they got to where they are in the play and the way that they
feel towards the world around them. This just gave me lots of creative liberty
and I really enjoyed doing it as I’m a very creative person.

I think I’ve definitely become a lot more confident in the ideas that I bring forth
to the group and how I can implement those ideas into a play of any sort. I’ve
also worked on my focus issue during this phase and I think I’m definitely a lot
better than what I was at the start of the year for sure. I also think I’ve
developed like this because I’m always trying to make sure everyone has a fun
time and that I want a great piece of work to come out of it.

Production Week:

Moving into tech, it was such a surreal moment for me as it hit me that this
was actually happening and that we were actually going to be performing our
play that week. It also just helped me visualise everything for the show since
we would have all the lighting and sound for the show. I also felt very
overwhelmed with emotions as it was such a surreal moment I didn’t know
how to feel about the circumstances. What impacted me the most was the
waiting around for tech stuff to be done and not actually being able to do
proper run throughs and just stopping and starting constantly. I think the only
challenge was being under the bright lights for quite a long time so it was a big
struggle trying to deal with that. I overcame this by drinking lots of water and
getting fresh air during the breaks as that really helped cool me off. Being in
tech changed my focus because I had to constantly have to pay attention in
case I was needed for a scene or I needed to stop/start the scene again etc. it
also just helped with making sure I was generally focused on the task at hand.

For the 2 dress rehearsals, this was where we got to have our party items for
the party scene glow in the dark and decorated in UV’s. My suit jacket for the
“taking away weird kid’s brother” changed to the grey one I ended up using.
This was also when I had to start wearing my wrist brace for my wrist as it had
started hurting really badly on Tuesday so for the dresses I needed to wear it
as a safety precaution. And for these dresses I really tried to bring my
characters out so that they could stand out a bit in the groups we were in for
the lads and girls. There was a bit where I went on stage without the lads when
all the lads were meant to be on the stage for the start of the snowball scene.

For the first performance on the Thursday, nothing really changed for me
personally and I didn’t really have any issues here or there. It went pretty
smoothly if I do say so myself. Yet again I tried to develop my character more
through this and I definitely felt like it was the best night that we had
performed so far. I did end up finding my fake phone had been misplaced and
so I had to get a new fake phone. One of my snowballs was also misplaced
before the performance so I just stuck with using one and making it work.
Reacting to the notes in preparation for this performance was quite easy since
we didn’t have a lot of stuff to work on and in general it was small tweaks in
very specific scenes where it wasn’t typically the entire cast. I think I managed
to look after myself in terms of eating and drinking enough and properly. I also
made sure my friendship group also ate and drank enough

For the second and last performance, this definitely outclassed all the other
performances in terms of energy and just general vibes for the night. We put
our absolute all into it and made sure to make the last performance was a
good one. We worked on yet again specific notes for the specific scenes as
there was still some little touch ups to improve upon. For the actual
performance nothing major went wrong which is always a good sign and a
good thing for performances.