Who Was I?
I started Leeds Conservatoire with minimal formal training and was both enthusiastic and overwhelmed to discover a new world of skills for acting. Creating a performance for the Festival of Dionysus revealed the challenge of feeling under qualified and possibly underestimating the skills I could bring to the space. The concept of working five percent better each day helped enormously as this took pressure away from expecting instant improvement. I entered Skills training with a more achievable perspective of ‘trusting the process’ rather than working with my Third Year self at the forefront of my mind. Now, as my First Year ends, I have a clearer idea of the actor I am becoming and shall be excited to discover how I may work towards extending this in my second year.
Movement
Devised Movement
I feel I have opened most new pathways within Movement classes. I practised ballet and played sport at a high level but due to fibromyalgia and hyper-mobility I stopped and thought my conditions would make actively studying movement impossible. I think my sporting background helped me stay mentally strong through challenges, especially in Donald’s class, but my ballet training restricted my view of movement itself. I thought movement was simply confined to choreography. The tutors have helped me deepen my perception of movement as a skill to serve the actor; I can now visualise how my body affects the space and vice versa.
Throughout Eilon’s movement classes we studied Viewpoints which is ‘a philosophy translated into a technique for… training performers…building ensemble…and creating movement for the stage’ (Bogart, 2014), focusing on moving through the elements of tempo, duration, kinaesthetic response, shape, gesture, repetition, architecture and topography. Each week we explored one area by applying it to our walk around the space, before combining the elements. I could apply these easily to my own body, but the biggest change was learning how I could view the stage space as a big lump of clay and that I’m encapsulated within it so when I move it leaves an impression like a three dimensional mapping of the negative and positive space.
I have learned a lot about how I work as an actor through Eilon’s lessons. I often preempt my responses and decide the best idea before I perform it but should like to explore the difference between my mind telling my body its instincts and its own genuine instincts. I often feel I owe the ensemble a more immediate response because they are providing inspiration. However, by learning that stillness is an action in itself I have started using this to push past feeling pressurised and discover new responses within myself. In a similar vein, I have really enjoyed using Viewpoints to find my natural state and then its opposite, such as naturally moving at a high tempo and then spending a lot of time at a very slow speed.
Whilst learning to prioritise my health, I have also explored Viewpoints as a means to move within my abilities. For example, I have used tempo through moving my hands rather than my whole body. Finding alternative movements made me consider my body as an orchestra rather than solo instruments.
In the last week of the first semester I had a breakthrough with the juggling task which I had previously struggled with across the term. I would flinch hugely, apologise a lot and laugh nervously. Our group would gather in a circle throwing any number of juggling balls to each other, relying on our peripheral vision and instincts to catch, drop, or throw the balls. In the final lesson, I did not feel any need to apologise for my actions, nor did I feel guilty about not being apologetic. I also had practised a soft gaze for so many weeks that I flinched less and threw the ball with more accuracy than I had done previously. I owe this to the weeks of failure which allowed me to make so many mistakes that I became comfortable with them. This helped me to trust the process and apply the benefit of making mistakes to my other classes.
Movement Assessment
Our Movement assessment, a ‘Speakeasy’ jazz routine included here, was the only assessment I was not nervous about. This surprised me because a few weeks before I had told Donald that he could remove me from the piece if necessary. Jazz choreography is very intense on joints due to its downward energy. We had been rehearsing for around ten weeks and my pain levels worsened every lesson, which meant that I could not keep up with the ensemble and I worried that I was causing a distraction. Once Donald explained the piece was marked on how we move as characters and our sense of ensemble, I saw an improvement in my dancing. Now that the piece had a focus beyond my disabilities I could create a character blended with my abilities, which was a much more positive approach.
In the first semester, we had the opportunity to create our own solo piece, in which I found some creative respite by working for myself. I struggled initially to create movements inspired by my own history, being more concerned about the product of the final performance. However, when Donald suggested using this piece as therapy I was able to dance what I struggled to verbalise, and I found a similar process for the Speakeasy piece. I decided my character had just escaped an oppressive household and was experiencing a jazz club for the first time. This gave a reason for the limits in my physicality while allowing me the opportunity to connect with other characters in the ensemble as if I had just found my new community. This was my assessment with the highest score and I feel that it is strongly linked with the change in my mental approach towards it. I perform much better the fewer nerves I have, and that is directly related to how much pressure I put on myself.
Animal Studies
I now create character through techniques I discovered in Animal Studies. Enjoying this module was a surprise as I had anticipated that I would feel the most self-conscious and self-aware about the bizarreness of acting in this class. However, it was the one I felt gave the most freedom to be myself and I discovered mindfulness. I chose a giraffe so I could use crutches to support my weight and joints. Once I had perfected an adult giraffe’s movement and rhythm of life, I explored a giraffe calf’s so I could explore my world with more interest. I enjoyed the childlike naivety because I could react with curiosity and expression to the stimuli, such as a rock on the ground which might not concern an adult giraffe.
I found mindfulness through this all-consuming project. For my movement I had to consider a slow breathing rate, limited blinking, walking toe-to-heel, spinal alignment, pace, vision, itching, stretching and more. Internally, I had to consider my motivations: food, danger, companionship, water and rest. I had freedom to not be my usual self at all and had permission to be a different side of ‘me’. Consequently, I found a lot of joy in fully immersing myself into a new way of being. When I anthropomorphised my giraffe into a character I fully appreciated the value of studying animals for acting. Having watched videos of giraffes, I had imagined my human-giraffe would walk with excellent posture, be graceful, socially isolated and nosy. However, when I moved the giraffe’s spine into human alignment, a very self assured, relaxed character with appalling posture emerged. Taking the giraffe’s pace of life and alignment and transposing it onto a human created a character of such depth that I would not have been able to create it simply by brainstorming ideas on paper. The spine was so informative of the character that I will use this as my primary stimulus when creating a character’s movement and even personality.
Voice
Voice is the skill I feel that I have developed least, partially because vocal training is a lengthy process and partially because I need to dedicate further practice to it. I find voice exercises awkward to practise alone as I struggle with auditory processing and use visual synaesthesia to help. This was particularly evident when studying accents with Jess as I could not hear diphthongs because they sounded fluid to me and I could not differentiate the vowel sounds (see diagram). Therefore, I find myself confused when I work on my voice independently because I rely on and need, an outside perspective. As I cannot depend on this method, I began to study the voice more academically as I found studying anatomy helps the visual side of my brain and the academic side which needs to know everything about a subject to understand it.
These are pages taken from ‘This Is A Voice’, a book I find accessible to read, with images, videos, explanations and suggested exercises for different situations. It makes me feel less alone in my vocal journey and is one I can use throughout my training.
I used to feel confident projecting, but studying resonance made me realise I had been succeeding more by luck than technique. I became insecure about my voice, especially with the constant focus on it and having to accept it will not change and that I can only enhance it. I was more comfortable developing individual stretches with Jo for our personal warm up because I could hear the benefit quickly. I discovered so many of my damaging habits which affected my voice, such as clenching my jaw, and once I stopped this I could feel the difference within weeks.
In all my voice lessons, but especially Singing, I struggled hugely with breath work. I have a small lung capacity that decreases with stress and nerves and so was in a vicious cycle for a few weeks as I panicked over how little control I have over my breathing. To improve it, I practised habit stacking and brought awareness to my breathing little and often, for example when sitting on the train, cleaning my teeth, or waiting for the kettle to boil. I found this hugely beneficial because it took the pressure away from instant improvement and I found it much easier to maintain. I have since used habit stacking for many tasks I find intimidating, like learning lines, and will use this in my future training.
Voice Assessment
I felt most insecure about this assessment, primarily due to the text I chose for the narrative piece. Here, we performed a Shakespearean sonnet and a two-minute piece of text from a fictional novel. I used an excerpt from ‘The House with the Golden Door’ which explores the lives of prostitutes in Ancient Italy. The two central characters are similar in age to each other and to myself, and, as humans inspired by real women, I did not feel I could exaggerate vocal choices into caricatures. I had to find nuance within my vocal range that could differentiate the characters’ and the narrator’s voice so I changed my pacing, pitch, and place of resonance, and I am now very grateful for the opportunity I gave myself. I find it much easier to be diverse within my vocal range so I was challenged by the need for subtlety, however this will help me in the future when playing characters from a similar demographic but with a different personality. Over summer I shall now reflect on all the techniques we have been introduced to and discover for myself which ones will work to improve my vocal skills.
How I see my voice now and what I would like my voice to become
Acting
The Acting modules intimidated me the most as I imposed upon myself the idea that these were the classes for me to prove my place. I found Sight Reading with Matt really helpful to diminish the nerves and choose bold ideas. Each week we had a new script to offer an opportunity to practise audition techniques for performing scenes without any preparation. I found making the biggest choice I can helps me define the impact that smaller versions of the same choice might have. Over this year I realised that I do not learn anything from making safe choices. It is much more effective for me to make a huge mistake than making repeated, smaller mistakes because ‘We are all so afraid of uncertainty that we want a guarantee before we even try…[but] success is a numbers game…The more often that you choose courage, the more likely you’ll succeed.’(Robbins, 2017).
I also enjoyed watching other people’s boldness and it reassured me that exaggeration is still enjoyable to watch, and I do not need to minimise myself. During one lesson, I volunteered twice and was really impressed by my bravery. My interpretation of the text was unlike anyone else’s so I received different learning points that I would not otherwise have gained by passive learning. It increased my resilience and reduced my fear of being judged because I experienced being both audience and performer and yet never felt judgment in either case. I found I had been imposing my fears onto other people, and this is an obstacle I am still overcoming but am reassured by the notion that ‘It is audacity, and not talent, that moves an artist to center stage.’ (Cameron, 1992)
Studying Stanislavskian methods with Tom brought more personal issues to the surface. The most notable obstacle I discovered during regression exercises was how many emotional barriers I create and how this distances me from characterisation. These workshops explored emotional recall (‘affective memory’ in Stanislavsky’s rhetoric), by closing our eyes and mentally answering questions around our childhood. During one, I had a panic attack and had to leave the lesson. I was really surprised by this as I usually compartmentalise during work, but I am grateful to learn how the access to my trauma is far more fragile than I realised. This introduced me to the ongoing debate about how much of the actor’s own emotions should be used in performances. In Diderot’s ‘Paradoxie sur le comedièn’, he argues that great actors do not feel any emotion whilst performing, succinctly explained in Henry Irving’s preface as ‘sensibility cripples the intelligence at the very juncture when a man needs all his self-possession’. (Wilkes, 2021) In the 20th Century, ‘Stanislavsky and… Brecht take diametrically opposed views’ as the former advocates for an ‘involved style’ whilst the latter supports the ‘detachment theory’ (Konijn, 2000).
I continue to explore different avenues in this discord without seeking an immediate answer. I would normally find a solution until I experienced a discussion during Esther’s lessons around ‘tactics’, another branch of Stanislavsky’s actor’s system. These are the ways in which your character tries to achieve their objective in a scene, but it brought many questions to me about whether the outcome is dependent on the actor or the character. Esther encouraged me to keep asking questions because they may never be answered but the work is in the act of finding the answer. I have never used this philosophy in my process before and I am still in the early stages of applying it, but it has allowed me to be more experimental. I am reminded that the world of acting spans across centuries and continents and I need to keep involved in the ongoing dialogue.
Creating A Character
Before Christmas our task was building our own character. Creating ‘Sara Howard’ was a rich experience that raised more questions about process than it answered. We experimented with exercises that support Stanislavsky’s methods of creating a believable character through the given circumstances, unbroken line of action, and memory or emotional recall. I appreciated doing these because it forced me to dwell on subjects and explore different ideas. For example, we had to recreate twenty-four hours of our character’s day, spending five minutes for each hour. Usually, in a more academic setting I might have created a timetable on paper and ‘completed’ the work; I would not have pushed myself to find new answers, I would just be pleased to have finished and found ‘correct’ ideas. Forcing myself to go more slowly and deeply with exercises has now become a crucial part of my preparation as I was able to view Sara’s existence with more clarity.
I explored this further when we engaged in a long form improvisation of our characters in an airport lockdown, and as we went into Leeds and met each other as our characters. Occasionally, I would not know what served me as an actor and served Sara as a character. I could not find a juncture between being aloof as Sara and therefore not interacting with anyone, and needing to listen to the ensemble. I found it boring to be Sara so I became more involved with the improvisation, but it would have been more of a personal challenge to remain insular. This self awareness deepened with the Leeds improvisation as I learned more about who I am and consequently what I need to be aware of when becoming a character. This was the first time I felt a connection between physicality and personality. My head naturally swivels a lot, so I see a lot of new information and this feeds my curiosity. Sara is the complete opposite and I began to understand her more by physically being in her shoes and viewing the world as she would. I learned I need time and stimuli for physicality, so being in a room I know is not inspirational or helpful. My mind cannot sustain a character within itself, it needs another direction such as another character or objective to keep myself present.
Acting Assessment
The Acting assessment illustrated how much I struggle with objectivity. The brief was to create a five-minute piece of action that one of the characters from ‘The Ruffian on the Stair’ might do when alone. I chose to focus on Wilson, who is grieving their brother, Frank, following their confrontation with Joyce. I created a map of their flat, and planned their actions as seen below. I found it easy to flesh out my interpretation of Wilson and what they might do as I had some ground rules to work from including no talking, Catholic guilt, grief, nostalgia through smell and photographs, the loss of the person I was before grief. These avenues were easy for me to access so I had freedom to explore Wilson’s world, which is why I felt comfortable exploring the bold choices of using the piano and smelling Frank’s boxers that I had been wearing. My downfall came from comparison with others because I instantly judged my choices as being too bold when watching my peers’ performances. As an actor and audience member I do find the ‘less is more’ approach more interesting, so I assumed that my bold choices were too performative. This led to me being conflicted about which course of action to take and thereby satisfying no one.
I had planned to use the five minutes before my assessment to drop into character using Laban’s Efforts, Point of Concentration and listening to music. However, the timetable was running ahead of schedule and I was invited in earlier than I expected, so I rushed my preparation hugely. Looking back, I realise how I should have advocated for my needs as an actor and given myself permission to prepare myself. I did not enter the space with the appropriate level of energy nor enough connection to my character. I felt I went through the routine with too much rehearsal and performance and not enough connection to the character. In short, I overacted a routine of sporadic, trivial actions.
My feedback indicated the opposite, since it suggested I should follow my instincts of bold choices and push beyond my boundaries to explore a wider range of emotional states. This was the opposite to what I was expecting, I believed I had gone too far and would have been more successful with smaller actions to refine my emotional states. I was disappointed with myself for not being more courageous and being too comparative, but this negativity is not beneficial and ‘If you can remove your ego from a process, then there really isn’t any difference between success and failure’ (Day, 2020). I am now grateful to have made these mistakes as I can rectify this problem by continually building on the courage of my conviction. It has also reminded me that comparison is ineffectual and dangerous to my own work and this is a habit that until now, I have not given myself permission to break.
Screen
Screen has been emotionally challenging as I still struggle to watch myself back. We only have time for one take, so what I see is essentially the first rehearsal yet instead I judge myself for the final draft. I have started reading ‘The Artist’s Way’ to support myself in challenging unhelpful thoughts and found this sentence particularly useful: ‘Judging your early artistic efforts is artist abuse.’(Cameron, 1992) With this perspective, I think it will be easier to be more objective and kinder to myself.
Screen lessons highlighted that I need to invest in my process and will come to rely on it. I have been ignoring the idea of a process in favour of an arrogant hope that I am someone who can just switch and turn onto performance mode. There is a switch within me where I become settled within the character and the world, but for that to come easily I need to be incredibly prepared. With lines, it is better to be over prepared and learn them beyond comfort but not know my cues as well which keeps me listening and my reactions as natural as possible. I am experimenting with Laban’s ‘Efforts’ and Mike Alfred’s ‘Point of Concentration’ as part of my process. Laban’s Efforts are ‘the deployment of human energy in the pursuit of a particular task…both mental[ly] and physical[ly]’ through four ‘motion factors of: Force, Space, Time and Flight’ (McCaw, 2012). We explored the Point of Concentration with Esther by closing our eyes, dropping into our character and thinking of everything they might connect with a certain topic; in one lesson our concept was ‘Time’ which brought up the issues of beauty, self worth and death for my character. We then immediately stepped into our scripted scene and allowed these thoughts to impact our character subconsciously. I have found these practices incredibly useful for accessing embodiment without creating a bulky process and shall continue to explore this in my second year.
Research For Performance
I was hugely excited for the Research for Performance module and it did not disappoint. I relished Ben’s lectures as they made me consider a philosophical perspective of acting I had not previously explored. It was more surprising to find that I benefitted from Ben’s almost brutal scrutiny. Usually this would knock my confidence, but as he almost refuses to praise or define ‘good work’ it feels a safe space to make mistakes as the work was critiqued all the same. Ben’s questions push me beyond all boundaries and inspired me to apply the same level of critical thinking towards other group’s projects, which made me more creative with my own. Occasionally, this would cause a disadvantage as I am not a linear thinker and find it incredibly hard to verbalise my ideas and share the vision. This causes further mistranslations when physicalising my ideas which I found disheartening as ‘It’s the artist’s responsibility to balance mystical communication and the labor of creation’. (Smith, 2010).
Consequently I struggled with the pressure when performing our retelling of Aphrodite’s story, and I agreed with Ben when he felt we shied away from the acting challenge. I focused more on creating a clever piece as a writer or dramaturg rather than as an actor. Conversely, creating the Aphrodite play refined my process of sharing my ideas and I was able to communicate my vision far more clearly than I had before. During the group work I noticed how I am much keener to present myself as a team player, but I actually need to take ownership of my own enthusiasm and intellect. I was relieved when I understood another group’s project more than my peers because it was technical and abstract, and I realised the way I think is sometimes useful because I can access material others cannot.
I fully understood the importance of this module after performing an abridged version of Racine’s ‘Berenice’, a Neo-classical French play focused on internal conflict expressed through voice with a minimal visual style. I needed to embody the concepts of objective and tactics so that I could realise the tension of Neo-classical theatre better. I did not achieve this in my performance because I did not give myself permission to make mistakes through the rehearsal process or become uncomfortable with challenging work. I relied on performing what I knew would demonstrate a sound but superficial understanding of the style rather than attempting something which could have been more effective though with room for error. Previously I had been viewing this module through an academic lens and had crafted the previous projects with a writer, director or creator’s view rather than as an actor but I can now move forward into my training knowing acting is a combination of all these roles.
I was incredibly relieved to have completed this module’s assessment as it had been the most frustrating project to date. The brief for the assessment was to pitch funding for a play created by our mock theatre company inspired by Absurdism, to include research and perform a small piece of the play. Throughout my academic life I have often been asked which role I naturally take in group projects and I honestly do not know because I have undertaken every role. I took this a step further in the project as I tried the non-role of the passive participant to see which roles others would fill. I have occasionally worried that I dominate within the group and others are not willing to participate because I am too involved, but I realised that by leaving a space for others to fill I was only making myself more frustrated.
After some false starts and with the deadline looming, our group needed to write the script for our play quickly and together we wrote a page in an hour and a half. I knew we needed to be faster, so I later wrote another three pages. Although I do find brainstorming with other creatives useful to push my own boundaries, I realised I am able to follow my creative line of thought much more easily when working independently. I limit my offers much more around others and I get frustrated when I think an idea may objectively work better but the majority vote shuts it down. My concerns about other people’s perceptions of me have been a continual frustration, primarily due to my own defensive mechanism of keeping quiet to keep the peace. ‘Peace’ is a false concept since I do not feel peaceful and what I fear will be ‘conflict’ would only be me trying to encourage more effective working practices. My leadership skills falter in drama groups because I am acutely aware that so much of the industry is controlled by reputation and I fear that being firm will be misconstrued as ‘nagging’, ‘bossiness’ or ‘arrogance’. This is a deeper issue of internalised misogyny, but also I am not fully secure in my leadership style. I always prioritise a happy working environment, but this usually comes at the cost of my own happiness. I’ve avoided researching leadership as I still managed to achieve results, but I now see that this approach is unsustainable.
Who Am I? 24103020
The most prominent ways in which I have grown this year are beyond the academic subjects we have studied. Instead they lie with questions of who I am both as a person and as a creative. When the year began I thought of myself as an academic first and creator second, but over time I have learned to give myself permission to value and explore my own creativity. Although I still enjoy elements of academia, such as research and in-depth analysis, my skills and joy are found in playing. I now realise how much of a visual and kinaesthetic learner I am.
This was cemented at the end of the year when applying all our techniques into an abridged version of Beth Steele’s play ‘Till The Stars Come Down’. The images here show the written character work I had prepared for ‘Hazel’, but when I tried to apply this to the scene I really struggled to embody it. When acting, I found it difficult to recall and focus on the ideas I had written and realised I was not listening to my scene partners because my concentration was on my preparation. Through trial and error, I discovered that I could embody Hazel more easily and effectively by playing the scene and finding out what was lacking. For example, I found I was not moving any differently than I would myself so I needed to find Hazel’s walk. The next run through I would add the modified walk and find another area that needed consideration, and so on. I could also apply this to any scene I observed and I now dedicate a lot of my time to watching other people act for inspiration. These methods synthesised when working with Alex Palmer’s method of sustained improvisation of our characters through vignettes. We would take ten minutes to drop into our characters, so I used music to enter Hazel’s world, and then spend an hour interacting with the other actors through scenes of our character’s worlds such as: telling my husband I was pregnant, attending parents’ evening, getting my GCSE results. This provided a plethora of memories we could then use for emotional and memory recall when tackling the script. I was astounded by the method’s simplicity yet how incredibly effective it is. I can use every single technique we have explored in every class, so it was heartening to feel and witness the progress I have made.
Confidence has been a huge battle for me this year and it is an issue I know I will continue to face in my second year. When I have been in a situation or scene that has made me anxious, I have used humour as a defence mechanism, a tactic that has been gently discouraged by staff. Using humour makes it easier to qualify any success and I hope it makes me likeable as I know the serious impression I can give belies what is really happening under the surface. This pervades into the character choices I make and I have been actively avoiding more serious roles because I find it harder to judge or feel secure in my success without laughter. Also, I do enjoy playing comedic roles and they naturally resonate so I find characters without a comic outlet require more emotional depth from me. I have been confused by my aversion to demanding work this year because I usually apply myself well to challenging tasks. I later realised that it lies with obsessive perfectionism. I conduct this easily in academic settings as I can revise an essay repeatedly until I am satisfied. Workshopping, and the act of getting onto stage and making mistakes to find the successful work, was my enemy until I applied Jo’s philosophy of ‘make it shit’, as I could argue that I was succeeding when I ‘failed’. It only cemented itself in the last week of Skills during Singing in which Jacob said ‘how disappointing it would be if our best performances were in Room 434 of St Peter’s Square’. It opened the world to me as a large space providing opportunities to find goodness rather than a pressurised arena in which I had to perform perfection.
The need for ‘likability’ eased after some tough social situations in and out of the classroom and I decided to embrace my loneliness and support myself the way I would a friend, which has shaped me as a professional. I have adopted the ‘Let Them Theory’ especially that of ‘focusing on what you can’t control makes you stressed. Focusing on what you can control makes you powerful.’ (Robbins, 2024) I now have personalised warm-ups, separate my personal life from my professional and am prepared to support my acting methods in the ensemble. I still have a long way to go but I feel I have laid solid foundations to build upon in the second year.
My new morning anthem
