Coming to Leeds I was nervous and scared about living away for the first time. I was also nervous and scared about looking after myself and making new friends and everything that comes with it. But the main thing that was in the front of my head at all times leading up to me starting was ‘will I be good enough, what if its too hard’. That worry was put quickly to rest after the first half hour of starting. Before I knew it I was halfway through my first skills week and loving every minute of it. I knew I would be okay in the singing department, but I was unsure of ‘how much more acting is there to learn’. I was stunned when it was revealed how many layers there are to acting and how interesting everything was. One of my main issues starting at Lcon was keeping on top of my reflection. It took me a long time and many different note taking methods to get into the swing of things. I still struggle now to stay on top of reflections, but it is also something I am consciously aware of trying to improve.
Dance choreography
Before starting the movement classes I felt frightened going into it as I have done some dance courses before and have felt petrified during all of them as I lacked self-confidence. I soon realised that it is not at all scary and is now one of the classes I look forward to the most.
I remember during our first lessons in term 1, Donald explained to us that we are simply ‘acting through dancing’. I was furious with myself that I hadn’t had this view on dancing for my entire life because after he said that. Something clicked with me. After connecting acting to dancing, I felt much more at ease with the idea that I would eventually have to perform Infront off all my classmates
Over the course of Donald’s term 1 lessons, I noticed a major improvement in my mobility (also helped by Eilon’s devised lessons) which is something I have struggled with for my entire life despite being a boxer. The improvement has been a result of the warmups and pushing myself as far as I can in terms of range of motion (I can almost do the splits now !!) I also noticed that the more I became friends with my classmates the more enjoyable the lesson would be. I realised the improvements were prominent in week 4 when we were doing a downwards dog pose and I noticed that I did not have any tension in my wrists or ankles at all !
When we were told about the solo performance project I felt like I wanted the world to swallow me up due to my immediate nervousness and unsuccessful past dance experiences. I did not voice to anyone how I was feeling at the time which reflecting back, wasn’t the best idea. To ease us into the project I was partnered up with Lottie (who’s amazing) and we worked on mirroring each other which I found to be a very fun and good exercise to ease into solo work, from this Lottie created 12 moves for me to learn. to make this experience less stressful I viewed it first as a memory game to remember all the moves as quick as possible and then I added emotion. When it came round to presenting, I felt nervous but ready! When it was over I felt overwhelmed with joy that I actually did it and really enjoyed it.
Solo Dance For Donald at the start of the year, partnered with Lottie.
For the solo performance, we were given the title ‘open hand closed fist’. The idea of beauty (open hand) and violence (closed fist) popped into my head. To do this I showed a mixture of extreme tension in the muscles and movement, sudden staccato burst of moves and to show the beauty I did gracious falls, with soft landings.
After we had completed our solo work, we moved on to ‘speak easy’, this is a style of dance that was prominent throughout the 30’s and still an active style now. Speak easy is all about easy going, fun, loving exotic communication between the dancers and the audience. Knowing this I was eager to work as I wanted to see how much acting I can put into the dancing. The process to get to speak easy was hard. A lot of strength and conditioning was required and during this time I noticed my durability through more constant moving increased massively. When we were learning the choreography, we had to be 100% focused 100% of the time because it was that fast paced there was no time for messing about. When developing my character for speak easy with Eilon, he really made us think about our characters e.g. ‘have they had a hard life, how has there way of life impacted movement, energy levels, relationships. And after digging deep I decided I want my character to genuinely embody speak easy, which I think I succeeded with as in the performance I used a table as a drum kit, I was shouting too my friends and I gave so much energy I felt like I was going to pass out (in a good way).
SUMMATIVE – Over the course of the year I have come long way with my dance course. At the start of the year, I was fine with doing the warmups and even though I struggled at first and my stamina did improve through repetition I still did not know exactly what the warmups were doing. I now do know what each exercise warmups in the body which has been huge positive as I still use some of the exercises in my own time to help with mobility. With the help of Donald and Eilon through the course I was slowly learning how to act through movement which I didn’t enjoy doing at first because I didn’t understand it. I am pleased that I do now though.
Movement technique / Animal studies.
I found that these lessons at the start of the year proved most beneficial to my mental health as it was the first lesson of the start of the week. And however well that lesson went would dictate my energy/focus for the rest of the day and usually the week. Every single lesson helped me so much as the classes were based around unlocking movement in the body which lead to all kinds of stretches and exercises which if done with the right intent and energy feels so nice and allows my body to move in more flexible ways which would help me add characteristics to a character I could be building showing the successful development for an actor musician. Moving into term two I was getting gradually more nervous as partner contact was being introduced, which at the time was quite nerve wracking to me!!!!!. I thought there was no point trying to hide, so I went for it and got partnered up and fully engaged myself and it proved to be mentally relaxing to have a buddy help you unlock new movement in my body.

Exercises to help improve mobility and flexibility.

Honey badger reflection / research.
When starting animal studies, I noticed that I have unlocked a new level of focus and in-depth research which I didn’t know I had and will definitely be bringing into next year. The focus and intent all started when we were asked to look at pictures of our animal (honey badger) and afterwards were asked to do some research on it for next lesson. So, I sat myself down and watched a funny video on honey badgers, this made me enjoy watching them and made me feel more connected to them which made me want to research them more which I did. So come next year I will use my new learning process which is to find content on the subject that I have been given, the content should make me laugh / ask question and then that will lead to meaningful intent in research. This process helped me massively with animal studies because when I was physicalising the honey badger, I could Invision being a honey badger and the way the anatomy works and the emotions or intent they might be feeling all came naturally to me because I enjoyed the research. What I also think helped in the class was the confidence that everyone else had. It was easy to be vulnerable and embody an animal Infront of people who are giving there 100% effort to the animal as appose to being around people who are not giving it there all. I’m grateful for such a great class. One thing that Tilda taught me that has really stuck with me is when she was teaching us how to ‘get into our animal’ and the easiest way is doing the ‘leap of faith’. After speaking with my buddy Torin on what processes we will take away from the classes and bring into second year I mentioned that the ‘leap of faith’ is my main process that I will bring as I told him it is the easiest way for me to dive into the deep end and taking layers of if need be rather than slowly putting more layers on. A real ‘POW’ moment for me was when we split the class up in half and had a partner sitting down watching us be out animal, I was happy that people weren’t thinking what I was doing was silly but ‘interesting’.
During animal studies Tilda told me that I should focus more on the ‘neck movement’ of the honey badger to make it more distinguishable from a lion. I took this on board and went home to research the neck. I applied what I learnt to my animal by displaying emotion through agitated head movement and Tilda said there was a good noticeable difference.
SUMMATIVE – Animal studies have been a very wholesome course for me this year as I have never seriously pretended / embodied to be an animal before and seriously underestimated how much I enjoyed learning the intricacies about my animal and how to inhabit the feeling and emotions they may feel and how their body moves as a reaction too emotion. I have realised that not a lot of the exercises worked for me to get into my animal other than the leap of faith.

Honey Badger Anatomy From google
Jo technical voice
Jo’s lessons were a blessing to me as they as the lessons helped me find my full range of speaking voice and helping my tone improve massively over the lessons. The key things I have taken away from jo’s lessons was that in term 1 week 7 she taught us how to warm up for proper articulation (where we also made our own personalised warm up) and one of the main points that I pulled away was that in order to have brilliant articulation you need to properly warm up the face which is something I didn’t consider before coming to the lessons. Some of the face warmups that have really stuck with me and that I will continue to use into my second year and over the summer are these warm ups; fat/ thin tongue (side of tongue moves in/out), Soft pallet stretches (yawning, ng-ah and Ka Ka), nan lips (lips over teeth), PLOSIVES, 2 lips – b,p. tongue/alveolar ridge – d,t. FRICATIVES, teeth and bottom lip – f,v. tongue and teeth – th,th (theatre, then). Link to the full warm up posted here https://space.leedsconservatoire.ac.uk/pluginfile.php/2353048/mod_labelcollapsed/intro/Articualtion%20for%20warm%20up.pptx?time=1670175939407

personalised warm up for Jo

I really felt like I connected with this lesson, these exercises in particular, as when it came to term 2 and we were working on our Shakespeare sonnets (sonnet 18). Jo was giving me feedback saying I need to improve more on relaxing in the face, this was a key moment for me as I noticed that there is an opportunity for me to use my knowledge to realise that this is where the face warmups for articulation came in handy because after doing the nan lips and soft palate stretches I had a more relaxed muscles in the face and body which improved the quality of my speech and then therefore more compelling storytelling. I feel like this has supported my development as an actor musician as I have a new tool to further my voice. after the exercises I performed my sonnet (number 18) and it showed a clearer voice and tone this has led to a successful contribution to my learning because my quality of speech and storytelling improved after I employed the warm up techniques Jo taught me that I will continue to bring this warm up into preparing for texts in any other classes and moving forward into year 2.
SUMMATIVE – learning about my voice has been one of the most enjoyable and eye-opening experience I’ve had. At the start of the year, I was certain I knew all that I needed to about my voice. I could not have been more wrong. I now practice my articulation and fricatives as much as I do my scales. Voice lessons have been the hardest for me to continually practice as unlike my acting lessons where I saw immediate progress I did not in my voice lessons. It took me a while to understand it was a lot more about the journey to finding my voice that was most important and has really stuck out to me this year.
ACTING TECHNIQUE STAGE
Over the course of my acting technique lessons for stage, what stood out to me the most and is now a crucial part of my acting process is when Alex Palmer taught the class ‘endowment’, which is when the actor is drinking a cup of water on stage but pretending (endowing) the water as something else such as alcohol or hot coffee during the May term.
This key moment impacted me in a positive way, although it was and still is really hard for me to learn because there are so many things that we do as humans when drinking a piping hot cup of coffee as we subconsciously lightly touch the cup to check heat, take very small sips. These are just a fraction of the things that I must consciously do on stage which I found very difficult reflecting back on the moment.
I feel like this key moment has supported my development as an actor musician as moving forward, I will be able to implicate endowment into future productions which would ultimately allow me to ‘add’ more dynamics into characters, which would successfully contribute to my development as an actor musician as I have more techniques to play with.
I am going to continue to use endowment because I feel that the technique adds so much more depth to the character and the scene that is done right could be the difference between a mediocre scene and a brilliant scene. I will also read up on how other actors and practitioners use and manipulate endowment to their advantage and hopefully add it to my own acting process.

Alex, Endowment reflection – notes.
Another key learning moment for me was when Esther taught us Laben efforts in the January term.

Esther reflection – Laben notes
Reflecting on the lessons I found learning the Laben efforts very difficult as it was a lot to remember for me and it was completely new to me, Esther did a really good job on explaining the process, but I felt like I need to hear the process from a different angle. so, I had to watch a few YouTube clips explaining the Laben efforts to help wrap my head around it. Such as https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXabAJFNv8s&pp=ygUXTGFiZW4gZWZmb3J0cyBleHBsYWluZWQ%3D
Reflecting back, I would say this key moment challenged my development as an actor musician because I struggled to find moments in scenes to apply the Laben efforts. To overcome this, I will simply keep practicing the various efforts.
I will try to continue this skill into next year and future practices by writing the Laben efforts on every script I get. This will make me more aware of when and how I can use them.
SCREEN PHILL
A standout moment for me in screen was during the January term when Phill told us that if the actor starts the scene light-hearted it allows the actor to create a wide range of emotions.
This moment impacted me in a positive way. It took me a week to fully understand the benefit of starting “light”. Reflecting on the moment, when I understood the reasoning, it became very easy for me to implicate it into scenes. Phill noticed this change in my screen acting and applauded it which really helped with my confidence in class and therefore successfully contributed to my overall learning.
This key moment challenged my development as an actor musician because I struggled at first to wrap my head around the reasoning and benefits to starting light (what if I want to be angry in the scene? However, after I came to terms and understanding the technique (if you start light you can slowly get more angry throughout the scene which shows a wider range of emotion) it then supported my development as it was another acting tool to add to my arsenal which I could/can pull out in any future scenes that I want dramatic varied and interesting emotions.
I am going to continue this skill into my future practices because when I’m struggling to decide how I want my character to behave in a scene I can default my character to starting ‘light’ this then allows my character to naturally find the correct flow of emotions.

‘Starting light’ reflection for phill
SIGHT READING
A standout learning moment from sight reading would be during the December term when Matt was discussing the importance of using ‘proxemics’ such as; main character might be centre stage or if someone wants to have a low status they might try and physically lower themselves next to a character of higher status
This key moment impacted me in a very positive way as I instantly understood the importance behind proxemics. I became instantly aware of how I could use proxemics for different scenarios e.g. if my character is angry, I could possibly distance myself from the rest of the characters as much as possible.
This has supported my development as an actor musician as I could apply this skill to where my instruments would physically be on stage e.g. if I loved my guitar I would try my hardest to stay close to it on stage which successfully contributes to my development.
I am going to continue this skill into future practices and next year because if I use good proxemic decisions on stage it would amplify and compliment my emotions that I would be trying to project on screen and would also allow the other actors on stage more to play with if I am making constant proxemic decisions.
SUMMATIVE – Over the course of the year in acting I have found processes that both work and don’t work for me. Stanislavski techniques have not proved beneficial for me in making my own acting process. I understand Stanislavski techniques such as ‘emotion memory’ and ‘through line of action’ however I feel I don’t understand them as well as other techniques and they may not serve me as well as the others. Reflecting on the year I would say that learning and understanding Laban efforts have played a role in making my own acting process as I often refer to them to express how an emotion is making me feel or how I want a character to move on stage. Endowment has been a huge part of my acting process as I have found it my most useful and applicable technique alongside the ‘4th side’. I use these techniques in every piece of theatre. And I also constantly look for them in shows. Looking back on the year Sight reading has been a lot more insightful and enjoyable than I thought it would be as I now have about 5 good monologues under my belt and know how to use proxemics/proxemic to the microphone in visual theatre and radio drama. One thing that Phill has taught me which has really contributed to my acting process is to start of light in a scene so that you have somewhere to go. I apply this to as many scenes as I can where I want there to be a noticeable build of tension in the scene.
RESEARCH INTO PERFORMANCE
A standout learning moment for me was in the march term when we were doing are ‘in yer face’ theatre exam. In yer face is a shocking and provocative style of theatre which underlines topics such as violence, sexual abuse. and me and Jacob wrote a script for our performance called ‘you never know’. This was one of my first times writing a script and my first ‘in yer face’ style script.
This key moment impacted me in a positive way as through intense research which I found very difficult at the time because I was struggling to force myself to read plays such as ‘blasted’ by Sarah Kane for inspiration as the topics made me feel a tiny bit uncomfortable. The research I did allowed me to bring really good contributions to the table when it came to writing the script.
This has supported my development as an actor musician as now if I want to write a play, a musical or an actor musician play, due to my research into performance I now have a system to begin writing.
I will continue this skill into next year as after doing the performance I would quite fancy attempting to write scripts in different genres. With how difficult I found writing an ‘in yer face’ style script, I now feel a lot more confident in my capability to explore different genres as I feel I have done the most uncomfortable one for me, so I would have more enjoyment writing for different genres.
SUMMATIVE – Over this year I have struggled the most with research into performance. Especially struggled with the most recent ‘in yer face’ theatre project. I struggled because the topics were kind of uncomfortable to work with. But nevertheless, I learnt a lot about script writing and presentation skills. As in the project my group worked a lot on presentation dynamics and how to keep the audience engaged.
I have enjoyed my accent classes but also found them the most challenge. This is because before coming to leeds I never really looked at the Yorkshire accents. I felt myself falling behind in class which meant that I had to do extra work on the side. I did this by searching for videos that could break it down into other terms to help me understand. I came across this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THsSizqiSKs&pp=ygUYeW9ya3NoaXJlIGFjY2VudCBleGFtcGxl and it has put me in a more confident position. However moving into next year I know I must work harder on my accents as it is my biggest weak spot.

Accent Kit list, Jess
SUMMATIVE – Over the course of this year I have found out that Liverpool is apparently not ‘up north’ which is not cool ahah. I have found that practicing fricatives has personally helped me with learning accents because my mouth is properly warmed up.
MUSIC LAB
My standout learning moment from music lab was on May 16th when Laura allowed us to conduct are own sessions where I taught everyone their parts for a song that I liked (I think they call this love). . Being able to conduct my own session for the first time impacted me in a very positive way as realising that I was able to conduct a class on my own gave me a huge boost of confidence in my teaching ability. I feel like this moment has supported my development as an actor musician because I now have more conducting experience for when I will need to do it again in the future. It also has helped with improving my ability to communicate how I want the music played. I will continue to try and conduct pieces of music going into second year, this is because I find it very enjoyable to hear a piece of music that has been layered and put together by myself. When Laura told me that layering the musicians in and breaking verses down ‘would help everyone find the changes. Rather than everyone playing at once really helped me understand how to communicate with the musicians as a conductor.
Artistic Development Reflection 08/05/2025
My stage combat lessons proved helpful in my research into performance class when there was a fight needed between me and Jacob in our play that we wrote with Kate. If it wasn’t for the stage combat lessons, we would’ve been unable to perform the fight as it would not have been safe. I will continue to practice my stage combat every now and then, so I know I am safe and ready if I need to pull it out in second year. Another example of this is when I used the endowment and through line of action techniques that I learnt with Alex Palmer and Esther into Phills screen acting class where I was drinking a fake hot coffee on film and ‘endowed’ the hotness. I will continue to use my knowledge of endowment and through line of action into my second year and professional practice as I feel I click with these techniques.
Ensemble singing
As someone who has trained as a singer for most my life I found these lessons really helpful as I was able to see other people sing songs that I would be practicing. And I would be paying attention to the different dynamic choices we make. For example, Jacob was doing the song ‘five foot two, eyes of blue’ and I was doing ‘Mac the Knife’ but also practicing Jacobs song on the side. It was really useful for me to see what notes craig gave to Jacob and I would apply them (if possible) to myself and see what the difference was. I feel that in doing that I have successfully contributed to my development as an actor musician.
Conclusion
In conclusion. This year has opened my eyes to help me see strengths of mine that I didn’t think were strengths such as a calm acting style in tense scenes. This was discovered as a strength of mine through Phill in the screen course. This year has also helped me discover weaknesses that I can improve on to better myself as a well-rounded actor musician, for example Eilon told me at the end of the year that I move around with a lot of stress and tension which is something I could work on to become looser. Tom also told me that my acting is too intense, and I could maybe work on acting in a more sustainable manner. Before being told this information by the teachers I had no clue that I had these traits. And I’m more than grateful that I have been shown them and that I have been given the tools to improve on them. I also feel like my focus level in class has massively improved over the course of the year which is my biggest weak point as a person in general. I feel the reason I can attain focus on a regular basis is purely because I love being in class and I love learning about performing.
Bibliography
Voice –
https://r.search.yahoo.com/rdclks/dWU9NG9xcjhncGs0MGMzYiZ1dD0xNzQ5MDM3MTYzODc2JnVvPTcyOTgwMzk5MDkwNTY2MSZsdD0yJnM9MSZlcz1xZ3paaVZaQ0NSVTAzOUdZdzQzV3RCZ0N4Uzc1TlNpSk1uME0yTVBPM2JtQldMTXFrZ012Q05yTV9kcDRpYkJralEuZVZLTFNGVEln/RV=2/RE=1751629164/RO=14/RU=https%3a%2f%2fwww.bing.com%2faclick%3fld%3de8Qcp7rOIJku8TG3e–ZpJ8TVUCUxvvIxTPzCPyqCNiAbB-t-L4GHTxI8wo2V0nubfRTRsvkSMlGI2agnTG2eQQHPt8OHjcL9iFNyjAJCQPNQJyTs6oiCPwFfTZ5Ky_iiTbpALWeegOI-GfcG8kp3PmRcDFfACnltEoDT8OKLAxZiOGJvracN8ZAdtImtMDLRMdxfK4A%26u%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%26rlid%3df3041c524752180b67fc7412773ea8aa/RK=2/RS=4TsTT_Fq8AnZ0dnpd1xj.iBD2Ac-;_ylt=Awr.pL1rMEBo6gEAgb8M34lQ;_ylu=Y29sbwNpcjIEcG9zAy0yBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNvdi10b3AtcGxh;_ylc=X3IDMgRydAMw?IG=0afea4bdd0d44ad8af01e8abda0b3c21
Acting –
standout moments for me
- My focus – when I was researching the honey badger with extreme focus and strong intent.
- Being creative – writing my own song for my solo assessment that is not at all my style and performing it Infront of people.
- Showing consistent 100% energy – build up to/performance of ‘speak easy’ dance
- Natural acting – filming scenes with Katie Teddy, Liv
- Believable acting – endowment Alex palmer – me and Darcy performing till the stars come down.

Esther. Applying Actioning technique.

Stage combat script for presentation with Sophie.