Practical Development Portfolio
Introduction
Since the start of my training, I have been working to improve my skills across singing, dancing and acting, as well as my confidence overall. Near the beginning of the year, I made a personal development plan (PDP), where I set my goals for the year, along with smaller targets to help me reach them. Through this, I identified my main areas to improve, which included chest voice in singing, coordination and energy in dance, letting go in acting, with the biggest one being confidence.
Below is a copy of my PDP, which I have updated throughout the year to keep my goals relevant and give me clear things to work on. I also added more targets after feedback week in January, so I was on the same page as my tutors and working on the things I had been given feedback on. This helped me take more responsibility for my progress and stay consistent with my development.
The goals I have set are important for me as a performer wanting to work in the musical theatre industry as confidence and strong technique across all three disciplines is a key part of performing.
To track my progress, I have used tutor feedback, self-reflection, and practice in lessons and in my own time which has helped me recognise my strengths and the areas I still struggle with. For example, while I am determined to improve my improvisation skills, I have realised that overthinking and self-consciousness can sometimes hold me back.
This portfolio will reflect on my progress across singing, dancing, and acting, looking at where I started, the work I have done, and how I have improved. It will also highlight the areas I still need to work on and set targets for my continued development as a performer.
Voice
When I started the course, I knew I needed to work on my chest voice in singing. I also realised I had a lack of confidence and I sometimes struggle to connect to a piece because of this. These are things I have been trying to develop this year as nowadays, chest voice is needed for a lot of musicals, so it’s something I want to be able to do, and confidence is so important to aid stamina, versatility, and storytelling in a song.
One of the hardest parts of starting to develop my chest voice was explaining how I struggle to my singing teacher because it’s mainly a confidence issue. This makes it hard for me to describe because I didn’t know what the mental barrier that stops me from using chest voice in front of people is, and this made it difficult for me to try and improve by myself. After this became the main focus of my singing lessons, I was given some exercises to help me sing higher notes with thicker vocal folds because improving my technique was the first step to feeling more confident with belting.
This audio includes some of the exercises I have been using as well as me working on “Wherever He Ain’t” from Mack and Mabel and “Killer Instinct” from Bring It On.
As you can hear, some of my singing does not sound great, but I know I have a long way to go with belting and feeling confident while doing it. The fact that I’m anywhere near belting the notes is progress and I’m learning to be happy enough with that for the time being.
Alongside this, I was also working on not singing through my nose with my singing teacher. This is because I get ill a lot and have really bad hay fever and that affects my singing, so learning to sing without air going through my nose became something we looked at often in lessons. The following audio shows one of the exercises we did to drill this in. I found that this also helped me project more which is sometimes a challenge for me. The audio also shows the progression of my chest voice singing “Disneyland” from Smile.
In our Singing Technique lessons, we looked at the following table and diagram which help inform what vowel makes singing a certain note easier. The most useful one for me was the “hod” vowel because I’m struggling with singing higher. Our tutor explained to us that you don’t have to alter the sound, just the shape of your mouth, and it aids the note you’re singing. This has helped me alter how I sing things by myself instead of needing someone else to tell me what vowel would help me sing a note. This is important because I may not be able to afford a singing teacher to help me constantly in the future, so figuring things out for myself is an essential skill.
As much as I don’t feel like I have improved a lot, I am hitting higher notes in chest voice more often. I’m feeling more comfortable belting “Disneyland” in my room, when previously I was too worried about being heard so my confidence has definitely improved, even if not by a lot. I’ve also been practicing acting through song more when I sing instead of adding it in later in the process. This has helped me forget about the fear I have of cracking on a high note. I have been trying to feel more in “the Zone” rather than overthinking when I’m singing, something I found useful in Andrew Evans’ book Secrets of Performing Confidence and something I have found works for me in acting as well.
I still want to feel for comfortable on higher notes in chest voice and I know it is important for me to keep going with the exercises I have been doing but I am proud of what I have accomplished so far. It’s only been a few months since I started working on this with my teachers, but I can already hear improvements, even if they are subtle. Now, I want to be more confident getting up in our Acting Through Song class because I’m still finding that difficult and I want to improve my control and consistency as I feel this will boost my confidence.
Dance
At the start of the year, I knew I needed to improve my strength and flexibility as well as my coordination – due to my slow processing, and my confidence. In September, I was struggling in body conditioning, I confused my rights and lefts in ballet, and I found coordination, and therefore, accuracy difficult in tap. These are quite necessary things in dance, so I knew I would need to do a lot of work to get to a reasonable standard. Also, I really enjoy dance, but I find the performance side of it quite stressful, and my lack of confidence affects my characterisation when dancing. This is something I have also been trying to work on.
I have been developing my skills by using my warmup slots on a morning to go over choreography with my peers to make sure I’m getting things right, I run exercises or dances in class if I am not part of the group actively performing so I’m getting the steps in my head and I take part in a student led extra class where we learn new dances every week which helps with pick up skills. I don’t have a lot of space in my flat so I can’t properly dance there, but I have previously found visualisation useful and after looking into it with ‘Dance Imagery For Technique And Performance’, I discovered that studies show imagery in dance can help with learning technique, expression and even injury rehabilitation, which is useful to know in case I get injured.
I have been working on my coordination by going over an exercise we do in jazz that involves the head, arms and legs doing different movements on the right side and then the left whilst we count up to 8 and back again. If I’m completely honest, I think it’s the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to do. When we first learnt it, I could barely manage the arms but with a lot of practice I have managed to get the arms, head and counting right most of the time. We had something similar in our hip hop masterclass, but the legs changed every 4 bars. I also found this very tricky, but I managed to do it okay by the end of the class. To improve my accuracy, I have spent time going over things slowly to make sure I’m hitting all, the marks, or in tap, getting all the sounds. The following clip shows One Vision and Bruce, both dances with very fast and specific movements that I worked on to get right.
I think my confidence has slowly improved since the start of the year, although I do think the song choice makes a difference to how well I connect with a piece, but it’s still an improvement. My strength has definitely improved as well, however I do have some limitations that hold me back, like problems with my wrists and ankles that make holding a plank very difficult, but I’ve still made progress. I haven’t noticed much difference with my flexibility despite doing a 30 second split on both sides after nearly every dance class and stretching often. It could be that I’m making small progress, and I just haven’t noticed but it’s still a bit disheartening, especially considering I spent months in lockdown trying to get closer to a split and didn’t notice a difference then either. That said, I am determined to keep going with the things I have been doing but not doing too much as consistency is better than forcing the extreme. I am also going to start documenting my progress so hopefully I will be able to see my improvements. As for my accuracy in tap, my tutor has told me that I am getting the steps right, I just need to be louder, which I am slowly improving with, but it is something I need to keep working on.
Reflecting on my progress, I can see that most of what I wanted to improve still needs work but at the same time, I have made progress. I now know what specific things I can do to get better at the things I’m struggling with. For example, I know that my slow processing affects my coordination because I don’t have time to think about what I’m doing and I mix things up, especially when we’re doing quick movements. I know that practicing as much as I can will help because it builds up muscle memory, so I don’t have to really think about it. I have also found that in tap, the less I think about what I’m doing, the more accurate I am (once I know the choreography).
My main targets for now are my flexibility – I’m doing the 30 second split more often and I will start doing it in my own time and during the holidays, strength – I need to work on strengthening my wrists and ankles so I can improve my core or find ways of improving my core strength without damaging them as I want to avoid injuries like joint strain, and doing more coordination drills – I want to work on our jazz coordination exercise and the hip hop combination over the summer to improve them.
Acting
I knew when I started the year that I would find acting difficult. When I have a character that I have developed and I have spent lots of time learning my lines, I usually feel relatively confident but the rest of the time, I struggle with letting go and overthinking what I’m doing, especially with improvisation. This is obviously not helpful in the industry as confidence and being in the moment is important and improvisation is a good skill to have and can help when things go wrong on stage.
The first task of the year in our acting workshop was to do a 10 minute life story. I was not excited to do this task in front of the class as I am not the most confident, especially when I’m being myself. However, when I started planning what I was going to say, I found it quite fun and when I had to show it, it got easier as it went on as people found it funny and interesting which made me more confident. Since then, I have tried to put myself out there more in my acting classes, for example, I have got up for solo improvisation tasks, which I didn’t think I’d do willingly. I am learning to trust the process more as well since the task where we had to create our own character from an object. I thought it would be really difficult, particularly when the object I had was a snail shell and I had no idea what to do with it at first, but I quickly built a character and a backstory. We had to use these characters in an airport scene that lasted most of our acting session and we had to take them out into Leeds for an hour and a half. I found these tasks really interesting as I stayed in character for the whole thing and discovered that being in this character completely stopped my internal monologue, which is usually constant for me. The task proved to me that I can stay in character and interact with others for an extended period of time which is something I thought I would find really tricky.
Something that really helped me with mindset was our acting tutor Tyrell’s talk about shame. He said that shame is something we learn, not something we naturally have, and this made me realise that it is something that can be unlearned with time and effort. I also found Stanislavski’s ‘An Actor Prepares’ helpful for combining mindset and technique. He explored expressing a character through intricate and deliberate technique whilst also allowing natural instincts to give a character an organic feel. This idea of releasing the subconscious while controlling the conscious has helped me understand that I can be prepared as an actor to portray a certain character, but I have to let go and react similarly to how I would to create a believable performance. Another thing I have found useful is knowing that there will always be a gap between what we feel and our ability to express what we feel. This made it easier for me to understand that sometimes I might feel like I’m acting in a believable way, but it might not come across that way and vice versa.
Currently, I am in ‘The Band’ the musical, where I play Young Claire. This role has challenged me in quite a few different aspects. First of all, I am playing the younger version of a character in the show, so I have had to match my acting choices to another actors’. Luckily for us, our director was kind enough to give us a little bit of time at the end of a few rehearsals to properly chat to our counterparts so we could figure out little mannerisms and walks for our characters. I also spent a lot of time in rehearsals watching the actor playing Claire and writing down things that she did and were I could use them. Below is some of the notes I made.
The other thing I have had to work hard on is a Stockport accent. This is not something I have ever really heard never mind tried to replicate. Thankfully, we had an accent coach give us a short tutorial on the accent and also my counterpart found it quite easy to learn and she sent me a voice recording of her reading my lines which was incredibly useful. Here is an an audio clip that shows when I first started learning the accent, the help I got from my counterpart and a recent rehearsal.
Overall, I feel more confident getting up class and I am enjoying acting a lot more. My goal is to keep building my confidence, develop my character work more, and work on accent consistency. I am happy with the progress I have made throughout the year and I hope I can keep going with my targets.
Conclusion
The progress I have made this year has been really important for my drama school journey. I know I still have a way to go in all three disciplines, but I am proud of what I have achieved so far. If I could change anything, I wish I had learned to take things less seriously earlier on. Obviously, I take my training as a whole serious, but sometimes I need to stop stressing over little things that make me feel less confident. I am glad I am realising this though. One of my goals for next year is to start sorting my repertoire folder now so I can have my songs learnt and ready for next year which should help me with confidence in Acting Through Song, as it’s probably the class I get the most stressed for. My other goals are to improve my technical consistency, integrate my skills better and improve my stamina, strength, flexibility and coordination in order to become a more versatile and reliable performer.
This year has highlighted the importance of self-awareness, taking on feedback, resilience and consistent effort in my personal development. I now have a clearer understanding of my strengths, weaknesses and next steps to continue my improvements. I may not have achieved everything I wanted to this year, but I am realising how vital the progress I have made has been and I am even more determined to keep going.
Bibliography
Donnellan, D. (2002). The Actor and the Target. London: Nick Hern Books.
Hamilton, L. (2008). The Dancer’s Way: The New York City Ballet Guide to Mind, Body, and Nutrition. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin.
Franklin, E.N. (2013). Dance Imagery for Technique and Performance. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.
Herman, J. (1974). Wherever He Ain’t from Mack and Mabel [Sheet music]. New York: Music Theatre International.
Hagen, U. (1973). Respect for Acting. New York: Macmillan.
Evans, A. (2013). Secrets of Performing Confidence. London: A&C Black.
Miranda, L.M. (2011). Killer Instinct from Bring It On: The Musical [Sheet music]. Milwaukee, WI: Hal Leonard.
Hamlisch, M. and Ashman, H. (1988). Disneyland from Smile [Sheet music]. Milwaukee, WI: Hal Leonard.
Orton, J. (1990). The complete plays. New York: Grove Weidenfeld.
Konstantin Stanislavski (1936). An Actor Prepares. [online] Read Books Ltd. Available at: https://www.craftfilmschool.com/userfiles/files/An%20Actor%20Prepares.pdf.
