Introduction
After three straight years of auditioning, I was so grateful and overjoyed to land a place here at the Conservatoire. I felt more than prepared to begin my professional training as this proved to myself that I had the dedication and passion to succeed. I knew that I wanted to go into this course prepared to fully immerse myself and begin taking ownership of my process immediately; I was, however, nervous about how I would balance everything. I had learnt on my foundation course that a poor work-life balance would burn me out quickly and make it harder to be present in classes to the utmost extent. As such, I placed an underlying focus throughout this year to prioritise my personal life in order to support my training. I had varying success; sometimes pushing myself too hard, sometimes not hard enough; but overall this approach helped me to maintain momentum to get the most out of this year. Being influenced to actively reflect throughout this year has highlighted the stand out moments of the year and areas where I would like to improve going forward.
Creating a character
Something we did within the first term was create our own character from scratch. We chose an object as a stimulus, created a story as to why this character had the object and then spring-boarded from there. I was surprised by how well this exercise worked for me. I expected to have writer’s block and doubted my ability to come up with anything interesting – and yet in practice, the ideas flowed very naturally. Through experiences like this, I have come to trust in my own creativity and my character choices. We thought about our hobbies and interests in artistic development class and I noticed how many of my hobbies actually do flex my creative muscles. I was able to look back at this task and appreciate how simple pastimes, like playing creative video games, supported me. For example, I realised that I’ve actually been creating characters and storylines for years, as in ‘the Sims’ I create characters with backstories and relationships. This realisation enabled me to have confidence in developing my skills in different forms.
After creating the initial story for my character (who I named Juliet), I was able to put into practice techniques such as Stanislavsky’s ‘given circumstances’ to fully flesh out my character. This involved providing the ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘where’, and ‘why’ to build the character’s environment, history and situation. It’s useful to do this so you can be extremely detailed in order to “supplement [the character] with more and more imagination, until you have achieved such a similarity to life that it is easy to believe in what you are doing”(Stanislavsky, 1936:57). I also explored techniques that I hadn’t tried before. I used Laban’s “efforts” (discussed in ‘Laban’s Efforts in Action’), a movement analysis system coined by Rudolf Laban that identifies and categorises eight fundamental movement qualities; also known as ‘efforts’. I thought about the fact that “most people have energetic qualities that are as a result of an internal dynamic” (Sellers-Young, 2001) and felt it was important to understand how my character would express different emotions and how this would manifest in their body. I therefore experimented with physicalising different Laban efforts in order to build familiarity with them, and then later in improvisational exercises, discovered which efforts to use for each emotion. For example, I drew upon the feeling of the ‘slashing’ effort, a movement that is heavy, indirect, and quick, when my character felt angry. Having an internal sense of ‘slash’ helped me embody the emotion because feeling it internally, changed my outward physical expression. Using Laban’s efforts to create internal dynamics allowed me to give Juliet energetic qualities that otherwise may have been hard to access. This allowed me to learn more about how Juliet functioned as a person, grounding her physicality in reality, thus making her feel more alive.
Going into this much detail was sometimes challenging though, as I realised that some of the questions Tom, our acting teacher, had tasked us to answer, I usually don’t consider when creating a character. Since Tom was not checking our preparation, it would have been easy to not push myself to go that deep and answer all the questions, but I saw this as a good way of practicing holding ownership of my process. As the work was reliant on my own discipline and I wanted to get the most out of the task, I knew I needed to push myself. Ensuring I did the set tasks as well as my own preparation, I saw how important discipline is and came to trust my process significantly more. I was rewarded for the extra work I put in when we came to do a variety of improvised tasks where I was able to really play; for example, one lesson we were told to act in character as if we were in an airport waiting for a flight. Thanks to my extensive preparation, I was able to remain in the moment and bring offers whilst in character without hesitation. After seeing how effective this process was, throughout the year I continued to do detailed character preparation. From this, I now see that it would be useful to work out a consistent methodology for creating a character that works for me so I have a go-to way to quickly begin building a character. This would then support me during year two projects, so over summer I will create a plan that I can reference when I need it.
Navigating an Injury
Something that I didn’t expect to be such a big focus for me this year was figuring out how to get the most out of the training whilst dealing with ongoing back pain from an injury. It impacted every aspect of my training and so I feel the need to acknowledge how it affected my development. Luckily, over the past year the pain has reduced significantly, but it took a while of me having to learn my physical boundaries and take care of my body. When I started in September, there were some nights where I couldn’t sleep because I’d pushed myself too hard during the day and I was in so much pain. I did pursue treatment and physio, but part of the problem was me ignoring the fact that I had to approach training differently. When doing our 20 minutes of cardio before dance, for example, I would try to do the exercise just as much as the rest of the class and then be in too much pain to focus on the actual lesson segment. I had forgotten that “our body is also our friend. It should be treated with great love and respect.” (Oida & Marshall, 2007:38) and instead was unable to participate and left frustrated.
When I read ‘an Actors Tricks,’ I realised just how unkind I was being to my body in trying to force it to function in a way it wasn’t ready for. So, I began to check in with myself each day to see what I was capable of and didn’t push myself to the extent of further injury. This meant I was able to pace myself in classes, participating in each task rather than only the first one really intensely and then having to stop. I was finding myself being able to fully engage with what I was being taught. I could feel what was particularly helpful and what I should continue to do. For example, I began noticing how the movement technique classes were a really good opportunity to stretch and use my body without putting too much strain on my back. We had a specific lesson where we focussed on spinal health and I immediately began applying the stretches we learnt to my morning warm ups, which definitely aided the healing process and helped improve my flexibility. I began to use my training to support my injury, rather than getting so angry at how my injury was detrimental to me. This mindset change helped my training this year as I could heal and participate in classes more, but also begin to understand how to take care of my body. As an actor, and a particularly clumsy person, it’s likely I will have future injuries so I can see that it has been helpful to learn how to cope and support that now.
Despite being a hindrance at first, I feel that this pain actually accelerated my understanding of how movement, voice and acting skills come together, as I could tangibly feel the difference that focusing on movement and supporting my back has had in supporting my voice and acting classes. This is still an ongoing process as the pain hasn’t completely gone but as my back has started to feel better, I have been able to push the boundaries more and improve my physicality and fitness to a greater extent. Therefore, I will continue to prioritise healing my back over the summer so I can hopefully come into second year in an even better position to experiment physically.
Dance and Choreography
When I saw dance on the timetable I was terrified. In the past, I have always struggled to keep up and would become embarrassed by how many mistakes I would make. I wanted to keep an open mind, but I did hold the assumption that these classes would be the same as my previous experiences. This, on top of my back pain, caused a lot of anxiety early on. However, once I began to take care of my body in order to engage more freely, things began to change.
When we created our own dance solos in term one, I started to enjoy just moving freely. Because I could make my own choices, the fears of hurting my back and making mistakes were eliminated. As dance doesn’t come naturally to me, I thought about exercises from other classes that I could use to create dance moves. I remembered an exercise that helps with alignment where you lift your arms and shoulders as if being a puppet attached by strings. This inspired me to apply this to a dance context, using puppet-like movement then devising movement from there. I was then able to apply viewpoints (Mary Overlie, 2016), a practice that provides a framework for exploring movement that was taught to us in devised movement classes. I used this in order to diversify my movements, for example by thinking about how time could be explored by speeding up the movement of becoming a puppet. I still wouldn’t say I am a dancer, however this showed me that I have more ability to move than I had put upon myself. I ended up really enjoying every dance class and found learning different styles to be a really fun way to experience different ways of moving.
An example of an early rehearsal of my dance solo, this was the first time I have ever danced alone.
Vocal Warm Up
Before beginning this training, I only had a basic understanding of what I could do to support my voice; I would mostly focus on articulation, doing tongue twisters in order to stretch and strengthen the muscles involved in speech. Over the past year I have come to understand each component that is essential in voice work. In classes, each component was broken down for us and we were provided exercises that would develop each area. I also read ‘Finding your voice’ by Barbara Houseman, which I have found to be a comprehensive tool in developing my voice as it has consolidated and developed my understanding of the components taught in class.
I created a personal warm-up to use before performances, developing it throughout the year, that focuses on each component that facilitates vocal production. I began by applying exercises that I had learnt from various classes, mostly from voice classes as we had covered all of the bases, but also exercises from movement classes. For example, I found specifically ‘the banana stretch’, which I learnt in movement technique, especially useful. It is an exercise for alignment and breath work and is a particularly helpful stretch for me as I hold a lot of tension in my back and ribs due to my injury. In releasing this tension, I can have more freedom in my movement and I can breathe deeper; this allows for more power in my voice as there is a sufficient amount of air to create a supported sound.
I then wanted to improve my warm up by reading the ‘warm-up’ chapter in Barbara Houseman’s ‘finding your voice’. Realising I didn’t include much text work in my warm up, I implemented one of her text based exercises that helps with connecting with and embodying the text. After adding this exercise, I was satisfied that my warm-up not only covered all the aspects of voice, but also was effectively catered to my needs. Now, I feel I can effectively warm up for any performance and I can cater the warm up depending on my physical and vocal condition. For example, when I feel particularly stiff in the morning I give more time to alignment based exercises and add more stretches to release tension, and when I feel more anxious I spend more time on breathing and grounding exercises.
Vocal Development
Through voice classes and exploration in my one-to-ones, I have understood and begun working on areas that I need to improve on. For example, I began to realise I needed to work on alignment (referring to the proper positioning of body parts, like the chest, shoulders, and head) as I tend to lock my knees which affects posture and can cause unnecessary core tension, affecting breathing, resonance and projection. I also realised that improving my posture would release some tension in my body and would improve my back pain. So, over the year I made sure to take note of any alignment based exercises and stretches to use outside of classes. Since making a conscious effort to keep my shoulders back and in line with the back (I usually would hold them slightly too far forward), and taking time to stretch my shoulders, I have noticed reduced tension in my shoulders. However, I still haven’t figured out how to fully soften my knees. Conceptualising this has been a big challenge, so this is something I am still going to research and discuss with tutors.
Something I was aware of before this academic year started; and was pointed out again after the voice assessment in April; was that I tend to use vocal fry, especially at the end of sentences. Vocal fry is when the vocal folds in the throat are pressed towards each other and relaxed, creating a creaky sound which can be negative as it reduces resonance and projection. In my one-to-one sessions, I have explored why I may do this and how I can avoid it. Fry can be caused by a lack of breath support so I have been using exercises for deeper breathing and stretches for my ribs to help them expand more, implementing these exercises into my warm up. My tutor, Jo, also had me perform a monologue, intoning at the beginning of each sentence. Intoning is when you recite the words in a prolonged singing tone and can help with habitual vocal fry because it involves practicing control and stabilisation of the vocal cords in a way that reduces the creaky sound. I found that after doing this I was using vocal fry less and less. I will continue intoning regularly so I can focus on precise muscle engagement and reducing my vocal fry. I will be creating an exercise/warm up plan to do over summer and throughout second year to help me improve in the specific areas, like vocal fry and alignment, that need addressing.
The Woman’s Voice
Over Christmas, something that really lit a spark for me was reading ‘The Woman’s Voice’ by Patsy Rodenburg. Her writing is incredibly powerful, her appreciation for women and their voices moved me, and I suddenly found that I resonated with voice work more than I had before. I was shown that training can be a form of empowerment; training my body, mind and voice to not only support myself as an actor, but also as a woman. When discussing people being able to express themselves with their whole voice, Rodenburg reveals that she has “never met a woman, who has been able to do this. All of them have been punished in some way for daring to be whole and fully present in the world.” (Rodenburg, 2023:8). I found this to be heart breaking but I also recognised it in my own experience. I found myself being able to recognise potential reasons why I held certain vocal habits and tensions through Rodenburg’s exploration into how women’s mistreatment has affected our voices and presence. Things as simple as wearing heels and tight clothing to, ‘the mocking, the scorn, the pacifying, the oppression, the taming of our power. And the other enemy, the self doubts and grief that the outside tensions breed in us’ (Rodenburg, 2023:22) And though linking these habits to the experience of being a woman doesn’t really solve them, it certainly made me more determined to fix them.
In my one to one sessions it was pointed out to me that I breathe quite shallowly and don’t fully release, and I thought well yes, I have been taught to suck in my stomach since I was a child. Realising that the psychological reason behind this habit was due to internalised societal pressures, allowed me to come to terms with and directly target the root of the problem; rather than simply trying to stop the symptoms, i.e. the habit itself. Finding success in tackling habits this way and also connecting to voice work on a more emotional level, has ignited a new determination in me to improve. I see now that voice work isn’t as simple as being able to speak on stage, but it is also imperative for improving my presence as a woman.
In Yer Face Theatre
During term two and three, I was tasked with exploring ‘In Yer Face Theatre’ during ‘research for performance’ classes. This theatre style emerged in the UK in the 1990s and is bold and shocking. For the project, my group decided to perform extracts from Sarah Kane’s ‘Cleansed’. I found creating this piece to be one of the most challenging things I have done at the conservatoire. The play is filled with intimate and graphic content, so figuring out how to appropriately convey these whilst sticking to personal boundaries, but still doing the theatre style justice, was greatly difficult. This was challenging due to comfort levels but also because we had no director, we were solely working together as peers. I really saw the importance of an intimacy coordinator and fight director from the lack of them. However, since we had been trained in these areas we were able to be open about our boundaries and choreograph scenes safely. Though the process was sometimes a bit painful from feeling unsure at what to do, I came out feeling really proud of this project. I really saw all my skills come together: the understanding of intimacy, safety and choreography of stage combat; naturalistic acting, and connecting to emotional extremes.
Acting Assessment
For the acting assessment in March, I created a solo scene set within the world of ‘Ruffian on the stair’ by Joe Orton, playing the role of Joyce. To do this, we were directed to predominantly use Stanislavski techniques. For example, a big focus was using the unbroken line of action (Stanislavski, 1936) which is the idea that there is life for the character before and after the scene. So, I was able to use this to create a scene that would believably slot between two existing scenes in the play and draw inspiration to what the action would be. I then used Stanislavsky’s system, using his book ‘An actor prepares’, to create the performance. For example, finding my character’s objective and using tactics in order to drive towards and achieve the objective. Since this scene was solo, and usually I focus on the tactics being within the lines and driven towards another character, I realised I needed a different approach. Not having another character forced me to realise that there must be tactics applied to the physical actions of the scene also. I started actioning, using ‘The Actors Thesaurus’ (Caldarone & Lloyd-Williams, 2011), a thesaurus of transitive verbs in order to experiment with different ways of playing the actions, and found more drive for my objective than I usually do in considering each action. Thinking about why and how my character was cleaning a mug gave more intention and specificity to everything, making a more interesting and truthful performance.
Once I’d applied Stanislavski’s techniques, I wanted to push myself further. The scene that I created had very high stakes and was very emotive, and I was worried about how I could connect with no words (for example) I read “the body is the home of the actor and the territory where all experience lives: pleasure, pain, sadness and joy.” (Oida & Marshall, 2007:38) and thought back to when I used Laban to create specificity in how Juliet embodied emotions. I immediately applied the same process here, as I remembered how it added great depth and realism to the character in having an idea of how emotions would express through the body.
Upon receiving feedback, and in personal reflection, I didn’t achieve the level of emotional connection I aimed to, despite my preparation and effort. I have noticed that I have struggled with emotional connection as a whole this year. In the past this has never been a problem, so this is a new obstacle that I need to overcome. I think it is likely linked to my personal life, as I do think my mindset does impact my acting. I read an interview study exploring the psychological wellbeing in acting (Robb & Due, 2017)and it highlighted areas that I feel perhaps may be hindering my ability to emotionally connect. For example, it discusses how your friendships and the class group dynamics may impact your wellbeing. This year, I have been pushing aside my feelings and have struggled to be vulnerable with the people around me and I see that shutting off this side of me could be impacting my ability to be vulnerable when acting. Knowing this, I will make an effort to push myself emotionally and try out more exercises to emotionally connect. I have mostly experimented with Laban and Stanislavsky this year, but over summer I will research and try new methods that I can apply in second year in order to heighten my emotional connection.
Personal Practice
I really believe in supporting my training outside of class; doing my own reading, repetitive practice of exercises from class and taking care of myself. I wanted to develop my ability to maintain a positive wellbeing and focus on taking care of myself this year, as in Siddins et al (2016) paper they discuss that, due to the “need for artists to display strong resilience capabilities”, their skills to maintain wellbeing should develop before coming into contact with the industry. They suggest that wellbeing must be considered in the training environment. I agree with this wholeheartedly as I found keeping a positive mindset during years of drama school auditions hard enough; let alone when the stakes are higher like they will be when I leave the conservatoire and start looking for work. I struggle with various mental health problems and I know that in order to live healthily as an actor I need to better understand how to handle such intense training and “the precarious nature of building an independent freelancer” (Latekefu et al, 2013:65). With this in mind, I made sure to focus on eating balanced meals. I found this challenging to keep up with during a busy week, however I did notice that when I balanced my diet and ate proper meals I felt much more positive and energised. This improved my focus and stamina in classes, pushing me to continue the good habits. I also let myself rest when needed, which reduced how often I felt burnt out and reduced my panic attacks. I still have a way to go, as I have been experiencing emotional numbness which I need to improve on in order to ensure I can emotionally connect during a scene, but I am glad with the progress I have made in my wellbeing this year.
I found the books and articles I have read have supported my learning considerably, leading me to discover new things to be inspired about and receive some clarity on ideas and practices. Being more inspired has helped me feel motivated to explore other outlets of creativity. Artistic development classes helped highlight how my hobbies can support me as an artist and, as such, I thought about more things that I could do. For example, I started to write more often to come up with ideas of things to create and to develop my devising skills further. I think engaging in the world with an artist’s mindset has greatly helped in my ability to be creative as an actor.
I would have liked to have read more; I originally tasked myself to read a different book every week, which I did not manage to do. But in prioritising my wellbeing I found that I would have burnt myself out by forcing myself to read this much as I was still working out how to balance my life. I have learnt to respect that there is only so much I could have done this year, and I will continue to set myself ambitious goals but will not be unforgiving if I do not meet them. I knew I needed to prioritise the training, and being able to turn up and be focussed was so important in being able to do that. I found pressuring myself to do extra practice whenever I struggled mentally left me too tired to focus in class. So I learnt to be introspective in order to gauge when I should allow myself to be more ‘lazy’ in order to look after my wellbeing.
Conclusion
Overall, I am really happy about my growth this year. Despite very difficult challenges, I was able to rise above and learn from them whilst still maintaining a drive to improve. I worked hard to develop my skills and my mindset, and now can view myself as an actor, not just when I am on stage, but in my day to day as well. Seeing how all the skills and elements of being an actor come together and have a knock on effect has helped me to see why each thing should be given equal attention. For example, my personal wellbeing has an effect on my focus and my physical energy which will in turn translate to the productivity in the room. Also, from having an injury I have been able to see clearly how important the physical condition of the body is in supporting the voice. Even the classes I haven’t discussed within this portfolio have shown me vital ideas that I have been able to take forward into every other class, like cite reading helping me to engage with a script quickly and improvisation helping me to make offers. At the end of the year, we did a short performance which really highlighted this idea of bringing the skills together; my vocal technique has to be practiced enough to be unconscious in order to focus on the action and connection in a scene. I was able to really draw upon what I have learnt this year; to see what is clicking and what needs consolidating.
In order to prepare for the second year, I have created a summer exercise plan and some tasks to complete. I will do a warm-up everyday to reinforce this as a routine that I can take into second year, and also have longer exercises that I will complete 3-4 times in the week. The exercise plan aims to release tension in my knees, reduce my back pain and improve my vocal fry. At the end of summer, I will take note of whether I feel these areas have improved and then go forward with editing my warm up in response to this and focus on new areas. In improving my pain, I am hoping it will have a positive effect on my wellbeing, as physical pain has been linked to mental health (Gatchel et al 2007), which I am hoping would help towards emotional connection. In second year, I will work to be more vulnerable to support this also. I also will create a list of steps that I like to do when approaching a script, bringing together a variety of ideas and techniques, so I have a clear, consistent approach I can easily use. So far, I found elements of Stanislavski’s system helpful such as objectives and units as well as Laban’s efforts so these will be integrated into my approach. This and the exercises will take me into second year stronger and prepared to learn new things.
Bibliography
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