Introduction

After completing my foundation course in Acting and Theatre Arts, it provided me with a lot of confidence in acting and voice but never really focused on my passion for playing instruments. To begin with, I questioned if an Actor Musician course was right for me, as I felt like I was just an actor who could play instruments and could never be a strong enough to be an actor musician.

I absolutely love meeting new people and being able to share experiences, therefore feedback is something I have always valued, and this year even more so. Year One at Leeds Conservatoire has taught me to be proud of my mistakes and it is those mistakes which have helped me become a more successful performer, allowing me to realise this was the right course for me.

I have gained experience from both watching performances and taking part in workshops and classes. I am eager to further develop my vocal technique with Jo, create healthy habits in movement and combine both of these together throughout our projects in Year Two.

I have chosen to showcase my learning with a written reflection for key topics throughout Year One, followed by a short conclusion. I will pull all my findings together in the summative statement.

Let’s start at the very beginning… ENSEMBLE WEEK!

First picture of the Actor Musician cohort 2024 – 2027.

Actors and Actor Musicians 2024 – 2027.  

Festival of Dionysus – Claire Eden

The year began with The Festival of Dionysus, I was petrified because I didn’t even know who Dionysus was, let alone have any knowledge of any other Greek Myths and Tragedies. During this project, I found research was the most helpful method to understand what our class objectives were. After discovering lots of Greek tragedies and myths, the story that stuck out to me the most was ‘The Three Fates’. This focused on destiny and how they controlled other people’s lives and outcomes.

Claire led an activity where we made noises on our instruments in the rehearsal room, as we worked as an ensemble to create something ‘pretty’ out of chaos. As I wasn’t very confident in my guitar ability at this moment in the year, this activity really helped me to break my perceived expectation that we cannot make mistakes, which further opened up my imagination. I was able to successfully think of new and interesting ways to incorporate music into a piece whilst still effortlessly conveying a story. It was this skill that I integrated into our performance and successfully used our instruments as inanimate objects as well as musically: a violin bow as a walking stick, maracas as a turbine and a guitar as a barrier.

Video: Marry You – Bruno Mars – Darcie and Actor Musician’s ensemble adaptation.

As I come from a singing background, voice has always been something that I have a lot of pride in, and so I took the leadership role in arranging part of ‘Marry you’ – Bruno Mars, which was to be performed at the end of our piece. I focused on harmonies, repetition and tempo changes, which is evident in the second half of this video. This is where I believe I really came out of my shell as I shared and taught new ideas to our ensemble.

Music Lab

After a couple of Music Lab classes, we were tasked with covering a popular song and changing its perspective. We performed our cover of ‘Can I Kick It?’ – Tribe, as a musical theatre / cabaret piece rather than in its original R & B / Soul style. The week prior to our performance we had felt like we had hit a brick wall as we had created a background jazz style piece but were really keen on vastly changing the song. Comedy is something that I usually shy away from as it makes me feel extremely vulnerable, so when Laura gave us a nudge to try a comedic approach, I knew that this would be a big step for me.

That was the first “screw it” moment for me as I ventured beyond my comfort zone and was willing to try something new. Our feedback from Laura stated, “our seriousness conveyed comedy, and I am impressed with your energy”. The class were also very impressed with how much we had managed to flip the song into a completely different genre which allowed me to feel satisfied with our efforts. Having peer to peer feedback this year has really helped me develop as both a person and a performer – learning what others see on the outside has really helped me change what I give from the inside.

‘Can I Kick it?’ – An adaptation by Darcie and Sophie.

Looking back at how far I have come is really self-inspiring as I now have more self – confidence when performing the accordion, guitar and piano. In this video, I overcame obstacles of anxiety and stopped worrying about the chance of mistakes, instead giving my all into the performance.

Musicianship

Throughout our lessons, we have developed key skills such as listening to the pulse of the music and working as an ensemble. At the start of this process, I really struggled to understand the techniques behind some of the exercises such as the drum machine and the counting game, but over weeks I concluded that we were in fact using a ‘fun game’ to tune into other people’s awareness and learn how to subdivide. This was reflected when we came together for our final music ensemble assessment and we needed to sing, play, act and emote all at once without always being able to talk or gesture towards your other members. Here I learnt the importance of breath, and how a small intake of breath and fixed eye contact can non verbally signify the start of a movement or piece.

Day of Music Assessment

Final rehearsal before our assessment.

Switching instruments in my final assessment started to prove difficult when having only a couple bars rest to get both in the mindset of playing a different instrument and sustain a strong characterisation portrayal throughout. This was a big learning curve for me and the only thing that truly helped was practice and confidence in it working.

Research for Performance:

I have always struggled with demonstrating the context of a play, playwright or world throughout my performance, as I never understood the importance of it. In our first class, I was chosen to answer the question ‘who am I’ to which I responded ‘Darcie’ which I believed was the answer. However, it turned out Ben wanted to know who I was in more depth, considering my morals, background and beliefs. This answer of ‘who am I?’ was then taught to us as a character’s subtext. In this class I learnt that people see actors with many different views, and this has stuck with me throughout Year 1. There is no right answer in acting!

Teacher and Peer feedback from our performance.

When it came to performing our first project, my confidence had increased in my ability to create meaning for every action that I / my character did.

Photos from our first performance.

For our next project, we chose to study Antonin Artaud as our practitioner and chose to create our own adaptation of Lord of the Flies, inspired by the 1963 version (Peter Brook). After reading Artaud’s manifesto, we clearly understood that our main aim was to “disrupt the relationship between the audience and the performer”. To achieve this, we exploited the senses for example using the sound of crying and screaming to create a cacophony of chaos.

In an attempt to follow Artaud’s ways, we wanted to ensure no audience member had the same experience, so we used distance and change of space to do this. I stayed inside with four audience members and forced them to build a tent when the other students went outside in groups to hunt for a ‘pig’. Unsuccessful, they came back inside and realised that the other students and I were hiding the ‘pig’, (which was a box in which we gave importance to) which was behind us. This pig was filled with goo and the other actors inevitably killed it along with a member of their tribe, which was done to subvert thought and logic.

In our final performance we also continued developing this idea of using inanimate objects and giving them purpose, such as us popping balloons in front of people’s faces to demonstrate the brutalities of war and the unpredictability of bombs exploding. Once again, referring to Artaud’s objectives of shocking the audience, we played piercing sounds on our instruments and shouted “move”, this was done to replicate the screech of an air raid siren, and to rush the audience to a new location in the space.

As Artaud is big on improvisation, we decided to only plan six of the fifteen minutes and leave the rest up to instinct, something that I had never done before. Leading up to this moment, we did a thirty-minute animalistic improvisation to unlock emotions, complementing Artaud’s view that “The Actor is an athlete of the heart” – Artaud. This coincided nicely with him stating “It is not a question of suppressing the spoken language, but of giving words approximately the importance they have in dreams” in the theatre and its double. We chose to to give less emphasis to text and more to movement following ways in Artaud’s manifesto. See Image 1.

Section 3 blocking of Artaud Performance.

As we could never actually practice how the entirety of our performance would go, we used voice notes to record how we wanted to hit our main beats and memorised this pattern. This is one of our early blocking voice notes which really helped us to remember the beats of our performance and memorise our cue lines to change the leader of our section or the moment.

Mind map of Initial Lord of the Flies key words

Our Performance in action.

My Reflection

After this performance, I was very proud of myself as I was able to create believable characters. I loved how successful the audience participation was and how I was able to use my impulses in a creative way. Something that I think could have been stronger was our ensemble work as there were some moments where the audience were conflicted on what to do as too many people spoke at once. It also didn’t help that the room was extremely echoey as it distorted people’s voices and made them blur together. From this project I have discovered a love for improvisation and will therefore continue to use it as a way of finding a plot or character motif.

Acting and Character development

One of my favourite tasks throughout Year 1 was creating a character and taking them into Leeds city to see what a day in their life would be like. Awareness of character is an important part of Stanislavski’s methodology, which I discovered whilst reading ‘The Complete Stanislavski’s Toolkit’. Before reading, I had never spent time working out a historical background for my character and what their objectives and obstacles may be, so I found this activity very useful for my development as an actor.

I find choosing a character with a big personality is usually the easier option for me as I find having rowdy characteristics allows me to disguise nerves easier. I decided to take a risk and create a quiet and shy character – Blossom. I started developing this character’s background by using an object as given to me in one of our classes. This object was a candlestick holder, allowing me to begin creating a backstory for Blossom. She has an emotional attachment to it as her Grandmother had made it for her before she passes.

In one of our classes, we did a twenty four hour day in the life of our character, this was very helpful as it allowed me to discover more about Blossom. I did find it challenging in some moments as I hadn’t thought about Blossom’s sleep schedule or social life. It was an interesting exercise as I began to notice changes to my posture become altered by her lack of self-confidence. When walking around the space I was aware that I took note of my surroundings and began to smile at people who I deemed were not a threat.

Blossom – Character playlist.

I used this playlist as a way to delve into my characterisation as I imagined her working at a library when all of her other classmates would be at the pub. This was a successful technique as it allowed me to shut off the ‘real world’ and focus on Blossom’s world instead.

Blossom Character Profile

Blossom in Leeds

After studying ‘Ruffian on The Stairs’ by Joe Orton, I chose to create my own version of the character Wilson, a man whose brother had just been murdered and wanted his life to be over too. It was inferred through the text that Wilson was in love with his brother, and it was this subtext that supported my creation of Wilson. By watching ‘Prick Up Your Ears’ – a movie about Orton’s life, it further allowed me to see a glimpse of what this life is like. Orton was also in a gay relationship and sadly was murdered by his boyfriend. Throughout this devising process, I experimented with the unbroken line of action, ensuring I knew what had just happened before and what was about to happen after my scene. I found it very useful as it allowed me to realise that no character’s actions should be inevitable. Meaning that the character should be persuaded or shocked or surprised, it shouldn’t just happen.

The Stanislavski method of objectives and tactics.

Something that I am sure to take into Year 2 is to intentionally be bold and to take risks. If something goes wrong, then it must be fixed with the character’s objectives and intentions in mind. The most helpful piece of advice that Tom gave was to “take risks more freely” which is something that I will talk more about in my summative assessment. However, Tom noted that whenever I added an objective for every line that differed from the one prior, it was more engaging to watch as it ultimately “raised the stakes”.

Improvisation

Improvisation is something I struggled with, to me it always felt like it had to be funny. However, I realised that it really doesn’t have to be comedic as long as the story moves and an equilibrium doesn’t develop – a back and forth of similar text with the opposing actor. One thing that I will take with me into Year 2 is remembering how powerful “the void” is. As mentioned in ‘Respect for Acting’ by Haskel Frankel, this technique by Uta Hagan is where I hold space for a character or movement which helps the audience see a realistic side to the characters, giving moments of release. Using this technique enabled me to stay present in scenes and connect more realistically on stage.

Movement

This year, I think movement classes were the classes where I discovered the most. It all started in Eilon’s class where we began each class by throwing balls in a circle – aiming to create an ensemble. We added movements such as claps and turns, and I was proud of how I managed to catch the balls with little response time. In doing exercises like these, I worked out that my tension is held in my shoulders, which I have begun to work on releasing.

We then began to use music as a stimulus for devising. I have taken this skill and used it in other classes such as research for performance and acting. I discovered it allowed me to create a new atmosphere, giving me a compositional framework to devise around. Having music in the background made me think quicker, giving me permission to take risks with my movement sequences.

I have always struggled with devising solo dance pieces as I have never been a technical dancer. I used to compete in commercial dancing, but the choreography was all made for us and just required memory rather than imagination, so this exercise made me feel very apprehensive.

Donald set us the task of a writing a passage, with the simple brief of Open Hand – Closed Fist.

I decided to write a poem about what Open hand, Closed fist made me respond, and from this I was able to begin choreographing my own piece. I came to the realisation that I actually needed my movements to tell a story and that I should choose each move for a purpose, something I had not considered in the past. This really excited me, and I started to book out dance studios weekly to both practice this piece and fall back in love with dance.

Private Rehearsal footage

Our next project was Speakeasy, and I absolutely loved it! Our choreography was fast paced and technical, but it allowed us to create some quirky characters. Using inspiration for my character from Eilon’s classes, I created an energetic and loud character. Dressing from the 1950’s added to my excitement and my energy throughout. Performing as an ensemble allowed me to feel a lot less vulnerable as it felt like less eyes were watching me! However, I did push myself to do a duet in the final piece. I was very proud to show as I put a lot of work into it.

1950’s fashion moodboard

My costume.

Animal Studies

Animal studies was next, these classes helped me unlock my spine movement and realise the importance of personalised warm ups. I found these classes really helpful as I discovered ways to change the way my body moves as it allows to make improvements in physical classes. As I am studying the giraffe, I focused on carrying weight in my stomach to see how this change alters other characteristics of my body. For example, it altered my breathing patterns, making it slower, this change proved to be accurate as a giraffe has a breathing rate of 12 beats per minute.

Giraffe Neck Elongation.

I then tried to focus on my neck and how I can use elongation to create a sense of extra length. I found the research tasks really interesting as I discovered that humans and giraffes have the same number of vertebrae in the neck, only giraffes are a lot bigger.

The following week, I used crutches to mimic the giraffe’s two front legs. This was resourceful as I was able to use a different transfer of weight. I discovered through answering questions from ‘Expression of the physical being’, that a giraffe carries the majority of their weight in their knees and stomach. Obviously, this is very different to a human, but it made me aware of what to change to move in a more animalistic way. I noticed that giraffes legs move by rotation, so I tried to reflect this by moving my hips and shoulders in rotation with each step.

After our improvisation, I realised how much weight was relying on my wrists and ankles, making me realise that I needed to warm these body parts up more next time. I learnt how a transfer of weight really changes mannerisms and creates different circumstances and characteristics. With this, I want to use these techniques with human characteristics using weight to develop new ideas as my training continues.

Extract from ‘Expression of the physical being’ with questions from one of our research tasks.

Voice

My favourite classes this year have been my voice classes. Before coming to Leeds, I used to feel very vulnerable in voice classes and would never volunteer or be the one to begin making sound. Over the year, I have been extremely productive in these classes because I do daily warm ups at home.

With Jo, we have learnt how to release sound healthily. I believe I have succeeded at this because of my commitment to the Alexander Technique, which is also mentioned in ‘Finding your voice’. I have also found that it helps with my anxiety and stress, doing this for five minutes every morning has made me feel more prepared for the day ahead.

Individual warm up.

In our first few weeks, we worked on creating our own individual warm ups. After reading chapters from ‘Freeing The Natural Voice’, it made me realise how important they are. In developing our warm ups, I had realised that I usually forget to warm up my resonators. Exercises such as buzzing, and ‘ng’ noises really help.

Warm up Feedback

Something I have struggled with this year are accents. I find trying new accents really intimidating as I fear people will laugh. However, over the last few months, I have grown in confidence and have stopped caring about making mistakes, instead I have started to think about how much I have learnt by making them. I discovered that accents were all to do with tongue and its placement within the mouth. I found the technicality behind accents really fascinating. I realised that my tongue placement is in the front of my mouth – this is similar to northern accents, which aided my development in this accent.

Something that both Chris and Jo mentioned in their feedback was to try and find moments in scripts to use my lower register. This is something that doesn’t come naturally for me, so I have been trying to unlock this in our lessons and even in my voice exam. The week before our exam, we did a practice and Jo said that my “articulation and projection were spot on. Well done!”. Having praise in voice classes, was fulfilling as this I what I actively study and practice the most at home for.

This supported my artistic development, I took a risk using my lower register and I identified a good place to use it in my sonnet. This led to me creating a goal of using my lower register at least once in my next text assignment.

As I am a visual learner, drawing what we felt our voice was like was a helpful activity for me as it helped me see my progress over the year.

In poetry, I volunteered to perform; and Chris gave me lots of objects on the floor and asked me to work with the punctuation within the poem. I read my poem and picked up different objects on different words, an exercise inspired by Cicilly Berry. This was very effective as it allowed me to visualise the words that I was saying. The images that occurred helped me to tell the story more effectively. The class also thought this was successful as I picked up a shoe for “our toes” and a spray for “our noses” and a glove for “hold”. This was done subconsciously, and it amazed me how my brain just knew what I was doing. This helped the audience to follow the narrative. Chris said that I made the exercise “my own” and that he was “very impressed”. When connecting words to objects – the audience successfully remembered every word I said.

Performances and concerts I have seen since studying at Leeds Conservatoire.

Pianodrome at Leeds City Museum. (1)

Jazz nights at Casa. (2)

Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe – Leeds Playhouse. (3)

Benjamin Button – Ambassadors Theatre. (4)

Year 3 Actor / Actor Musician performance. (5)

Flatline – My new band! (6)

In photographs 1 – 6, you can see that I have engaged in various opportunities that both the Conservatoire and external companies have to offer. This has been through watching performances and taking part in them. This year, I have really discovered the importance of watching both live theatre and live music of different genres and analysing why performers have chosen certain characteristics and movements. Watching more shows both locally and in the West End has allowed me to create my own theatre more naturally and opened up my imagination by being exposed to new and diverse acting styles. Over the summer, I want to continue watching theatre and learning about different styles to aid my training and make me a more all rounded performer. I want to re-start writing songs and poems as I have begun to understand the importance of self-creation in this industry, and that you should always push yourself to try and be creative in new ways.

Summative Assessment

Over this year, I have changed my approach towards dance lessons. At the start of the year, I came to Donald’s classes with a face full of makeup as I was always self-conscious of how red my face goes when I do movement for a long period of time. I used to stand at the side where I couldn’t see in the mirror as I was always embarrassed of how I looked. Even when I used to dance competitively, I always felt ashamed of my redness and starting here was no different. Another thing I struggled with was contact work. I always backed out of duets as I was always afraid of being lifted or being the one who lifts. I tried to overcome this challenge by pairing with Lauren and as I trusted her, I began to gain more trust in myself. However, taking risks also came with consequences when a lift resulted in me getting concussion. Initially, this knocked me back psychologically, but I was resilient and became a stronger dancer as I wasn’t afraid of making mistakes anymore. I also then started to wear my hair slicked back and wore no makeup, instead using my energy to focus on my performance. This has taught me that, despite my vulnerability, I can overcome obstacles and take risks. Next year, and for the rest of my artistic journey, I am eager to keep the things that I have overcome, such as trust and communication alive. This year, I have really understood the importance of trust in an ensemble.

This year has been challenging, especially dealing with the struggles of endometriosis. Recently, I have undergone surgery for this, and it is during my recovery where I have learnt how important it is to rest and listen to your body. I have definitely started taking on both peer and teacher advice more this year, and this has helped me to further discover what my body needs. In Year Two, I am eager to carry on this awareness even without surgery anxiety, but continuing to realise that I am the only one who understands my body, and it should never feel too exhausted. I have really struggled to find a work life balance this year and have found myself worrying too much, overworking myself and getting stuck in a cycle. However, I am slowly coming out of this – I am allowing myself to read and absorb more theatre instead of watching things online as I have found this is a good way to help me switch off at night.

Over my first year, some feedback that has reoccurred is my ability to be bold and take risks. In one of our acting classes, I could feel my characterisation for Blossom coming to a halt, instead of worrying about what to do next, I decided to follow impulse. By doing this, I enabled myself to take a risk and jumped up on a chair at stage centre and shouted at the whole class, which was a real stand out point for me. The scene leading up to this involved a bomb threat, my character was given the ‘bomb’ in the scene and I had to convince everyone that it wasn’t me who had it. By doing something bold, it aided the scene and gave the other actors more to play off. By working as an ensemble, we further developed this scene and formed further alliances creating chaos. After this class, my peers questioned if I had been told to do this by our teacher and if it was planned, to which I proudly responded ‘No’. The validation I felt by taking risks was unmatched to any other feedback I had received before as I finally believed in myself, and I could see my hard work had begun to pay off. From this exercise, Tom told me that I “was committed to my actions” and he “enjoyed the sense of urgency building and the way I conveyed it was believable.” Taking risks is something that I have been trying to develop, especially in Alex and Tom’s classes. I believe I am slowly getting there.

Improvisation has been something that I have always shied away from as I found it too vulnerable. I felt that other people were better at it than me and this therefore created an extra layer of pressure. A piece of advice that has stayed with me this year was from Alex Palmer, who stated that the reason I wasn’t getting up is because I believe that others deserve to try out things more than me and by “facing fears and getting up” it will help me crush this fear. In improvisation, we really had to think on the spot and Alex would give us random scenarios that we had to immediately find a way to perform. This was a new style of acting for me and I found that not having preparation time threw me off as it was different from other methods of acting I had trained in before. This therefore challenged my acting process as I had to take more risks to serve the scene. I gained the skills of fast paced thinking and allowed myself to become more exposed and more vulnerable in making mistakes. My flexibility as a performer has increased throughout Year One as I have been able to adapt successfully to new ways of acting such as the ability to improvise more freely and volunteer myself more.

Next year, I want to give more committed time to practice on my instruments. I was shocked that I would be able to have my own accordion for the year and having this opportunity, alongside the 1-1 lessons have improved my practice habits and my ability to pick up new material. I have found that I often neglect my instruments when I have exams approaching and then stress that I haven’t rehearsed enough for something. I absolutely love playing the guitar, piano and accordion and don’t want to lose this ability next year.

Conclusion

Overall, this year has been amazing! Yes, there have been ups and downs, but every day I feel privileged to be studying here. I am surrounded with such a great community of people, both students and teachers and I have learnt so much about myself and my acting style. I know how to stand up for myself in situations I don’t agree with, and I don’t feel embarrassed to ask for help or question why I get certain feedback. I have become a stronger actor by learning more about my body, both internally and externally. I now know my limits, and when to stop and let my body recover.

Something that has really helped me grow this year are my teachers. I have found that the lessons where I have made bold choices are the classes that I have strived in, despite facing criticism. This year I have learnt to listen to all feedback and use it professionally to push my skill set in every class.

I can’t wait to see what Year 2 has to offer!

Bibliography –

Orton, Joe. (1964) The Ruffian on the Stairs – Read February 2025

Aeschylus. (456 BC) Three Fates within the Oresteia trilogy – Read October 2024

Mars, Bruno. (2010) Marry You – Accessed 2010

A Tribe Called Quest. (1990) Can I kick it? – Accessed October 2024

Golding, William. (1963) Lord of the Flies – Accessed December 2024

Artaud, Antonin. (1932) First Manifesto – Read March 2025

Martin, Bella. (2007) The Complete Stanislavski’s toolkit – Read November 2023

Frankel, Haskel. (1973) Respect for Acting – Read January 2025

Ewan, Vanessa. (2014) Actor Movement – Expression of the Physical Being – Read December 2024

Berry, Cicely. (1973) Voice and the actor – Read January 2025

Linklater, Kristen. (1976) Freeing the natural voice – Read November 2024

Houseman, Barbara. (2002) Finding your voice – Read February 2025

Lahr, John. (1987) Prick up your ears – Watched January 2025