To begin with, I believe my biggest point of improvement this year would be my willingness to make bold mistakes in class. At the beginning of the academic year, I was scared of making any mistakes in front of my peers as I believed performing for the class was a final product and result of my acting. This led me to making safe and easy choices, such as performing exactly as the writer may have intended instead of following my own gut instinct and unique interpretation of the character (during our first Reading Week, I performed in a production of Streetcar Named Desire in the role of Steve — I did not put too much thought into the character and thus my performance was quite bland, just an ordinary American man.) However, after our Uta Hagen sessions with Alex Palmer in Term 2, I realised that acting and rehearsing can be seen more as a lab in which you can experiment, where it wasn’t a catastrophe if I messed up and was actually celebrated, rather than having a finished product on day 1. This resulted in me making bolder choices in class (for example: Endowing my toothbrush as a torture device in a SAW-esq trap) whilst also helping me create a stronger bond and trust with myself, that I can test my ideas and not beat myself up if they go wrong.
“You must never feel badly about making mistakes … as long as you take the trouble to learn from them.”
― Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth
In the video above, you can see my (in the orange shirt and white vest) acting on stage is very sheepish as I do the bare minimum in terms of interacting with my fellow actors on stage, keeping it very safe.
My confidence in myself as an actor was very low when I first arrived at Drama School, I’d never studied GCSE or A-Level Drama and found myself with a slight imposter complex, that I wasn’t as good as everyone around me. This in-turn made me retreat into a sort of metaphorical acting cocoon, where I didn’t really perform my best work for the first term. Alex Palmer’s Uta Hagen methods as well as end of first term discussions with Tom, Jo, and Eilon, slowly encouraged me to come out of my shell across the second term. I’m proud to say that what finally pushed me out of my “cocoon” and allowed me to perform to the best of my abilities was when I wrote, directed, and acted in my own short play. This showed myself that I still have a great ability to act and that I’m worthy of being here at Leeds Conservatoire. If you compare the image above (me in the white shirt) with the video from A Street Car Named Desire you can see a clear improvement in my abilities to interact with my fellow actors
In light of the aforementioned exercise in Endowment during Alex Palmer’s lesson, during this hectic bold choice for the exercise my classmate noticed something in my breath support: I didn’t have any. This was confirmation of something I had been expecting for a while, my breathing was unmistakably unsustainable on stage, and I found my voice to be weaker after just a three day performance run whilst I was in high school productions that were vocally demanding, such as The Crucible and Death of a Salesman. After packeting up my ego and throwing it away, I began to take on my peer’s constructive criticism of my performance. I began working twice as hard to ensure that my breathing was always supported, during Sight Reading, during Alex’s Uta Hagen Exercises, whilst I’m waiting in line to buy groceries at Sainsbury’s. Paying extra focus to my diaphragmatic breathing that Joe had introduced to us in Term 1. Slowly, my supported breathing began to become more natural. As of right now, I would say I still have a long way to go, as I believe I am breathing sustainably around 60 percent of the time I am on stage however that crucial 40% could be the result of me losing my voice during an 8 show a week run. I have however received praise for my sustainable breathing in my voice examination, so I am sure I am on the right path.
