Comedy of Manners

This semester is divided into 3 performances. We started with Shakespeare histories, which were only shown to our little groups, then we have Comedies of Manner, which are shown to the other semester students and staff, before finishing with Shakespeare tragedies, which I believe is also for semester students and the staff.

Yesterday were our performances, as well as tutorials, so other than dance night and my teas, we have been spending all of our time rehearsing.
It was so nice to finally get to see everyone in the program perform, since we are all in different sections. Another group was also doing the exact same scene as mine with Lucy the maid, which was kind of terrifying, but the styles were so different that it was okay. It was a lot of fun to see all the choices they made and how they played the characters. I considered reworking my entire performance to capture her childlike simplicity and innocence, but ultimately convinced myself to trust the work that I had done and do it the way we rehearsed 😉
As for my scenes, I think Lucy went pretty well. My sore throat came back in full force during the morning, so I was drinking lots of water and coughing a lot backstage, but I tried my best to be on voice, to enjoy being clever, to give the monologue a shape, and all of the other notes I have ever been given.

The Hay Fever scene, where I play Simon, who is a boy, went well as a whole, but I think it was probably my worst performance of it. It went a lot better for me in the run that morning. I was trying so hard to be loud enough and full of energy that I felt like I might have just been yelling more than anything. Still, people seemed to enjoy it and laughed a lot, so I either didn’t ruin it, or people just loved it in spite of me. I need to work on being better at knowing how a performance went. Either way, the  Restoration Comedies are officially done, and I am incredibly proud of all of us, including myself.
The tutorials were definitely interesting, with one of them making me think, for a good moment, that I should come and study here for one of the full time programs, so I could work on all of the things she was talking about, while the other tutorial sort of made me feel like they were questioning why I came in the first place. Still, you have to learn to deal with rejection and criticism in this industry, and they brought up some good questions I need to ask myself, and did give some advice of things to look at and work on for future performances.
We have a masterclass and a play this evening, then I get to explore London with some very special visitors before diving into Shakespeare tragedies next week 🙂

WE DID IT! 🙂

“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.”

-Winston Churchill

“We can do things the cheap way, the simple way, for the short-term and without regard for the future. Or, we can make the extra effort, do the hard work, absorb the criticism and make decisions that will cause a better future.”

-Mike Rounds