Overall i feel my process didn’t work very well, but taught me a lot about how i work as an actor. At the beginning of this study block i felt connected with the piece and felt i had the ability to play around with it and make it fun and engaging. As time went on I felt more comfortable with my lines as well as understanding my characters motivations however i was struggling with following a score and doing specific movements at specific times. As we got closer to the performance date I started to feel disconnected with the character and the scene and focusing to hard on the specific movements and actions that were needed.

Something that I didn’t realise would help me was the repetition at the beginning of the rehearsal process. This gave me a lot of confidence in the scene as we would read through the script then get up and improvise it. I found that i learned my lines incredibly quickly as i would be using active recall to remember them during every improvisation. I also found that the improvisation gave me the opportunity to play around with my character and really bring him to life and to live truthfully in the moment.

I really struggled with setting out specific movements to do and repeating them in every run of the scene. There were certain movements i did remember to replete every time, such as whipping down my cape hood every time i said “my name is drake” and hissing when Wysteria asked if I drank blood. However, I am used to working of impulses so certain movements that we had agreed to repeat would feel character driven in some runs of the scene but in other run it felt robotic. This affected my ability to live in the moment and play around with the character.

This module has changed my understanding on how to interact with a piece of text. My old process would have been t learn lines and then to move onto staging and characterisation. Whereas the techniques we were taught during this module gave me the opportunity to work on my lines, staging and characterisation all together.

I have never used improvisation in this context before, I was always taught to only improvise if absolutely necessary, however from this project i have been able to understand the importance of improvisation. Improvising can help to create a space where you can experiment in lots of different ways. With both your scene and your character without having to decide on anything and without anything being deemed “wrong”.

In conclusion, i feel my understanding of what i can do to connect with a character has improved. I need the ability play around and experiment with my character behaviours. Having the opertunity to see how my character naturally behaved gave me a stronger understanding of drake, although as i had to start setting specific actions i lost the creative expression i had when just experimenting. This is something i can apply to future practice by giving myself the opertunity to improvise with my scenes, both so i can learn lines easier and so that i can find my characters personality, but i will know that for it work well for me to only set important specific actions.