units 1-4 skills audit

UAL - Level 3 PaPA - Acting Pathway - Unit 1 - 4

~Ilonka Flora

Unit 1

skills audit

My main skills in performing arts are acting and singing.
I am on a performing art level 3 BTEC course, and this requires:

• Confidence: This is one of the most important skills needed in order to pursue performing arts. 
• Improvisation: During auditions for this course, I performed a monologue, it was a 'sad' piece, but I was told after performing it to try again but this time, to tell the story with humour
• Freeze frames: This helps to engage with the audience. Use of body language, levels and facial expression helps the audience understand whats going on in the freeze frame. Usually, freeze frames are used to tell a story in a frozen picture state.
• Completing things on time
• Motivation: This is also one of the other most important skills needed in order to pursue any career really, you must find your motivation, whether it's your life-long dream or you really enjoy it. Find a reason to do the work. Also speaking of motivation, always try to understand your own characters' motives. What motivates them to do what they do.
• Team worker: This is again, another important skill needed for this career. You will need to work with other actors, directors, and the technical theatre crew. Being able to contribute ideas and listen carefully to others is important.
• Independence: Able to follow any given instruction and do it sensibly and in the right time frame. Also able to follow instincts or if something appears wrong I can react in the correct manner.
• Friendly: It's important to be polite, especially in the drama/acting world because having connections is important, along with building a positive and good reputation.
• Good communication: It's easy for me to contribute to any given ideas, and I am able to speak well with others and listen well to their ideas. It's important that you listen to everyone's ideas and take the best ideas.. avoid conflict to avoid wasting time... try a voting system within the group.
• Basic acting skills: I am able to project my voice constantly, I can enter into another character and engage the audience, I can memorize lines, Having the right dedication and energy to perform and having a creative insight, which helps develop a character. I was apart of Drama club and performed Snow white in my secondary school.
• Good English skills: I enjoy reading always, I was in the top class during secondary school for the last two years.
• Singing skills: I did Music GCSE, I achieved an A, my main instrument was my voice, I was in the choir, I performed a classical piece called 'Caro mio ben', and I would have professional singing lessons once a week. I wrote two songs for my creative tasks.
• Performance skills: I've performed in school events (Singing) as a duet and as a group.
• Basic knowledge drama techniques: I know the basic techniques for what is needed to convey meaning and tell a story to an audience
• good emotional depth: I am able to find a memory within myself, in order to play emotion into my character, I even go as far as to try and relate or see myself in their shoes (Empathy)
• able to perceive my own understanding of a character and portray that through my voice and body. body and voice
• Right context: When auditioning for this course, I had read my monologue and perceived it my own way, but I also had to understand which way and how I should say things so that it is in the right context.
• Engaging with the audience: Even though my audience was one person during my audition I believe was able to convey meaning to them, and help them see from my point of view and really capture the story within their minds.

Now after the performance:

The  new and older skills I have developed are:

• Character development: I was able to take a character (Lady Montague) and develop their objectives in order to build on their actions and motives.
• Spatial Awareness: Through workshops, I learnt that being too close to other actors whilst performing on stage creates 'kiss or kill'. I need a true motive to be so close to other actors on stage. Example: Lady Montague is usually close to Montague on stage because they're married.
• Maintaining character: I've learnt to avoid 'corpse-ing', which is when you break character, i.e. laughing. Our teacher challenged us to stay in character for thirty minutes throughout the entire duration of Romeo and Juliet, even when we are offstage too.
• Right context: Shakespeare vocabulary isn't easy to understand firsthand, as a class we went through each word, in order to understand and then perform the lines in the correct and suitable context, this way we perceive it correctly e.g, Jokes that we wouldn't understand in 2017. 
• Engaging with the audience: I was able to develop this skill, through learning how to control stage spacing and highlighting moments such as the ensemble piece (Party scene) where everyone freezes except Romeo and Juliet to show the intent of focus on them. The audience knows where to give their attention and this also keeps them engaged.
• Rehearsing skills: This is where independence plays a great part, you must learn your lines first in order to rehearse as a group, rehearsing time should be taken seriously because it is practice time, time is given for you to truly explore any ideas as an actor or director. With his time given, you can polish moments and add details to bring a scene together.
• Stanislavski: We've learnt that Stanislavski's technique encourages actors to recall emotional memory in order perform a realistic piece.