Reflection.

Romeo and Juliet is a classical story and when I read about it, I imaged a lot of scenes in my mind. But I never think about that I can remember all lines and perform Romeo and Juliet on the stage. I really love the main character, Friar Lawrence, in the show because he is an old man and he’s the calmest one in the whole story, that is why I choose him. Compare with my first performance, me and Sam improved a lot. Especially on blocking and actions. For blockings, after I watched the fall play The Dead, suddenly I understand why should I add into the scene and what actions should I use. After I watched the show, I began to know what means to relate yourself on the stage, to let yourself live on the stage. So during the show I put myself into the Friar Lawrence, I tried to guess what was his inner activities that what would he react when he was facing threaten by Juliet. Furthermore, I communicated with Sam about the actions when we do not speak about the lines, like when Sam threats me by using a knife when I took out the vial. Maybe is Sam speaking the lines, but at the same time, I should act scared to show my afraid rather than just standing like a robot. Also for blocking, in performance, we did not only stand in the same place to finish the whole show, instead of that, we added more movement to show the plot more clearly to the audience. However, there ’s also something I needed to improve, for example, the interaction between me and Sam, it has nothing to do with the actions, I want to talk more about the lines connections because I only remembered my lines, so I had no idea that when should I start speaking. Before the show, I tried to remember several lines from the end of Sam’s lines, but it does not work very well, maybe I can talk with Sam about adding some actions to remind us about lines, like some gestures show she finishes her lines and it is time for me to speak. And the second shortage is in speaking lines, even though I added some pause in my soliloquy to slow down my speaking speed and also do not show audience that I am speaking out the lines that I remembered, I should let the audience believe that I am the Friar Lawrence and I am trying to help Juliet. The first shortage is easy to revise, I can chat with Sam and ask her to add some actions in the show, but for the second shortage, I think I need to spend more time on it to practice it.  I can speak about the lines first and try to find a feeling about the pause parts, and then I may close the lines and try to slow down my speaking speed to say the lines. In this performance, I think I did a good job on portraying my character. Because he is an old man and like alchemy. so there’s a difference between he and Juliet, because he is older and calmer than Juliet, so when he heard the news about the marriage, the first thing he tried to do is to comfort Juliet, Juliet’s voice is higher and speaking speed is faster, but for Friar Lawrence, he needed to show his calm to console Juliet. And also when he took out the vial, he became crazy, a deep love on the alchemy, so at this time, he may lose his calm, so at this time, I always hold the vial and speak toward the vial because of the alchemist. I can not say I did a great job on adapting literary features but I would say I did a good job. There’s one movement I think is very hard to accomplish on the stage, which so goes across from the right stage to left stage. Because of our setting, the door is on the left stage, but I was talking with fake Paris on the right stage, so we decided to use the soliloquy of mine, which I gave the vial to Juliet, so at this time, I showed to audience an action that I will go to find the vial, but actually I move myself from right to left, which I successfully accomplish the actions that the script required.