Final draft reflection

I had performed final draft with Josh on Tuesday and it ended successfully. The part that we chose from The Glass menagerie was the conversation between Jim and Laura in the room, and their dancing on the bridge. While acting as Laura, I mainly focused on Laura’s significant change during the scene. Especially the difference between Laura that before she met Jim, she was insanely shy girl who had no confident to herself; however, after talking to Jim, she has been totally changed that she started to talk about herself and even gave her favorite unicorn glass to Jim. Therefore, I worked hard to describe her change and to clearly show it to the audience. At the beginning, I tried to describe her shyness by staring at floor and saying silently. However after Jim giving more confidence to Laura, I started to speak more loudly, and stared at Jim’s eyes more oftenly in order to show audience that Laura has been changed because of Jim.

As I and Josh read through the lines a lot of time and practiced really seriously everytime, we could show up with our final outcome really well, and even Ms. Guarino even complimented to us that our blocking was really good. Our blocking was nice that audience could understand the relationship between Jim and Laura, and how Laura has been largely affected by Jim. Furthermore, I showed the significant change of Laura through changing my voice, eye contact, or body movement so that audience could notice that Jim’s advice and compliment have been changed her to open herself and start gaining confidence to herself. The light also took a huge role during our performance. Especially while I and Josh were dancing on the bridge, the light was only focused to both of us that audience could more focus on the characters and were able to notice the characters’ affection.

However, I made few mistakes while acting in front of audience. Although I practiced a lot before go up on the stage, I still felt nervous and was worried about making mistakes. Since I felt nervous and was  mainly focusing on acting like Laura, I forgot few lines at the middle of the conversation; however, it didn’t really affect to our stage or conversation since Josh reacted naturally and keep led the conversation. I really appreciated that he was not being confused and acted normally so that I could gain more confident and finish the rest of the part very well. After watching video, I strongly felt that my voice was too low that other people could barely hear my voice. While I was on the stage, I did not really recognize that my voice was too low. Actually I turned my voice low in purpose to be more like Laura; since Laura is a terribly shy girl, I thought I should not speak loudly as Jim. So I did not speak out loudly, but actually it was too silent that I could not even clearly hear my voice in the video. Maybe the audio had some problem, but I thought that it would be much better to speak more loudly next time so that others can also hear it clearly.

Although I had some flaws that I forgot few lines and my voice too low, I still thought that our final draft had been done successfully.  Both of I and Josh improved a lot compare to what we had done during the first draft since we worked really hard to show the strong connection between the characters and to show audience their affection. After performing my first draft, I thought I did not really act like Laura and I still had a lot of things to improve because the way I talked or moved was not like Laura, but more like myself. Therefore, I read through lines in the book again and studied about Laura’s characteristic through watching other youtube videos who acted Laura and Jim. I was so satisfied after performing my second draft since I acted more like Laura, and showed her notable change before and after meeting Jim.