I'm Sorry Christopher

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hz-Z7DCutQ

Official first draft, Solo project

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mJpf4oL-cXQeWVoLskhh1UZP_UrkowbpPNO8y8h4G64/edit?usp=sharing

Solo Performance Reflection

Over the course of working on my solo project I learned and refined a lot of my acting and some directing techniques. I studied Stanislavkis methods of acting with strong emotions and how to make everything more believable. And putting all of his methods into my character was so much fun, especially the magic if. This method makes you imagine how your character would react to certain situations. This is a great way to find out more about your characters: habits, feelings, emotions, mindset, values and thinking process. So preparing when I was preparing for my solo performance during the entire previous week I would go about my day as usual and when something interesting happened or was said I would of course react or think as myself but then i would always backtrack and think “ what would Ed have said or done in the same situation” This is a great way to connect to a character and it really helped me connect to mine. 

So when performance day finally came around I felt really prepared to express all of Ed’s emotions to my best abilities. And I was really pleased with the way things turned out in the end. The performance went great and I felt really into the character and based on the response from the audience during the talkback I could confirm that my connection to the character could be seen on stage as well. I was also so happy to hear so many different people notice my commitment to the character and how they liked what I did with my performance. Something that was a bit of a challenge at first was finding a way to show Ed’s darker side to the audience without anyone else on stage. So I decided not to SHOW it at all, but let the audience hear it instead. I started the performance by screaming and smashing thing backstage with headlights on stage. This instantly grabbed everyone's attention (basing this on what was said during the talkback) and made everyone interested in what was going on and why it was happening. Then I come out of the backstage door in the far back and breakdown right by the door. I decided to do this to give the audience even more time to be confused and make them want an explanation. But also to show the audience that it is not something that my character is used to doing or likes doing (getting mad, beating up his child, ect.) Then I started Ed’s monologue from The Curious Incident of the Dog in the nighttime. The monologue takes place right after Christopher (Ed’s son) finds letters from his to be believed dead mother. And it went great, the Only thing I wish I had done different would have been to slow the performance down a bit so that I could have had more time to show a bit more variety of emotions such as pure sadness. This would have helped even further to show Ed’s good side. And also showing how deeply sorry he is for lying to his son.