Reflective Journal (Lesson 1, 2 & 3 – Act 1 Scene 1, Act 1 Scene 2 & Act 1 Scene 3)

Today, since we were far behind our work schedule, we had to hurry and rush everything in order to get back on track. We started off the lesson with our short "insult" play which we learned during the second lesson. For this play, my group had a problem coming up with the script because the link that was supposed to help us with this didn't work and so we just stuck to the ones given in the table. 


For this first play, we didn't have a script and decided to improvise. While performing the play, I tried to blab out as many insults that were related to appearance as possible (because that was what our whole play was based on). This didn't take much effort but I felt quite happy when Simran said that it was nice to have all insults making sense. 


Later on, we progressed to the third lesson where we had to split up and each act out 2 difference scenes of the play. And because most of the people from the other table (where all the guys were) weren't done with the Starter of the third lesson yet, we decided to just split up according to table groups, therefore, Azzah, Jasmin, Kai Song, Simran & I acted out Scene 3 and the guys (Danial, Hong Yi, Jake & Terry acted out Scene 2)


So this was how the "casting" worked. 

1. Azzah - Juliet
2. Jasmin - Nurse
3. Kai Song - Narrator 
4. Simran - Lady Capulet
5. Jamie - Peter (Scene 3)
6. Danial - Romeo
7. Hong Yi - Benvolio
8. Jake - Capulet 
9. Terry - Peter & Paris

Personally, I think that the class, in general have similar things to work on while presenting and acting. During these few lessons, I've realized that we all share the same problems when standing in front of an audience. Personally, before coming to nexus I have never done much presenting, speeches and I've certainly never done any drama so all of these are, in some ways, still "new" to me which is why I'll always have butterflies or become really nervous and stutter-like whenever I have to do something like this. 

However, after a whole year of presentations and speeches, I would like to think that I have improved a little. Which is why I think that as a class, to overcome the fear of stage fright and clarifying speech would be to practice in front of an audience. Because judging by experience, practicing in front of a mirror would definitely help fluency, but everything just gets screwed up when you see all of those pair of eyes staring at you.. watching your every move. 

Personal Evaluation

After what we've done and read so far, I feel that in terms of performing and presenting, all I need to do now is to be comfortable and to try to be able to evoke more feelings and emotion while acting. As for the "paperwork" I feel that it's difficult for me to understand Shakespearean language even after the previous help with "thou" "thy" "thee" "thine". In fact, I don't think it has anything associated to the pronouns but more of how people used to converse and the way things such as sarcasm and humor were used to be the problem.