Performance Log #1

When Kate and me were acting our scene, we both have a very different feeling than just look at the scripts. Through the acting, I can feel Romeo’s love to Juliet and his emotion changes.

We used three classes time to act our play. In the first class, we don’t know what kind of emotion we should have. All we knew is Romeo is leaving Juliet. So we borrowed the scene in the 1996 version of Romeo and Juliet movie. In the movie, the scene starts from Romeo gets out of bed. Romeo puts sheet over both him and Juliet and the camera shoots between them. Since we are acting on stage, we need to show our self to audience; we changed our actions. We decided to make both Romeo and Juliet stands and Juliet walks toward Romeo when she’s talking. Then she pulls Romeo back into room from the balcony.

It is hard to know what action I need to take if I don’t act the scene out. In the second class we decided to act and see what we could do to our actions. We fond out some inappropriate decisions we made during the first class. For example, we arranged Romeo to stand in front of balcony in the first 14 lines of scripts. We found out this is a really long time and Romeo has nothing to do when Juliet is reading her scripts, which is awkward and boring. So we make Romeo start the scene by gets out of bed then walks to balcony when Juliet lies on bed and tells him: “Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day: It was the nightingale, and not the lark.” Since this scene happens in the next morning after they had sex so we have many close actions. By practice acting the scene again and again, we over came the embarrassing. When we were reading our lines, we found some words that are hard to pronounce and fixed our incorrect pronunciation.

In the last day, we started with getting familiar with our scripts. We read the scripts out and record it. I found out that I am more like a robot that reads without any emotion. Unlike Kate, she reads with intonation and can totally makes me feel Juliet’s sadness and happiness. The recording tells me I am still don’t totally understand my scripts and not familiar with it enough. I also found out we read too fast. One example is that Juliet says: “Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day: It was the nightingale, and not the lark, That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear; Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate-tree: Believe me, love, it was the nightingale” she just woke up, so she need to speak slowly with soft voice. We need to arrange the speed we speak by both our action and the scripts’ content. Then we act the scene again. This time I have a new feeling of the act. Especially when I say: “More light and light; more dark and dark our woes!” I can feel Romeo is relive with his destiny.

Through these days practice, we made many changes to our actions, emotions, and positions. I find out practice is good for our acting. Through acting, I can find out if there is anything that I can improve or any actions we can add.