Anju's Blog

8B Drama: Character Formative from YIS Arts on Vimeo.

What is the skill that I used?
The skills that I used in this skit is mostly my vocal. I spoked low and slowly to show that I’am not that recognizable, shy and doesn’t like socializing with people. When the audience compare my character to Mia’s, it will show that Mia’s character (businesswoman/colleague) does not really care about what’s going on in my character’s life.

How did I approach creating the character? Was it successful – if so how? What needed improvement? Make a suggestion?
As I already mentioned it before, I think my vocal was good because it showed my character’s personality. However, I could have improved on my body language because there is a part when Mia’s character cut me off when I was talking then I was just standing there and looking at her to finish the call, I could have used body language to make my character’s personality clear.

How can I use these skills in performance?
I can use these skills when I want to show my character clearly.  These skills are important in performances. If the character are not clear enough for the audience that will affect the skit as a poor skit because audience will not be able to believe that person as character which makes it unrealistic.

7A Drama: Storytelling Performance from YIS Arts on Vimeo.

How did I perform?
I played two roles in the performance, I played as Father and little bit of Issunboushi. While I was performing I did a great job because I used clear and loud voice at the middle. Where Issunboushi and Oni have a fighting scene I tried to put more dramatic acting because it makes the audience believe that we are the characters. For example, when we were doing the scene there was a girl sitting in front looking scared when Issunboushi and the princess trying to find the Oni.

What were some difficulties? Solution?
The difficulties that my group have while on the stage is not remembering the lines. This really effected our performance because when this kind of problem happens the audience will not going to believe that we are the characters and they will keep on laughing at us, making us embarrassed. We can figure this kind of problem by someone improvising the story. I was disappointed that I couldn’t improvise the story because I remembered the lines so rather than stopping the performance I should of came up front and keep the performance going.

What were some achievements?
In this unit we learnt different techniques that could be used in the performance.  My group specially worked interaction between the audience. By using this technique it makes the audience interested so that they would pay more attention to the performance. For example, asking them a questions and our acting at the middle gave a lot of attention from the audience.

Which group was successful and why?
The group that I thought it was good was the first group Mary, Jamie, Iruka and Axel. They were very organized and nice use of equipments. For example one of the equipment they used were scarves and they used it as fairies wings and old ladies. But when narrator was asking questions to the audience, I think she/he could of dig in more because when the first narrator asked a question most of the kids did not really answered the question. But other than that it was a great storytelling performance!

We started a new unit about Story Telling and this blog post is about the difference between legend, myth and folk tale.

Legend- a story coming down from the past especially one popularly regarded as historical although not verifiable
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/legend 

Myth- a usually traditional story of ostensibly historical events that serves to unfold part of the world view of a people or explain a practice, belief, or natural phenomenon
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/myth 

Folk Tale-   a characteristically anonymous, timeless, and placeless tale circulated orally among a people
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/folktale 

The story I chose is called “Issunboushi the Inch-High Samurai” it is a one of the famous folk tale in Japan.
Here is the link to the story 
http://life.ou.edu/stories/issunboushi.html
 I chose this story because it is an interesting story about a little boy about inch-high tries to defeat princess from the evil. This folk tale shows the braveness of Issunboushi fighting with the evil which meters taller then him, but he didn’t care about how small he is.

Last year in Drama class, Each person had to make a 1 minute speech about their passion. This time we had to make a 3 minutes long speech that are going to be assessed on. The topic has to be chosen from here: Fashion, Holiday, Neighborhood and one more. I chose my speech about neighborhood.

7A Drama 3 min Speech from YIS Academics on Vimeo.

Volume: At the start my volume was normal but when it goes on my volume gets smaller and smaller because, where I talked about when my mom and I were gardening we found a big toad it sounded like I was mumbling.

Projection:  I don’t think I used projection often in this speech too.

Pace: The pace that I used was quite fast I think because I couldn’t follow or understand what I was talking about. Also about the middle of the speech I forgot what I was suppose to say next so I left a loooong gap.

Pitch: Some first parts I used a little bit of pitch to make it but later it was all same pitch.

Pause: It didn’t really seemed like I paused at every places, where I supposed to. But, I paused at some places.

Emphasis: In this speech I didn’t use any emphasis to any words.

Posture: I think my posture was alright. But when I was speaking I was crumbling my palm card and rocking back and forth so this movement makes the audience disturbing.

Eye Contact: When I watched my 3 minutes speech video, my eye contact was bad then the 1 minute one’s. When I watched the video I was looking at the palm card a lot moving my head up and down. If I was a audience who’s watching to this kind of speaker I would think it’s very disturbing so I should get on my habit to not look at the palm cards more than 2 times.

Use of palm card: All my palm cards was the size of my palm. But it didn’t really helped me improve this speech then the 1 minute one, because when I got really nervous I started to crumble the card and also forgot what was I suppose to say next so often I looked up and down to see the points on the palm card.

What did I achieve? I don’t think I achieved on anything because I wasn’t impressed and it wasn’t good as the last time’s.

What could I improve? I need to improve on a lot of things. But mostly I would like to improve on my pace and posture because, I thought my posture will alright when I finished presenting the speech but when I watched the video it was disturbing and for pace I could of just use normal pace that the audience would understand what I was talking about.

Few weeks ago we started our unit about speech and we had to make 1 minute long speech for getting ready for our final speech that will be graded. We all had to write about our passion and I chose my passion as Art.

7A Drama 1 min Speech (2011-12) from YIS Academics on Vimeo.

Volume: I think I did an great job on my volume I heard my voice clearly enough on the video and I think the audience understood what I was talking.

Projection: I don’t think I used projection often in this speech.

Pace: I should use more periods because where I said “I like to make collages with different types of pictures that cut out from the magazines”. I went to fast it seemed like I was mumbling.

Pitch: I think I need to put more pitch into it because when I listened to my voice it all seems to be the same pitch and it got boring. But I did like my opening “Do You Have A Passion?” because I used pitch for it.

Pause: Some parts, I should of paused but mostly I paused the basic places.

Posture: I think I should improve on my posture because sometimes I moved side to side and when I was standing for me it looked like I was leaning against on the wall.

Eye Contact: I think my eye contact was good because I always looked at the audience not on the floor.

During the past few weeks we started our first unit Mime. Mime is a action that only use emotion without words, using only gesture, expression, and movement.

What did I explore?
In groups of 5, each group had to make there original mime . I was with Ellen, Ren, Haakon and Aiki. Each group had to choose a theme that they want to perform to the audience, our group chose the airplane scene. The story was about a woman, a father and his son. The problem of the story is the father and his son sat a seat behind the woman and the son started to kick the woman’s chair and she warned him. But after the woman ordered a hot cup of tea the son behind her started to kick her seat again. Than the hot tea spilt all over her clothes and his father and the woman was arguing disturbing other tourists so the cabinet attendant and the captain kicked us out off the plane. My role was the woman, my weaknesses was taking each action slowly and show more facial expression. My strength was to show the size and the weight of my luggage.

What did I learn?
In this unit I learnt that it’s very important to take each action slowly so that the audience would understand what the actors are trying to show. I also learnt that spaces and the angles of where are we performing is important because  when you are using smaller spaces the audience won’t see what the actors is doing and the angles too. For example after we finished performing my group had an feedback about the angle because the audience couldn’t see the son kicking the woman’s chair because the chair was blocking his foot. Also, facial expression is important too because when the character has an big, heavy bag he/she should try to show us how heavy it is by making a facial expression.

How can I use this in performance?
Mime is one of the interesting way to present performance there is different ways to perform mime. One of the example mime could be used is Comedy show and movie like Mr. Bean and his movie called “Mr. Beans Holiday” the actor Rowan Atkinson was just using mime only to express.

What did I know?
Before this unit started, I barely knew anything about mime but I knew that mime doesn’t include speaking. I knew a little by watching Mr. Bean in my younger days.

What do I want to know?
I would like to know more about how to make my mime performance interesting and funny for the audience to watch.

I think the dance was enjoyable and fun to watch, I don’t like dances but I like musical dances like this how they use props well (umbrella, hat, and his tapping shoes). He used spaces very well by dancing around the streets I liked how he jumped to the pole. His expression was very happy and we don’t need to see his face to know that because his tapping dance was very energetic so that expressed that he is very happy. The rhythm went to slow to fast for example at the end it became faster where he jumps into the pond and gets slower when the police comes.

We had a speech assessment LAMDA, it’s stands for London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.
6th grade had to choose a topic of a person that is really important and you know a lot about them. I chose my brother because he is my sibling so I should know him really well. We had to make a interesting introduction to attract the examiner into the speech. I used question for my introduction asking “Do you ever had a big brother who’s gigantic and plays american football? Well, I do”. Than next the draft of the whole speech after its checked by Ms. Erickson I started to write my final draft making more better. Ms. Erickson’s advice really helped my speech a lot.

Anju-LAMDA Speech from YIS Academics on Vimeo.

We got weeks to finish the final draft, and when it was the due date we started to record the speech to understand what is your weaknesses. My weaknesses was talking loud, clear and using body movement. My LAMDA exam was on January 17 at 4:10 p.m after school. I was so nervous when it was the day in the waiting room I wasn’t relaxing at all, my hand was shaking really fast. My turn was coming, and it was I slide the door making myself relaxed. The examiner was so nice that he welcomed me very warmly. Than we started the speech.

My introduction went right but when it became to the speech’s body part I started to fidget with my Q card, may started to mumble a little, and stop at middle of the point because I was so frustrated that I forgot it. But the last part my conversation went really good because he chose  the category of ART we started to talk about what kind of drawings do I draw, who is your favorite artist, what makes it unique and more.

After the LAMDA I was free as a bird flying up the blue sky…

In drama class, we started to write a short speech about “My Hobbies and Interests“. My strengths was not fidgeting around and not looking at the palm card a lot to not distract the audience. My weaknesses was speaking more louder and clearly.