Self evaluation: Blue Remembered Hills

In this piece I had many ideas for my character, I decided to use a very high pitched voice as
girls when younger usually have this. I decided to use this voice throughout although during
the fight scene I wanted my character to have a whiny voice to show a change occurred due
to the fight. My body language was carefree and relaxed most of the time; I did this to show
that children don’t worry too much. Although during the fight scene I made sure that my
body language was tense and immobile to show that the character was instantly scared and
that she couldn’t fight. Lastly I used many facial expressions throughout at the start I
wanted to look relaxed to show that the character was not aware of the dangers, I also had
a confused look as my character was always asking questions to understand what the other
character was doing. During the fight scene my facial expression was sad because my
character seemed very vulnerable. Although at the end my facial expression was coy due to
my character playing a trick on the other, I used this facial expression to show that my
character knew something the other did not. At the very end my facial expression was the
same as the start to show that my character had forgot about the previous occurrences and
was quickly forgiving.

My partner and I staged the scene well; we used a box which we decided would be used as
different things as the scene went on. At the start we decided the box would play the tree
on which Astrea’s character starts doing a parachute drop. Later we used it as a branch in
which Astrea’s character uses as a seat during the frightening part of the scene, we did this
so that we could have different levels also to show that Astrea’s character was more
powerful than my character because I was on the floor whereas she was higher up. Overall
we mostly used the middle and left side of the stage, although we could have used the other
side more productively we decided that we couldn’t move around too much as it would
break the continuity of the scene. For the fight it was difficult to face the audience while
speaking so we decided to have dialect only at certain points so that our voices were not
muffled. We used many levels to show which character had the most power, mostly Astrea
being at a higher level to show that her character had more power over mine, during the
fight scene I was lying down and she was standing to show how powerless my character was
although during the suspenseful part my character rose to a sitting position to show the gain
in power but not enough to be more powerful than Astrea’s character who was elevated on
a block. Lastly to show that we were travelling through a forest we decided to go along the
stage and the back to the original place to show that our characters had made their journey,
while my character was holding a rose which I mimed, we also showed the trees and
branches by ducking and glancing around.

There were many parts which successfully established atmosphere. To show the playful part
of the scene we decided to twirl and skip around to show our characters carefree attitude.
Another part was the fight scene where both of our facial and body expressions were tense
and calculating which clearly gave the atmosphere of menace. We successfully established
the atmosphere of frightfulness when Astrea’s facial expression became scared and worried
whereas mine became coy; this was when my character was trying to scare Astrea’s about
tearing rose petals. Lastly when we made the joke and our facial and body expressions
became carefree and started to skip we successfully established the atmosphere of
joyfulness.