Drama Devising Piece – Evaluation

We decided to base our monologues on a bunch of high school friends that have
different personalities and these personalities would, in some way, affect them in the
future, thus the name of our devised piece, The Butterfly Effect. We chose 5 different
emotions and made our monologues based on them. I chose confusion and we worked
well with. When I first performed, we all noticed that we were not using enough
techniques. We were only using Placards, Unison and music. We instantly knew that it
wasn’t enough for us to even get a 6, so we then made lots of alteration in our
monologues like making our monologues long enough so that we add the techniques in
and also, it would be at least 2 minutes long.

Once we did our alterations, we performed our monologues and then we figured that
this won’t make sense if we do not add an opening scene and an ending scene. So, all
together created the opening scene and ending scene and we performed it and at last,
the whole devised piece made sense. Now we had to move to the clothing. Since we
had different emotions, we had to wear clothes that matches it, so we all got our clothes
together and debated on which one was best. Now that we had our clothes ticked off
our list, we were then told to perform with to the class as a practice. When we first did it,
my initial thoughts at the end of MY monologue were:
 The music did not match what I was saying or the personality. It was just an eerie
music in the background
 My clothing wasn’t really giving off the idea of a person who was confused
 We, as a whole group, would just say our monologue and turn our camera’s off,
we weren’t really listening to what the other person was saying, we weren’t taking
part in it properly, and that was highlighted by the teacher
 We didn’t use our placards properly and we had to work on that

After being “bombarded” with lots of E.B.I’s by the teacher, we finally decided to make
some major changes in our monologues. We decided that all of us would take part in
everyone’s monologue. The teacher hinted to match our actions with what the person
who is performing the monologue is saying. This was our first step in changing the
piece. We then, one by one, created those mini performances during someone’s
monologue, and it went very well. We could clearly see that our performance during the
monologue matches what the person was saying, and that was another technique being
used.
While I was performing MY monologue, I noticed that my performance had lots of gaps
in it, we didn’t have any ideas on how the other people in the group would take part in it.
We had loads of ideas that were hitting speed bumps. Then, my friends and I decided to
scrap that monologue. After 3 weeks of performing and 1 or 2 weeks left until the exam,
we decided to change my emotion from confusion to anger. We quickly adapted to the
idea of me being angry at something and everything started to smooth out from then
onwards.

The monologue or idea that I chose was about a girlfriend who broke up with me and
complained about really stupid things and accused me of something which I have never
did. We agreed on that and also knew how the others would take part in my monologue.
We worked on it quickly and it turned out much better than I thought. Once performed
on the day of the exam, we received much better feedback from the class.

The things we could’ve worked on is the music, since we didn’t have any music playing
in the background. If we had music on in the background, I think it would’ve made the
monologues much more interesting and engaging. Even though, in my opinion, we did
really well whilst performing, it would’ve been EVEN better. If we had more time on my
monologue especially, I would’ve added more to my monologue and that the others
would be able to take part even more. If this wasn’t online, this would’ve been a master
piece since everything was in sync and we no one being confused on when to meet up.

The other things I could’ve worked on is my clothing. I wore a different type of jumper
that reached up to my neck, and I thought that I would look angry in that but I looked
intimidated instead of being angry, so I wasn’t very happy with that. Also, if I had a bit
more space around me, I would’ve used my hands a bit more to show how really angry I
am. My vocals were not on point since I didn’t really sound angry, I just spoke really
fast, which maybe would’ve implied that I am so angry that I didn’t know what to say, so
I just blurted it out?

The other thing to work on is when we are transitioning to another monologue. We

weren’t really fast enough, we had to quick and snappy to avoid that awkward wait and
silence during a performance. Even though we managed to change our clothes, we
needed to faster. The one thing we couldn’t control was the WIFI. At times it would
affect someone’s monologue and then their camera would freeze and then the awkward
silence or wait jumps in, it really affected our monologues.
Overall, despite we didn’t execute all of our tick boxes, I believe we did an awesome
job. We used time to our advantages, we helped each so much that it was as if they
were doing our monologues instead. Our ideas would match instantly and we put to use
and it worked. We used a lot of techniques which were asked from us. I believe we
made our teachers happy at the end of the day since we so restricted on a lot of things,
but we eventually got through those barriers and that is what I am proud of myself.