Reflections on monologue

     Today was the final draft of the monologue project. I have learned a lot things from this project and I think I did fine the the final draft. During the performance, I added a lot of body language and I spoke pretty slow. Those are the things that I think I did well because they fit my characteristics. Another thing I think I did well is I smiled a lot and I was pretty shy, because this is what a shy seven year-old kid would do during a presentation. But there are still a lot of things that I could have done better, for example, I should’ve spoken louder during the performance, because we were in the black box, so it was harder for the audience to hear the performer. I also should’ve said “thank you for listening” at the end of the monologue because this could make me sound cuter and shows that I was actually doing a presentation.
     All of my classmates did great on their performances. For Giovanna, she did a really good job, she was really into the character and she had good body language. Her lines were very clear and she spoke loud. The only thing that she could’ve done better is to have a more interesting or exciting ending. She could’ve be more scared. For Jack, he also did really good on his monologue, he had nice body language. His voice was very clear and showed his characteristic. He was pretty into the character. It was great, but he could’ve been meaner and the ending could’ve been stronger for his monologue. For Josh, he improved a lot on remembering the lines of his monologue. His voice was loud and clear, and he had a lot of facial expressions. The only thing he could’ve done better is to stay  more into the character.
     This was a really fun project, I learned a lot from it, I really liked it.

Reflections on monologue

     Today was the final draft of the monologue project. I have learned a lot things from this project and I think I did fine the the final draft. During the performance, I added a lot of body language and I spoke pretty slow. Those are the things that I think I did well because they fit my characteristics. Another thing I think I did well is I smiled a lot and I was pretty shy, because this is what a shy seven year-old kid would do during a presentation. But there are still a lot of things that I could have done better, for example, I should’ve spoken louder during the performance, because we were in the black box, so it was harder for the audience to hear the performer. I also should’ve said “thank you for listening” at the end of the monologue because this could make me sound cuter and shows that I was actually doing a presentation.
     All of my classmates did great on their performances. For Giovanna, she did a really good job, she was really into the character and she had good body language. Her lines were very clear and she spoke loud. The only thing that she could’ve done better is to have a more interesting or exciting ending. She could’ve be more scared. For Jack, he also did really good on his monologue, he had nice body language. His voice was very clear and showed his characteristic. He was pretty into the character. It was great, but he could’ve been meaner and the ending could’ve been stronger for his monologue. For Josh, he improved a lot on remembering the lines of his monologue. His voice was loud and clear, and he had a lot of facial expressions. The only thing he could’ve done better is to stay  more into the character.
     This was a really fun project, I learned a lot from it, I really liked it.

https://youtu.be/6uZQkoUepjs

Now I feel like my performance on my monologue has been improved a little. But there are still a lot of aspects that I need to be working on. For example, I should speak louder and slower, this is going to help me to show "my" characteristics. Also, I should move around a little bit more while I'm performing, because this is going to make audiences feel more interesting. My voice could be higher when I'm talking, because this can show I'm actually a child.

After I watched the video of myself presenting the monologue, I realized there are still many things that I could change. My character is a 7 years old kid, so my voice should be higher and sweeter. I was a little bit shy, and I should spoke my lines a little bit slower because the character is a kid. I should do more actions that show I'm thinking hard about how to describe my mom.

Reflection

     I’ve only be taking acting class for two weeks, but I feel like I’ve already learned so many useful things from these classes. I joined the class on the friday of the first week, so I think I might’ve missed something. But it doesn’t matter. 

     On the first day of the acting class, I felt really nervous and excited, because I didn’t know what I should do and what is going to happen. At that day, Ms.Guarino let us to walk around the classroom, while we were walking around, she gave us some situation to practice our reactions. I felt surprised about the way we are doing it, Because I’ve never done something like this before. I was a little bit shy during that activity, but I also liked it a lot.

     I think the hard thing for me in this class is to speak fast and loud. English is my second language, so sometimes I don’t know how to describe the things that I want to describe in an accurate way. I am also a little bit afraid of making mistakes while I’m speaking. I will try to speak more and try to do things with more confidence in class.

     The easy thing for me is probably the acting part. Because I’m a pretty funny person, and I like to use many body language while I’m talking, so I feel pretty comfortable while it requires us to use body language in class. 

     I like all of the activities that we’ve done so far, I think all of them are very useful. I might want to do more actual acting for this class, because I want to know what different characteristics that different characters have, and I think it is very fun to be a “different person”. But to be honest, there isn’t anything that I specifically want to do for this class. I like this class a lot and I hope I can enjoy the acting class of this year.

Monologue - Loading the space
The character of this monologue is probably a kid, because her language is sweet and niave. This monologue is talking about her/his mom, so it shows he/she loves her mom a lot.

My name is Jenny, I am a seven years old kid from second grade, my favorite person is my mom. I love my mom so much! I think she is the best woman in the world! Even in the universe! She has long black hair, gorgeous eyes... Her body is very fit and she acts gracefully. She is just perfect, she never gets mad at me, she lets me to do whatever I want to do...

The homework for English today is to define the word "beautiful", and we have to do a presentation about it tomorrow. I don't really know how to do it... So I go to ask my mom, because I think she is beautiful! I ask, "Mom, what does the word beautiful mean? Does it mean the people as beautiful as you?"

Mom laughs and says, "Oh Jenny you are so sweet, but what I'm telling you is... There are two kinds of beautiful."

"Two kinds of beautiful? What are they?" I get confused.

Mom smiled and explain to me, "There are people who are becautiufo on the outside, and people who are beautiful on the inside."

I thought about it for a little while... That's exactly describing my mom! She is beautiful anytime! So... I guess my mom couldn't decide what kind of beautiful she wanted to be, so she just picked both..."

Today during class we talked about three important parts of acting. They are motivation, objective and obstacle. We acted a lot of scenes out trying to achieve our goal that's written down on the paper, but sometimes things didn't go like what we were expecting. I learned that the scene is usually more interesting when people interactive each other. It is very important to have conflicts or struggle in the scene, because this is how you are going to make your audience interested in you play.

Acting blog

     I was a very active kid when I was born, and so am I right now. I cannot stop keep moving, my parents even say I don’t know what the word “tired” means. So this characteristic makes me willing to present myself in front of many other people, makes me not afraid of expressing myself. Which is one of the most important reason why I take acting class. I was born in Shanghai, but growing up in Beijing, these two are two big cities in China. I had a very happy childhood memory.
     There are many important and interesting things about me. One of the things that I think it is fun to know is, I am a really funny person, I love jokes. When I was in middle school I’ve memorized a whole jokes book, I love see the faces of people laughing, they make me feel comfortable and happy. This characteristic really helps me to get a lot of friends around me.

     Another interesting thing about me is I am an crazy animal lover. I love all the cute animals in the world, especially dogs. I’ve had four dogs before, I feel like they were just like my family members, and I love playing around with them. Dogs are always human’s best friends.

     The third interesting thing about me is... I love food! All kinds of food! I also love to cook for the people around me. For example, my mom is really tired after the whole day of working, when she gets home, she would be so happy if I have prepared fried rice for her. Sometimes food really can make people feel relaxed and happy. I’ve been living in the United States for almost three years, so sometimes I really miss the food I’ve eaten in China before. To be honest, China is a very beautiful country, and it has very interesting culture, you will never be regret if you travel there. But of course, there are a lot of people.

     I am taking acting is because I have learned of it before and I really liked it. When I was in elementary school, I took a class called both acting and public speaking. At the beginning, I didn’t like it so much because I was very nervous about speaking in front of many people, I felt ashamed about it. The turning point of my attitude was when a conversation with my teacher. She said I have acting aptitude, and she said I would be doing great if I put more efforts in it, she really encouraged me a lot at that time. She was a great teacher, she had taught me too many things that have big impacts to my whole life. After that, I started to take acting seriously, after a while, I started to “fall in love” with it. I really like the feelings of experience the life of different people from different stories. I also think being able to speak in front of other people confidently is a very important skill to have in everybody’s life, My parents think that, too, so they supported me a lot while I was learning public speaking and acting.
     I hope I can enjoy every single class of acting and work hard on every project. I think it’s going to be a very fun year.