Assignment 6: Jessica Nelson

     Our performance did not exactly go as expected. The gigantic pause in the middle was not ideal and I’m sure if you could see my expression behind my ginormous umbrella during it, it was not so much in character as it was annoyed. Somebody forgot part of a line and it happens but were we to do it over again I would definitely prefer that didn't happen. Other things I would change are mainly blocking and my expressions. I feel like I made the same expression multiple times and I wish I had varied it more to make it more interesting. I projected pretty well though and I was glad to have successfully memorized all my lines. The blocking was an issue as well because we didn't move around enough and when we moved to the right of the stage Alex didn't move back far enough and there was a table in the way so I had nowhere to stand without blocking them because of the umbrella, having my back to the audience, or being awkwardly far away so I spent that portion of the performance doing little steps around that table (and almost falling down) to try to find a better position which detracted from the performance and was unsuccessful anyways. The umbrella tied up my hands too so the only real gesture I could do was twirl the umbrella, so maybe it would have been better if I had used an umbrella that was lighter so I could have held it with one hand and gestured with the other.

   
      Some of my classmates that I think excelled were Raffia, Charlie, Andrew, and Samantha. Raffia’s group overall was the best but she stood out to me in particular for her vocal expression and exaggerated movements. Samantha is a naturally sarcastic and funny person and she brought that to the character even though she was reading her lines directly off the script and her inflection made the performance more “modernly” funny. Charlie’s performance was subtle but it really fit the character. The attitude and the little gestures (sweeping strands of Sam’s Barbie wig back) he used made his performance very interesting and fun to watch. Andrew was fun to watch just because he was so into it. He had obviously put thought into his movements and expression and he seemed to be having fun with it which makes it more enjoyable to the audience then watching someone who just looks uncomfortable.

     The performance helped me to understand the text better by highlighting the humor. Sometimes it can be hard to just find words on a page funny but when you make a conscious effort to make those words funny in your audience’s eyes by your expression or the ways you move when you say them makes the humor more apparent and it resonates more with a modern audience. I also understand how hard it is to connect to an audience because not everyone finds the same things funny. Our group thought the little “secret handshake” we did and the comically large umbrella was really funny, but the audience wasn't laughing as much as we had. It shows how hard it is to write universal humor too. There is no way every reader found Wilde’s comedy funny and thinking about which groups of people would have disliked The Importance of Being Earnest brings a better understanding of it.