Assignment 6 Maya Creamer

     At the time that it was assigned, having to prepare a scene from The Importance of Being Earnest seemed like yet another assignment that I did not want to have to worry about. The thought of memorizing the scene amid rehearsals for 12 Angry Jurors, college applications, and all the other homework we are assigned was enough to make me groan. But, despite my initial reaction, this turned out to be a very entertaining assignment, and I was impressed with how well the performances went overall.
     I think that my group's performance went about as well as we expected it to, which was fairly well. We all had our lines memorized, and aside from a few slip-ups, we delivered them well. The few times that we did stumble, I think we covered it pretty well. We knew that we had chosen a longer scene with a lot of lines to memorize, so we knew that it may be hard for us to get them down. But I think we were well prepared for our performance. I definitely think the rest of the class could hear us and clearly understand what we were saying; we did a good job of projecting our voices, and our articulation was clear overall. We could have done a little bit better with character development, especially with Gwendolen and Cecily. It would have been great to play up their mannerisms even more. We stayed in character most of the time, but there were a few instances where we slipped out of our characters and into our normal voices and mannerisms, especially when we were struggling to remember a line. I think we did do a good job of portraying the absurdity of the way the characters are acting towards each other, and for the most part I think we pulled off the mannerisms of the snooty British aristocracy. We used a majority of the stage, but there were a few instances in which one person stood in front of another, blocking them from the audience. The few props we had I think we utilized well, although my fan could have been used more to add even more to the snooty mannerisms. Overall, I am proud of our performance, given the amount of time we had to prepare, and I think the class enjoyed it.
     This performance definitely made the text easier to grasp; by being able to visualize the scenes described in the play, both through my group's performance and watching other groups' scenes, I was able to better understand what was going on. It also made what was already a very entertaining play more fun, and emphasized humorous moments that I may not have noticed had I just read the play. This performance was definitely much different from the acting I usually do; it was much more casual, and some people had scripts on stage. But it was also very fun, and made me realize that acting doesn't have to be professional to be effective, since I would definitely say that watching and performing these scenes helped me better understand the play.