Isabel Jenkins Assignment 6

I had a fun time with this assignment. Obviously my group was no stranger to the stage - we've all been in at least one play. That's not to say our performance was perfect by any means! As the others have said, we took a risk by condensing a few scenes and cutting out lines, but ultimately I think it paid off. The way we combined the scenes, keeping everyone on stage the whole time, seemed to hold the audience's attention well. We could've executed it a little better, staying in character and reacting more dramatically when the other group was speaking. For having only one rehearsal (and one group call), though, I thought it went great.

I know some of my fellow group members have struggled a bit with projection in the past, but I'm confident that as a whole our lines were clear and understandable. Some of the blocking was guesswork during the performance, since it was difficult to work out the logistics of the stage with the setup for 12 Angry Jurors. With more practice, we obviously could've been better prepared, but we utilized the whole stage fairly well and only stood in front of each other like 3% of the time. Admittedly I'm pretty embarrassed that I dropped a line, since I'm supposed to be the "seasoned actress" and all... But to be fair, I had at least two muffins stuffed in my mouth, as well as a mind swirling with the thunderous accusations and snide snips of Juror 3. It was surprisingly difficult not to deliver my lines angrily, since all I've done the past two months is scream at Raiffa. That aside, we recovered pretty quickly and hopefully most people thought I just paused to swallow those muffins. Which is also true.

While I love acting just for fun, I did find that my understanding was deeply enriched by viewing these performances and doing one myself. Sometimes I struggle to identify deeper meanings when first reading a text, so I really appreciated the kinesthetic aspect of this project. Reading Earnest in the book, I picked up on some of the satire and comedy of manners, but actually performing it caused the humor to be abundantly clear. 10/10 would do it again ...just not right before tech week of a different performance ;)