The Great Gatsby: Relfection

This scene required a great amount of dedication, especially when it came to blocking. Therefore it is no surprise that what I took most out of my experience from performing this scene is learning that the more effort you put into the physical aspect of the scene, the better it will turn out.

Even though Jack, Ryan, and I put a lot of effort into this scene, it felt very last minute to me. This is probably due to having many distracting factors occurring outside of D Period Acting Class. This includes "Once On This Island" and both Ryan and myself missing class due to being sick. I would have liked to rehearse the scene more on set, so then we could have been more sure of our blocking. As far as lines are concerned, I feel although each of us managed to memorize them very quickly. To be truthful, I was not able to pay as much time as I hoped to memorizing the scene because of other activities, but I feel that I was still able to remember each of my lines.

When I watched the original videos that we took in class, I felt that our scene was lacking in emotion and had awkward blocking. Throughout the duration of skit it lacked reaction and was too monotone. It would quickly climax when Ryan's character, Gatsby, had his outburst, however it took too long to grow intense. Ryan and I were able to meet and discuss this outside of class and I feel that doing that helped us a lot. We took notes on our performance and what we could do to improve it. In the end, I feel as though every note that we made was taken into consideration. We began to emphasize different words when delivering our lines and used multiple vocal tones. When it came to blocking, we did use the extra day in class to work on it, and it was truly worth every single minute.

Another strategy that I used to help the energy in our scene was to think more about who my character was. I wanted to develop my personal story for who Daisy was, and how she got to where she was in that scene. I feel that this helped me understand what emotions I wanted to express in the scene. This is a challenging scene to play Daisy in because of her lack of lines. There is a lot tension between Tom and Jay, not to mention important and hostile language, to it was important to develop facial expressions and movements to perform to show (instead of tell) the audience how my character was feeling.

Unfortunately, because I missed two days of school due to illness, I was unable to see the final result of the other group's scenes. I was, however, able to see them rehearse in class and I know that if I am able to see the video of their skits that they will be great.

Link to video: https://youtu.be/A_M0_RhkNcU