Songalogue Performance Review

During the songalouge project, I was able to learn more about the importance of expressing the emotions of character through various techniques such as purposeful blocking, vocal tone, and facial expressions. I feel that one of my strengths was being able to take the critiques that I got from the class and use them to show a stronger performance. Another strength I felt that I had was being able to make the song I chose sound like a monologue. Instead of trying to memorize the lyrics as a song, I tried my best to read them as lines, which later helped me deliver the songalouge without saying my lines along with the beat of the song. A weakness that I had was still feeling a bit shy. I feel that I could have built up the emotion so I could show a stronger feeling of despair for the intense character. Another weakness I have is that I still have trouble creating natural looking blocking that convincingly portrays the character’s emotion. I feel like I could have had bigger blocking at the end as the character’s emotion built up.  

I am satisfied that I was able to remember to add in the blocking changes. I stood up at the “please don’t ignore me” and added in some more blocking that I felt made the monologue more interesting and convincing for the audience to watch. I am also satisfied with my song choice, since I felt that it was a character everyone could relate to on some level. I really felt that it was a good song to turn into a monologue. I feel that I have had more movement and gesturing than my last monologue, so I hope that I will be able to continue to grow more from that. If I had more time, I would have added more change in the tones in my voice, and let my voice get louder and more desperate at the middle to end. I also wish that I could find more blocking to match the intense character. I really want to work on making my monologues seems less like good acting, but more natural so it just seems like good story telling.

I think something that definitely engaged the audience was great blocking. The blocking was different for every monologue because it is a huge part of drawing in your audience and showing your character’s emotion. An example of this is when Pacifica did her songalouge to “City of Stars”. I feel that part of the reason her performance was so convincing was because of all the movement she included. She started out by looking out the window and then moved around the stage as she delivered her lines. It fit the concept of the dream like song and the whole performance seemed almost as if it was choreographed. She added little details like spinning, when she said “dance” which grabbed the audience’s attention. Another technique that I felt grabbed the audience’s attention is pace and tone of voice. An example of this is when Jordan turned the theme song of “Fresh Prince of Bel Air” and completely changed the mood of the entire song by utilizing different tones of voice and using a slower pace. This was a huge change from the original fast and upbeat song. He used emotion in his voice to convey a different message all together, which really caught the audience’s attention.

I feel that I learned the importance of listening and adjusting our performances after listening to the critiques, so we could improve. I also feel that I am beginning to understand how to create a more convincing character, and I am excited for our next project!