General Skills and Experience Audit 2020

Experience before starting the course:

 5 years' worth of Industry work experience with amateur dramatics society Solihull On
Stage (SOS)
 A year’s worth of professional one-to-one singing lessons
 Experience in ballet, tap and freestyle dance styles during younger years
 3 years’ worth of educational practice, focused on script development, devising, physical
theatre and practitioner and play analysis

What are your strengths, or the things you have improved the most in?
Acting: I think I’m good at altering my voice for different characters at times, though
sometimes it’s a little rusty. I can understand how to adjust ‘light and shade’ within the voices
to get the quality of sound that I want or to get a certain reaction out of the audience, and I
understand when I need to attempt it again if I don’t get the outcome I want.
Also, when devising, I often think deeply about what I want to convey and what would be the
best way to do that, so audiences can get the most out of my work and come away thinking a
certain thing or feeling a certain way. However, sometimes I delve a little too deeply into this
process (see current weaknesses).
Singing: When it comes to memorising song lyrics and tunes, I can’t exactly stop – especially
when it’s a song I like. Because of these reasons, I’m able to pick up songs quickly and I often
know when I’m or others are going wrong with a tune. When listening to people singing, I also
have a habit of knowing if notes are out of tune if they’re singing with backing tracks, even if I
don’t know the song. I’m not entirely sure where this skill came from.
Thanks to my skill in pitch and note recognition, sometimes I make ad-libs for songs that make
sense and that are in tune. However, I do recognise to use this kind of thing sparingly as too
many ad-libs can make a song overcrowded and hard to listen to.
Dance: Something that I’ve improved upon is my attitude and self-esteem to dancing – before
learning dance skills within this course so far, I was very uncomfortable with the idea of the
subject and put myself down for making tiny mistakes that were often out of my control.
However, because of the support I’ve had in lessons, I’ve developed a more positive, have-a-go
attitude towards dance that I want to adopt in everything I do. Also, I’ve been starting to get
better at the technical aspects of dance styles because of my newfound positivity and focusing
on how to make things better, rather than what I’m doing wrong.
General/Academic: When facing a difficult situation or a frustrating activity, I know when to
step away, release the tension I was holding, reflect on the situation and come back to it with a
clear head. Honestly, I look down on myself sometimes for doing this, but I think it’s good for
my mentality when I’m frustrated or conflicted. It also helps so I don’t explode emotionally
when I’m trying to fix the problem I’m presented with.
When analysing work and practitioners, I’m always asking the ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions - for
example, ‘how was the practitioner presenting their ideas?’; ‘why is the practitioner using this
technique?’ and the like. I have a specific interest in how practitioners delve into politics, social
problems and representing the minority within theatre, so I think that asking questions like this
when analysing their processes is important for when I think about my own work development
and how I want to go about doing so.

What are your current weaknesses, or the things you want to improve?
Acting: As I mentioned earlier, I sometimes delve too deeply into the planning of devised work,
which can throw me off course and into a growing pile of ideas and speculation. I often don’t
trust myself with the ideas I produce so I find it difficult to start or carry on with a project unless
I get super inspired. This recently happened with the Lockdown mini film project I was asked to
produce - I spent about two weeks gathering ideas, before I got spontaneously inspired and got
all the footage in the space of a couple of hours. I think my ratio of planning and doing things
need to be reconsidered.
Singing: When practising, the only thing I really do as a warmup is drink a lot of water and sing
some sets of scales and arpeggios - even though I know how to take care of my vocal cords, I
don’t think I put it into practise very well. I know for a fact that this needs to change.
As for techniques, I don’t think I can control my breathing very well in practise, so when
learning and revisiting songs, for example. I think the problem is that I struggle to place or
remember points to breathe, so longer notes are often constricted towards the end and
audiences can often hear that.
Dancing: Admittedly, I spend a lot more time practising technique rather than creativity within
dance. Technique is obviously important for knowledge and understanding, but I don’t get the
chance to explore the technique through creative study or devising. I should start thinking
about exploring this aspect of dance for personal groth.
General/Academic: The main thing generally I want to improve upon is the trust I have in
myself, whether that is to get my work done in an efficient way or to know when to stop
working and take time to self-care. As I said with my weakness for the acting section, I struggle
to trust myself on things, and then start to panic about things affected about that self-doubt. I
need to find a way to come out of that a little more, and make more spontaneous decisions
based on my own initiative.

What areas or skills do you want to develop during your time on the course, and
why do you think it’s necessary?
I want to expand my knowledge on all areas – the career I want to go into, dramatherapy,
often uses roleplay, puppets, masks and storytelling to traditionally support patients, but even
now I’m gathering ideas to make alternative support techniques. For example, we could have
confidence and trust building sessions of physical theatre to help students with trust and
confidence struggles. I want to shape the knowledge I have into support for who I work with in
the future and make things as enjoyable as I can at the same time.
As a secondary to that, I want to develop my way of analysing techniques and questioning how
it provokes thoughts about social stance and mental health, if the techniques do so. I think this
will help me create more alternate support activities, and possibly recognise patterns in theatre
that talk about these things.

How will you go about improving these?

The first think I should do is plenty of research on all subjects and take time to absorb what I’m
learning. This way, I know and retain at least a little bit of information on the things I’ve studied.
I also want to take time to focus on watching more plays focused on social stances, politics, or
characters with mental health/conditions – particularly autism – to give myself ideas on who
they are presented and develop my analysing skills.

Choose one thing from each category you want to improve, and set a SMART
target for each:
Acting: I want to have more trust in myself when independently devising ideas, and I think this
will come with making sure I have a certain amount of time to plan, and stick with it rather than
getting too many ideas. So, for when my next independent devising project comes along, I’m
going to write down the conditions I’m asked for to the letter and on the same day as request
so I know exactly what I need to do, and then make a small list of initial ideas to choose from
and stick to when taking the time to do the devising work. If my next project has a deadline, I
stick to it and don’t make any excuses; if it doesn’t, I will set myself about two to three weeks
devising time and I will plan only on the day of request.
Singing: I want to give myself a warmup structure that focuses on breathing techniques and to
use it before every time I intend to practise any monologues or songs – I want this to be set into
my audition practise sessions before the October half term. I’m halfway there already, as I am
practicing a vague set of warmup exercise before singing lessons and independent audition
practise, but I haven’t made a solid warmup structure yet.
Dancing: During each holiday I have, I would like to have some time within my study sessions
to develop a short creative routine using the techniques I’ve used during term time. Depending
on how long the holiday is and how much overflow work I need to do, I would give myself about
three days to devise a full piece based on a stimulus I give myself, as well as record the process
as a mini project and record the final results, hopefully on the first day back from holiday.
General/Academic: I want to make sure that I’m doing all the work I can in a day, following
the timetable I’ve set for myself – Every Friday, I will write myself a to-do list for the following
week, and if I need to, rolling over tasks from the week before. If I have something if I’ve been
laying off for a few weeks, I will know ask it won’t be ticked off once. My aim is to have all these
tasks completed by the end of the half term.