On our first week on our unit for identity we watched a short film on the topic and then afterwards we got into groups and made a mind map about identity and what makes our identity and talked about how our identity makes us who we are, after that we started to write our own monologues about our own identity. We did this because it is important that as actors we know our identity as well as being able to explore ourselves and our identity and being able to be vulnerable as people. I think this has helped me as an actor to be more vulnerable in front of people as my monologue was very personal to me and has helped showed a more vulnerable side to me as an actor as well as showing more of my identity to others.
our second week we looked at Verbatim Theatre. Verbatim Theatre is theatre created from interviews from real life people about an event in their lives and then those people are portrayed on stage by actors. In class we watched a video on what Verbatim Theatre was and the meaning of it. After the video we had to do voice recordings of each other and then say and act like the person in the voice recordings. This is important because it helps with improvisation skills and make the performance more realistic as if the person acting out the voice recording like they are that person. I think this has helped as this helps improve my improvisation skills as well as my confidence in performing. As well as that helps us go further with our understanding with identity.
Third/Fourth week we took one or two of the monologues and used that to perform and act out for our identity unit where we were split into groups and where given lines to act out our scenes as well as going into further detail about how race and ethnicity goes with our identity from one of the monologues we read. This helps because it gives us as actors a wider range of different identities and make us more aware. We were also given a random script about this girl named Clarissa who found out her parents were not her real parents and we had to act out how the scene would turn out after the script and create our own scenario. This has helped as this improves our improvisation skills as well as teamwork skills. The script we were given also links with identity as Clarissa never knew that the adults looking after her was not her real parents so that could suggest a part of her identity is gone and she doesn't know what part of her life is even true anymore that's part of her identity.
