Evaluation of Pronoun.

From my point of view I think the performance went great! I remembered all my lines, didn't mess up or stutter on any words and my voice was projected loudly enough for the whole audience to hear. As I would speak to the audience my focus was directly on them and I stayed in character through out the play. I always worried in the rehearsals how I would do it and had second thoughts of being the mum since all I do is speak to the audience and stare directly at them but it went better than I expected and  I wouldn't mind doing it again I really enjoyed this performance. I have been practicing through out the rehearsals how to stand still and to have a straight posture with my head up straight as well and to give eye contact to who ever I speak to and it worked. Looking at little clips on the play and doing some background research also helped me to develop my character as the mother. I had to really dig deep to my emotions and try to understand how I would feel if that actually happened to me as you may or may not know my character is very hurt about the situation of her daughter transition into a boy  and try's to hold onto every memory that she had of Dean being a girl up to the point that Dean even cut up all the photos of when she was young, she is trying so hard to erase the memories out of her head while I am trying hard to cope with how she's changing right before my own eyes and I have nothing I can do about it.

Being the mum in the play gave me an insight of how some families feel when they have a child that  transitions into a male or female. You never really get to know about how the parents or siblings feel about it or how they are copying so I am glad that I played the mum because I feel that I was able to let the audience understand how hard it is for us as the parents to cope with it, in this case it did not just affect Dean but it also affected his boyfriend Josh her little sister Dani and me and the Dad. Dean did not inform anyone about how she felt about her self before it happened and then suddenly waking up to see your baby girl dressing and practising how to be a boy just broke my characters heart.

Pronoun and the rehersals.

The play I'm doing now is called pronoun  written by Evan placey a British Candian playwright  who has done a few plays such as Suicide in Vegas , pronoun , banana boys and how was it for you. Evan Placey recently won an award for the best writers for a young audience for ' Girls like that' which took place in the unicorn theater. Evan was also apart of the channel 4 screenwriting  talent scheme, he has graduated in the university of school and drama and is now a lecturer in the university of Southhampton.

 Pronoun is a little play which is mainly focused about love and transition. Josh who is played by Jamie loves Isabelle who turns into a boy and names himself Dean( played by Ducey). Dean is strong minded of who is is and believes that he is not meant to be a girl anymore because he wakes up everyday and doesnt feel right in his body he takes hormones and injects testosterone in his but and even binds his chest with a black strap material to hide his breast until he gets enough money to get a breast removal. I am playing the mum in the play,I didn't know much about her wanting to do this or how long she has been thinking about doing so because she never voiced out how she felt to anyone. Tarkan is playing the dad and he doesn't really seem to care that much about it he's just taking it as it is while I am still trying to take everything in. For the performance I'm going to wear all white while Tarkan is going to wear all black since we got told to dress nutural. During the play we talk about the love we have for our child Dean and the failure we feel as parents.

Rehearsals

In Sharon lesson she gave us a chance to get familiar with the script and let us use that time to read through it to understand who our characters are. I am playing the role as mum therefore I decided to go through my lines with Tarkan since he's playing my husband in the script, we read our lines to each other a couple of times before we left to go home. When I went home I decided to go online and do some research on the character that I am playing just to get an idea of how I should play her and what body gestures and tones I should use when I am acting it out.

Rehearsals

We are at our last week of rehearsals and personally I think it's too soon because none of us are ready.I'm still in the progress of trying to learn my cue lines of when to come on stage and I'm just worrying because I haven't had a chance yet to rehearse in the theatre yet that would give me a better understanding of when and where to come on stage. However , I know my lines which is good and Alex has been the one helping us through giving us ideas on how to stand on stage helping us with the actions to do etc and Is doing a good job at it considering the fact that she didn't take on the role as being the director for our group but she's been the one helping us. As a group we need co operation which means EVERYONE should negotiate and give ideas but it is hard for that to work out because not everyone would be willing enough to do so. Our performance is next week so hopefully everyone will know what to do and do it successfully.

 During the rehearsals me and Tarkan we off script but just had the script in our hands so that we knew when to come on stage, we stand at the front of the stage parallel to each other and face the audience the whole time as we are speaking sort of like we are the narrators of Deans life because we are just explaining what is going on with her. We practiced our lines with Zulaiha in one of the rehearsals she stood in front of us and made us look at her while we were saying our lines so we could get into the habit of looking at the audience and not looking down or away, she helped us to stand straight as well making sure we that were not dancing and that we had a straight posture and if we did not say a line properly or with enough emotion and loud projection she would tell us to do it again and i think that helped me a lot because having a peer assess me on how am I acting and giving me live feedback is very helpful and would encourage me more to improve.

Monday 16th Rehearsals.

We were in from 10am till 6pm in the theatre just teaching and running through briefly the script  saying the cue lines only so that Jack and Alex could put the lights and sounds on for that scene. For my scene I would always have the spot light on  me because I am speaking to the audience therefore I would be the center of attention for that moment. Myself and Tarkan managed to get the props so while we were saying our lines I would take off the tie and give it to him to wear and he would take off the apron to give to me to wear but because the stage is pitch black and just two spotlights on the both of us he had to come into my light while we would exchange clothes and then go back into his once he was done taking the apron from me. Everyone had to be off script by today which was not a problem and doing the dress rehearsal was good because it was great practice for when the actual performance happens. This is one of our very last rehearsals so we did not have enough time to go through every line of the script , the time is getting nearer by the hour and everyone is getting a bit stressed but it is natural and everyone has worked hard so hopefully it all pays off!

The source that I got which helped me was from a transgender site called support all students.