Anne-Marie Rand
Evaluation of Improvisation Exam Over a Period of 8 Lessons
The improvisation exam dealt with the issues and experiences felt by people due to war and other conflicts. I found this particular topic hard to relate to at first as it is normally men who are involved with war but as the eight lessons developed I found it easier to become involved in the topic, relating the topic to similar situations that I have experienced myself. The first two lessons were particularly helpful in developing characters that could be used in later lessons. The first two lessons dealt with personal conflict between friends, family or strangers. Starting off with these topics helped me to understand the reasons behind the outbreak of war and conflicts between people and therefore aided me in build up more in depth and real characters in the war scenes.
The beginning lessons were mainly performed in pairs, which I feel very comfortable with as it allows me to create more personal characters that are less likely to be affected by other characters in the improvisation and consequently lose the concentration of my character. In the second lesson we did improvisations that involved the whole class. It was difficult to keep the concentration for the whole lesson because to work as a whole class in an unprepared improvisation is hard to do well when there is little structure to work from. In one particular exercise I was asked to be the leader of a biker gang in a heated argument between two gangs. It was a confrontational scene and required me to think on my feet and to be very forward in how I portrayed my role. As I am more comfortable with roles that are more reserved and less antagonistic and aggressive I found this particularly hard but it was a very useful improvisation for me because I was able to try a role that I was not at ease with and become more comfortable with that type of role, which would be required especially with war as the theme.
