SKILLS

      Over the past year, I have gained and developed many various wider skills from the Performing Arts course at Westminster Kingsway College, such as focus, confidence, stage awareness, teamwork, creativity, improvisation, communication, discipline, articulation

FOCUS
      By working with a class of 27 people, the focus may get quite difficult to maintain sometimes, there can be many distractions from the script and the class exercises. Usually, when we are working on a play, before going through the script we do focus and breathing exercises so we can have the right energy to work. A good example of an exercise that we also did recently in class is when we all stand in a circle, one of us starts the game by pointing at someone through the eye contact. The person who had been pointed at has to leave his spot and do the same ( eye contact) with somebody else while the person who started the game takes his spot. The exercise starts slowly, but it gets faster and faster. It helps us as actors to focus on what is happening around by paying attention and following the eye contact. It's very useful, especially because we're such a big group of people and we're all working together at the same time, which requires a lot of attention paid. Over the past year, going through all these exercises and techniques, I've developed focus as an actor. It is way much easier for me to get into the character now comparing to the first month when I started the course.

CREATIVITY
      When it comes to creativity, I can not compare myself from 2 years ago with myself now. Just because of how much the course had trained me, which led to a huge improvement. It is way much easier for me to write a script or just to come up with ideas now than it was then. The Broken Hearted Youth also helped us with some techniques and advice to make writing a script easier for us. Also, by writing, our brain is constantly exercising and we all know that through exercising we become better.
      Feedback from the other people in class after performing helped me a lot as well. When I hear opinions and ideas from outside, I immediately listen and try to understand which makes me more creative.

TEAMWORK
      As I said before, there are 27 students in our class. All of us are different types of people but we want the same thing, that's what keeps us together. Having the chance to work with many different types of students turned me into a real team worker. Even though before the course I might've thought that there is nothing I can develop about teamwork because of the sports I've done, my opinion has completely changed. Before the course, I did 9 years of Taekwondo, which created the teamwork spirit inside of me, but the Performing Arts course has shaped all those abilities.
      As our teacher said, " The performance is just as good as the weak link". For me, this means that everyone needs to put all their energy into the rehearsals, the performances and everything else we do. That means attending to lessons, being present and being on time.
      At the moment, we are developing a script written by our tutor, Rob Alexander, inspired by our ideas. To finish this, we all net to work together and put our energy in. Not just for the performance but for rehearsals as well.

IMPROVISATION
      When I first got into the course I had no experience in improvisation. I didn't really know what to do or how. Also, I was a bit shy to do it by myself in front of the class because I wasn't used to doing anything without planning it. Working on a script is always a good idea, perhaps a safe one, however, going off-script can offer the audience an indescribable moment.
What I believe is that improvisation is really an example of heightened communication, relying on an actor’s ability to engage completely with their performers as well as their own character. Taking a character off-script and seeing how they react in different situations helps create a character and can lead to more natural, believable performances.

ARTICULATION
      "An actor's voice is their instrument, and in order to be understood an actor must pronounce words clearly. Articulation an essential skill for actors to master."
      Articulation exercises must be part of an actor's life every day. In our class, before we start to rehearse, we make sure we train our mouths, so we can clearly pronounce all the words and phrases.
      This is the part where I really need to work on, mostly because of the fact that I only learned English when I moved to London, which was also when I started the course. Even though it's not my first language and I only started to speak it one year and a half ago, that doesn't make an excuse for me to not improve it. I need to work on this as much as possible so the audience can clearly understand what I am saying.

CONFIDENCE
      Gaining and developing all these skills above have increased my self-confidence. The course has shaped all my abilities and it turned me into a better performer.