Shakespeare Festival Performance

For my performance I performed a section of Edgar's speech from King Lear, having known the ruff storyline of king Lear I found this a good choice to do for this performance, the audience for this performance is different to any other from past performances, as they were not paying to watch us and would not be seating around us. A lot like busking in the street it is unknown who or how many people would stop to listen.

Having this in mind when rehearsing and preparing my speech, I focused a lot on meaning and projection of my monologue. As audience would be coming and going during the performance, and some not even stopping to listen, I found it key to really empasis parts of it to draw an audience member in. As an audeince member I would want to watch something that not only start in a bold way, yet has moments throughout that make you want to hear more. During my speech my character has just escaped a battle and is hiding from the war. So he would seem paniced and on edge. I started with my body and how I would immediately show this to an audience member catching my gaze. I used sharp, sudden movements like scratching my arms and jerking my head to show my character fear and frustration. With my vocal skills I looked into different points in the speech that I could empasis words and add different levels in to draw in the public. Other than the starting line of "ive heard it proclaim" which I deliver with power and assurance, the is a section where my character discribes what he does to himself in order to hide, I said this in a harsh tone, yet projecting over everything else that is happening in the street, at the point in the speech is where I got a lot of interation back from the audience, as I could hear mumbles and could feel people eye contact on me. Throughout the speech I lower the pitch of my voice to a lower register, this created a character that seemed menacing towards other.

Over all I was really happy with the efforts that I put into my Shakespeare performance, and I feel that the time that I put into thinking of the elements that make up the monologue in order to draw in audience members and add depth to my character worked well. I also think that I tackled the different type of audience well, while trying my hardest in every performance to draw them in with every line, as well as battle out with the busy street market adjacent to the performance space.