Portfolio Entry
For
the first quarter play review I went to see the play “Lucky Stiff” which was
put on by Montgomery College. I enjoyed the play because it was, entertaining,
funny, and well directed. Our assignment was to see a play and analyze it for
setting, use of the fourth wall, acting, music, and singing. One thing that set
this apart from a lot of the other assignments that we had done so far was that
we actually had to go out and experience something as opposed to doing
research; to me this was really exciting because it allowed me to get out of
the house, and experience a play from a new perspective. Instead of just watching
the play for entertainment, I was watching to analyze the play on a technical
level.
When
I arrive at the theater I was genuinely excited to begin, and as soon as I got
there I began to take notes on the setting, set, and the overall atmosphere at
the theater. As I took notes, I felt as if I was a newspaper reporter which is
something that I want to consider doing when I graduate and look forward to
doing when I am able to join the school newspaper “Silver Chips”.
Writing the review became really easy
because of the extensive notes I had taken. I started off by collecting my
notes, then I began to write, first about the premise of the play, and then
about my personal thoughts on the play, what was done well, and what wasn’t.
What I wanted to accomplish through this paper was to transfer what I had
experienced in the play to the reader, so that they felt some of the same
things that I did, and experienced the play through my words. The reason for a
review of a play is to encourage or discourage people from seeing the
production although the only person reading the review was Mrs.Jeral, my
purpose for writing the paper was to encourage people to see the play.
A factor that made this a successful
paper was using some of my past experience on writing reviews of plays and
movies. In middle school we had completed movie and play reviews. I learned
that some of the best reviews contain information on the plot, costumes,
casting, the theme, and the style. I touched on all of these points and more
which helped me to reach my grade of a 90%. An aspect that did not positively contribute
to my paper was the grammar and tense I made. I need to make a greater effort
to proof-read my papers more than once before I turn it in. If I could do this
project over again there isn’t much I would redo. I would take more time
proofreading it to make sure that I didn’t make any silly grammatical or
spelling mistakes. I would also pay more attention to the tense that I am
writing the paper in to make sure that I continued to write in present tense
instead of past tense. I would also like to write more about the individual
aspects and character traits of each character, each of the characters in
“Lucky Stiff” were incredibly complex and really interesting, and the actors
who played them really came alive and showed every aspect of their character,
not just one.
What made me proudest about this
play review is that the teacher really understood what I wanted to do with the
paper; she commented that the review was vivid, and animated. Getting my review
to come across as exciting is something that I really worked for, and I believe
that the notes of interesting things I noticed throughout the play really
helped me to achieve the vividness. Mrs.Jeral describing my paper as thorough
and vivid provided evidence that I had accomplished my goal of transferring my
experience at the theater to the reader and that is one of the reasons I want
to include this piece of work in my portfolio.
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