Self-Evaluation: Progress in Acting Jessica Bewes

Throughout my Level 3 acting course I have learnt, practised and developed a

wide range of techniques in which I have now acquired skills for in performing.
This self-evaluation aims to shed light on what I do best in, where I need to
improve and how I can improve my acting abilities.

At the beginning of the semester, I set myself the goals of improving pace and
becoming more confident. Since then, I have been using each session to work
on these goals and I have been improving ever since – through script work to
simple warmups to help speak clearer and adding pace. Work which we have
performed in front of an audience, whether its to the class or to family and
friends, has supported me to being much more confident with my acting and
feeling more comfortable on stage.

Since rehearsing/performing my Shakespeare monologue, playing the role of

Lady Macbeth, my confidence has improved immensely which also allows me
to slow down my pace as before my nerves would make me speed up. This
then follows through to me being able to speak clearer. Despite this success in
achieving my aims from the start of the term, I have now realised that when I
perform, I can enhance my voice to a greater extent by experimenting with
volume and tone to develop emotion to a further extent.

I believe my strongest skills lie within being able to portray my characters

emotion and feeling – often best with anger, sadness and confusion – through
physicality and facial expressions. For example, when playing the role of Lady
Macbeth, positive feedback compliments my ability to portray manipulation.

An area of which I would like to improve on is speaking clearer as I can

sometimes merge words together or say some lines too quietly. I have already
seen some improvement on this since the start of the semester, but I feel I
have more room to improve on this.
I have found that feedback from my teachers and peers often link to speaking
clearer which I am aware I need to improve on, they have helped me with this
through telling me how certain words are pronounced (in Shakespeare) which
is extremely valuable to me as it lets me understand what I’m saying and how
to say it. With this feedback, I am actively attempting to improve my vocal skills
whilst still having in-depth emotion portrayed through it.
My next main goal is to carry on improving my speech as well as when I’m
acting a casual conversation, to try and make it appear more natural.

Overall, this evaluation has delved into what I have learnt in my course so far
and allowed me to view my strengths and weaknesses on paper – as well as
helped me understand ways I can improve my weaknesses.