Performance Reflection

          For the Shakespeare performance project, i was Lady Capulet in act four scene five. Lady Capulet played a mostly minor role in the story until the climax of the story when Tybalt died and Juliet was rushed into marriage. Act four scene five portrayed Nurse and the Capulets finding out about Juliet's presumably real death and their reactions to it. While acting out this scene i really wanted to express the loss and shock that Lady Capulet felt after hearing the news about her daughter's death. I also wanted to express her drastic change of emotions from the beginning of the scene to the end. In the beginning of the scene, Lady Capulet felt anxious about the wedding and just wanted to get it over with because she knew how unhappy Juliet was, however she went from anxious to very distressed and hurt when she discovers Juliet.
          I felt that my group's final performance went pretty well and that we made good use of props and were confident in our lines. However, there were a few things we could have improved on. For example, I feel that if we had practiced feeding off of each other's emotions while we rehearsed, the scene would have been more intense in our final performance. Overall I am proud of my group and I believe that our annotating and analyzing of our script helped us improve our understanding of the scene greatly.
          Through this unit of Romeo and Juliet, I have learned many things. However, the greatest skill I developed while doing this lesson was connecting the story to real life to develop a deeper understanding of the book. Getting the chance to act out our scene really made the book come to life. As i was memorizing my lines and annotating them, I found myself truly understanding all of the characters and their emotions in the scene in addition to the character I was acting out. Also, I learned to channel emotions that I was experiencing in my everyday life into my performance. For example, Iwas able to channel my anxiety about the regent exam into the anxiety that Lady Capulet was feeling on Juliet's wedding day. I can use these skills in high school english class next time we are assigned a book to read and have to take specific notes on characters and their emotions because I now feel confident in my ability to analyze characters.