Post Performance Reflection

Yousef Abou Areda      Post Performance Reflection Class 811

1. Describe your character. What did you want to communicate about her/him in your performance?

My character was Page. Page was the servant of Paris. Throughout Act 3 Scene 5, I think that there are multiple times where readers can see how loyal Page is to his master, Paris. First of all, he agrees to go to the spooky, creepy tombs with Paris so he can see Juliet one last time. One of my lines during the performance was, “I almost afraid to stand alone here in the churchyard. Yet I will adventure”. This shows that despite the fact that Page is afraid to accompany Paris, he will still follow his master’s orders. These are the key qualities I attempted to portray throughout the duration of the scene. I wanted to show how afraid Page was, and I did this by making my physical body smaller and changing my facial expression so I looked frightened.

2. How did your performance go? What did you do well? If you could have changed and improved something in your performance, what would it be and why?

Overall, I believe that the performance went very well. Everyone in my groups had their lines fully memorized and worked together on stage. I enjoyed working with my group members. I think I knew how to convey Page’s fear and loyalty to Paris very well during the scene. I made sure I looked afraid the whole entire, like a ghost was going to come out of the blue. I also took advantage of the props like the flowers and torch to add extra emotion into the scene. Lastly, I knew my stage directions very well. I knew when to whistle, and I had to be sharp with my cues for that. If I could have changed something in the performance, it would have been to look at the audience more often. Although I portrayed Page’s fear throughout the scene quite well, I was looking at the ground very often. Making eye contact with the audience is very important because your eyes hold a lot of emotion. I personally have very big eyes, so I always hold a lot of emotion in my eyes. This could have further displayed Page’s terror in the scene.

3. What did you learn and gain from the Romeo and Juliet unit? How can you apply the skills and lessons to high school English?

To sum up, I learned a lot from this Romeo and Juliet unit. My annotating have really improved. The language used in Romeo and Juliet is very different than the language used today. Sometimes, it could take a very long time to figure out what a specific line means, or what specific words in a line mean. The text was very difficult to comprehend at times. However, using post-its to annotate the text was very useful because when you go over it to review for a test or memorizing lines. This is a valuable skill that I hope to retain in high school. In addition, my synthesis pages have majorly improved. A major thing I learned during this unit was comprehending Shakespeare, and doing synthesis pages majorly helped with that. I can apply the skill of making synthesis pages when I have to write essays in high school or trying to further understand a character.