Evaluation - Peter Pan

Peter pan is a fun, upbeat and unique musical that contains lots of fun characters who bring the show to life. In this show my main character was - Twin One. 

Twin one is a mischievous lost boy character who is always with there sidekick Twin Two who is played by Alex. When given the role Alex and I were allowed to decide whether we wanted to be Twin one or two, upon reading the script I went with Twin One as we thought the older and younger sibling feel to the characters would be funnier and it seemed like Twin One was the pushier character so they would be older. We thought we’d lean into the little fights and bickering and have Twin One always portray the emotion of “Well i’m the oldest, so you do what i want” even though there like 30 seconds apart. Although the audience didn’t know about our ideas or this information i think it helped with my performance as my character was well rounded.

The twins are humorous characters and a lot of their scenes involve them finishing each others sentences or speaking together. Because of this I found it slightly difficult to portray the emotions of this character as they don’t seem to have any thoughts of there own, they are always with someone they are identical too so the emotions also need to be identical. In some sad scenes this became tricky as I felt my character would be sad but also find the fun side of the situation, for example, when Peter was kidnapped I felt as though the Twins would be upset and scared but also find it exciting that they have to rescue Peter and may find Pirates. While portraying this emotion I have to make sure to be following Alex’s emotions too so they always make sense and line up. I feel as though we both pulled it off but it was definitely a challenge that i would like to be able to do more confidently in the future. 

This years show was a musical so there was singing and dancing involved throughout the play. This was definitely the biggest challenge for me as I am not a singer or a dancer and it was very nerve wracking to do both on stage for the first time. I definitely need to work on my dancing if I want to do more musicals in the future as it would strengthen my skill set. While I do not think my dance performance was the best it is something I am proud of as I put my all into it. For the singing aspect of the show it was easier than the dancing. I was able to be loud enough so that everyone could hear me and hold a note pretty well. I felt my volume was the same throughout the show which is something I wanted to achieve in this play as I wanted to work on it after Little Women as that was my main feedback. This is something I am glad to have achieved and hope other people also agree that my volume was loud enough throughout the whole play.

The Lost Boys are the ensemble and a big one at that. There was about 12 lost boys on stage for some scenes and it was crucial that we all spaced ourselves in a way where we could be seen but it also make sense, I think the Twins did a good job of this while also staying in character because as we moved we would pull on each others hats or prod one another maintaining the sibling idea. This was also something I wanted to work on moving forward as I do struggle to stay in character throughout the whole play but I feel as though I did a great job doing this during this play. Working in such a big ensemble was actually really fun because we were all able to bounce off of each others ideas and emotions. My favourite ensemble scene is when we “hide the Wendy” as we all worked together to make the scene as awkward as possible and it definitely payed off. 

My favourite part of Twins was their costumes as we tried to make ourselves look as similar as possible with the resources we had. The fur hats stood out as to what made the Twins look the same but we also wore matching pasta necklaces. Our costume was mix and match, so I was wearing a green top and black trousers, Alex was wearing green trousers and a black top. We also mix and matched leg warmers as arm warmers. I really enjoyed this costume as it really brought my character to life it made getting into character much easier as I felt like a lost boy. 

The twins main prop was frying pans and I loved this it just made so much sense to me, they are silly characters who would pick kitchen ware over a sword for battle. During the fight scenes the Twins fought each other. This was really fun and just made our funny character idea come to life the most as we were able to whack each other with frying pans as all the other Lost Boys took the fights seriously. I think this scene described the Twins the best.

I think the way I ended up portraying Twin One was a good way of doing so and made my character successful but there are things I would like to improve on and strengthen, one definitely being dance, just being better at basic moves so I can have more chances at similar roles in the future. I would also like to work on my improvisation as i’m very comfortable and confident on stage now but still get nervous if I know there’s the possibility of needing to do something on the spot so I would like to work on that.

My plan moving forward is to take a couple hours a week to work on basic movement skills until I know I can do them confidently so moving forward i’ll be able to say I can. However for the improvisation I think this one is trickier as it’s something you can do well or you can’t as it’s all based on creativity but to help me feel a bit more comfortable about it I will start up games on a morning that involve improv and make myself more used to be being put on the spot. This year I need to fully put myself out there. I have said “let go” during every evaluation but I do see progress in what i’m achieving on this course and in my confidence, sometimes it just gets a little knocked however I would like to be able to break out of the pattern of getting back into a box everytime something may set me back and instead use it to fight for what I want.