'Road' By Jim Cartwright - Evaluation

‘Road’ is set during 1987, in a small town near Lancashire. I had imagined the street on ‘Road’ to be a long worn down street that has suffered because of the economy breaking down, poverty is rife and teenagers are laying graffiti all over.

This interpretation of the setting came to me when recalling the location of my dad’s childhood home; he used to live on a street just like this. There is row upon row of houses, hidden by the main high street, unseen by passers-by. Since the mines closed and jobs were scarce, this area has become ransacked; the houses are near demolished since no-one lives in them anymore.

The contextual research helped me in the understanding of the 1980’s and what the characters in ‘Road’ might have gone through in their lives. The increase in tax, higher prices for everyday essentials and jobs becoming even harder to find helped me understand why these characters are the way they are. They couldn’t do anything for themselves to escape ‘Road’ unless they left the past behind and moved away.

Each of the characters individual roles takes us on a different journey; we witness how life is treating them during this time. Some characters are better off than most however, my character, Skin-Lad, found his own escape from ‘Road’ by having a belief in Buddhist culture. By conducting research into Buddhism, I now understand that he changes his own life completely by guiding himself away from the life of a Skinhead into a more ‘peaceful life’.

I had a continuous engagement in the feedback sessions by viewing the other performances of fellow students and we all gave helpful tips to help improve our characterisation and/or physicality of the character whilst on stage. This formed a great relationship between all of us.

I found my personal management within this project to be below-par. I was unable to attend all of the sessions, but I countered this by the amount of time I’ve put into the work and dedication in my Blogs and my role as Skin-Lad.

I was willing to shave my own hair off to bring a much more realistic impression to my performance as Skin-Lad, I also purchased the appropriate clothing worn by the majority of Skinheads during the 1980’s.

I’d been told by my peers that I portrayed the role as much more intimidating and ‘not like myself’ at all. Doing this helped in the growth and development of me as an actor and I’ll continue to do things such as this in future roles.

In terms of learning my lines, I was one of, if not, the first member of the group to learn all of the lines as their character. I have done so much in-between each session to come up with different ideas for the monologue to show my own interpretation of it to the audience.

Each session I performed my monologue as Skin-Lad to the group were met with massively positive results, some had mentioned that it gets better each time they saw it. Having feedback like this gave me much more confidence with the character in both areas of vocalisation and physicality. This is mainly what helped me during the main performance in front of a live audience, and I appreciate their positive contribution for my own benefit.

My response to my lecturer’s directions in each session is positive. I sometimes agreed with her intentions for each character and I thought the main performance came out brilliantly; each scene in the play was executed confidently and I couldn’t see that it could have been performed any better.

My response to the directions for my monologue before and during the final week was mostly positive, although it was near negative at first in the final week. I say this because I had done so much work on the monologue to make it what I had interpreted him to be, i.e. an intimidating and threatening character towards the audience members by going right into their faces.

This was changed at the last minute by my lecturers for my character to be pulled back from approaching the audience into what I like to picture as a ‘cage’ which was shown by a single light source in the middle of the stage and therefore limiting my physicality. I accepted the use of the light cage; it helped me in containing Skin-Lad’s frustration towards others and even himself. By looking at our lecturer’s direction objectively, it helped me enhance my characters role and my overall performance.

Many members of the group said that my overall physicality as Skin-Lad was "Brilliant" and I had interpreted the character very well. Audience members and even the front of house staff were astonished by my appearance.

During rehearsal sessions, I had made use of the whole stage. This helped my character talk about his journey about how he has to be fit to fight. This was changed for the final showing of Skin-Lad to be restricted to a light cage. I adapted well to this change as I feel I still came across as a scary character but not as near intimating.

Since my interpretation of the character was changed at last minute, I felt as though this effect was lost but this could be countered by how the audience members were reacting once I had walked out of the theatre post-show.

Throughout the whole rehearsal process, there were areas which needed to be worked on, mostly the accent which often sounded Scottish.

Another weakness I had during the rehearsal process was that I had a tendency to perform my monologue differently each time as I had researched so much information on the era.

For the next project, I will work on the weaknesses above to hopefully have an improved performance with my new character. This will allow me to gain more confidence in these areas as an actor and it will show me that I’ve clearly developed my performance skills post-‘Road’.