Evaluation of a Third Kind

I wanted to put this piece of course work on my blog as it is a way of presenting myself to others without going to deep in to my personal life. This is an evaluation I wrote for for my Performance Writing class at Uni. I'm rather proud of this piece of work, and wrote it down whilst in a state of deep anxiety and depression. I like to look back at work I have written when like this. It gives me a sense of my own well being.

Self Evaluation

This is the first time I have ever performed stand up comedy, and quite

possibly my last. No, I’m only joking, I loved every second of it. Not the preparing for the performance though. I had to come up with some funny material to recite upon a huge Alice in Wonderland fantasy which I call a stage. My quest to find this material was difficult, but luckily I have been writing comedy for about a year now, so I already had some ideas and plans to coordinate the script.

I decided to write comedy for this terms assessment as I have become bored

performing depressing idealistic monologues. I really admire Allan Bennett and his

talent of structuring his own monologues, but I fell my writing abilities needed to be

expanded as I have done these before.

To come up with possible jokes I read many newspapers and researched the

culture scene in the UK. I didn’t realise how much research some comedians did for

their pieces! To engage the audience I used up to date news stories in my set; I

have even decided to subscribe to the famous magazine “Private Eye” to try and get

my creative juices flowing. I mainly used random thoughts that just popped in to my

head. I have no idea why I have this random, bizarre ability to think up nonsense, but

it’s a skill that came in great use for this assessment.

When I participated in the warm up exercises I felt extremely self conscious.

Why this was I’ll never know, but it’s strange how I feel so exited and enjoy

performing but dread and hate the warm up exercises with a passion. Maybe this is a

self esteem problem or I have such a stubborn personality I resent performing what

others ask me to do.

To enhance the strength of the subjects I spoke about I made links between

each subjects. This gave the over all performance a smooth feel which felt as though I

was telling a story rather than trying to be a fake character. On stage I try to be myself

as much as possible. My self character has transformed in to this egomaniac and

stubborn single woman. A typical 22 year old some might say.

Overall I feel my performance was a huge success if I may say so myself. On

stage I felt like I was in another dimension and that everything else in the world didn’t

matter until the piece was finished and everyone watching had absorbed every tiny

piece of information I was giving them. Sitting down and writing, be it for comic

purposes or for my online blog generates the same feelings. I also love being able to

make other people laugh with my material. A bit like a nurse is able to help someone

feel better, I can realize endorphins in someone brain with a simple line. There can’t

be anything wrong with that.

The last few months of this class have really taught me a lot about my abilities in writing as a

whole. I am able to come up with ideas easily, but I now need to keep improving the way I write

them down and structure my work.