Unit 3: Personal Statement

PERSONAL STATEMENT:

Drama has been a subject that has greatly influenced me both personally and academically. I have found that through drama, I have been able to free my mind and heart. It has helped me grow as a person and through acting and character work; I have been able to understand emotions and states of mind more clearly. Drama gives me an immense feeling of release and I love the sense of being a part of something so full of energy and enthusiasm. I feel that the dramatic talents that I have been given are such a gift. Because I have such a passion for the arts I have always wanted to be able to teach them to others, I would love to have the chance to earn more experience on the subject of drama/musical theatre whilst also giving my knowledge of what I have learned previously to others. The arts have always been a big part of my life, having the arts run through my family it made an impact on me from such a young age and I’ve stuck with it because I realised that the arts are who I am.

Throughout my education I have always studied drama as it gives me a chance to take a break from me and become someone I’m not, although it also allows me to be myself and be able to express myself because I felt like I couldn’t through other subjects. I went to Worthing High School where I decided to study Drama for GCSE and it was by far the best decision I have ever made. Being unconfident at first I felt like I didn’t have the ability to take on a lead role until I was given one. I was given the lead role of ‘Christopher’ in our GCSE performance of ‘The curious incident of the dog in the night-time’. This was my first major role in a drama production and at first I was a bit hesitant of taking on this major role but eventually I found the courage. I gave my all to this role and but every bit of effort that I had into this role. After giving 100% towards this role I achieved the highest grade that I could for my performance and I was over the moon. This was the point in my life that I knew that I wanted to study further into the arts, and I did. I went on to study Drama and Theatre Studies at Worthing College and then I went to study Musical Theatre. Throughout college I took part in many different productions through my Drama and theatre studies course and Musical theatre course. Through Drama and theatre studies I took part in a-level production called Kindertransport, where I played the character of ‘Lil’ whom was two characters in one. This was shown through ages, I played ‘Lil’ as a young woman and ‘Lil’ as an old woman. I put all my effort into this part as it was difficult to constantly switch between both age groups. I showed my change of age with this character by costume change and body language and voice. This helped me to gain more skills in my acting as it helped me to change role throughout the production. Furthermore, through the musical theatre course I performed in a musical production called ‘Our House’ which was a musical based around music by the band ‘Madness’. I played the character of ‘Dad’ whom was dead. This was a challenge for me as I had to act as if I was looking over my son ‘Joe’ whom was the main lead in the production. Another challenge that I came across was losing my voice for the production, I overcame this by speaking the majority of my solo songs because with the music being ‘Madness’ it came into favour for me because most of their songs are low and you can speak them if needed. Through the challenges that I faced I still gave it my absolute all and I was very pleased with the grades that I achieved out of both of the courses.