Sunday 18 October 2015

MY EXPERIENCE PREPARING FOR ROLE PLAY


Role-play. What is role-play? A role-play is an acting in which the participants assume the roles of characters and collaboratively create stories. Participants determine the actions of their characters based on their characterization, and the actions succeed or fail according to a formal system of rules and guidelines.

I did quite a few performance in my secondary school but this is my very first time I did a role play in English. At that time, I am a new student. I am still finding time to get to know my classmates especially my teammates. So when Miss Dini informed to us that we need to find a tittle, a character for each member also what our story line is, I am excited but anxious at the same time. We have tons of ideas running through our mind from a role play about family, to comedy, to horror, and even musical. We were planning to do “Beauty and The Beast” at first but then we remembered that our lecture asked us to avoid love stories so we decided to choose a classic drama which is “The Hamlet”. On the discussion day, Miss Dini, our lecture, gives out her opinions that our play is too heavy. We were totally blanked and have no other idea on what our role play is going to be about. Our lecture helped us saying that we should do a parody. So for the final time, we decided to do a parody based on TV-drama “Oh My English”. We started out with our script and it turns out we did not even take one scene from “Oh My English” TV-drama. It was all our own idea and script.

Between the role-play, we also have other subjects work to get done with such as quizzes, presentations, and also the reports on every presentation for every subjects. We were stressed out and barely get enough sleep. This is when time management plays a vital role. We totally forgot about our role play and practice as we were too busy and focus on other subjects. Without we even realize, there’s only 3 days left until the role play performance! We were doomed. We got the script done and straight away starts our practice. Najwa, the new additional member that joined our group adds another interesting character in our play. So we have 4 scenes altogether, first scene is “In The Classroom” when we were all first introducing ourselves since it is like the first day of class, second scene is “Talentime Audition”, third scene is the “Road Trip” including “Camping Trip” and lastly is the “Final Performance”. So we have me, Adilah as Dylae, a rich and spoiled girl who loves to sing, Najwa as Teacher Wawa who teaches account for 5 Gembira, Haziqah as Aeqa, a nerd girl who loves poetry, Syafiqah as Syae, a best friend to Dylae who loves to play guitar, Hizal as Hizaly, a soft girly-like boy or the auw boy who loves to model and Afzan as Afzany, a macho boy who loves to do magic.   




We finally did all the props the day before the role play but we obviously were not prepared since we only practice together twice. On the day of the role play performance, luckily our group has to perform on 4pm so we got time to practice and improve our acting. Suddenly, we forgot that we haven’t buy the props for Afzan and Hizal’s character plus we forgot to transfer our sound effect to the laptop! That’s when things get chaos all of the sudden. Everyone were so nervous so when an incident like that happen we all get super emotional and flustered. We rushed out to buy all the props needed. So on our way to buy Afzan and Hizal’s props, in the car, we actually did last minute practice while Syafiqah transferred the sound effect in the laptop. Haziqah was driving like crazy since we had to be back at the hall before 4pm. It was madness! We managed to buy all the props needed and arrived at the hall 4pm sharp. It was still consider late because we actually have to be prepared and ready on the stage by 4pm. We actually wore 3 layers of cloths that we have to change every scene. As we want to make sure that our role play is not more than 30 minutes, we wore that 3 layers at one time. But just before we start our play, we were facing with technical difficulties in terms of the sound effect. Already late, nervous and shaking, we don’t have time to worry about it and start our play. We may look okay but at the backstage, only god knows how chaotic it is! 


We give our all during the play. I used every voice in my body possible to make sure it is loud since our hall is very open so it is quite hard for our lecture to hear. We for some reason memorized every line, we did not bring any script along, and just perform. I think we did great! Even with our last minute practice, we managed to perform well, I can hear the others laughed and enjoyed our play. I hope our lecture enjoyed it as well. Despite all of the circumstances, we actually did it. Ahh… good times. A memory that I will treasure for the rest of my life. From this role play, I learnt to always make an early preparation, don’t do last minute work. I learnt to manage my time between role play and other subjects’ work, to be tolerate and work together as a team and also to be punctual. I think the role play definitely helps to boost up my confident level to perform in front of people, and improve my English as well. Overall, I had a great time in doing the role play and if I can do it again, I would.

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