Week 27: Mock TPPP's

Monday: Mr. Fearnehough gave us an assignment to read and annotate several texts about Brechtian theatre and use the information to sketch set designs for each scene of "Mother Courage". This project will get us to think as designers and learn about Brecht's work from a practical angle. Although we were originally scheduled to present our TPPPs today, Mr. Fearnehough had an appointment come up so they were postponed to Wednesday.

Wednesday: Today was a day of infamy. We presented our TPPPs. Before we began I was very nervous, I was worried about messing up and getting a terrible grade as this was our end of year exam and I was also worried about saying something completely stupid or too personal. The point of the TPPP is to reflect on theatre and share your personal experiences, emotions, reactions, lessons learned... When I began preparing for this presentation I was worried about having enough material. After all TWENTY MINUTES is a looong time! But when I practiced my presentation it was actually too long, this helped me feel more confidant but made me worry about it being too long. To make sure that I would not forget my points and so that my presentation would be long enough I made a super long outline. This really helped, but it could have been better developed. I used five pictures that were photographs of what things that we had done in class. In retrospect I could probably have found better images that would have let me say more things and may have been a little more interesting and useful. During my presentation I was not very well organized, I got a little lost in my notes as well as having some ideas while presenting, which were more distracting than helpful. This meant that my presentation did not flow well. In future TPPPs I need to remember to pick specific events/elements to speak about in depth instead of touching on everything kind of randomly. Another thing I could have done better at was referring to the images specifically, as "image 1" or "image 2". I had some nervous "tics" that I need to make sure not to do next time, I played with my bracelet, I said um... and so... when I was uncertain of what I was going to say next, but overall I think I did decent at not allowing my nerves to affect my presentation.

One thing that I think went well was going first. I volunteered to go first so that I wouldn't have to see everyone else doing amazing and get more nervous, so I could get it out of the way and done with (like ripping of a band-aid [plaster]), and so I could pay better attention to everyone else's presentations. This worked I was able to concentrate on the other presentation much better and I didn't have as much  time to get nervous while I waited to go. I liked my pictures of me before and after theatre, I could have elaborated on them a little more but I thought they were pretty good.