I can’t and won’t deny that I was incredibly nervous for this, I’ve only ever performed solo once before and that was at A Level in year 12 for my 2 minute monologue. I was also rather nervous for that, however, what made a huge and very helpful difference for Bnag: OCD and Me was that I didn’t have a specific script to stick to, but rather a list of points in which I have a different story for each point. These stories I had memorised and knew the gist of, I knew where I started the story and where it ended.
Reflecting on my performance, I believe that I successfully told each of the stories that I wanted to tell:
- Number related OCD
- Christmas Day/first time OCD took me over
- M&M’s
- Takeaway
The funny thing is, I didn’t plan on having time to tell the takeaway story as in rehearsals, I had always reached 12 minutes right after I had finished the Christmas Day/first time OCD took me over story. But whenever one actually gets to the performance date/time, a rush just seems to happen and you speed through your material. What I did throughout was check my watch as I knew I would start at 11:00 so therefore I knew how long I’d have. After my Christmas story, I had reached 10 minutes, so I was glad to have a back-up story in case I didn’t quite have anything else to say. Equally, however, I could have just walked out claiming to have had my allotted time at that point if I didn’t have a back-up story.
One thing I wasn’t expecting in my performance was an audience of just one gender, and that is what happened so I had to adapt my performance on the spot. There was one thing I’d considered if there were some of the audience members of the same sex sat next to each other, and that was to just create a ‘human-sized’ space in between them. This is what I ended up having to use in my performance.
If I were to have any improvements to my piece, it would mainly be my set. In my set I had on the day, I had a doorway flat lit up, whereas if I was to improve on that, I would have liked to have had an actual door that I could open in a frame/doorway. For me, if I had an actual door, there would be to believe in the story, however, I did try to make it as believable as possible. The one thing I would also love to improve upon is the length of it as I feel if I had a little longer, perhaps 15 minutes. If I could do this, then I think I could have included more stories about OCD perhaps. However, if I told a lot of stories then it could be overkill on the subject and this may bore the audience after a while. My improvements however, would be mainly how my stage would look as I enjoyed the stories I told during the performance. And perhaps attempting to slow down my pace as well, use the nerves to my advantage.
I do believe that I should also add that I DO NOT HAVE OCD.