Iyla Chakal

Name: Iyla Chakal
Exam taken: Acting, Solo, Grade 5
Category nominated under: Creativity– originality, inventiveness, taking a creative approach to their qualification
Nominated by: Charlotte Emerson, Teacher

As soon as I began teaching Iyla, she instantly displayed a palpable enthusiasm for the weird and wonderful when it comes to performance. When participating in improvisational work, she consistently displayed bold choices and ingenuity as an actor, never shying away from an opportunity to explore the unusual in a comedic and engaging manner. Whilst she has always wanted to select quirky characters and unique situations for her examination monologues, it is when she creates her original scenes that her inventive nature really shines through. She has consistently produced incredibly unique and memorable character developments throughout her examinations, and she is unafraid to explore a variety of characters in a way that displays an abundance of creativity.

During Iyla’s Grade 4 examination, she selected a piece in which she played the idiosyncratic little old man from Roald Dahl’s ‘James and the Giant Peach’. Her portrayal was daring and energised, seeing her leap around the stage with delight as she jubilantly exclaimed about the magical ingredients she had in her grasp. When it came to creating a character development for this eccentric figure, Iyla did not shy away from crafting something worthy of such an anomalous role. The concept she formulated explored the little old man conducting a phone-operated sales business. Her monologue therefore depicted her character attempting to sell unusual and magical artefacts to unsuspecting victims. This monologue was highly comedic and gripping, involving brilliantly unique descriptions of the items available and incorporating delightfully humorous asides to the audience. She captured the old man’s eccentricity wonderfully and often had me laughing in rehearsals with her exceptionally crafted comedic moments. Her speech even included an unexpected twist in its concluding moments, as the character realised that his phone had been off the whole time and he had, in fact, been talking to himself.

Iyla continued to demonstrate an abundance of originality when creating the character development for her Grade 5 examination. As usual, she was drawn to comedic monologues and elected to perform Chris’s opening speech from ‘The Play That Goes Wrong’. Here, Chris welcomes the audience to the performance of a play produced by a theatrical company who are no strangers to mishap and disaster. Iyla decided to build on this idea by creating a monologue that demonstrated the chaos and carnage of Chris’s rehearsal process. In her piece, Chris enters the theatre to find the actors asleep, realising that they have been using the theatre more as a hotel than a rehearsal space. She then enacted some brilliantly comedic moments, from chastising a performer who calls his mum in the middle of rehearsals to reassuring an actor who has just fallen down the stairs that she will help him order his all-important toilet paper.

Overall, I believe Iyla has demonstrated on multiple occasions that she has utilised the Trinity examinations to effectively display her creative prowess. At every opportunity presented to her she has made choices that have revealed her to be an innovative and imaginative individual.