Most of what you make in this course vanishes the moment it ends — a scene performed is a scene gone. Your journal is the part that stays. It is where a term of workshops, rehearsals, and performances turns into something you can look back through and actually see: this is where I started, this is what I tried, this is what changed. In this course, the journal is the portfolio — the place growth becomes visible.
The hub is Drama Journal: what the journal is, how entries work, and the success criteria it is collected against at the end of each unit. The pages below support it at each stage of the course — and one of them, Judging Your Own Work, turns the same honesty outwards, onto the piece your group is about to perform:
| Page | When you need it |
|---|---|
| Your First Entry | Week one, facing a blank page |
| What a Strong Entry Looks Like | Once the habit exists and you want entries worth rereading |
| Judging Your Own Work | In the working period before a piece is performed |
| Journal Checklist | Before handing in each unit’s journal |
| Showing Growth | Mid-course, when earlier entries become evidence |
| Final Reflection | The last week, looking across the whole record |
Four entries in this book carry a mark, and they are a task rather than a portfolio page: Milestone Journal Entries holds their criteria and the days they are written on.
The journal is written forwards and read backwards
Each entry takes ten minutes and feels small. The value arrives later, when Showing Growth asks you to compare your starting self to your most recent self — and the comparison is only possible if the earliest entries were written honestly. Write for the person you will be in four months.