A Loose Theatrical Cannon

Working with Joseph has been fantastic. He really wants to work and work well. When we feel like we are done, we are then able to go our separate ways because we both have a good amount of other things to work on. Something else that I have really enjoyed about working with Joseph is how knowledgeable he is. He really enjoys researching and learning which has been helpful to me to help me to learn more about this scene. There have been some great moments working with Joseph. There was one day where I left to use the bathroom and as soon as I come back, we started a run of our scene. Joseph really liked that time that he had to sit waiting for me. He liked it because it felt like it would actually feel if he was in a hospital waiting for someone, anyone, to come visit him. It is really great to see him have those moments and it inspired me to have moments like that also. As we work together, I think that I have been having moments like that. There is an instant were I start exclaiming...

For our final performance, we were assigned partners and plays from which we are to our pick scenes. I was very excited for my assignment. Joseph is my partner. The time that I have spent around him, I have really enjoyed so I was excited to work with him. It also made me laugh that we ended up being scene partners because there was a member of our class who couldn’t keep us straight, and now we are working together in a scene where we play brothers! We were given a couple of plays to choose from but the play we ended up going with is called As Is . It is a play about two gay men and their struggle as one of them has AIDS. For a play that has such heavy subject matter, the play has a surprising amount of comedic moments. The scene we chose though is not very comedic. We chose a scene where Rich, the man dying of AIDS, is visited by his brother in the hospital. Joseph is playing Rich and I am playing the brother. Something that I find interesting is that my character is just known a...

I have really enjoyed watching other people perform their scenes in this class. It is fun to see my peers act. I feel like I do have a slight problem with watching them. My issue is that I don’t really know how to critique them most of the time. It feels like I all I have to say about their performances is that I liked it. That isn’t enough. If people are looking to improve, they need to hear the things that I have to say. I am not exactly sure where the problem lies. One thought I have is that I may not be paying enough attention. This doesn’t mean that I am not paying any attention, but that I am watching through rose-colored glasses of “this is good and I really like it” and I don’t think any deeper about it. I feel like this way of thinking doesn’t happen all of the time. There are some times that I do have criticisms and things to say about a performance. Yet there are other times where I glaze over and think, “I’m having fun at the theatre!” I really would like to pinpoint what...

One day in class, we began talking about letting the character live in you. I really liked this discussion. There are many things that have so much meaning to us as people. The characters that we are portraying are no different. When someone mentions the name of a person, behind the mention of that name is all of their feelings about that person. They could be good or bad feelings which all could be portrayed in different ways. Someone could have good feelings about the aforementioned person and they could be excited that the person was even brought up because they are a good friend or even a lover. They could have these same feelings but for whatever reason need to hide their feelings because they don’t want to give anything away. The same can be true for bad feelings towards that person. They could show that they don’t like that person or feel the need to hide their negative feelings. All of this can be true about an object as well. In all of these cases, the mere mention of these ...

While yes, I may have had plenty to complain about for my scene from True West , mostly my scene partner, there were many great things about that scene. I really enjoyed my character. To me, it really did feel like it was within my type, but it was still quite fun to play. Something that was interesting about the first two scenes that we performed in this class was that our first scene was supposed to be within our type and our second scene was supposed to be against type. I think I switched them, to be honest. Brian in Jerry Finnegan’s Sister is not a character that I have played before. As a person, I am very similar to Brian, which made it very fun to put myself into that scene because it was so similar to things that I would do. On the other hand, Lee in True West is very similar to other parts that I have played but is nothing like me as a person. This is a note that I received from the first performance for the class from my classmates. I wasn’t that surprised by that nor did...