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 I feel bad about it.

After we had been working on emotionally connecting to imaginary circumstances with our fantasies, we were to then apply those things that we had learned to our scenes. For a character like Lee, this was somewhat hard to do for me. Lee and his brother Austin’s relationship drives on competition. I don’t have a brother that I am competitive with, nor any of my siblings. I am not a competitive person in general. What made things work was not thinking about the competition within my own life, but to think about the imaginary circumstances that are Lee and Austin’s lives. Once I could focus on that I was more connected to Lee. I really enjoyed working on this scene and working with my teacher. It was unfortunate that working with my scene partner did burn me out on this scene. By the time we did our final performance, I felt rather “meh” about my performance. I was just done for that scene to be over. It was a great experience, but I was grateful it was finished.