[Insert creative title that I can’t think of]

Over the past semester I have gained a lot more acting experience. While in the past I had done all of the school musicals and plays, I had never really gotten any real instruction, or done anything outside of that. At the beginning of the semester, I wrote that I wanted to work on getting more comfortable on stage and feeling less self conscious. And, honestly, I still felt that self consciousness throughout the whole term, up until my final project. Previously, I couldn’t stop comparing myself to the other people in the class, wondering what I was doing there and why I always felt so awkward. But somehow, my final project managed to overcome that. I was much more comfortable with it than any of the other things we did all year, and I already was familiar with it beforehand so it only took a couple of tries to memorize. But it might also have been because I related to Evan more than the other characters I’ve played this semester - the girl complaining about guys and bad pickup lines, the angry candy shop customer, or the random sick person from the poetry project were all people that I didn’t know very well.

    This is not to say that the final project was just meant to keep me in my comfort zone and be an easy project. The hardest part was between the two monologues - I had to show how Evan changed from the beginning to the end, without any words. I didn’t get to practice it much before the final draft, so it was the part I was most nervous about. I hadn’t had much feedback, so I wasn’t sure what I could be doing to get it the best it could be.

    Towards the end of the year I felt that I was gaining more confidence. When we were doing more serious works I felt a lot more comfortable, like I knew how to express my character much better. During the comedic scenes the characters were more loud and over the top, and everything I was doing felt forced. I didn’t naturally fall into that category. In the future I’d like to work on being more expressive with characters like that. I’d like to build on versatility, because playing characters who are different than you is the entire concept of acting.

    Another thing I learned was how to work better on my own, and how to work better with other people. There are pros and cons of each. One one hand, working alone allowed me to take the project in whatever direction I wanted. My ideas didn’t have to be accepted by the rest of the group, I could just go with what I had. In group projects we had to mix and match ideas, so that everyone got a little of what they wanted but also might have had to work with things they might not have been envisioning. On the other hand, performing alone could be more difficult sometimes because it was just me onstage, while working with others gave me something to play off of - especially in the candy shop scene. Over the course of the class I learned to work with each of these things - getting comfortable being on my own, while also getting better at collaborating with the group so that everyone’s ideas ended up in the final draft.

Link for final project

https://youtu.be/kIJLR6_W9Rc

Improv Comedy “Propless” Review

Last Saturday (May 19) I went to the improv comedy show at CA, “Propless”. Overall it was a very funny show composed of a variety of amusing improv games including freeze tag, not a box, park bench, and more. The actors were all very talented and creative, good at creating scenes and characters in the spur of the moment and making it funny. Sometimes the scene would come together and everyone would be on board with what the scene was, whereas other times it would fall apart into chaos and the scene would dissolve. Of all the actors, Julia Rafferty stood out as one of the best. She was not afraid to go all out with her character/scene and it made it all the better. In every scene she was in she took the lead and directed it in whatever way fit the prompt. During the dating game she made a very accurate Ray and was one of the funniest participants. She was very comfortable up on the stage and made the audience laugh a lot.

Sam Weed also did a great job directing, and occasionally participating. She made the audience feel comfortable and got them ready for the show. She clearly knew the games and the actors very well, and she was confident in everything she did.

I liked the way that the show was set up. The progression of acting games allowed the actors to show their skills in a variety of different ways, including various restraints on their dialogue - the alphabet game, for example, forced them to think quickly and come up with a line that fit the scene while also starting with the right letter, while the laughing game made different characters interact with others that may not have been there when the scene started. This showcased the different ways that improv can be expressed, and it made for a funny and enjoyable evening for everyone.

Final Project Proposition - Dear Evan Hansen

I am proposing to perform the opening and closing monologues from Dear Evan Hansen. They’re from a show that I feel very strongly about and I had already connected with the two monologues even before starting this project. One thing that I’ve been told I struggle with is speaking clearly. Evan’s letter at the beginning of the show is meant to be spoken very quickly, so I will have to push myself to speak quickly but also clearly enough that I can be understood. Evan changes a lot from the beginning of the show to the end. In his second letter at the end of the show he is far more confident, and his anxiety has ebbed since his first rambling letter. He’s definitely much wiser that he was, having gone through everything he did - which included some very difficult stuff to deal with. My biggest challenge will be between the two monologues - I will have to find a way to show the passage of time and the change he undergoes, something which in the real show is accomplished in about an hour and a half but I will have to show in only a minute or two.   

There are several ways this could be accomplished. First, I could utilize music from the show. There’s one part, at the end of “Disappear” and the beginning of “You Will Be Found”, that really shows a change in him in a short amount of time. He receives a tie from Cynthia Murphy, and the time from when he puts it on and begins his speech to the school is the part I would use. He goes up, gets nervous, and starts to have an anxiety attack, but he slowly stands back up and continues his speech, only this time much more confident. The speech would be too out of context but the piano at the end of disappear would be a good backtrack to the transition. Another idea for the transition is that I could use the overlapping voices technique from “You Will Be Found” but record my own version to fit the transition. Finally, I could video the recording and record different scenes from the show that demonstrate his change, and then edit them all in iMovie. I could also not do the last monologue and instead get a scene partner to the scene right after the first monologue between Evan and Heidi.

This monologue will push me to perform something longer than the other monologues this semester. It’s a lot more to memorize than what I’ve done so far but I still think I will be able to handle it. The whole project will encompass both the memorization part and the creative problem solving part of the class. I will have to memorize the monologues but figure out my own transition between the two.

Devising Unit First Draft Reflection

I really enjoyed the process of deconstructing the original video and then using different pieces to create something new as we went. It’s very interesting how the process of creating the piece involves everyone and builds as we each add something on. There was a lot of putting ideas out and seeing if they stuck, and it eventually formed a big web of ideas (that may or may not have completely made sense) that we then had to translate into something that we could perform. Eventually it came together and we started performing by walking up onto the bridge and reading them and then walking off, but it felt too formulated and the same every time. Doing the whole thing improv was very hard at first. My mind would go blank and I wouldn’t know what to say and have to stand there for what felt like a long time thinking of something. After a couple of tries however I had a basic idea of what I wanted to say and it got easier. It was more fun to come up with the short, funny rejection letters at the end, though they started to feel repetitive after a while. We now need to work on videoing our final draft and coming together at the ending so that it isn’t so awkward when we throw the papers and go off and it makes more sense.

Girls Gone Wild - Red LIght District and Devising Unit

-The girls started almost like this was a performance for the people on the street, but they then used it to drop a message after everyone had gotten into it and surprise them - they were enjoying themselves and weren’t expecting it
-I was very confused at first and wasn’t sure what was going on and why they had started dancing
-The music and actions were kind of intense and the red lights and dark colors made it seem surreal in a way.
-Women on display in windows

The idea that people think that they are just watching a performance but they are tricked into receiving an important message, while at the same time (in the girls case in the video) the performers have been tricked as well. It also creates a greater impact on the audience when they don’t see it coming and were just enjoying themselves, especially because they were part of the problem.

People trying to ignore or avoid a reality that they might not like or that makes them uncomfortable, even though they might know about it.

Ideas for devising:
- Leading the audience on and then twisting the ending by revealing that the characters had been tricked

Spoken Word Poem

I was sitting in a classroom

With two good friends

In an after-care program

That took place after school ends.

We were talking just like normal

So I felt right in place

When one of them said something

And I almost felt erased.

She said she’d pick the other friend

That it was Allison who “got her” more

And I’ve only just now realized

What I didn’t know before.

That she’ll never know I “get her”

If I never let her “get me”

I’m always so closed off

So there’s this part that people don’t see.

That they don’t know.

They don’t know.

They don’t know.

That in my head there are

Fireworks

That ricochet off my

Skull

And sometimes they are

Beautiful

But also very

Loud

And those fireworks are

Passion

And I feel them in my

Bones

But they never seem to

Stop

So I always feel a-

lone -

No, not really alone

There are people around me

Always

But they don’t know

What I

Know.

And the fireworks get

bigger

but they never

explode

I’m a tiger in a cage

One that nobody can see

Because that cage is my head

And the tiger is me.

And I know if I could

Let go

It would all turn out just

Fine

But my head won’t let me

Do that

So the tiger waits in

Line.

Because the truth is

Fireworks were not meant to be contained.

What they don’t know, they don’t know, they don’t know,

Is the tiger.

They don’t know.

But I want them to.

Strengths and Weaknesses of Wipeout

One thing that the group did very well was making each character very distinct in the way they moved and the way they went through the obstacle course. Giving each one their own song to match them was also a good way to make each one unique. It was really funny to watch each one play out and I liked the effects they added. Hunter did a good job as the old man and the fat man - he added a lot of physical comedy while he was going through the obstacle course and really stayed in character. Sarah’s characters (the nerd and the little girl) were also both very funny, especially the little girl at the end. She made her look very happy and carefree. I also likes how her first character kept reading the book until the very end. Jordan did a really good job after he shot himself in the foot - he was very dramatic and the music also made it a lot funnier.

The group could have added more of an ending to the show, rather than just finishing after the little girl. They could have announced the winner or had the person who finished go last instead of having it happen so early on. Some of the songs with a lot of words were a little distracting and kind of took away from the purpose of the silent movie. The ones without words seemed to match the characters better because they sounded less like songs you might listen to in your free time and more like a theme song playing for each character. The words weren’t always relevant to what was actually going on in the movie - like the song from Tangled at the end - even if they fit the mood and feel of the character.

Silent Movie Reflection

Making a silent movie was very different from the other projects we’ve done so far, in that there were a lot of different aspects that I’d never covered before. Because there was no dialogue we had to tell the story completely through actions, especially because we didn’t use any text slides. We had to convey a lot through our expressions and exaggerate more than we normally would (like inserting clips of me with an evil face) to show what was really happening, otherwise parts of the plot might get lost. Another thing that we’d never done before is work with a camera to get shots from several different angles, though I was disappointed that some of our final clips didn’t end up in the final draft - the part where I take off my disguise and knock out Erin was replaced by an earlier clip that wasn’t as good. This also allowed us to retake shots that we didn’t like or wanted to improve. Adding the music and editing clips to speed them up allowed us to make scenes funnier or create a different mood, and I liked that we got to make up the plot.

    We could have improved on drawing out our scenes and making them longer. We really just did the scene, and as long as it went well we put it into the final draft. As a result we didn’t focus much on using the right body language or maximizing the comedic effect. I wish we had done more takes of the beginning scene because I would have liked to have worked more on taking off the disguise and being more dramatic about it. I also think that if we had all had had a part in editing the video we could have gotten in the clips that didn’t end up in the video. We probably could have also worked out getting the video of Erin and I at the beginning to alternate with the part where Maddie robs the bank.

    I thought I did a good job emphasizing my movements when there was a lot of action going on, like during the scene where I trip and the chase scene.

Candy Shop Skit Reflection

    The biggest difference between performing the candy shop skit and my first monologue was having a scene partner. Instead of being on my own, I could play off of Maddie’s reactions and focus on something that was actually happening rather that something that I had to imply by my own actions. I enjoyed adapting what was already a funny skit, the Monty Python Cheese Shop sketch, into something that fit our purposes better. We could add and subtract what we wanted and make it more of our own, rather than just reading what someone else had written. I had more to memorize than I did in my monologue, but there was also the additional challenge of remembering cues from the other person and knowing how and when to respond. It was much easier to remember sequences of conversation that remembering the list of candies, but I liked having them memorized rather than making them up on the spot, especially because some of them were cues for Maddie and I couldn’t repeat any. In places where I could have gotten around it on my own, anything that Maddie or I forgot would just confuse the other person and we would have to restart. The most challenging thing was getting angry enough at Maddie to maximize the comedic effect. I don’t normally express anger in that way and I felt awkward after a certain point. I still think I could have improved in that area, though I do think I was better in the final draft. I also didn’t have a lot of blocking to work with - Maddie was always going back and forth and checking things but I didn’t have much to do so most of the time I was in the same place. I think I did a good job with the ending, even if I sometimes couldn’t get the gun out right. My reaction to her hiding the candy felt more natural than the rest of the scene, when my reactions felt a little more forced, and I changed the way I said the last line in the final draft. I liked our additions to it that the cheese shop didn’t have. Overall, I learned more about the different techniques applied to monologues as opposed to partner scenes and gained more experience reacting to another actor on stage.

Review of Les Miserables

    Les Miserables, as presented by the Cheshire Academy theatre department, represents several different themes throughout the show. Though at first centered around the musical’s main protagonist, Jean Valjean, the plot soon branches off into several different directions and focuses on the intertwining stories of the people around him, without making it difficult to keep track of. Set in early 19th century France, the show opens with Valjean’s release from prison after serving nineteen years for stealing a loaf of bread and his subsequent escape attempts. After being denied his pay due to his time spent in prison, he is finally taken in by a kindly bishop, but repays him by stealing his silver for money. Once Valjean is caught, however, the bishop, rather than calling him out, maintains that he had made a gift of the silver and give him his silver candlesticks as well, thus “buying his soul for god”. Valjean is moved by this act of kindness and vows to be an honest man from there forth. This prologue is the premise for the rest of the story, which follows several characters though war, unrequited love, death, and revenge.

    Les Miserables focused on many themes, the most significant of which being love, death, and forgiveness. The way Valjean puts it, the bishop teaches him love when he spares him from being rearrested, and he carries this with him, saving Fantine from Javert and taking care of her daughter after her death, which Fantine acknowledges in the epilogue - “you raised my child in love”. Both the musical and the book represented love with a very religious aspect, making several references to God, including “to love another person is to see the face of God” and making it a bishop who saves Valjean. We did not emphasize this point so much as other productions might have. Death was also a constant presence in the show - starting with the death of Fantine and progressing through the deaths of Eponine, Enjolras and all of the students (including a young boy named Gavroche), Javert, and finally Jean Valjean and the very end, when all of the ghosts of the dead return to bring him presumably to heaven. Finally, forgiveness - Javert refuses to shake his belief of “once a thief forever a thief”, and when Valjean spares his life and shows him mercy he commits suicide. Valjean, on the other hand, forgives Javert, even though he was hunted by him for years, and is kind towards everyone.


The main set is of a bridge in front of a painted background of houses along a street and a river though the middle, but other settings are created by five three sided panels each painted a different way - one side is yellow, one is gray, and one is painted with a garden. The yellow side usually appears during happy scenes, at the inn during “Master of the House” and in the ABC Cafe, as the rest of the set is fairly dark. The one exception is during “Turning” and “Empty Chairs and Empty Tables”, because they are both sung at the ABC Cafe where the students used to meet, but after their deaths it becomes a reminder of how what once used to be a happy place has become sad. The gray background usually sets a sad/hopeless scene - the chain gang that Valjean worked with, and the hospital with Fantine, while the garden was at Valjean and Cosette’s house and was where they got married. The bridge scene usually was where the poor and the beggars were, and the barricade set the stage for the war and the death of the revolutionaries.

Sometimes the lighting would dim to focus on a certain character or interaction, like during the barricade scene when Valjean spoke to Javert as everyone else froze, or during “Bring him Home”. “Master of the House” on the hand had colorful lights to emphasize the festive mood of the inn.

Of the many talented actors and actresses in the show, the one that really stood out to me was Julia Rafferty as Fantine. Her singing was very powerful, especially during “I Dreamed a Dream”, and she was able to convey lots emotion despite her characters short life. The Thenardiers were also very funny, and I liked them a lot more than in other versions of Les Mis that I’ve seen. The first time I saw it, at the Bushnell, I wasn’t sure why they were supposed to be funny and I flat out just didn’t like the characters very much. But the way that Sam and Gianna portrayed them, the Thenardiers became likable and funny, despite being the antagonists of the play. They used a lot of physical comedy to exaggerate everything and get their point across.

    Overall I really enjoyed the show, both being in it and watching parts of it. Both the musical itself and the actors are the best that I have performed with, and it though it was a lot of work, it was very rewarding to do a completely sung through musical. I would recommend watching it to anyone who has heard of the show.

Candy Shop Skit

Short Comedic Monologue Final Draft and Reflection

The biggest challenge that I faced during my monologue was learning to make my character feel natural. In the beginning I had my character talking to an invisible friend beside her, which was kind of awkward because I was interacting with someone who wasn’t really there. The switch to talking of the phone made it much more realistic - I was still having a conversation with someone, but they didn’t have to be there next to me and we didn’t need to hear their response. This worked much better and taught me new ways to look at monologues that might make it appear more natural or make more sense.
    Another thing I had to work on was the gestures. I normally don’t gesture very much, and when I do I’m not usually paying attention to it, so to do it deliberately felt awkward at first and didn’t always fit with what I was saying. It was easier when I had my monologue memorized so that I didn’t have to think about what I was saying and could work on using my body more to emphasize it.
    Something I tried to work on was adding more emotion to my voice. In watching the video of my monologue I saw that my voice doesn’t always come out the way it sounds in my head. I tried to improve upon this during the finals draft but it still didn’t come out quite as I wanted it to.
    One thing that was difficult was balancing all the different aspects of of the monologue. It was easy to focus on one thing and then forget about the others - when I started working on my voice I wasn’t thinking about blocking or gestures, and it was hard to keep them all in mind. Once I got to know the monologue better it came together and I didn’t need to focus on one thing at a time.
    Memorization seemed difficult as I was doing it, but once I got it the first time I didn’t really have any trouble knowing the whole thing. Other than the first line, which I knew but kept losing at the last second, it came very easily.

Short Comedic Monologue Strengths and Weaknesses

Strengths: I was more confident than I have been the past few times I’ve performed, mainly because I’ve had more practice. The performance as a whole felt pretty natural, and using gestures didn’t seem as forced as it had before. I also thought that, besides the pacing, the blocking worked pretty well, and I “stuck the landing”, which I hadn’t done in previous performances.

Weaknesses: Something I noticed while watching the video was that my voice sounds a lot flatter than it does in my head. I could definitely work on adding more emotion to it and making it a little more varied than it is. I also saw that my pacing was a little weird somehow and it could be a lot more purposeful. Sitting down in the chair seemed a little too staged, mainly because I wasn’t completely sure where it was, but it wasn't a big problem and shouldn’t be too hard to solve.

Short Comedic Monologue

This is what I chose as my short comedic monologue:

Kim is so fed up with men approaching her with their one liners. In this comedy monologue, she talks to one of her good friends about the annoying men she randomly tolerates.

KIM: I don’t know what it is with me lately but I just get so UGH! when guys come up to me, with their cheesy lines, (imitating guy) “Hey, you have such a beautiful smile” or “Can I just tell you that you are so beautiful”.  Ugh!  It disgusts me.  I mean, who the hell does this guy or that guy think he is to give me such compliments?  What gives him the right?  I don’t do anything to give off any kind of interest whatsoever, I completely look the other way when I see eye contact happening and they STILL come over thinking they’re so suave and it’s simply repulsive.  You know what I’m saying??

What does a girl have to do these days?  Maybe if I just vomited on myself the guy would walk the other way but I bet even then, I’d get, “The way you vomit on yourself is just so, so delightful.”

…All I want is to be left alone.  I have a man, I love my man and I do my best to be polite but the irritation and the cheesy lines are getting to be too much.  Guys are blind, they really are, OBLIVIOUS to when a girl is not interested.  There are days when I’d rather be a man.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

1. Who is your character? 

Kim is a woman who is probably in her early twenties. She’s probably very pretty because men keep approaching her to compliment her, and she is very annoyed by it. She tries to tolerate it but eventually starts ranting to her friend, which is what happens during the monologue. 

2. What is the situation? Setting?

Kim is ranting to her friend, probably at her house or over a cup of coffee, and she begins to get more and more upset.

3. Why is your character delivering this monologue? What emotions are being expressed?

She wants to get it off her chest and rant to her friend (who probably does not care that much) and she goes from annoyed and gets gradually more agitated, eventually reverting to sarcasm and then ends a littl;e calmer but still annoyed. Even though she’s unhappy she still ends up bragging about herself a little, how she’s so pretty that men won’t stop noticing her.

4. What do you think happens right before and right after the monologue?

Kim had probably just been approached by some one who was going to compliment her while she was with her friend, and after he’s gone (or maybe he’s still there and can here her) she completely goes off, ranting about how this always happens. Afterwards she probably calms down a little and she and her friend start talking about something else.

5. What props or set pieces or costumes will you use?

Kim probably doesn’t wear anything too different from what other women wear, so whatever I’m wearing will probably fir her character. She does probably like to dress nicely, because again, she’s pretty and everyone notices her. There aren’t many props necessary, and it could be performed with or without the friend onstage. 

About Me

Hi! My name is Elena Parkerson, and I live in Cheshire, Connecticut. I am a Freshman and a day student. For the past three years I have run cross country for my school and I’ve also played two seasons of Ultimate Frisbee. I’ve been in probably every school play that has been offered to me, including the drama club plays we put on in middle school. My favorite shows are Hamilton, In the Heights, Dear Evan Hansen, Wicked, Come From Away, Les Mis, and Newsies (among others), and I just recently saw Waitress on Broadway.

One thing that you should know about me is that for six and a half year I lived overseas. When I was four my family moved to La Paz, Bolivia, and we lived there until I was almost eight. Then we moved to Kampala, Uganda, where we lived for two and a half years until we finally moved back to the U.S. where we have been living for about five years now. Living abroad has given me a much wider perception of the world, and I’ve loved experiencing things that most other American kids have not, like having monkeys run across the roof of my school like squirrels would here. Living in Bolivia means that I used to be completely fluent in Spanish, but as soon as we moved away I forgot most of it and am now relearning it. For the longest time soccer was “football”, counterclockwise was “anticlockwise” (it still is), and the date was written with the day before the month. Unfortunately I am now quite American (boring!) but really glad to have experienced other parts of the world for so long.

Another thing about me is that I love reading. Some of my favorite books and series are The Golden Compass, Harry Potter, Ms. Peregrine’s home for Peculiar Children, Shadowhunters, Watership Down, and The Book Thief, and I am currently reading The Hate U Give. The most tedious thing I have read is probably Ron Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton (because I was a devoted Hamilfan!) which was 730 pages long and way too interested in describing the Federalist Papers, but since I have read it I understand the show a lot more than I would have had I not, even finding some quotes that were put directly into songs. I have also tried to convince my seven year old sister that she really loves reading too, so she thinks that she loves reading but really she doesn’t care that much.

The last thing about me is that for as long as I can remember my family has loved to go camping. The last two summers we camped on a tiny island in Lake Saranac in New York. We had to canoe all of our supplies over to our campsite, and we spent our time canoeing (and swimming!) between islands, going cliff jumping, and playing Werewolf. A couple of years ago we went on a backpacking trip in the White Mountains. We carried all of our food, clothes, and tents with us. We hiked up and stood at the peak of four different mountains during the trip. Because of adventures like these I have learned to love  nature.

                                         
I joined this class because I have always loved theatre, but it doesn’t really come naturally to me. I want to work on getting comfortable acting in front of people and feeling less self conscious, and hopefully working towards getting a larger role in future musicals.

Turtle