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I began acting when I was in the 4th grade, and I immediately fell in love. I was able to determine very early on that acting was what I wanted to do, and I never strayed from that dream. I loved being on stage and playing different roles. When I was in high school, I began to take it very seriously; I was after school almost every day doing something for my school’s theatre program. That’s when I began to develop technique for acting, and I wanted to learn everything that I could. My director helped me immensely by trying to cast me in lots of different roles and by pushing me to constantly be better in every performance. She taught me a lot about hard work and not giving up when things do not work the first time. She is the basis for my career, and I am extremely grateful for what she taught me. I was also able to attend a summer program in high school called the Governor’s School for the Performing Arts; there, I got to study acting everyday for a month. It was something that taught me many lessons, and it determined that theatre was what I wanted to study in college. Even though I was confident in what I wanted, I needed that confirmation, and it helped me a lot. This year, I took a break from acting. I was constantly doing something creative in high school, and I did not even realize how burnt out I was until this past summer. I decided that this year I would take the time to refuel my creative brain and fix issues I was having with my acting. I can say that I successfully did that, and I am extremely excited to jump back into creating this year.

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I think of practices and habits as what I do to create and improve my craft. For me as an actor, a lot of what I do depends on finding techniques and stories that work for me. I remember studying Stanislavski in high school, but nothing else beyond that. I think my favorite part of my acting classes thus far has been learning these different techniques. I have found that some aspects of the Stanislavski method works for me, but I enjoy other methods more. One of these would be Uta Hagen’s techniques. She focuses on detailed preparation before entering a studio or a stage; I enjoy this because I personally love being over prepared for everything. I enjoy figuring out how my character feels about everything surrounding them. I enjoy figuring out exactly what happened to my character the moment before a scene begins. I just enjoy digging into a character’s headspace in general. Getting to really delve deeper into that this year has been really helpful for me. One of the reasons I took a break this year was to correct mistakes I was making in my acting, and I felt like I did that this year. I learned how to be present in my character, and how to bring myself into a role. This gave some fantastic breakthrough moments this semester, and that was extremely motivating. I have found that collaborating with people this semester has been really helpful in my development as an actor. Obviously, it is hard to connect with scene partners over Zoom, but I have loved getting to work with the scene partners that I have had. We work hard to give each other advice and critics where we can, and that peer review has helped me immensely. It also allows me to bounce ideas off of someone, and most of the time they have something equally as creative to add. I have just loved getting to be creative with others this semester.

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I chose to include my Acting II final because I felt that it shows a cumulation of the practices and habits that I have incorporated this semester.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gDWF1IN0RwcNf1wTaosAQfU02icNpBxx/view?usp=sharing

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I think of developing ideas as experimentation in the creative process. I have had a lot of issues in the past with experimenting when creating. I prefer to be completely prepared when I walk into a room, so letting go and just committing to something is difficult for me. This course specifically has helped me a lot with that. Each section forced me to be impulsive in some way, and it helped to build my confidence more. If you had asked me to just let go and dance in front of a room of people a year ago, I would have flat out laughed in your face. I am now better at letting go, and just allowing myself to commit to a creative idea. I think this was really shown during the final performance project we were given; my group was just throwing out random ideas, and we all made an effort to just go with it until something stuck. It just reminded that sometimes the best art does not need to be planned down to an exact detail. I appreciated that lesson immensely. I think my collaboration skills in general have improved this year, and it has shown me how to develop and incorporate ideas better. The double diamond is an example of something that helped me to do this. That model helped me to visualize a concept that I understood subconsciously but did not know how to verbalize. The breakdown of each step gave me guidelines to follow when I was not quite sure what to do next. It just overall helped me to improve my communication and listening skills within group work settings this semester. Having those skills allowed my group mates and I to create fully realized products for every assignment. This surprised me because my experience with group work has never been so positive before.

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I took this photo for the lighting section of my technical theatre class. I chose to include it because I had never taken a tech class before, and it made me think in ways I had not before. I really enjoyed this section of the class; I got to develop new skills and gain new knowledge.

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I think of influences as things that make up art. We all take inspiration from somewhere. My main sources of inspiration have always been music and people watching. For every character I play, I create a playlist of songs that either remind of them, or that I think they would listen too. It is fun, and it helps me get into their headspace right before a performance. People watching is important to me because it shows me how people react to the world around them; I need to mimic that behavior when I act. Watching how someone emotes allows me to attempt to show that same emotion on my own face and body. It helps me alot when I am first trying to understand a character and script. I have also started to bring in my own personal experiences into my work. This is important for making my acting feel genuine, and it is an interesting experience. When I am trying to understand a character’s reaction, I can often find a situation in my own life that follows the same emotional pattern. It is cool to see how we as humans universally share similar reactions and feelings. I also enjoy taking walks as a source of inspiration. Sometimes, I just need to reset my brain and not think about whatever I am doing for a while. I always feel refreshed and ready to work afterwards. Walking also allows me to combine my other two sources of inspiration; I enjoy listening to music as I walk and watching the people around me. I focused this semester on figuring out what inspired me, and I am so glad I focused on that. Now, when I feel burnt out or uninspired, I have a plan to help me find motivation again. It makes me excited to work on future projects knowing that I can utilize these things.

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I decided to include this photo of my friends from Virginia. They inspire me a lot when it comes to scenes and creativity in general. This photo is actually one of a couple that they sent me in order to help me with a project.