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I grew up an artist. I was in all the 1st grade plays I don’t even remember signing up for. I would put on dance shows for my family without knowing a single dance move. I would tell long drawn-out cohesive (not always comprehensible) stories to no one in particular with my toys. I was fascinated with Pixar’s Ratatouille’s comments on creating art, though I admittedly didn’t really get it at the time. My defining experience as an artist, the moment that made me think to myself, “I want to do this for all my life”, was when I watched my 8th grade English teacher (later theatre director) perform onstage in the musical Aida at my community theatre as the leading male role. I looked up to this man, and as I watched him perform, I had only one thought: I want to do that. I can do that. I can’t say for sure what exactly that meant for me at the age of fourteen, but I now hold that experience in my heart to remind myself that I strive not only to perform just as he did, but to create art in the hopes that I may someday allow a kid to discover for themself that they want to do that too, that they can do that too. Since that time as a fourteen-year-old, I have fallen in love with acting. Musicals, specifically, are my bread and butter. I’ve participated in many musicals at that same community theatre where I watched my first mentor perform, but I have branched out beyond it. Specifically, I now find myself wanting not only to act, but to create. I’m not sure if I should get too specific, but it would be hard to create an entry summarizing myself without including a work that has had such an impact on who I am, that being John Gardner’s novel, Grendel. This novel has inspired me artistically in ways I myself probably do not even realize. I long to adapt this novel into a stage-play. I would consider it my magnum opus if I am able to achieve it satisfactorily. Probably the first thing I thought of once I had finished it was how well it would translate to the stage. From there I couldn’t help but connect it to theatre in my mind, and I haven’t stopped. It has given me a mental image of the extremes to which a character can move you, how words can captivate an audience, and how integral dynamic staging can be. This work has defined my love for words and the beauty we can find in them, and it continues to define my work as an artist citizen who hopes to bring beautiful words to the world so that even just one person one day might realize that they want to live artistically too. That they can live artistically too.

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I always look back fondly on my experience with the Puttin' on the Ritz dance when I played Frederick in a production of Young Frankenstein.

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I think that as this class has continued, my thoughts about collaboration have stayed the same, but how I actually approach collaborating has shifted dramatically. I still hold the same respect for collaboration that I did at the beginning of the semester, but now I actually find it easier. Through practice in class, I find it much easier and enjoyable to approach my peers in collaboration than I did before. I think that the reluctance I held before this semester was largely due to how isolated I had come to feel through the pandemic, but exercises such as the small dance we had to come up with in the Dance module helped me to come out of my shell and be vulnerable with my fellow collaborators. I have never been much of a dancer, and I still think I would be embarrassed to do it alone in front of others. However, after learning about everyone’s backgrounds in dance and watching their performance, I felt more willing to put myself out there and even offer suggestions in the group dance that we later had to come up with which I don’t think I would have offered before. I feel as though I have a better understanding of the need to fully invest yourself in your fellow collaborators. Especially now that the whole process of the final performance is over with, I have really grown to appreciate collaboration in a way I never have before. My group doing so well in the final performance and receiving so much praise has made my thoughts on the combined effort we put into the performance all the more gratifying and satisfying. It makes me eager to collaborate more in the future as I now feel I have a better understanding of how much a project can prosper from multiple perspectives. I think I will definitely find it easier to put trust in the process and accept others’ ideas freely moving forward.

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This is just a close lookalike to the cowboy hat we used in class.

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Towards the beginning of the semester, I felt as though my aspirations were shifting around a lot. I didn’t feel sure about what I wanted to do with myself at all. To be honest, I still don’t think I do know for sure. But as this semester has progressed, the work I have done in this class as well as outside of this class has made me feel more confident in what I think I would enjoy and given me a more firm idea of what I’d like to do in the future. Honestly, the collaborative works that we have done in class have genuinely made me more excited about collaboration, and it has made me eager to do so more in the future. I remember the first exercise that my cohort worked on in the devising module (our first module) where we developed a sort of scene from an idea we got from a single object onstage (my group's item was a cowboy hat). I didn’t know pretty much anyone, but it was fun to learn more about them as we worked, and we ended up creating a funny scene we all enjoyed. It reaffirmed my wishes to act in the future, and the Lab theater’s resemblance to spaces I’ve worked in back home and that I still think I would like to teach in furthered my resolve to continue to pursue theatre. My positive experiences such as this that I have had over the course of this semester have made me feel more secure in pushing forward with the creative projects I have in mind for the future. Knowing that I have people I could look to for support gives me confidence that I could reach out to others who I think could contribute to my ideas to make something even better than what I might have originally intended.

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This is a picture of my short bit from the writing exercise we did in class.

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One of the main things I mentioned in my personal statement was how the continual return of in-person classes was a great source of excitement for me. My expectations regarding that were met and far exceeded. In less than a semester, I’ve gone from feeling isolated and disheartened to feeling like I’m a part of a community and emboldened. I made friends and participated in several collaborative projects that greatly bolstered my creative spirit. Now that I feel as though I have a solid support system, I’ve been able to regain some confidence in my abilities and have felt a greater urge to express myself in a fulfilling way. I’ve been inspired directly by a lot of my peers this semester too. Working with the people I’ve come to be friends with in my cohort has opened the door for me to express myself more in conjunction with their work. I think the module that made me realize this the most was Playwriting & Directing. The monologue writing that we did in this module felt very personal to me, and getting to see a glimpse into everyone’s personal creative process made me feel more passionate about mine. I’ve had ample opportunities to see many of my peers in the department work and create, and I think that it has made me realize how free I am to really express myself the way I want to. This feeling of freedom has even spurred me on to further my ambitions. From my peers in this class, as well as others I have collaborated with outside of this class, I have been inspired to do more. Before, I had only one main artistic project I wanted to create, and only because it is such a huge source of inspiration for me. But now, after meeting people who create for art’s sake and for purposes that I feel to be more than mine, I feel encouraged to make something greater myself. I feel free to create, and I know that I can always look to those around me for inspiration.