Reflective Essay: Comparing My Journal And Process

Timewise, to compare my Acting I journal and process paper to my current work and philosophy is only a difference of a year and a half. Despite such a short length of time, a lot has changed. These changes include not only taking more acting classes, but working in a professional theatre, studying abroad, seeing more theatre in three months than I have in my entire life, and being in my first Shakespeare show. These experiences have helped to shape my process, from beginning to end, and the theatre artist I want to be. In my Acting I process paper, I talked about auditioning, including controlling the space and controlling my nerves. I’ve learned that the feelings I talked about in the paper might never go away: “While sitting in the audience
Despite this fact, I learned I could control this part just for a little while” (Process Paper 2). These techniques I have learned over the past year and a half have put the audition more in my hands. The biggest lesson I have learned, however, is to remember that I am a collaborator when I enter a room with people wanting to hire me. I am no less or more. I was reminded of this in Randall David Cook’s unit from an article that we read about being a successful actor. It was further evident in the cold reading sessions we had that we all contributed to the feeling of his
Another focus was the music we would use in the production. As I was set to sound design for it, I was lucky enough to have the blocking and character reactions already laid out to help me determine what music we should use. We knew he was a younger artist; therefore, I picked classical guitar music because the classical music that an artist might listen to sounded too stuffy for who we had created. Each time that he drank more, the music built upon itself and became a bit more disorienting. At the end when it is a dream sequence and his entire world explodes in slow motion, we wanted something slow and dreamy. This song, however, was informed by his past of destroying his life, essentially. Because of this, I chose “Smother” by Daughter to create a melancholy effect and it was also the only song with words in the entire production. When everything had fallen apart, the music finally spoke about being a “foolish, fragile spine” and “wasted, losing time.” All in all, using the character biography’s elements, I was able to do exactly what I stated in my Acting I paper: “To use this in future endeavors would only strengthen my work and justify the character’s wants and needs in the play” (Process Paper 3-4). This time, I was able to utilize it to create an entire