Goals and Challenges

I want to start this blog - a new method of journaling for me - by stating my goals for this semester and the challenges I expect to face as I continue developing my acting skills. Last semester with Barbara Mackenzie-Wood taught me a LOT about myself - my acting abilities, my strengths, my weaknesses, and even how I naturally interact with other people - what my tendencies are and what I usually shy away from. Having never taken an acting class in high school, last semester I made some major breakthroughs in how an actor approaches his craft and what "good acting" looks like. In that spirit, I will lay down my goals - where I need to improve - and discuss the challenges that I faced, and will continue to face, this semester.

Goals:

• Listening actively. This goal I think of almost as a muscle that I have to train - train myself to be present to what is going on around me, especially with my scene partners. One of the biggest breakthroughs I made last year was when I realized that experiencing losses is a key part of listening and being a good scene partner. The most interesting scenes are a give-and-take: I go for my objective, I fail, I experience the loss, I recuperate and try again. The acting I did in high school, and much of last semester, was instead: I go for my objective, I fail, but I'm not listening, so I don't realize I fail, I just keep going expecting that if I try the same thing over and over again I will succeed. That kind of acting is really, as Matt likes to say, throwing enormous energy at the objective instead of using tactics and a small amount of energy. If I train myself to keep listening, staying in the moment, I can be more versatile and confident as my character.

• Playing for the audience. Last semester, I became quite good at playing the character internally, "feeling" the character and responding honestly, but not thinking about the audience in the process. As Matt said on Monday, the audience doesn't give a shit about what I'm feeling - they give a shit about what they're feeling. And the way I make them feel something is by playing outwards instead of inwards. So, this semester, I want to make stronger choices with the intent of provoking the audience and showing my character. An important way this will be done is by:

• Engaging my body. Already this semester we've done several exercises to engage our bodies in our work, and with the Animal Projects coming up that will be the focus of much of my work this semester. As an actor, my body and my voice are my two instruments, so I must learn how to listen to them onstage, remember that they are, in fact, there, and that they are always telling the audience something whether I am making a conscience choice of it or not. For example, if my hands are mindlessly in my pockets, that is telling the audience something, even though I probably just forgot that I had hands at all in that moment. Working with each part of the body will help me develop this, I think.

• Being specific. Matt quoted Stanislavsky on Monday when he said, "Generality is the enemy of all art," and it is an idea that I have been aware of for several years. In my Commedia dell'arte work in junior year, I learned that comedy arises out of specificity in gestures, movement, and thought, and now I am starting to see how specificity aids any theatre practice. But once again, specificity requires being on your toes as an actor, noticing the details, listening actively, and finding the unique aspects of a character that, in their minutiae, honestly tell his story.

Challenges:

• Confidence onstage. Last semester was a little rough for me - coming to college, meeting more new people than I had ever met (coming from small private schools my entire life), being in a conservatory where the other people seemed to be far more sure of their interest in a career in theatre than me, etc. - excuses and reasons and whining and such of course, most of which I am in the process of growing out of, but it affected my confidence onstage such that I was often unable to make a real stage presence. However, like I said, I made some major breakthroughs and I am excited to meet this challenge head-on this semester.

• Playing different characters. Last semester, I found that I was pretty good at playing one specific type of character (the shy, nervous, desperately-in-love type of dude, not too far removed from myself), and I would really like to explore more transformative characters this semester. I often think, and am told, that certain actors are "made" for certain parts - but what is the point in acting if I am always typecast, if I can't make a real statement as a completely different character? So this semester I am challenging myself to play something completely new, dangerous, and different.