the review

This post has been put off for too long. Maybe because I've been sick or maybe because I just didn't want to do it.

This is a review of my first performance.

The fifteen minute one act play Can Can was the first live production I have ever done. I had originally acted in the short film Lost Literature made by me and my friends for our junior year high school literature class. But back to the play. This was the best thing I could've done in my first year of college to help further progress in acting. It wasn't a full play, it was only a one act so I was able to ease myself into it. It was however slightly complex in its performance. I had to say my lines looking straight into the audience, not to another character. I thought this was a great challenge. I think it's easier to act when you can be working with someone, but for this I did not have that opportunity. The dialogue was unorthodox. The characters conveyed their stories in a series of soliloquies. The lines where out of order which also provided another challenge to master.

Overall the components of the play for me were: 41 lines of dialogue, 25 stage directions, in a 15 minute performance talking to an audience of 55 people.

This definitely provided a huge step forward in my acting career. I had not planned on acting in my first year of college, let alone act in a live play. I've always liked film more than live performances. Mostly for the spontaneity of it, less rehearsal, and more wide open cinematic views. However, theatre offered much more than I originally thought it could. The rehearsals were long and mistakes would be much more visible. You had to be at the top of your game in every performance. I thought performing a play would be boring because it is the same thing over and over again, but I was wrong. Each performance and show was different in it's own subtle way. The audience would laugh at different lines or not laugh at all which gave the play the seriousness it desired since in fact it was a drama.

I wanted to keep this short and I've already gone longer than I wanted, but there had to be a post dedicated to reflecting back at what I consider my first performance. I felt I gave my best in the last performance which was good considering if I wasn't satisfied with my final performance I would have had to wait many more months to try and make it up.

I was nervous in the weeks leading up to the play, so much so that I considered quitting early on. I was nervous backstage in the scene shop as I was frantically practicing my lines one last time. I was nervous when I was behind the curtain with the audience on the other side. I was nervous walking my chair out and placing it into the darkness. But once the lights came up and I was standing there, looking the audience in the face before a single line was uttered, a calming peace came over me and the nervousness went away, becoming a figment of the past.

That has to count for something.