I had an interview yesterday for the Trustee Award I applied for. If I win the award, I get to speak at graduation. I was interviewed by 4 people, all of which are involved with my college, but none of which I'd met before. They were incredibly nice and easy to talk to. However, their questions were things I've thought about in my own time, but not necessarily things I'd had to formulate answers for before. And of course, in an interview situation, you have to have an answer.
I spoke a lot about how much I love this college, and how much I've learned about myself as an individual. In fact, I must have been too positive about the school, because I was asked if there was anything that bothers me about the college! That was hard to dig myself out of. Honestly, I felt like I talked in circles and repeated myself a lot. I also couldn't remember the ten ideals of my college...oh wait, that's because I never had to learn them. Honestly, I should know them anyway after all my time here, but I don't. I didn't look very intelligent on that answer. Overall, I became frustrated (not in the room of course, but afterwards). The questions they asked were things that I wanted to sit and think about before giving an answer. Subsequently, I'm still thinking about them now. And some questions I didn't think had appropriate answers, such as: How are you so involved in theatre with such an intense, accelerated curriculum, and involved around campus, and still manage to keep your sparkling GPA? My response was: I do my homework.
I wouldn't say the interview was rough, but I'm not sure it was my shining moment either. I learned a valuable lesson about interviews though: you can't always be prepared.
So: backtracking. I saw a True/False film this year called The Arbor which was very good, but incredibly depressing. The idea behind it was interesting. The director did audio interviews and then hired actors to lip sync to the voices of the real people. It was pretty amazing.
I also went to see the dance concert. Some of my friends from Freshmen year had solos, and it was amazing to finally get to see them shine. They did a fantastic job! The costumes were stunning, the dances were really cool, and I had a great time with friends!
Friday night I had auditions and callbacks for Eleemosynary, and Monday the cast list went up. I made it! My character is Dorothea. She is a 75 year old mother/grandmother who has recently had a stroke. All of her action in the play takes place in the memory of her granddaughter Echo, who imagines her much younger. So for the most part, I get to be in my 40's and 50's, but she was born in the 1920's. I'm so excited to research this role. I have so much that I can do with it. Since we found out we got cast the same day as our first rehearsal, I haven't had much time to prepare. I'm definitely going to take this upcoming weekend as a time to dive into everything. We've blocked 2 scenes so far, and my cast is amazing! We also have a swing cast that will get to perform one show. The girl playing my role in the swing cast is great! I'm so excited to get to work with her on this project.
Already I've been researching eccentricity, since my character is a notable eccentric. The play is really about a family of geniuses. All the characters are incredibly smart, so it's a lot of fun to work on such an intelligent script.
Also this week, I've been working on the directing scene I'm acting in. It gets better every time we run it, which is no surprise, but it also becomes more fun. I'm always finding something new to laugh about, and it's so easy to be natural in this role. I love knowing that I get to come have fun every time we rehearse, and I don't have to worry about being somebody else necessarily. We perform that this coming Sunday!
Yesterday in comedy class we had to perform a skit by our comedians. I was playing Molly Shannon's character Mary Katherine Gallagher.
She's an Irish Catholic schoolgirl whose grandmother thinks she can be a superstar. She has no social skills, she puts her hands in her armpits and smells them when she gets nervous, and she watches too many made for TV movies. I had a blast! I got to jump around, do a horrible monologue and song, and fling myself onto a pile of folding chairs. She always does dangerous stunts, but I made sure it was safe. Professor L loved it! She told me I was her doppelganger and that I did a great impression. You can sort of see the stack of chairs I jumped on in the background.
Here's a link to the skit I copied for class. It plays an advertisement before it lets you watch, but it's worth the wait! Just copy and paste it.
http://www.hulu.com/watch/4121/saturday-night-live-st-monicas-talent-auditions
It's been a crazy couple of days. We've been reading more plays in Dramatic Literature, and doing more on camera scenes for Acting for the Camera. Our next assignment due before spring break in that class is called Hidden Camera. Professor D has give us 6 monologues. We're supposed to choose one and then have someone film us performing it in public somewhere off campus in a creative way. If we use a stranger, they're required to know they're being filmed of course, but the hardest part is making the monologues into our own words. They're very difficult monologues, which Professor D gave us on purpose. I'm excited to try it out, though I haven't decided how I want to perform mine yet.
I'm so busy all of a sudden that I'm having trouble keeping up with things. Our next assignment in comedy class is to perform a Shakespeare monologue as our comedian. You can not possibly understand how excited I am to perform Shakespeare as Mary Katherine Gallagher. It's going to be so awkward!
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