The Halfway Mark

We’re halfway there. Whoooah! Livin’ on a prayer.

Please excuse the 80s song reference. I couldn’t help myself. There really is a song for everything. :)

Those lyrics aren't too far off the mark. Making it six full months with such an intense schedule doesn’t happen without a lot of prayer and hard work. God has been so good to sustain, provide, heal and energize. We’ve all had our struggles (some ongoing) but at the moment we’re all here and ready to finish this first semester well. And what happens when a class is wrapping up?

Yup. Finals. 

Midterms too, because we have a few classes that run all year. In this post I wanted to share about some of the assignments for our finals and midterms. Because like everything else in the Conservatory, they're a lot of fun. 

In Sight Singing we finished up learning four-part harmony choral piece called Sing Me To Heaven. We applied everything we’ve learned about rhythm, pitch, and music theory to sight read it in class and then sing it together. It’s beautiful and I loved it. I've never really been apart of anything like that before. We make quite a nice little choir if I do say so myself. There's a possibility we'll be performing it for our end-of-the-year showcase, so we might not have to put it away just yet! 

Our Improv Final was quirky and fun. We were divided into two groups and asked to work together to create characters and a scene. We had about three weeks to put the details together. The stories were kind of crazy, as were the characters, but our goal was invest fully in them and become that person for a little while. Chris encouraged us to spend time really thinking through our characters.  We gathered costumes and props and performed them on Tuesday evening. We all got a good laugh at seeing our fellow classmates go all out. I doubt we'll forget that assignment anytime soon. ;)

This morning we wrapped up our final day of Discipleship Part 1. The class continues through the year, but we'll be switching teachers next week. It's a discussion based class and is such a great time for refocus on what's truly important. With all the craziness and amount of performance topics we're covering this year, it's great to have an hour every Thursday morning to sit and talk about Jesus. For this first half of the year our discussions were led by Kim Miller. She's the head of the Ministry Team at Sight & Sound and lovely woman of God. I was so blessed by her insights, as we all were. For our final class she invited us to her beautiful home for breakfast. It was a relaxing morning and a special time to ge together. Not bad for a Final. ;) Thank you Kim, for all you've given us these past six months! 

Our midterms for Acting Class were great. We've spent the last couple of months working on scenes with our assigned partners. On Friday mornings I spent my time watching my classmates do their scenes and also performing my own in front of everyone. A few of us were assigned scene partners who were fellow students in the Conservatory. But six of us had partners who are actors in the Jonah cast. Being able to work on a scene with a professional actor was a great experience. A special thanks to Cassie, Terron, Ronnie, Nicole, Kelsey and Wes Wise for being willing to help us!

The scene work was pretty tedious, especially at first. Each time a team performed, Jeff would spend at least half an hour with them, sometimes more, digging into the material. It didn’t work to come unprepared! He wanted us to really understand our scenes. To do the research. To identifiy our character’s objectives. Blair and Hannah worked together on a scene called Sisters that explored the tension between two very different women. Gabby and Terron were fantastic and hilarious in their scene from Barefoot In The Park. Emma and Wes Wise did a scene from Waiting For Lefty, a show set in the 1930s about the struggles of blue collar workers. JT and Kelsey performed a charming scene from The Glass Menagerie. 

I spent quite awhile working on my own scene before I performed. My scene partner was Ronnie, (one of the actors) and such an enjoyable person to work with. Our scene was actually cut from a movie called A Place In The Sun. In all honesty, I’ll probably never watch it because it's extremely depressing. Our scene was sad and rather heavy. My character was a poor factory girl named Alice who hopes that this young man, George, will marry her. But he’s clearly not interested in tying himself down to a girl who isn’t going to do anything to increase his social position. Although he never says that in the scene, it’s implied in the text and Ronnie did a great job of portraying that.

Even though it was sad, it was a fantastic challenge and I really enjoyed it. As I worked on my scene, I tried to identify Alice’s objective. Why was she saying the words she was saying? What did she want from George, and what was getting in her way? I wrote about objectives in depth in a previous post, and if you’re interested in that you can read about it here!

To compliment what we've learned about objectives, Jeff has also been teaching us is how to “action” a scene. In order to be a believable actor, you have to do a lot of dissecting of a script: first you have to determine what your character’s objective for the show as a whole. That influences their objective in each scene. And to break it down even further, you can go line by line (even sentence by sentence) to add actions for your character. Jeff explained that actions are “mini objectives” all leading toward your overarching objective.

Actions are words that will fit into the phrase “I _____ you.” Jeff gave us a book called The Actor’s Thesaurus that helps a lot in brainstorming. Even when we're talking to someone in real life, we're using actions, whether we realize it or not. With every sentence we say, we’re usually trying to do something to the person we’re talking to. We’re trying to affect them in some way. This can be positive or negative. Maybe we’re trying to encourage them. Or charm them. Or inspire them. On the other hand, the action could be to harm, to confront, to blame, or to control.

When you think about it that way, the inevitable conclusion is that you can play just about any action with any sentence. When we were first learning this we did an exercise to illustrate the concept. We went around the table and took turns saying the the phrase “Would you like some coffee?” Seems simple enough. But those words can convey about a thousand different things based on the action behind it. How would you say that sentence if you were trying to challenge someone? Or embarrass them? Harass them? Or comfort them? Maybe you want to befriend someone, or perhaps you want to appease them. Each of those actions results in a different inflections, facial expression, and body language. As the exercise continued, we found that the adjustments can be subtle yet powerful.

As we learned about actioning, Jeff encouraged us to do it with our scenes. As neat as the concept is and as much as I liked it, it’s extremely tedious when put into practice. It's really almost no fun at all. I have so much more respect for people who perform for a living. It's hard! It took awhile and some real thought, but eventually I was able to action almost all of my lines. A few still had me stumped, but I had most of them. My script looked quite the art project when I had finished.

And I found that it really did help. Keeping in mind my overall objective and trying to apply actions to my lines (as well as Jeff’s direction) helped give the scene a new energy and life. Sad as the story was, it was so cool to be able to immerse myself in that world, just for a few minutes, and see the affect it had on our small audience.

So last Friday we all had a final showing of our scenes. Everyone did a LOT of work with objectives and actioning, pace, energy, as well as listening and responding to one another. And the result was that those scenes were gold. I was moved, entertained and drawn in, even though I’d seen all of them performed multiple times. “I’d pay money for that!” Jeff exclaimed after some of my classmates finished. It was so much fun to see the progress all of us have made. It was worth all of the hard work and mind-numbing, tedious study involved in making a great scene. I'm looking forward to growing more as our class continues. 

And with that, our first semester will be over at the end of this week. We have a few classes that run through the full year, but Improvisation, Voice & Speech, Sight Singing, Viewpoints, and Part 1 of Discipleship are all drawing to a close. Passing the halfway mark is rather surreal. 

But our second semester is going to be awesome. Some classes that I’ve been looking forward to all year are beginning and I can’t wait to get going. I’m sure I’ll have lots to share about all of those in the coming weeks!