Points if you correctly guess who uttered these words. (Even more if you’re a fan!)
As part of my general education concentration (in Bates slang, pronounced “geck”), I’d never thought beginning acting wouldn’t be simply fun and games. This head-splitting difficulty, I guess, is largely attributed to the paradox that such a simple action when broken down, involves quite a lot of complications. For instance, part of our class exercise is the “Observe and Repeat” activity, where a pair of actors are performing something interesting (this by definition, entails a degree of both obstacle and objective). At the same time while pursuing your mission physically, you’ve also got to achieve a verbal aim. The process is hard to describe, but the best way to put it in words is like a ping pong tournament. Ultimately, you must out-serve your partner- all in friendly competition, of course.
You may be wondering, what does acting have to do with my major? For starters, it’s precisely what a liberal arts school is for: experimenting! Second, even if I suspect that choosing to immerse in theater may have stemmed from the deep innate childhood desire to be a star (we’ve all gone through this phase, haven’t we?), I’m mostly interested in learning how to develop socially, not only academically. I admit, the hardest part of this class is not thinking, when we’ve been conditioned to think methodically all day throughout our textbook-incorporated classes.
And although I may resemble a deer in headlights on the stage, I continuously remind myself that spontaneity is part of the entire process- even if I have to “unlearn what I have learned” by improvising a bit, maybe I may even discover something about myself I’ve never known before.
