Christeena Aaron
Mrs. Guarino
Acting Final Reflection
At the beginning of this year, my goal was to become a more well rounded actress. I wanted to be able to play roles that would make me stand out as an actress. As the year progress, Mrs. Guarino taught us the art of acting. I now understand, what I need to do to play a character. You must make up the backstory and create the personality. I now understand what I need to perform a character. I need to write the lines down, over and over again till they stick to me. Once they do, I can actually perform and not worry about what I need to say next. I already know.
I believe that when you act, you're not yourself. You become whatever character you are given. That is your life now, that's who you are in the theater. One of the first projects we did was “My Real Father”. I played a character named Trina. She was an orphan meeting her dad for the first time after 18 years. Sometimes with characters, you can relate to them so creating them is easier and more real for you. Trina and I had different goals, so she was someone I had to think about from scratch.
During the first few weeks, we did a bunch of exercises that were fun. I remember it being hard to keep it together and easy to laugh and break character. You would end a scene or let us keep going, interested in what we did next. I liked how attentive Mrs. Guarino was to the class. From those exercises, I noticed that it was hard for me to stay in character. I would get distracted from what someone else was doing so I stopped what my original goal was. From there, I wanted to focus on staying in character and doing what I needed to do.
As we came to a close during the first marking period, we did scenes where my voice needed to be louder. In life, I think I’m normally a loud person so it was weird how quiet I was when saying something on stage. At one point, we did a movement project, so I won’t have to talk. Michael and I decided to do a song from Forrest Grump. It was a good preparation for the silent movie.
The silent movie, was definitely the project I enjoyed the most this year. It was fun and entertaining. I came up with the idea to have two people in a room and then one leaves and gets locked out and the person in the room is to distracted to notice. Michael, Linda and John added a lot of depth and substance to the plot which made it comedic. Linda lost her keys and when she leaves I look through her bag to find weird music but then decide to play my own music. I am dancing around the room not aware that Linda was knocking on the door trying come in. I never notice until I turn around and find her and Michael on the floor with a broken door. I can tell they are very mad at me so I run out of the room.
The final project was probably my second favorite project this year. Linda and I sang the song “I Don’t Need Anything But You” from Annie. It was difficult to block and make up the dance routine and remember the lines but at the end of the day we got it down. It was one of the hardest projects but I think we did a great job. This year was fantastic so I want to say thank you to Ms. Guarino for a great first semester class.
