I am

My name is christeena, but you can call me chrissy. I have been on this planet for 15, 15 years. Not always in the same place. I haven’t always been here, in Connecticut. I use to live in New York. The Empire State as some would call it. At the age of 9, my mother decided to take me away from the only place I had grown to know. Shrub Oak, New York. Now as a 9 year old, I’ll admit that I was a bit overdramatic…...I cryed and cryed and cryed, than slept, but than cyed again. The world was coming to an end people. I had to leave my friends, my house and my school. You can imagine I didn’t talk to my mom for the longest time. Blinded by anger but when I got here it was like the darkness turned to light. I had better friends than before and an allowance PEOPLE ALLOWANCE. I was rolling in dough but thats not the poit.

#2 about my first time learning to ride a bike.

#3 about all the plays I have been in

#4 my trip to disney land or israel

Christeena Alexandria Aaron

Ms. Guarino

January 11, 2015

Acting Class

This will be my second semester taking acting class. My experience in acting varies. I have been in plays and musicals since I was 3 years old. It s a huge passion of mine. One of my strengths is my presence. I think I am good at capturing the audience. I like making whatever scene or role I play interesting and intriguing for the viewers. Another one of my strengths is being able to memorise my lines. Once a person memorizes there lines, it is easier for them to play their roles. One of my weaknesses are my voice. My voice can be way too soft so people can barely hear me. I need to make sure my voice is loud enough for everyone to hear me. Another one of my weaknesses is not laughing during a scene. After getting to know everyone, it is easier not to take these seriously. It's hard to stay in character, and not laugh. This semester I would like to work on my characters. I need to focus on staying in character and not messing up scenes. Since I know everyone it is easy to break character now. I want to work on having more educated side in theater. On the take-home quiz we had before the first semester ended, I had to look up more than I would have liked to. I want to know more about the art of acting than how to do it i guess.

One goal I want to set for myself is having a well-rounded intellect about acting. I want to know what it's all about. It's easier for me to do it in the moment than to keep the information in my mind. Another goal is to play more different and diverse roles. I want to expand my experiences. I like to try more things out this semester. I like the projects we had and want more. My last goal is to be able to have a clear understanding of what I’m capable of by the end of the semester. I don’t plan on taking acting next year so I want to get as much as I can out of this semester. I look forward to working with everyone again and for the very first time Olivia Williamson. I know she will do great things and you are the perfect teacher for all of us to have. Thanks you for the future semester that is to come.

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.

blog 13

          Aaron 1

Christeena Alexandria Aaron

Mrs. Guarino

12/4/16

Linda and I have finally memorized our lines and have solid dance routine. We still need to figure out if we want to have dialogue in the begin before we start the actually song. We are planning to have Mr. Warbucks as Linda and Annie as me. I think that this will be a perfect way to end the acting semester on a high note. I am very excited.

The most difficult part of this project was  trying to find the instrumental behind it. We couldn’t find anything online  so we had to make one ourselves on Garage Band. This took a lot of time which I thought we could use in better places. I liked creating the dance routine and choosing the characters the most. Thank you, Mrs. Guarino for letting Linda and I work together.

Everytime we have practiced we end up laughing so we need to make sure we are acting out our characters and not just us. We need to concentrate better and focus so we can succeed with this project. I am confident that we know our lines well enough to be able to play off each other if one was to mess up. However, I hope we don’t have any mishaps. Now that Linda and I know each other better and are friends it is easier to just laugh if we make eye contact.

Thursday, during class we had a lot of trouble maintaining our characters. I think we didn’t feel very confident and every time someone messed up we would laugh but not even stop but continue laugh. That needs to stop. After a while of practicing we finally could contain ourselves. It honestly took the whole class time to do so but we did it.

Work-In-Progress

Christeena Alexandria Aaron

Mrs. Guarino

Acting

Work-In-Progress

For my final project, I have decided to work with Linda. Linda and I have decided to perform the song “I Don’t Need Anything But You” from the movie and musical Annie. We plan on having some dialogue before we start the song. We will dance, sing and act during our performance. I am very excited about this. I think Linda and I will have a lot of fun. Instead of playing Annie and Daddy Warbucks, we might change those characters into long time friends that have been reunited. Linda didn’t know what Annie was until today so we have a lot of work to do. Linda is suppose to be watching the movie tonight so hopefully it will make a lot more sense to her by tomorrow so we can make a plan for next week.

Brainstorming

Aaron 1

Christeena Alexandria Aaron

Mrs. Guarino

Acting Class

Brainstorming for final project

As the semester is coming to a close, I am excited about the final project. One idea I have is to sing a song I wrote. I’m not much of a songwriter but I want to do something original. It would probably take a lot of time and effort but I believe I can do it.  I would make something on garage band for the audio of the song. Another idea is to perform a song by an artist. If I don’t like or can’t come up with my own song I will sing someone else's. Since whatever I do I have to act out, I should do a song from a musical. I think Maybe from Annie would be a great idea. In the School of Rock: The Musical I know I will be singing a lot so this would be a good warm up round. My last idea for the final project is to act out a scene. I know this is something I perform by myself so it would be a monologue. I don’t have a clue has to what I would perform but I know I will have time to find something to do when I return from break. I want to act out a scene to show the progress I have had since the first day of class.

Reflecting on second scene

Christeena Alexandria Aaron

Mrs. Guarino

November 16th, 2016

Acting Class

Blog Reflecting on my Second scene

In Linda and I’s second scene we became a lot more serious than the first scene. The first one was more funny and carefree, while the second scene has a lot more emotional and feeling added to it. There are two girls, who use to be best friends, but one of them betrayed the other to hang with the popular group. That girl is trying to rekindle her friendship with her and it was difficult at first but there was progress made. Linda played the girl that betrayed my character for the popular crowd. I was more sad then angry at Linda’s character and felt the need to push her away a lot. Linda was trying hard to have a conversation with me to apologize and try to fix things. I learned that in most scenes there starts off with a problem that is usually revealed in the end of everything. I think I improved on showing more of a happy strong feeling instead of focusing on the bad. I seem to love tragedy but it's good to have a happy ending. I still need to work on the volume of my voice. I am way too quiet. I need to work on making sure I’m facing the audience during a scene. This scene was very different from my first scene because it had a more serious vibe and more depth to it.