BWW Blog: What My Virtual Theater Finals Are Like

As we enter December, we also enter one of the hardest times for college students: finals week. Personally, finals week has always been madness, between projects and papers, it's hard to keep track of everything. I knew that this semester was going to be different when it came to finals, but now that they are over, I can reflect on how being virtual affected how I did on them. I'm going to be talking about three of my different theater classes: Introduction to Performance, Introduction to Design, and Theatre One. Each one of these classes had a different kind of final and each was a different experience for me.

First I am going to be talking about Introduction to Performance. For this class, my final included a recorded monologue and some writing to go along with it. My professor assigned each student with their own monologue, something that she felt would challenge us. I ended up being assigned a comedic monologue, which is something I felt uncomfortable with because whenever I do monologues, they're normally dramatic and serious. During this semester, this class was socially distanced and in-person, but right before Thanksgiving, we began doing the class on Zoom. As a class, we would take turns performing our monologues for everyone and then getting feedback. During each class session, everyone would read their monologue 3 or 4 times, with different people giving feedback each time. This was incredibly helpful because it allowed everyone to hear different opinions on their work. The final work to be submitted included the filmed monologue, the marked-up script with beats and tactics, and answers to Uta Hagen's nine questions. For me, the hardest part was figuring out my beats and tactics because when I was performing my monologue, I was doing what felt natural, and sometimes it is hard to put words to those feelings you're creating. I think that being online for this final was helpful in a way because it gave me the chance to film my monologue until I was satisfied with it and there was a lot less pressure on me to be perfect during my first try.

Second, I had my final for Introduction to Design. For this class, we had been reading plays and doing design work for them all semester, whether that be set, costume, or lighting design. For our final, we had to read Sweat by Lynn Nottage, write a script analysis, find photos that represent how we see the world of the play and do either set or costume design for the show. Along with that, we had to re-read The Dramatic Imagination by Robert Edmond Jones and discuss how our feelings toward the book and design changed over the semester. I had a hard time with this project because I didn't exactly connect to Sweat and it's hard to do a lot of work for a play that you don't connect to. I did enjoy working on the costume design because I think that costuming can change so much about a production, even if all the sets are the same as every other production.

Finally, I had my Theatre One final. Theatre One is a class for all first-year theater students and it is an introduction to the department and a basic overview of theater. For our final, we had the choice of doing a scene, song, design project, or dramaturgy project for any work we studied during the semester. Since I had already done a scene and a design project, I chose to do a dramaturgy project on In the Heights. We had a lot of free-range on this project which I liked because I got to discuss the idea of gentrification in the show and in Washington Heights, which is something I'm passionate about. I also got to discuss feminism in the show and how the female characters are treated as opposed to the male characters. We had to present all of these projects on Zoom, so it was interesting to get to see what everyone else pulled out of the shows. Some people took a lot of time to talk about design aspects, while other people chose to talk about the music and melodies of the show. I think that this project was interesting because it would have been hard to do in-person and we had a lot of free-range.

This semester, each one of my finals was very different for each class. I think my professors gave us the best project that they could with what we did in class that semester. Having to present everything online and hand it in online was challenging and difficult, but it had some silver linings, like having extra time to prepare my work and having chances for re-dos.