Student Blog: Back to School: Absorbing As Much As I Can in My Last Year

Being back in school is definitely a change in pace from the stress free summer I spent working retail and binge-watching Dance Moms. Between classes, rehearsals, and work, it’s difficult to take a moment to appreciate the chaos that the responsibility of my schoolwork has given me this semester. Now that I’ve completed my foundational theater courses, my schedule is open to take any elective I want to, and I made sure to truly take advantage of my open schedule. As a senior, I am focused on gaining as much skill and insight as I possibly can from my teachers before I graduate!

My first class of the week, Costume Design I with Professor Marie Anne Chiment, is on Mondays and Wednesdays from 10:00-11:40. I knew this course was going to be outside of my comfort zone, because I don’t consider myself much of a visual artist, however, once I began to draw my designs for our first project, I realized that my creativity and imagination are much more important than the ability to draw the renderings perfectly. Throughout the semester, we design two shows, the first of which being Alice in Wonderland. Our assignment is to design costumes for a production of Alice in Wonderland based on our reaction to the novel by Lewis Carroll. I had almost no prior knowledge of Alice in Wonderland before this assignment, and my biggest take away from the book was how young Alice is. I decided to design all of the characters she meets in wonderland as toys that would appear in and around her bedroom at the beginning of the story when Alice’s sister is reading to her. I interpreted her trip to Wonderland as a dream, and dreams are how our memory processes the day before, so it is possible she would be dreaming about the toys she had played with that day.

My next theater class of the week is Musical Theater Scene Study with Professor Peter Reynolds from 11:00-12:20 on Tuesdays and Thursdays. In this studio class, we are matched up with one or two other students to study and perform five different scenes from musical theater throughout the semester. We are working on the second scene of the semester and I was assigned “Secondary Characters” from [title of show]— my first scene being “What You Don’t Know About Women” from City of Angels. I took this course to learn more musical theater scenes and improve my acting skills in the context of musical theater, but I also realized that I learn so much about directing musical theater simply by watching Peter Reynolds coach the other students' scenes. In addition to my classes this semester, I am directing my first musical, Little Women, through Temple University’s Student-run Musical Theater Organization, By You For You (BYFY). A big learning curve transitioning from being an actor to a director is learning the vocabulary that directors use to help their actors understand what message they are trying to convey through each scene, and watching Professor Reyolds coach the other students has strengthened my understanding. 

My next Tuesday/ Thursday course is Directing for the Musical Stage at 12:30-1:50, also taught by Professor Peter Reynolds. This is a course I’ve been looking forward to taking for some time now because I’ve alway participated in this class as an actor for the scene assignments, but this time I am one of the directors! In addition to other directing projects, we have two scene assignments in which we audition and direct actors in a musical scene of our choosing. For the first assignment, I decided to go with a scene I’ve always loved, ”Light My Candle” from Rent. For the assignment, we held rehearsals during class time that included a 10 minute music rehearsal with our class accompanist. Luckily for me, my scene was the song with no additional dialogue, so my actors were able to get off-book quickly. I started with table work the first day, discussing the historical and cultural context of the musical Rent, focusing on the effects that addiction has on both Mimi and Roger and how that is the thing that really connects them. As a director, it was important to discuss the stakes of the scene so the actors and I were aligned on the objectives and overall vision for the final performance. 

I am glad to be starting my senior year in classes that feel like a good mix of both challenging and rewarding. Considering how much I’ve already learned, I am excited to see what the rest of the semester will bring. I am so grateful to have such amazing theater artists to learn from!