The introverted-extrovert

I want to take a second to look back and re-evaluate my life and the things I have learned within my first few months here. Wow, first off, college rocks! I have really come to love everything about college and what it encompasses. Oddly enough, it makes me feel at home, being here, alone, on my own. And I love that. Some people, it's not for them, but I, I've always known I was made to be in college. It's difficult in ways you don't necessarily suspect. I wouldn't say it "harder than . . . " I would just say that it is different, very different than anything prior to college. Now, about what the blog was for in the first place: My Acting 1 class. As a "theater person," I feel like the luckiest person on earth. I get to change lives through an art form, practically daily. I get to be real and feel and understand humans. I get to bond with all kinds of people over our passion. That's what theater teaches you. It teaches you how to be human a...

This brilliant and life-changing video was shared with me by a great mentor and I wanted to share it with any of you out there. https://youtu.be/8OkzozrUEHY This video is a TEDed discussion by Ted Thurmon about the balance of life. Although this life lesson applies easily to theater, it can apply to anything, any area of life, any area of study in any moment. On a quick note, let me express how this applies to the life of an actor. The idea of living 'off balance on purpose' is an unusual one, but, ultimately, it makes perfect sense. As an actor, you cannot truly plan your life out in any aspect, because you have a career that is completely unpredictable. There may be months of full-time work and there may be years of none. For me, I like to plan. I want to know exactly what is happening and when so I can prepare as best I can, but that is not how life works. I know that my life is always going to feel somewhat off-balance, physically, mentally, and emotionally because I a...

Like I said in my previous post, theater is about learning to work together. That is the reason scenes are great. It is a very compact way to begin to learn and understand that concept. I was lucky to work with a great scene partner. We get along very well and we were able to combine efforts and ideas to let a more professional scene evolve. We were able to practice together, which is imperative, but we were also able to rely on each other to do our own part and memorize our line, rehearsing separately. This was an ideal partnership in our case, but that is often not always the situation. It is necessary to learn how to work with all kinds of people; outgoing people, quiet people, bossy people, busy people- all types of people are types you will have to work with in theater (and in life). It's likely that you will have to live with, work with, teach with and collaborate with all kinds of people. There will naturally be people that you get along with better than others. An important...