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Why I Act
Why I Act
Acting is something I have been doing for a long as I can remember. From Elementary School through College, I have been doing something in and around Theatre. It’s really hard to just pinpoint one specific reason for being an actor and why I enjoy doing it, but I list a couple of my main reasons.
When I was younger I felt my imagination was a giant factor in the way I played with my siblings and childhood friends. We used to pretend to be Power Rangers to Superheroes, such as X-Men, basically a lot of these options of characters with giant superhuman powers and abilities. I remember finding it very easy to imagine the scenarios and the situations of the stories in my head. I could easily get lost in acting these characters that I remember my mother actually forbidding us to play it while we were younger, most likely because of the violent side of the play of defeating and conquering the bad guys. Also, the fact that some of us would get hurt every once in awhile probably was a factor as well, but of course we healed and are all presently living with no major complications.
Imagination as I have grown older has definitely been kept vivid. I write stories and poetry as well where I can see the actual characters put into situations and instances of danger all the way to love. I can sometimes easily find ways to get into these characters’ heads and learn their stories from their point of view. As in acting, I feel that characters from the scripts I read and plays I perform can just as easily get a grip on me. Before I actually act anything out, I read the character(s) as much as I can and get an idea of who they are. I try to understand their motives and reasoning for their actions, while also imagining their world from their view. It just reminds me of childhood in a way that I can connect to these characters I read about and play, whether by loving them to their fullest or hating them to the extreme point.
This option of imagination was a way for me growing up throughout Middle School to almost mentally escape as well. I didn’t have many friends that were very close and my siblings and I weren’t on a level to even want to be around each other, so I basically spent a lot of time alone. I read a lot of books, saw a lot of movies, watching a lot of television, and kept myself preoccupied with the internet and other activities such as writing to take my mind off the fact I was not very popular with kids my own age. I think this was a way for me to grow up a little more because I was subjecting myself to a lot of things to relate to things I would need to understand later, seemingly learning about the world through media, books, and plays. When I finally did more drama and Theatre at school, I gained a sense that this was a way for me to escape, while also having others to escape with as I gained actual close friends. I learned that this was a way for me to connect with people in a different way other than the media sources I had been using before. I do not feel I ever was some misfit that could not make friends, I just did not have the sense of connection with people I needed. Acting was that connection.
Another reason for acting I find within the escapism is that I have the option of being someone else. I can be a high class, snobby, rich prude or a poor, coke addicted bum, living off the streets, and yet in the end I can leave all that in the end and be myself. I can do and say things to people, animals, things, about life, death, love, sex, religion, politics, and lots more and I don’t have to care about what I do or say. I could even not be telling the truth about anything at all. I could lie, cheat, steal, kill, and get away with it all, or lose and get away with nothing. I could die. I could be reborn. I could live forever. It’s almost like living in my imagination, or one of my stories, and letting it run wild.
Sometimes it is a nice vacation to do something or be something a little different from the usual. I think that’s definitely a reason why I traveled all this way to Dublin. Learning further acting and other parts of Theatre from the aspects of the Irish ideal is very different experience while also having some ties to the usual things I have learned in the past. Even trying the new monologue choice of Bernard Shaw’s Heartbreak House with an English accent was and still is a challenge. I feel that this one monologue, which I will have to use when I return for an audition is something that will help me finally get something good in the Theatre department. I still will need to further learn this monologue so I can improve. I feel my main concern is that learning and utilizing this accent is the biggest challenge. I would do the monologue without the accent, but I feel this is a challenge for myself to do better and improve upon myself, and it’s required for my audition. I feel that also this character, Alfred Mangan, is a character I like to hate because I do hate him. He is the complete opposite of who I am as a person and just a bad man. Why would I act a character out that I hate? If I get a part, that’s great, but I find that it if I can make other people hate the character like I do, I have done my job as an actor.
The job of an actor, to me, and why I choose to act overall comes down to the main reason of connection, and the impact it can take on someone, including myself. I have been part of many shows while growing up, but one in particular stood out to me while typing this paper. I was the lead Nazi, Herr Zeller in The Sound of Music my third year in High School. This was a character almost like Alfred Mangan, which after dealing with the character and refining it became a very intriguing process when finally bringing it to its final stage. After we opened the shows, and after the night was over, our cast would go into the lobby and greet and meet people. I, however, barely received any greetings from people each night. I got the same attention as everyone else in the cast, just the opposite effect. Little kids would stay away from me when they saw me, I remember one little girl wanting to hide behind her mother, and I had one older man ask me one evening if I was a real Nazi offstage. I had realized that this character I portrayed created something. It made a connection, not a pleasant one, but a connection was made nonetheless.
In other productions I have been a part of I have seen other actors and actresses give themselves connections just through their characters as well. I connected with them at times where I could feel what they were feeling. I remember one of my cast mates one night in our high school production of Our Town, she played Laurie, and it was in the second act when she found out she was dead, she had this look on her face that I could just tell her heart broke. I could feel my heart break with her. Her body keeled over as if the news was so much of a burden she could not even stand. I almost felt as if I could barely concentrate on anything else, and I had a scene coming on right after hers and I almost missed my cue.
As I feel mostly that I want to do acting in film later, I realize that connection is the most important thing you have to do with being on screen. People have to connect with your character, or at least have the believability that your character is legit, knows who they are, and knows what they are doing. Of course music and direction take a giant effect as well in the course of film, but the actors themselves have to make the film something to connect to for the audience. As I have seen a lot of movies throughout my twenty-two years, the most movies that stand out to me are those that have either made me laugh or cry the hardest or made me smile the widest. I made a connection with those films because of the relationships to the characters and their stories. The connections could be completely new experiences associated by the movie, or trigger old ones from memories of the poignant times of growing up, from childhood to the present state of being.
I have grown up with a somewhat sensitivity to everything in my life, from family and friends to life and it’s unknown answers to all my questions. If a character or scene can make me understand and/or feel pain and suffering, or joy and happiness, I feel that it gives me an awareness of my own life. I understand and feel these things in my own body and it reminds me that I am a living, breathing entity. I am alive. In a sense, acting is what keeps me alive.
When I was younger I felt my imagination was a giant factor in the way I played with my siblings and childhood friends. We used to pretend to be Power Rangers to Superheroes, such as X-Men, basically a lot of these options of characters with giant superhuman powers and abilities. I remember finding it very easy to imagine the scenarios and the situations of the stories in my head. I could easily get lost in acting these characters that I remember my mother actually forbidding us to play it while we were younger, most likely because of the violent side of the play of defeating and conquering the bad guys. Also, the fact that some of us would get hurt every once in awhile probably was a factor as well, but of course we healed and are all presently living with no major complications.
Imagination as I have grown older has definitely been kept vivid. I write stories and poetry as well where I can see the actual characters put into situations and instances of danger all the way to love. I can sometimes easily find ways to get into these characters’ heads and learn their stories from their point of view. As in acting, I feel that characters from the scripts I read and plays I perform can just as easily get a grip on me. Before I actually act anything out, I read the character(s) as much as I can and get an idea of who they are. I try to understand their motives and reasoning for their actions, while also imagining their world from their view. It just reminds me of childhood in a way that I can connect to these characters I read about and play, whether by loving them to their fullest or hating them to the extreme point.
This option of imagination was a way for me growing up throughout Middle School to almost mentally escape as well. I didn’t have many friends that were very close and my siblings and I weren’t on a level to even want to be around each other, so I basically spent a lot of time alone. I read a lot of books, saw a lot of movies, watching a lot of television, and kept myself preoccupied with the internet and other activities such as writing to take my mind off the fact I was not very popular with kids my own age. I think this was a way for me to grow up a little more because I was subjecting myself to a lot of things to relate to things I would need to understand later, seemingly learning about the world through media, books, and plays. When I finally did more drama and Theatre at school, I gained a sense that this was a way for me to escape, while also having others to escape with as I gained actual close friends. I learned that this was a way for me to connect with people in a different way other than the media sources I had been using before. I do not feel I ever was some misfit that could not make friends, I just did not have the sense of connection with people I needed. Acting was that connection.
Another reason for acting I find within the escapism is that I have the option of being someone else. I can be a high class, snobby, rich prude or a poor, coke addicted bum, living off the streets, and yet in the end I can leave all that in the end and be myself. I can do and say things to people, animals, things, about life, death, love, sex, religion, politics, and lots more and I don’t have to care about what I do or say. I could even not be telling the truth about anything at all. I could lie, cheat, steal, kill, and get away with it all, or lose and get away with nothing. I could die. I could be reborn. I could live forever. It’s almost like living in my imagination, or one of my stories, and letting it run wild.
Sometimes it is a nice vacation to do something or be something a little different from the usual. I think that’s definitely a reason why I traveled all this way to Dublin. Learning further acting and other parts of Theatre from the aspects of the Irish ideal is very different experience while also having some ties to the usual things I have learned in the past. Even trying the new monologue choice of Bernard Shaw’s Heartbreak House with an English accent was and still is a challenge. I feel that this one monologue, which I will have to use when I return for an audition is something that will help me finally get something good in the Theatre department. I still will need to further learn this monologue so I can improve. I feel my main concern is that learning and utilizing this accent is the biggest challenge. I would do the monologue without the accent, but I feel this is a challenge for myself to do better and improve upon myself, and it’s required for my audition. I feel that also this character, Alfred Mangan, is a character I like to hate because I do hate him. He is the complete opposite of who I am as a person and just a bad man. Why would I act a character out that I hate? If I get a part, that’s great, but I find that it if I can make other people hate the character like I do, I have done my job as an actor.
The job of an actor, to me, and why I choose to act overall comes down to the main reason of connection, and the impact it can take on someone, including myself. I have been part of many shows while growing up, but one in particular stood out to me while typing this paper. I was the lead Nazi, Herr Zeller in The Sound of Music my third year in High School. This was a character almost like Alfred Mangan, which after dealing with the character and refining it became a very intriguing process when finally bringing it to its final stage. After we opened the shows, and after the night was over, our cast would go into the lobby and greet and meet people. I, however, barely received any greetings from people each night. I got the same attention as everyone else in the cast, just the opposite effect. Little kids would stay away from me when they saw me, I remember one little girl wanting to hide behind her mother, and I had one older man ask me one evening if I was a real Nazi offstage. I had realized that this character I portrayed created something. It made a connection, not a pleasant one, but a connection was made nonetheless.
In other productions I have been a part of I have seen other actors and actresses give themselves connections just through their characters as well. I connected with them at times where I could feel what they were feeling. I remember one of my cast mates one night in our high school production of Our Town, she played Laurie, and it was in the second act when she found out she was dead, she had this look on her face that I could just tell her heart broke. I could feel my heart break with her. Her body keeled over as if the news was so much of a burden she could not even stand. I almost felt as if I could barely concentrate on anything else, and I had a scene coming on right after hers and I almost missed my cue.
As I feel mostly that I want to do acting in film later, I realize that connection is the most important thing you have to do with being on screen. People have to connect with your character, or at least have the believability that your character is legit, knows who they are, and knows what they are doing. Of course music and direction take a giant effect as well in the course of film, but the actors themselves have to make the film something to connect to for the audience. As I have seen a lot of movies throughout my twenty-two years, the most movies that stand out to me are those that have either made me laugh or cry the hardest or made me smile the widest. I made a connection with those films because of the relationships to the characters and their stories. The connections could be completely new experiences associated by the movie, or trigger old ones from memories of the poignant times of growing up, from childhood to the present state of being.
I have grown up with a somewhat sensitivity to everything in my life, from family and friends to life and it’s unknown answers to all my questions. If a character or scene can make me understand and/or feel pain and suffering, or joy and happiness, I feel that it gives me an awareness of my own life. I understand and feel these things in my own body and it reminds me that I am a living, breathing entity. I am alive. In a sense, acting is what keeps me alive.
This is beautiful! I think that you have this acting thing pretty much figured out. I hope Dublin is treating you well.
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