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12/9

Today's class had a really nice energy. I really liked Mia's piece, especially how they included everyone so smoothly regardless of major. The costume coordination was really nice too. Again, the piece based on the Vivaldi song was so fun to watch, because of how many different ways people reacted to the same music.

The last piece we watched was so well rehearsed: it was a cool reminder that all of us are actually here because we want to be, and because we're all talented and qualified. It's kinda an honorable feeling, to know I qualified among all these really talented performers. I still feel under qualified a little, when I see other PDSM students who can do aspects of performance art, when that's one thing really out my realm (unless you count, like Just Dance).

The thing that really stood out to me about the last piece though, was how well rehearsed the dialogue was, and how in sync the actors were. It was really good writing, on top of the performance aspect. It was emotionally and really well done, and just overall really nice to get to watch. It actually reminded me a little of one of the dance pieces in Emergence that's going up next week.

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12/7

Because this project was so open ended, it was so fun to see the different ways everyone reacted to the prompt. Emmett's film on art criticism was really cool. I think it was really cool how some actors on both presentation days used film to put together monologues.

As much as I don't love group projects, I was thinking that it would be pretty cool to throw together a 'show' based off some of these art pieces. We have every major in our class, so it would actually work out pretty well. We have IPE majors and directors to devise scripts, and crew and stage management to put together paperwork and designs. Actors, obviously. It would be cool to do this project in the context of the Text to Life project we did. I love the way I'm thinking about paintings now too, looking at them more adjacent to a piece of theater art. Or as inspiration for a play, with more of a linear story behind them. Arden's project made me think of it, with how they put together a narrative for a show that doesn't exist, and put all the paperwork together for it. It had to be hard, too just having to set up all these rules for yourself without a script, or actual props or a company to work with.

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12/2: Reflection on group presentations and project work

Besides performing my own piece, I really liked being able to watch all the other group's projects. It was really amazing to see how some people can just pull out a dance if they're not a dancer, especially in Kat's project. Arden's group was really fun to watch too, because of how they set us up in the room. It was cool to see how two groups reacted so differently to the same artistic inspiration.

I definitely got to explore how anxious I get performing things in front of people. I really do hate it, it's kind of funny. I have no problem walking onstage in front of a cast and directing team to discuss a technical problem during rehearsals, but for some reason being the performer myself is still terrifying. The class environment was really great though, and the same with my group.

I really felt like we all contributed a lot to the project; scheduling times for all of us to meet was a little difficult, but it definitely helped that we had that one class period to work through our blocking. One thing that worked really well was all of us coming from different majors, (I think we had everyone except MT represented) and we were able to play to each other's strengths that way. Riley and Angela helped a lot with putting the actual piece together, and Izzy and I worked through getting the poem into a narrative. I worked on the music mixing and recording everything (mostly for my own sanity, we didn't really need it haha), and Emma helped us put together the movement pieces. Overall we just worked really cohesively and it was a great time; i feel like everyone contributed and worked well together.

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11/30: reflection on art as inspiration presentations

Today's presentations were so much fun to watch. The dance pieces really stuck out to me, both because of how fascinating it is to see choreography based off of a painting, and because of the sheer talent of my classmates. I think it's so amazing to see how in control people can be of their bodies, and how dancers can move all of their limbs so independently and still make a piece flow so well. I love watching dance pieces, and dancers are one of my favorite subjects to draw. I also noticed how during one of the dances, I think it was Emma's, I could hear her knees and ankles cracking. It made me think of how much art is a bodily activity, no matter what kind of art you're doing. Artists tend to put so much of themselves into their work that it ends up affecting us physically, even if it's just a painting. But you can tell so much more with physical artists like dancers or singers, because their medium is their own bodies.

Izzy's piece was really fun, too, because it took a painting that I totally wouldn't have expected based on the performance, and made it relatable to every single person in the room. It was also really nice to see a comedy piece, because I feel like we as a class don't do a lot of comedic performances, so that was just nice. I thought it was really funny though, and I enjoyed the process as an audience member of realizing what the situation was, and watching Izzy go through this monologue of talking to these strangers about what its like at parties, and this newfound connection with a random person's dog. I really love dogs too, so I really connected to the monologue she wrote. it was awesome.

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11/18: Reflection on Backstage Roles, talk with April

This was a fun class, even though I knew a lot of what April was explaining to us. It was really nice to have a company manager in for another perspective on the business side of theater. I've always known that the monetary and organization side of a production puts in a lot of work, but because it's so behind the scenes you never really see it.

A lot of what we talked about with budgeting was new information too. Since most of the tech work I did in high school was volunteered time, I never put in the thought that in real life, every single hour working on the show is paid time for a tech crew, or director or anyone. So beyond the budget for show pieces like sets or costumes, production staff have to work out how long it will take to put everything together, and get all of those numbers into one giant company budget. I'm starting to see that more since I've been here, through the PSA positions and whatnot.

I also really resonated with the communication piece of the talk. There are just so many people that are involved with theater, that it takes a really well communicative person to be able to organize a whole production. Additionally, all of the design choices have to go through so many avenues to become realized, that I think it actually adds to the shows. Because not only is the designer having all of these thoughts, but that goes then to the director, who has the final say. But then after that production management has to approve the idea, or shift it to fit the show budget. Throughout this whole process there's also constant feedback and critique, which ends up letting the initial idea take on a whole bunch of different artist's influence. And then at tech, when we get to see the actors bring these ideas to life, that's another artistic influence that really embodies why live performance is so freaking cool.

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11/11: Reflection on Nutrition and Injury Prevention

A lot of the injury prevention conversation today was based on dancers, which is hard to relate to. I do think if the rest of PPA had to take intro to Production like the PDSM majors do, this would solve all of their problems that were voiced during this class. But its also a communication thing, in the way that if actors are having trouble moving something they can ask us for help. And if we have a set piece that actors move that's cumbersome or heavy, it's the deck crew's responsibility to properly train them to move it. Safety is also tied in real closely with sleep, which can get problematic because of the long hours theater people work. It's hard even for tech people to keep safe habits when we're all really tired.

Nutrition is just hard in general. College is a terrible nutrition environment, because there's such limited access to good fresh food in the caf. It's a little different for me because I never grew up being taught to care about my weight, we just ate really healthy between my houses. Now that I'm responsible for myself its been kind of hard trying to keep up a great diet but it's not terrible. The biggest thing has been trying to find time to go to the gym. Work calls kind of accomplish the same thing, but during tech week it's also such a crazy schedule that it seems like a net zero.

There also really wasn't any talk about the risks that are associated with stage crew jobs during class. I understand, because ratio wise we're a smaller group. But there's a lot of risks that I don't think anyone talks about, mostly just on the personal health level. Lack of sleep, lack of time to eat properly. So much of the time we'll take breaks for dinner, but while actors might get a whole 30 minutes or something, tech is taking that minute to look at cue lists, or fix a light's focus. And we're always coming in an hour earlier and leaving an hour later. Overall I think that's something that can be changed, but its also part of the job so I understand the necessity of the extra long hours.

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11/9: Diversity in theater Reflection

This article reminded me a lot about a conversation that came up in high school around 'classic' literature- the debate about if reading endless white European -written books is still beneficial. In my story structure class we've been reading classic epic from all different African and Asian cultures that aren't even out of reach from a high school level, so I wonder why these stories haven't come up before, especially in AP classes. You can see the colonialist influence still in the translations though: so much is lost because the translators aren't native speakers or didn't consult native speakers throughout their process.

But back to the high school conversation, one of the points that came up was the ability of teachers and readers to look at a piece, and realize the problematic, stereotypical parts of it. The challenge then is to take out the implicit biases of the writer and recognize what the historical period was. Because it we don't talk about how (American culture especially) used to be so insensitive toward any non-European culture people could assume that problem was never there.

When it comes to contemporary literature and theater though, I think it just comes down to laziness of the artist in the choice to not portray diverse characters in their own uniquer story. (Rather than falling into a stereotype) In the article it talks about David Hwang's play, and it reminded me so much of a conversation I had with a teacher about Gauguin's paintings from his trip to Polynesia: modern artists have spent a lot of time analyzing how he moved there just to be provocative and put out these colonialist paintings for his French audience.

The application to theater is really interesting because of the casting problem. I think a lot of the issue can be solved by really putting effort into advertising casting calls to a broad audience, and for casting directors to really try and get their heads out of a box of who the character has been cast with historically.

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11/2: Artist Research Reflections and Reflection on Tableau Activity

I really liked seeing the presentation on mime in context of my groups presentation on dance. I thought it was a cool contrast between two performance mediums that don't use dialogue. It actually made me think a little bit of some styles of tik tok videos; because they can take place over generic music that doesn't really pertain to anything, and be these absurdist acted out scenes that people post for fun. Similar to silent film, in a way, but with less plot and seriousness.

I also thought the tableau activity we did. It was similar to some of the points in the mime presentation, which I thought was cool. IT was definitely something that brought me out of my comfort zone, but I really really liked the design part of it. It keyed in to exactly how I think about composition when people are involved. The whole piece about trying to show a dynamic story across time through still movement clicked perfectly in my head, which was fun. It was also really interesting to work with dance majors and all performers really, because they know so much more about movement, where I think mostly about the end aesthetic part of the piece. So that was a cool collaboration because we got all sides of performance and design perspectives together to create a really cool story.

And then on the perceiving end, I really loved how the whole class put out ideas about whatever tableau we were watching. IT was a really cool collaborative brainstorm, and I just got so interested in the collective story telling and how we all built off of each other's ideas. We all had the same vague semblance of a theme in mind, and from that were able to create these really cool stories in our heads and out loud with each other. I like how this whole activity is really a little window into how everyone thinks as well. Because we get such a cool glimpse of how each individual process information into a visual format, it really shows the breadth of how everyone's creative brain works differently.

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10/28: Reflection on Financial Literacy Workshop

While we were waiting for the loading truck this morning April actually gave us a little crash course in financial literacy as a theater artist, which was super cool. She had a lot to say about finding health insurance, which is something that hasn't really crossed my mind at all. I keep a budget monthly to stay on track with my savings (especially since I haven't found a job since getting to school)- but I haven't considered what my financial life is going to look like after school yet.

There's a lot I didn't realize I'll have to think about, most importantly the question of whether to stay on my parent's health insuracne until it maxes out (which I realize I'm very lucky to have) or to join a union.

We also talked about getting an 'artist-adjacent' job (like in a box office) to sustain ourselves before we're really established as designers. Freelancing can be hard, and there's a lot of little unspoken rules around taking union jobs versus freelancing non-union. Staying non-union at first can help so I could just take as many jobs as possible at first, to establish myself, and then work into the design union. It would also give me time to figure out if I'm even staying in New York, or if I'll take a little time and go to the West Coast, or Europe.

I also started thinking for the first time about living off campus my senior year here at Pace so I can learn how to sustain myself in a safe-er environment, with space to fall back on my parents and school as a safety net if I need. This was something my friend who's a junior year student brought up- its what shes doing right now, and presented it as a really great opportunity to get off campus and learn to financially sustain yourself fully: I pay rent to Pace, but not electricity and groceries and internet and metro-card fees and all of those little things. Not to mention my tuition loans that are going to kick in 6 months after I graduate. There's a lot of things I didn't even consider that go into getting an apartment; I think its a little nuts that there's zero education on this in high school, at least where I'm from. There's plenty of people who don't go straight to college that need to figure out sustaining themselves financially straight out of senior year, and I got all of this new new information from a quick conversation this morning.

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10/26: Reflection on Artist Research Presentations

I really enjoyed the presentation on the Stanislavsky method. Its one of those things I never knew a lot about- especially the history of acting in general. I loved that part a lot because I've been taught the history of theater, but not of acting. I also had the best time with their interactive portion, because I straight up did not expect that ending to the activity. It actually put me into the mindset of an actor for the first time which was a really cool experience.

I also really liked Arden's comments about if this method is still useful. The way they talked about the harm that can come to actors was a new viewpoint to me too. I thought that it was really interesting to think about, how method acting a villain can be so harmful to a person. Not to an actor, but to a person. Especially after the pencil activity, because I can reflect and notice the difference in my own mindset and my own actions. I also start to wonder about how method acting plays into memorization. I've never been great at memorizing stuff and I've always been curious about how people do things like memorize all of Hamlet. My first instinct is to think that method acting would make it harder, because you're getting so into this mindset of this character that it would be hard to remember preset lines. I'd love to talk to some of the friends I made at She Loves Me though, because some of my friends were method acting throughout that show.

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10/19: Alumni Panel- Open Reflection

Hearing the alumni speak was really cool, because it made me think a lot about what real life as a designer or stage manager is going to look like in the future. I think they had a lot of really great advice, especially about what to do now, in this moment as a student to further our success. But it also hit that success is really just measured personally. It doesn't really matter if I go out and win a Tony when I'm 35, because as long as I have a stable place to live and I'm working in the theater industry somehow, I know I'm going to be happy because that's what I really enjoy doing. A lot of non theater artists I talk to kind of think I'm nuts when I say this, especially my parents, because they're like "well, if you're not famous, but you're working these crazy hours, why is it even worth it right?". And I just have to try and show them that it isn't the hours or anything that really matters, because I'm working in the coolest field out there (to me, anyways) and I seriously just enjoy what I do.

The part of the panel that resonated the most was probably what Grace had to say, about taking yourself seriously and putting yourself out there. You have to be the artist you want to see out in the world, otherwise who else is going to do that work? I thought it was pretty great to hear about how all of these super talented people took the same stuff we're learning in our classes and ran with it to all of these really cool career pathways.

It was also pretty awesome motivation too. A lot of times on my days off I'm sitting around wondering what more I should be doing, because it seems like I should be busier. But just putting my name out there in random job applications because I might be qualified, or putting that extra hour into my homework, is exactly what these alum did and they're doing great. Taking the time to just sit around doing homework with my friends is technically a kind of networking (even though I kind of hate that word because it makes me think of wall street lawyers or something). And that little thing is a way to potentially get a job at a random theater in San Diego, because my best friend's old director is putting on a production of Rent and that's my favorite musical, and she remembered me saying that this one time in college so now my name is being brought up in a production room that needs a set designer or something.

It's pretty cool to think about this kind of future, even though my biggest priority right now sometimes feels like the FAFSA, or getting a job, or my Drafting homework. But its a cool kind of hopefulness I get to think about of off days, and I really love that I get to have that as an artist going through this program.

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10/14: Reflection on Friday's class- LGBT+ conversations

I really liked hearing from the performance majors on the subject of gender, because it's not something that comes up a lot as a designer. Not many shows that I've worked on have had queer aspects to them, so I've never been able to incorporate my queer identity into a show personally. But, queer actors can't really avoid that because every performance for a queer actor becomes a version of a queer performance simply through their presence. I can't imagine how difficult it must be to try and fit into so many binary roles as a queer actor.

It was also cool to reconcile our experiences as theater people with a speaker who's a writer. It makes me excited for future design conversations with play writes or directors who are taking a show and putting a queer spin on it, or writing a queer show from scratch.

I think as an industry, there are also lots of steps to be taken in regards to accessibility in places like dressing rooms, to make queer and trans actors more comfortable. Its similar in the design and production field as well: a lot of the theater industry (in the technical side) is very male, and very cisgendered. As upcoming industry professional, I'm very aware of the fact that I'm outside of this box being young and trans in a space that historically is not. In the past, maybe because I used to present much more feminine, or maybe just because I'm so short (lol) there have been many times where I haven't been given physical jobs that I'm more than capable of performing for no real reason. I'm hopeful, however, that the theater world is happy to move forward expanding our horizon in welcoming queer technicians into the industry.

I also think that our conflict resolution class from last week plays into this week's class, because coming into new spaces and being able to advocate for your pronouns to be used correctly, or for a gender-neutral dressing room is very important. It's little things like that which are so important to improving the diversity and acceptance of theater spaces.

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10/12: Reflection on Etude presentations

The thing I liked most about this project was being able to see everyone's different interpretations of the city around us. I'm dying to know where everyone went for their observation piece of the project. At the same time though, it is kind of cool seeing how alike different parts of this city are regardless of where geographically you're located. It really brought out the connectivity in humanity I feel living here.

I thought Arden and Emma's project was really cool: I liked the fact that Arden was playing different parts the whole time while Emma was a static character. It was unlike a lot of other presentations because it focused on relationships from one shopkeepers perspective throughout a day, while constantly interacting with new people. Arden's performance was also really cool because of how they were able to emote in a mask the whole time. Their use of hand motions was really great.

Additionally, the piece that I think had the best creative storytelling was the one with the lost dog. Both performers really embodied the story well, and got us as the audience caught up in the emotion of the whole experience. It was cool to see the story laid out between strangers as well.

Overall this project was cool for me because of how out of my comfort zone it was. I took a lot of notes from seeing other PDSM students perform, especially since this nonverbal type of devised performance is so interpretive. Its hard to draw a connection between the type of art that I do and this project, but that was kind of nice. It was something to shake up what I've been doing in the rest of my classes for sure.

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10/7: Reflection on class discussion- Conflict resolution with Chris

This was a really cool class for me because it brought to light a lot of what theater is like for stage managers. It definitely made me realize how SMs have to compartmentalize, and the headspace it requires to dos that job for a company. It almost reminded me of what a lawyer or divorce counselor might go through because they have people in distress yelling at them because of their own problems, even though it has nothing to do with them specifically. But it's not exactly something that needs to be fixed in the theater industry because getting angry at an SM is kind of just how it goes, and a good SM knows how to realize its not about them and how to step back and uncover the actual, fixable problem at hand. Whether that's changing a transition or blocking, or adding a new rehearsal to the schedule.

It takes a lot of organization to be a stage manager, and you have to really love it to work in that field. It also takes a lot of really stellar communication skills, which is cool to me. I wonder a lot about how you train yourself to be successful in that field, and what a career arc is like for a stage manager. You also need to have such a thorough knowledge about every aspect of a production, which is a special kind of niche.

The other night my stage manager friend was showing me an old video of a production, and there was one scene where projection and light cues had to go off every three seconds in time with the music. What really hit me in the face was how she was able to call these cues a half second before they needed to appear on stage; I know what it's like to stage manage, but seeing this finale happen was just another entire experience because of how flawlessly it all went off. And all of this happens after a stage manager goes through the entire process of getting a show onstage for the cast and the creative team, and now you're calling the cues opening night. The energy required is kind of amazing to watch. I understand how intoxicating that vibe is though; professional designers don't have that because they're not behind the booth during actual performances. It almost makes me wonder if I should change my major, because I love the backstage energy. It's also got to be incredibly fulfilling, seeing a show go up from the absolute drawing board to a final project, and being a part of every single aspect of that.

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9/30: Reflection on class discussion

I really liked this workshop- I think it was really helpful to see the different perspectives everyone in PPA has coming to college. Because not everyone comes from a place as liberal and diverse as NYC, it was probably really validating for them to be able to sit through this workshop and be able to hear everyone speak and relate to that.

One thing I wish we had been able to talk more about was how we as artists can break through these stereotypes- while its super amazing to be able to voice our experiences as non-dominantly identifying people, guidance about how to move forward with that in the arts would be cool. I almost wished we had more time to ask about the Broadway Advocacy Coalition and their work in diversifying theater. Like, what goes into the process of shows at the BAC and how does the production room look going into a show's brainstorming? How do they involve different voices in productions, and how do their designers work into that equation?

Because I've grown up queer and Jewish in a town where that certainly wasn't the majority culture, I'm already really familiar with the dominant narratives in media and not seeing myself in that light. One exception is young adult novels, because I feel like that genre has done a lot of amazing work to help diverse authors publish their stories, and it's generally pretty open to a lot of different narratives. I think that's one place the theater industry can look at going forward to try and figure out a way to get more authors into the published performance sphere.

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9/28: Reflection on readings and class discussion

The first reading- the letter "Dear White American Theater", was a really interesting read for me. When we discussed in class the concert of creating theater with a white or dominant culture audience in mind, it definitely took me back a step in my perspective of the performance industry. It's a really confusing duality, because on one hand, is it really a big deal to cast a person of color in a role originally written for a white person, because so much theater was written in America before it was 'acceptable' to have people of color on stage in main roles? And then the other side is the necessity to take into account BIPOC perspective in casting, and to have diversity advocates in production rooms to ensure accurate story-telling.

From a personal standpoint, I think that actors are empathetic enough people that if you find a person to be in a rehearsal room that can input their own experiences as a minority status person, actors can successfully perform in roles they may not identify as personally. I've seen movies where cisgender actors play trans roles, and do it successfully to the point where I, a trans man, can't tell the difference. Usually these shows or movies have implemented plenty of research behind the scenes for an actor in that role. The opposite is also completely true, so I think the same rule should hold for theater.

I think the conclusion our class sort of got to echoes my own thoughts. I'm not an actor, I've never produced or directed a show, and I'm a white guy in America, so I'm for sure not the most qualified person to be asking about casting people of color in american theater. But i think that it really depends on the story that is being told what the best approach is around handling a diverse cast. Obviously opportunity should be given equally, to everyone. It can be hard in some regions, for small theaters to be able to cast shows with actors of the correct race for a role. I think in that situation, theaters should move away from doing shows (Hairspray, In the Heights) that have racial components as main themes. In shows like Ariel, though, I don't think it matters at all what race an actor is, (and despite recent controversy over the Disney remake), having people of color acting as main roles in stories like this is great and really beneficial for audiences.

The second article does take into account, though, that audiences in american theater are mainly white, and like we talked about in class, those audiences want to be catered to. I think it can be really hard for small theaters to walk the line of trying to make enough money to stay in business and also put on shows that challenge the majority. Broadway, however, does not have this problem, and doesn't really have an excuse for doing endless reproductions of shows like The Music Man.

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9/23: Post-workshop Thoughts

This improv workshop really put me out of my comfort zone- I have massive stage fright; anything beyond reading from Hamlet in front of my English class makes me uncomfortable as hell, so this was interesting for sure. At first I just partnered up with people I knew, because it made the whole improvisation part less intimidating. The worst part was the large group improv part, because it put me on the spot in front of people I don't know, even though it was a low-stakes setting. Also, the devised movement- mirror thing. That was weird for me because I'm a very visual and verbal thinker, and I don't know at all how to put movement together into something cohesive, or to work with other people in a movement project. I also don't like the idea of being watched in a movement setting- give me a power point to present over that any day.

It was cool to do the activity where you're presenting 'gifts' to the other person- the idea is to just say whatever is on your mind, so that was fun because it felt like an extended brainstorm. It was also one on one, so it was much less intimidating. I think it was cool to experience, and I want to start doing that by myself when I'm in the design process between reading a script and analyzing it. Stream of thought brainstorm is something that's come up in my design class as well, so I think that could be a cool thing to explore.

I would have liked it to incorporate some design ideas though- I think a brainstorm improv kind of thing, like word association, could be a really cool way to spark design metaphors for a show for any aspect- scenic, costume, etc. That's for sure something I think this class is lacking, even though I know designers and stage managers make up such a small part of PPA- I feel like if we're being pushed to improv movements and all of that, we should be able to do activities with non-designers that have a design focus, if that makes sense.