The Nerve(s)!: What it's like being an aspiring actor
Nov. 1st, 2023
Being in Drama class in high school
Selena - RCP Newspaper
The Drama course is an elective at Palmer in which students are put into fun icebreaker activities and team building exercises to build their confidence on stage and comfortableness in the theatre scene. Students that have chosen this course are either looking to expand more on their passion for theatre, or break out of their comfort zone and try something exploratory.
Students were interviewed on what the difficulties in Drama class are (with Ms. Riddel this year). One student replied, "I think the most complicated part for me in Drama is probably improvising," saying that the pressure to quickly figure out how, what, and if it's applicable to the scene is difficult to grasp, which rings true for the other students interviewed, saying the same sentiment.
Drama students
The strategy to overcoming this is "just practicing and getting better every time," another student said, to hammer in the techniques of thinking on your feet, the skill becoming muscle memory over time because of just how frequently the need for it pops up in live theatre. Some of the other difficulties in the Drama room is memorizing lines, as main characters being protagonists often have pages and pages of lines to recite, because of "[their] poor memory," the students say.
As well as retaining other information throughout the school day and needing to find a balance between the times. A class like Drama helps strengthen your perception of time and time management because of how much dedication it requires, so if it's something a student really wants to do, they need to find out a happy medium between the hardships of being a student and an actor.
The skills improvisation in Drama class builds on are finding out how to deliver lines and different ways to characterize the parts the students play to make them their own, separating themselves from a part already played and giving a unique experience to the audience.
To go out of their comfort zones and expose themselves to being something entirely different to what they are inherently is brave and what is required in theatre, creating the start of their new selves, whether it be in the theatre or just in daily life.