Assignment 2

1. I believe that I embody the characteristics of a good musical theatre student. One of the reasons I think this is due to the fact that I pay attention and stay on task. I always like being 100% committed to something. When I am practicing the musical parts of our play, I always am paying attention to what page we are on and what section we are singing. I also usually have a pencil handy to mark my music. I try to go over my part and hum it along while other people are singing their parts.
The second characteristic that I believe I have is energy. When on stage I always try and react to what is going on, in this play everyone has to be super energetic and happy (after all it is called "Happy Days"). That means that everyone has to be enthusiastic and over the top which requires a lot of energy. In welcome to Wisconsin, I try and make my actions big and interact with others. Also, everyone needs to bring energy to rehearsal or else it will be a group full of bored students. I believe that I have energy simply because I have fun, and to have fun you need energy!
The third characteristic I believe that I display is creativity and imagination. This characteristic is shown through the character that I play. You have to evolve as a character and being a chorister, you need some imagination. My dance/musical theatre teacher says that giving your character a name and backstory helps you with your acting and character development so I decided I would do that here. My character's name is Shirley and she has grown up in Wisconsin. She is outgoing and overdramatic when any sort of violence arises. She loves to dance and is very energetic. She is stubborn and speaks her mind,  and when she graduates she wants to be a part time author because of her love of english. This character is nothing like me, but it will help me become a part of the play. When you are on stage you always need to be acting and my backstory for my character helps me do this. I think that my character story signifies that I have enough imagination and creativity to help the play, and help myself to be a better musical theatre student.

2. The first goal I have for myself is memorizing my parts and harmonies in the songs. Even when I have my music, sometimes I don't remember or can't get a certain note. I think that I am going to need lots of practice to be able to remember and sing all the different parts in the songs. When doing choreo, sometimes I latch on to the sopranos or altos not realizing because I don't have my music. It is hard to pay a lot of attention to your part while trying to learn new steps at the same time. The way I am going to improve my singing is to (of course) practice! I need to spend some time at home drilling the parts into my head, then I will be able to keep my part. Also, I can practice with a friend who is also a soprano two, or go over parts that I can't get with miss Armstrong.
My second goal would be perfecting the tap number. I was a bit behind because of my absence when it was taught, but it wasn't that hard once we went over it. Still, I think that I need to work on it a bit more because I don't have it memorized completely. Sometimes I have to think before going to the next step. I can easily achieve this goal with a little practice. I can go over the steps each week to keep it in my head. My only problem is that I don't have the music, but I can ask miss Armstrong or someone else to lend it to me.
The third goal I have in musical theatre is to connect with the people and characters of the cast onstage. Being a chorus member, I don't have a big speaking part but that doesn't mean that I can't be in character! I think that everyone could interact more instead on standing on the stage like statues. I especially thought this when we were rehearsing the beginning of welcome to Wisconsin. Everyone has to be more energetic and interactive. My goal is to be involved, in character and interact with the people onstage with me. The way that I will accomplish this is perhaps talking to new people and being enthusiastic so hopefully other characters will interact more with me and the rest of the cast.

3. September was only a short month ago and I feel that I have improved a bit, just not overly. I have learned a lot about how our play is going to work with the stage, and about choreography, but my character hasn't had enough time to really develop on stage. I have plans, but not much opportunity. That's ok with me as I am just a chorus member, so my improvements have been on other things. For example, I have learned a lot of the musical score and a few of the dances, but right now it's like a bunch of puzzle pieces and at the end we will put it together. I think that it's hard to improve on something when you just learned it, and that is why my improvements are not many. I do believe however that now we have lots learned we can begin to improve a lot more this month.