Project by: Alex Sawyer (9th Grade)
Project Advisor: Joan Jubett
Student(s)’s Advisor(s): Joy Piedmont
During Trimester 2, I read monologues and plays and eventually chose a piece to perform. During the third trimester are worked on performing the monologue. I chose this honors project because I love acting. I have learned a lot about acting and hope to continue this work.
Update Trimester 2:
So far I have looked over many monologues, read the play “Every Brilliant Thing.” This is a play about suicide and the realities of suicides affect family members. It was a very meaningful play and I was deeply touched by it. This brought me to decide to chose a monologue to read from this play. The monologue is from the perspective of the son of a woman who has recently attempted suicide. After choosing my monologue I worked alone and with Joan to understand what it was saying and how to portray that correctly. I learned a lot throughout this process. For example, moving your arms and hands when you talk can often take away from the performance.
Since I chose this monologue only a few weeks ago, I am not entirely ready to perform it by finals week. Therefore, I have chosen to continue it into trimester 3 so I will not be on such a rushed schedule.
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T3 PROJECT PROPOSAL
Please write a description of the project you are proposing. Why do you want to take this on, and what do you hope to learn?
Throughout trimester 2 I began this honors project where I read monologues and plays and eventually chose a piece to perform. Currently, I am in the process of working through the difficult piece I chose with my mentor, Joan. I chose this honors project because I love acting but I am currently in an art rotation. So far I have learned a lot about acting(like that moving your arms can sometimes take away from the scene), but I hope to continue to learn throughout trimester 3.
Critical thinking, creativity, citizenship and courage are essential LREI learning values. Explain how you’ll draw on at least one of these values to complete your proposed project?
Of the learning values listed, I believe this honors project will involve a lot of creativity through the choices I make through portraying characters.
What is your proposed outcome? How will you be able to demonstrate successful completion of this Project? How do you plan to share your learnings with the larger LREI community (e.g., exhibit of work, poster of learnings, performance, etc.)?
My proposed outcome since the beginning has been to have a final performance. I have been working towards that and I plan to continue working towards that.
Please provide a general outline that indicates your work plan for the trimester? What are some of the key project benchmarks (i.e., goals that will help to ensure that you finish the project)?
For the next trimester, I will memorize my monologue(s) entirely, which will be one benchmark, and I will perform said monologue(s) which will be another benchmark.
When do you plan on meeting?
Friday X-Block
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TRIMESTER 2 PROJECT PROPOSAL
Project by: Alex Sawyer (9th Grade)
Project Advisor: Joan Jubett
Student(s)’s Advisor(s): Joy Piedmont
Please write a description of the project you are proposing. Why do you want to take this on, and what do you hope to learn?
I plan on strengthening my acting skills for my honors project. Because I am currently in an arts rotation , I would love to focus more of my time on theater. I would like to work on monologues and possibly scenes and begin to explore my areas of strength.
Critical thinking, creativity, citizenship and courage are essential LREI learning values. Explain how you’ll draw on at least one of these values to complete your proposed project?
Of the learning values listed, I believe this honors project will involve a lot of creativity through the choices I make through portraying characters.
What is your proposed outcome? How will you be able to demonstrate successful completion of this Project? How do you plan to share your learnings with the larger LREI community (e.g., exhibit of work, poster of learnings, performance, etc.)?
I hope to have one or more prepared monologues or scenes that are good enough to perform. Possibly I would perform during a coffee house or film the performance and put them into a video.
Please provide a general outline that indicates your work plan for the trimester? What are some of the key project benchmarks (i.e., goals that will help to ensure that you finish the project)?
I would begin by working with Joan on which monologues and scenes would work with me. Eventually, I will have some and I will work on memorizing those and working with Joan on polishing my performance. By the end of the trimester they will be fully polished and ready to perform.
When do you plan on meeting?
Friday X-Block
Approved
The beginning of Trimester 2. Update:
As of now, I am deciding where to perform the piece I chose and working on memorization(which is really hard!! 3 pages is a lot!!).
It’s definitely a difficult piece both length and content-wise, especially during this next week at LREI where suicide is talked about often. It’s definitely making me reflect on suicide’s effect on family members in a very effective way.
I’m working a lot on connecting emotionally to the play and learning different ways to approach such a sensitive topic.
This piece has also opened me up to hearing more about the stories of people who have experienced the suicide of a family member. I recently read a few articles written by people who experienced the death of their mother, *SPOILER ALERT* something the lead in this play, unfortunately, has to go through. One that I found really insightful was: https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/surviving-suicide/2018/11/28/life-after-suicide-my-mom-killed-herself-grand-canyon-live/1527757002/
It’s a different story than the play, but it shows the guilt this woman went through, something I know the character has experienced as well.
Memorizing, memorizing, memorizing. Monologues are SO hard to memorize. When you memorize a scene, there’s a queue and other people acting around you. And that’s a lot easier for me. But monologues are just a lot of talking from one person. No one to act off of or get cues from, it’s all you. Which makes it immensely harder to memorize. Anyway, I’m one page through and have around one and a half to go. Hopefully, I’ll be able to finish that by next week. That’s the goal.
Worked through a memorization technique today. Joan suggested that I try to connect words to aspects of my life/whatever I connect to that word. For example, I worked a lot with the image of bothered(a word in the monologue) and connected it to the image of being bothered by a bunch of ants crawling on me. It really helped with the process of memorizing. At this point, I’ve memorized everything and I’m working on turning those words into a story and getting them ingrained in my mind.
Read through it a few times alone and then once with Joan’s input. Midway through I said the line “answer phone” and Joan pointed out that that’s a British phrase. So I decided to read through a bit of it with a British accent, which I eventually stopped doing because it took me out of the piece too much. Then Joanne, who is British, walked in and discussed accents with us which was very interesting! Anyway, we’re working on staging currently and I’m on track with the goals I set last week.
I just finished my honors project. I performed both a comedic and dramatic piece during my time doing this honors project. The first piece I performed during the spring festival of plays. It was called “Red Sugary Sweet Dreams” and I played the kool-aid man. For this piece, I performed with other people which has a completely different feel compared to performing alone which I did for the dramatic piece. For one thing, it’s easier to memorize lines when you’re working with other people. It’s also easier to act when you’re with others. When you’re acting alone sometimes you feel like a doofus while standing on that stage. But when you’re with other people, you don’t feel alone and have others in character to help you get in the mood of the performance. The dramatic piece I performed was a monologue from the play “Every Beautiful Thing,” a story about a boy whose mother commits suicide. I chose not to perform this one at the spring festival of plays for obvious reasons. This was a difficult piece to perform because I didn’t necessarily have fun performing it like the comedic piece. I had to be serious during this because it’s a serious topic. It was also a 3-page long monologue so that made the memorization much more difficult. But I did manage to memorize it and perform it. Both of these pieces were challenging in their own way but something I realized through this honors project is that I have an easier time performing dramatic pieces. With comedic pieces, I break character easily and don’t get in character in the same way as I do for a dramatic piece. Overall, this was an excellent experience and I learned a lot about what works best for me, acting wise.