My name is Joshua Garrison and I am a current senior within LREI high school.  Throughout my entire high school experience, I have relished the opportunities that I have been granted to do certain with my own creative abilities, from being able to write and create my own short stories to the times in which I have been afforded the chance to write and perform monologues within the context of theater classes and beyond.  My enjoyment of these experiences didn’t really sprout from a vacuum, instead they have come from a lifelong enjoyment of writing and creating my own stories and experiences. From a very young age I truly cherished playing with my toys and created my own very vast worlds and narratives. I would find myself losing track of everything around me and simply engaging in the deceptively simple practice of playing with toys. As I grew older this interest transitioned into my making my own short movies on my computer, as well as my own short stories in school and beyond. Though movies and the practice of filmmaking has always been an immense passion of mine, there is also something truly alluring about the practice of theater. I love  the fact that it’s this live  and often ephemeral moment that is such an intimate and deep connection shared by both audience and  actor.   The live nature of theater  is something I have come to love in the past 7 years of my life that cannot be  replicated  on film. I have really enjoyed being able to be a part of  theatrical productions within LREI in classes and extracurricularly ,  and I wish to attempt to push my current bevy of theatrical knowledge even further, I think that the writing and production side of theater is something that I don’t really have as much experience as I wish to.  Though as I stated before I am passionate about both theater creation and filmmaking, I  feel  theater  is the medium that is best served within the confines of a senior project because of the fact that I can do the majority of the tasks independently.  

My project will consist of two main aspects. The first aspect is reading and watching plays and different media. and then from that media compiling a list of  different writing mechanics so I can utilize them for my own creation. I will attempt to go to theaters and watch plays as well, and of course Joan (an LREI theater teacher) will be valuable as a resource. She will provide me  with plays that she perceives as seminal. I will also make an effort to watch different sorts of media that is available on the internet, whether that be a video of someone critiquing a play or performance, or perhaps a movie or a bootleg of a play that has a particular creative skill that I am attempting to learn.  This research aspect will be interspersed with the second aspect of my piece.  The second aspect of my project will be drawing from what I have learned through consumption of media to make my own longer form narrative creative piece.  The piece will serve to incorporate many different aspects of theater that I have learned and observed throughout my project, focused on dramatic monologue, movement, and puppetry. The goal of this project is to familiarize myself with new-to-me aspects of the theatrical experience.  The play would most probably be a series of short vignettes all with different theatrical styles. The play would be united by segments that narrative bring the piece together. I would present my piece, which should be close to a one-act play in length,  at the Spring Festival or another venue.. It will be written with a mostly solo performance  capability in mind. The first week of the project would consist  of my attempting to write the foundations of my piece and trying to establish what sort of areas I wish to explore with the project. In the first week I will also attempt to compile a list of all the different sorts of media I wish to watch  throughout the project and begin to watch them  as well. Then in subsequent weeks I will alternate between creating the piece and attempting to make any props and puppets that I want to use, and watching different pieces of media I feel will inspire me.  I feel that this experience will be very creatively fulfilling and educational. It will  serve as a way for me to better understand and explore my creative abilities in a relatively new medium.