Student Blog: Seeing Theatre Through a New Lens
What writing a blog for BroadwayWorld has taught me.
Writing is so much more than expressing ideas on a page, and if done with sincerity, it can take a surprisingly long time–that may be my biggest takeaway from my first attempt at blogging.
As I began the semester and saw BroadwayWorld’s call for student bloggers, I welcomed an opportunity to hopefully improve my writing skills. I did not, however, appreciate what a challenge it would be to routinely create content worthy of publication. I also did not anticipate just how many different directions a blog could start to take. The thoughts in my head are not just a road with many forks, they are more like a DFW highway interchange system.
Balancing a blog with a double major and a school production was definitely more difficult than I had thought it would be. Procrastination stinks, but I already knew that.
Other than the amount of creative labor that goes into writing, my other takeaway from blogging has been just how much there is to think about it when it comes to theater. Often, impact comes in small moments–a lighting cue, a projection, the repetition of a musical motif, or the reaction from an ensemble member in the back corner. The barely perceptible quirks of a character, such as those I saw Andrew Barth Feldman give to Evan Hansen, can be more revealing than dialogue. A simple set of stairs, such as the stairs to nowhere from The Hills of California, can be more memorable than the glitziest, high-tech sets. A single lyric–such as “I’m a great American bitch” from Suffs, can speak volumes about patriarchy.
Writing regularly about theater has taught me that there is so much more energy and attention I can devote to character analysis when I play a role or even when I audition. One of the songs I added to my book this year, “No Man Left for Me” from The Will Rogers Follies, explores a woman’s frustration at her absent husband. It is soulful and bluesy. She is angry and fed up with his lack of attention. At first read, I considered her to be just an angry, wronged wife. But as I explored the song, I began to wonder: why, in this particular moment, has this woman decided that enough is enough? She has probably felt rejected by this man many times before. What happened on this day to make her want to change her life?
This is the level of character analysis that I hope to bring to the next two years of study and to whatever follows.
Writing regularly about theatre has opened my eyes to just how much attention to detail goes into creating a production and how every artistic choice, no matter how small, contributes to the storytelling. Writing regularly about theater has taught me that everyone has a reason for everything they do in life, even if it is trapped in a person’s subconscious. I cannot be a good performer if I am not striving constantly to figure out what is driving my character.
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