Student Blog: Back Into the Swing of Things

Hello!

My name is Grace Schofield and I couldn't be more excited to be joining the BroadwayWorld Student Blogger team! A little bit about me, I am a 2nd year BFA Musical Theatre major at the Dobbins Conservatory at Southeast Missouri State University. I'm also minoring in Film and Literature. While at SEMO, I've been involved in 6 different productions so far, doing different things for each of them. I've been a performer, assistant stage manager, co-director, shop worker and a few other things as well. for multiple productions. If you want to know more about me or see more of my journey you can visit my author page or find me on Instagram and Tik Tok @gracek_schofield or on Twitter @gracek_schof

This semester, I am in 6 different classes, 5 for my major and one for my minor. I'm in two dance classes: Ballroom dance and Musical Theatre Jazz II. Both of these classes are super fun and I'm learning a lot from them. Learning to Ballroom dance is definitely beneficial for musical theater because so many different types of musicals incorporate ballroom dances into their choreography. Musical Theatre Jazz II is mainly a technique class where we are just fine tuning different techniques needed for jazz and then applying them to the musical theater genre. I'm enjoying it so far!

I'm also in 2 singing based classes. I'm in Musical Theater Vocal Styles. It is styled like a masterclass and we are singing different types of pop/rock songs. We just finished up our Motown unit and later we are working on 70's folk, 80's Rock, Poetic style, and a few others. We aren't allowed to sing any musical theater songs for this class which I really enjoy surprisingly. In this class we are performing as ourselves-which I find a bit more scary, but it is so cool to get to explore. I am also in private voice lessons this semester. I love my lessons. It's very therapeutic for me. I have a great relationship with my professor where I'm able to go in and be truthful with how I'm feeling and how that might affect my lesson for the day. I'll go in and say "Hey, I had a great week, my voice feels great" or I go in and say "hey, my anxiety is very high right now, it's been kinda rough but I'm here" and either way, my professor is very understanding and meets me where I'm at. Then I just sing for an hour and forget about anything else that's going on in my life. It is truly wonderful.

We also have a class called Rehearsal and Production that every conservatory student is required to take. We meet mostly once a week and it is just a conservatory wide meeting where announcements are made about auditions, upcoming shows, student organizations, etc. Occasionally, there are workshops offered during the class period as well. Recently we had a session all about summer stock and we also had one about some basic level intimacy training. Each student is also given and R&P assignment where we are assigned a role to either work on a show, or work in the costume shop or the scene shop. R&P can be overwhelming at first, but I will say in the long run it is useful in learning different aspects of theater.

The last class I am in is the Art of Film, this class is for my film and literature minor. We are learning all about the different aspects of film and the different cinematography aspects of filmmaking. We watch 1-2 movies a week and relate them to what we are learning about in class. I really enjoy this class a lot-I mean for the most part my homework is watching movies, how could I complain? I also have a friend here who is also a musical theater major in the class, so we will often have movie nights and watch them together. Our friends have started joining in occasionally too if it's a movie they want to see.

This semester so far has been quite interesting. We've already had about three snow days so far-but I'm not complaining. One night, a good chunk of our conservatory went out and had a snowball fight and went sledding. We were like children. We also had students from Florida and California who hadn't experienced snow before and it was fun to see them experience it for the first time. I've very much enjoyed my snow days.

So far, I'm enjoying being back. I love having my friends just down the hall and being able to hang out with them again. I've also started working again and that has been nice. I work as a student worker in a small library here on our arts campus that has plays, sheet music, and other things like that. In addition to this I also work as an usher for events we have on campus. I also just started having meetings for one of our spring shows, Firebringer, that I am assistant directing this semester, so that is very exciting and I'm eager to get started on that!

My friend, Lydia, and I also took a very impulsive trip to go see Six the Musical at the Fabulous Fox Theatre in St. Louis. It was truly phenomenal. We both enjoyed it a lot. We are very lucky that we are close enough to be able to go and see shows at the Fox when they come into town.

One big thing I'm trying to work on is showing myself grace, pun very much intended. Last semester, I was insanely busy and I was really hard on myself for not doing better than I was doing. I was the assistant stage manager for one of our main stage productions and I was also an understudy for a student workshop production at the exact same time-that's a lot of things to do at once. I was constantly making mistakes and I wasn't very forgiving towards myself. That is something I'm working on and so far I think I'm doing well. I'm allowing myself to take time to do things I enjoy and I'm allowing myself to make some mistakes along the way. Overall, these first four weeks have been super nice and I'm excited to see what the rest of the year holds!