Overlooked

Cramming Practice

A literal week before the performance, my group had a practice. The song was 3 and ½ minutes long and through a practice of 2 hours, we managed to block 1 minute. The whole practice was full of sidetracks and random conversations. I was so irritated that the core they had picked couldn't even keep a practice running smoothly. Being the eldest of the group, I decided to take initiative and help with the blocking rather than having Julia and Savine do it VERY slowly. I had to keep this practice running smoothly and make sure that this gets finished. I'm basically leading everyone and choreographing myself. Whenever they would try to choreograph we'd waste time because of their indecisiveness. None of them could make decisions on the spot and would need 10 minutes of repetition to process it all. I've always hated that the acting club was always so inefficient. The core would have an concept that took them a week to make then they'd bring it to us a month before the performance. We'd discuss it for a meeting then it'll take them the literal week of the performance to get the script done. We'd spend an hour trying to read through something that 5 minutes long and have our full run through the day of the performance. I see this group is no better. Someone has to come in and fix this. That's what I planned to do.

The performance was on Friday and we promised we'd meet Monday morning an hour before class starts which is about at 7:30AM. I came to school at 7:15 expecting people to be there... Were they they? NO! I waited 'til 8 AM for everyone to be there. The latest people were actually the core. So we had 4 days to finish and polish the entire performance. We had to rush most things so that first day, because most were late, we only had a 30 minute practice and a basic position for the first 1 and ½ minutes. On Tuesday, more came on time and we were able to fully polish the first 1 and ½ minutes that we positioned the day before. Wednesday was a hard day, we had morning assembly that day so our practice was cut short. So we had to attend then continue on with our practice. This was they day they told me that the breakdown scene was a full 1 and ½ minutes of the song and that it was up to me when the end would come so I had to time it just perfectly so that we exit as the song ends. This was 2 days before the performance. I knew I could cry on cue but I didn't during practices in case that someone would see us and also spoil my surprise. Not many people knew that I could "fake cry" so I was planning to spring it on them with this skit. Thursday was just spent running through everything. Our only problem was the ending. I would vary every time we did it depending on how long people decided to do things, so our ending was never exact. We had to cram final changes in the morning of the performance. I  The skit wasn't until 3, so we had the morning to practice. We even skipped lunch for our first and last stage practice.  HATE THIS! This is the reason why we need to change in the acting club. I don't like the fact that we have to rush everything rather than giving us time to polish scenes and finalize. Direction is also barely given as you're just given a script and left there. There aren't much guidelines to characters. I know that we're supposed to be creative but seriously people here need help. When I would ask what could I improve on they say that my acting and my writing is good. GOOD? If my acting is good, why didn't you pick me for better roles? If my writing is good, why didn't you pick me for core?

I needed to digress from my anger and focus more on what my character was supposed to wear.  My artistic/pretentious part is telling me wear something to symbolize your character. The guy who was cast as the villain literally has villain on his shirt. So I went with a black and white striped top so that "it would provide the audience with a conflict of moralities and a question of where the character is heading." I had no idea what was happening to me... Maybe the new core announcement is messing my brain up.