A Play Review About A Guy With A Really Cool Beard

“All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered: the point is to discover them.” This weekend I went to a play about the scientist, Galileo Galilei. It showed the life of Galileo and his discovery of the telescope. I found the play to be very informative. Maybe a little too informative, but I feel this would be a very interesting event to go to as a field trip for history class. The play overall I found very boring and it is not something I’d probably see again.

The story was about Galileo and his belief that the Earth is moving. His beliefs are extremely against the way of the Pope and the religions of the country. He disproves heaven, the location of G-d and this angers the people. He teaches his ways to a little boy Andrea who learns to believe the ways of Galilei. Though people try to bring him down and disprove his newly found knowledge. His ideas cause controversy and result in ruining his daughter’s engagement.  

The play was very hard to follow and even though I tried to make the best of it, I still found it extremely boring. To start with some positivity, the acting was really impressive. It was very interesting to just watch how these boring characters came just slightly more alive due to the very talented actors and actresses that were in the play. The projection was very good and so was the articulation. Even though I didn’t really find the actual words interesting, I still noticed the difficulty in the lines and the words that could have easily been jumbled. Memorization was also a key thing that impressed me. Remembering lines is not an easy thing and the fact that they could remember these difficult lines and deliver them with the comfortability they did was an extreme showcase of talent. Body language was very good at most times although there are times they struggled. One of my favorite parts was when Sam, who was playing a girl named Virginia, fainted. It seemed so real and I thought she actually fainted and it scared me. Charlotte really did a great job making a really boring role come to life by using body language, facials, projection, and tone. There were some parts I didn’t like as much, but there were some that I did find impressive.

The parts I did not enjoy as much were mainly from the play itself. The topic was boring as well as the story line. It was something I honestly did not care about at all. The play felt like a really boring lecture in class that I just wanted to escape from. There were moments when I couldn’t hear or see the faces of people talking because they had their backs to me and they should have cheated out a little more. There were some little line stumbles and parts that I could tell they forgot due to their faces after, but nobody’s perfect. What threw me off was after someone stumbled over a line there was a split second of them staring blank with a disappointed face. That one moment they jumped out of character made me no longer believe they were that character. These little things detracted from the performance as a whole.

In conclusion, the play was not exactly my favorite. There were some parts that I did enjoy, but the majority was a negative experience. Although I have learned some valuable lessons that I will take with me to class and try to work on during my career as an actress. No matter how boring the play is, having good facials, body language, tone, and projection can make the play just a little bit better. Also no matter what, never break character because someone will notice, even if it is for just a minute.

Final Scenes

http://youtu.be/KPJ4PIfPzPA - Freshman and senior 

http://youtu.be/JB1xE569zIs- Bo and Patti

Main Component of a Good Scene: Body Language

In this class we are still working on our scenes. I am in two scenes, one with Maddy and one with Sam. The one with Maddie is about a freshman and a senior. The senior is confronting the freshman about a boy named Bobby who she recently started going out with. The senior warns the freshman of what a jerk Bobby is and by the end of the scene the freshman is off to do a confrontation herself. The second scene with Sam is a little more serious. It is about Bo and Patti two friends who had both recently lost their siblings to the same traumatic event caused by the deadly substance of carbon monoxide. The scene is Bo going to see if Patti is doing alright due to the fact that she hasn’t been to school all week. The scenes are both very serious and that is probably the biggest challenge for me.

In this project I have learned that it is not easy at all to be serious and to portray sadness. I, being a generally happy and excited person find it hard to go to from that to a sad boy who just lost his sister. I also learned that during long pauses, it is more facial expression and body movement that tells the story. There is a part when Bo realizes that “burns with a blue flame” is in the definition of carbon monoxide. He then has a long dramatic pause before revealing what the phrase meant to him. His sister had used the phrase before her death. This pause can’t be one where I just sit there showing no expression at all and then say the next line, my face has to show realization and my body has to show confusion and thought.

I have finally discovered the most challenging thing for me in acting and that has truly helped me develop as an actor. Learning how to adlib and react naturally to things that my character would, are the main components of being a good actor. When someone is a character on a television series, being able to understand your character and to be able to react the way that character would to situations is what makes or breaks you getting the part and keeping it. Now that I know this, I can work harder on my abilities to portray more serious and depressing scenes. Also making the audience believe that this is real and not some cliche.

Like I said, body language really makes or breaks a scene. When a person is trying to deliver a line that the character would be hesitant to say, body language shows that you are have that hesitance. Body language can help show our inner feelings in a way that the audience can just notice how you deliver your words and how you act while saying them. Memorization helps with being able to connect to your character and that has helped Sam and me realize the true way to make the scene heavy. The more comfortable we get with the words, the easier it is to add character to them. Backstory helps build character as well. It helps with the body language and with the delivery of lines. Knowing your character a little more than what the script says makes the performance more comfortable.


         Lea Michele portrays great body language here.