David Bean has participated in several campus productions.
Students fill various roles in campus plays, productions
Students of all majors and classifications work together as cast members in dozens of plays each year—acting in everything from campus-wide Artist Series productions in Rodeheaver Auditorium, to the smaller, student-directed productions in Performance Hall. Actors rehearse for weeks, usually from the very beginning of the semester, up until the play’s opening night.
Auditions are held at the start of each semester for students interested in acting. These auditions are open to anyone and require students to perform a one-minute monologue. After the general audition, each director holds a callback for students who fit certain parts.
Speech GA Miss Ashley Love said that if the director can see that a student is well prepared at the audition, that student will care about his or her role. Auditioning students must always be mindful of their stage presence and voice projection.
“Be confident. Be committed. Go all out—no reserves,” she said.
Miss Love said to think about how your character would react in each scene of a play. “Keep it consistently real, with every word, so that every word that you say is from your character,” she said.
Miss Love said one of her best acting experiences was in the Performance Hall play, Anne Frank. She said it was enjoyable because the storyline is based on historical events.
“Working with a true story, you can research the actual people and take it a little more seriously because they are real people,” she said.
When performing on stage, actors must immerse themselves in the lives of their character. “The more you study your character and analyze your character, the more you’re attached to that character, and the more you’re able to portray him,” she said.
Senior performance studies major David Bean will play the character of Orlick in November’s Artist Series, Great Expectations.
“We’re doing the whole play in British dialect, which is tons of fun,” he said. “Orlick is Cockney; that’s a lot more fun to speak than high British.”
“You have to understand the character, so the first few weeks of rehearsal, it’s all about character exploration, finding out who you are,” David said.
Ideally, actors should keep a mindset that they are not performing on stage in front of an audience, or on a set, but that they are actually a character in real circumstances, David said.
“You can lose yourself in the scene, and just stay completely focused,” he said. “Giving it 100 percent of your full attention is the biggest thing.”
David said that he acted last year in his two favorite productions. In the fall semester, David acted in the Performance Hall play, Arsenic and Old Lace. “It was so much fun to immerse myself in the role, and really stretch myself as a performer, and to have the support of the cast we had,” he said. “We had so many good times.”
In the spring semester, David played Linus in the Stratton Hall play, You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. “Getting to be in [a musical] here was tons of fun,” he said. “Getting to do some aspects of choreography, being in a musical is an entirely different experience. It was just sheer joy to perform.”
Thousands of students will attend Artist Series or Performance Hall plays each semester. Dozens more will step onto the stage, revealing their talents and imaginations, and making the story come to life.
