Week 4 - Acting & Expect Respect

A quick update about Expect Respect. I pulled some strings with a friend and got us a new location for free for the retreat which was really exciting. I had a meeting with a bunch of the Expect Respect leaders and we really set in stone all the details of the retreat and we will finish finalizing next week. We also started to discuss the specifics of this summer and all of the trainings and the possibilities of having some guest speakers. Not to be brief but I have more important stuff to say about the other part of my project.

Half of my project came to an end last week. It was the week of the show, Voices From the High School, with the Acting 1 kids. On Thursday we got them out of conferencing and did a full dress rehearsal. It went pretty well, way better than both Mr. L or I expected is to, and only went better during the performances. They had their first performance at 4:00. I don't think most of them had any idea what to expect. Their audience was only about ten kids so they weren't really responsive but still putting some people there watching them was a big news flash to a lot of them. At the end during the last monologue where they all line up at the front of the stage it was really cool to look down the line at them and see the kids who had never done a show before that thought they just had one of the coolest experiences ever. The entire class is really into acting and all but one of them signed up for Acting 2 next year. To Mr. L and my surprise, right before the second show, for over 30 family members and friends, Eric said that he changed his mind and will be doing acting class next year. He said it was half because he wanted to and half because his parents were making him, but I think it was a pride thing. He didn't want to admit that he had a good time out there. Then when they did the show for their family, seeing as most of them were parents they got claps and laughs and reactions that none of them expected. Their energy shot through the roof. They all did really well and had a blast doing it and it was great to see that. Some of their scenes didn't get as far as we hoped they would but it was still plenty worth while to see those kids smile and see how excited all of their parents were.

Here is a bunch of video from the morning dress rehearsal. Sorry for the shaking and moving of the camera, I had to take notes while taping it with my digital camera.


First is Stephen and Sheila. This has been one of our consistently strong scenes. We had to work a little bit with Spencer on some of his lines because they were worded a little awkwardly but otherwise this was all on their own. Also, this was their first scene they did for the class at the beginning of the year and they made up most of their blocking on their own with minor adjustments from Mr. L or me.



This next video is one of the three monologues in the show. This one is Jimmy. Mark is a great actor and he really likes it. He is amazing and just reacting in the moment and as anyone who has done acting before they know that acting is reacting. He's really quiet but when you get him on stage he comes out of his shell a lot. He lit up after we did the first run through, he was amazed by all the lights and everything. In this monologue he had to work really hard, it's not an easy topic to talk about but Mark took it and did it well. For his first show, he did really well.



I really wanted to upload one more video to this and I have been trying to the past couple of days but the blog isn't liking that idea very much.