Music, Theater, And Dance From The Inside Out

The past four years, I have breathed, slept, eaten, thought and immersed myself in all thing pertaining to theatre. This is where I discovered to truly work in a team, where I could be without fear of being something I am not, and where I have found peace in the maddening swirl of day to day life, ironic in the fact that theatre is a hectic world. This world is where I have made my best friends and found people I know I can count on and that I insist can depend on me. If I have learned one thing from my experiences in theatre, it is to strive and achieve

Above all, I wouldn’t be where I am today without theatre. Without the chance to perform throughout my life, I would be disconnected from the wide array of communities and histories that’s been imbedded in my daily routine. Unfortunately, it’s speculated that the theatre is a dying art form, because of the expanding popularities of movies (“Is”), but I think that it’ll remain a well renowned part of expressing imagination and interpreting history as years pass; it only takes cooperation with school faculty and young students that go above and beyond to change their

The Faculty Dance Concert was an entertaining event filled with a variety of dance styles. The show took place on Friday, November 6, 2015, at 7:30 in the evening, and was held in the Fullerton College Campus Theatre. The founding artistic director is Melanie Kay Rosa and the assistant artistic director is Lisa M. Anderson. The dance faculty choreographers are Lisa M. Anderson, Sarah Cashmore, Teresa Jankovic, and Melanie Kay Rosa. The four guest choreographers are Helen Gardea, Robert Laos, Devon Smith and Shawnee Amara Williams. The two student choreographers are Ashely Garcia and Madeline Young.

Ever since I can remember I have loved theatre. It’s been a constant presence, and an important touchstone, in my life. However, for as long as I’ve loved theatre, I have also been ridiculed for my enjoyment of it. As a child, my interest was tolerated as something precious, something I was bound to grow out of. My parents and teachers would sit in the audience, clapping and cheering me on, all the while thinking to themselves “I bet she’ll make a great lawyer one day.” They thought, like most of society, theatre was an unnecessary luxury; a pastime for the rich and powerful, for those who didn’t have to worry about putting food on the table, or clothes on their children’s backs. Certainly not

Chavez started a tradition of a play series produced once a year solely by the students. The playwriting class would write ten-minute pieces, and the directing class would take it on with the company. We attacked the chance to create independently with ferocity. I was in the playwriting class taught by Mr. Chavez. When my pages were read aloud I was so nervous I could taste iron on my tongue. I started to talk rapidly over the scene, attempting to apologize for how terrible it seemed. He told me to take a deep breath and not to respond, just listen. I did. For the first time, I allowed my ideas to exist in creative space without ego interfering. He spoke with me sincerely about the rise of my five-act structure, the character’s depth, and where the act turns could flow smoother. A month and a half later I saw my very first play on stage. I was not afraid to call myself a playwright. Because of Mr. Chavez, I was genuinely proud of myself for the first

When your interest is as broad as theatre it’s almost impossible for your identity to not be represented. However, like many of my peers, I’ve struggled to find my identity and have floated between different adjectives for the past seven years. Luckily for me my love for Broadway guided me to a perfect show that let me know it’s okay to be confused about who I am.

Professor Wolf is the author of Changed for Good: A Feminist History of the Broadway Musical (Oxford University Press, 2011), A Problem Like Maria: Gender and Sexuality in the American Musical (University of Michigan Press, 2002), and the co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of the American Musical (with Raymond Knapp and Mitchell Morris, 2011). She has published articles on theatre spectatorship, performance pedagogy, and musical theatre. Professor Wolf also oversees the Lewis Center’s Music Theater Lab and has experience as a director and dramaturg. Wolf holds a B.A. in English from Yale and an M.A. in Drama from the University of Virginia. She received her Ph.D. in Theatre from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Recent publications include

At the age of four, most girls are asking for the newest barbie dolls and sparkly dress-up tiaras for a birthday present. But I always enjoyed beating to a different drum, begging instead for my parents to take me into the city. And thus began my love affair with New York City. From that point on, my birthdays often involved trips to NYC, with unique cultural, food, and art experiences. As I grew up, I began to use every and any excuse I could possibly justify, to escape to the metropolis. By the age of nine years old, I became involved in professional theatre and music in NYC and Connecticut. I became intoxicated by performing and was obsessed with it. I participated in over 20 professional musicals and plays between the ages of nine and thirteen.

The first art piece that I’m going to be discussing is a theatrical production that has a special place in my heart, and it is the Jakarta Performing Arts Community’s rendition of the hit Broadway play, ‘Fame.’ The reason why this piece is so important to me is because it was the first ‘real deal’ production that I’ve meddled in, and was the first production that I was appointed stage manager of. The play itself has a great message and great tunes, to be honest. I really like this play because it’s so naturally high school, the problems are so realistic that it almost didn’t feel like it was some sort of a make believe, and it also addressed things that are so simple yet are so scarcely discussed.

As a musical theater junkie, I was ashamed to admit that Bucknell’s performance of Spring Awakening was the first production of the show I had seen. It was a show I was always interested in and had listened to a few times over, yet I had passed over the opportunity to see it on Broadway (or at other play houses). Despite my excitement to see Bucknell’s performance, there was something missing in the show that kept it, in my opinion, from being truly great. It appeared that there was an imbalance of acting, singing, and dancing skills, where one talent excelled at the fall of the others.

Musicals are a wonderful experience for everyone involved. Whether someone is watching the musical, preforming in the musical, or working behind the scenes of the musical, it really turns out to be a magical experience all around. My project was to help out the directors of the musical by guiding students working backstage and by operating the backdrops for the musical. The project is extremely significant to me because I have been volunteering to help out with Middle School East’s musical for years and it feels so great to be able to help out the directors while working with my friends. In this paper I will be touching on what the project is, why I chose to do this project, and what I have learned from completing the project.

DV8 is a physical theatre company which is all about taking risks and breaking the barriers between theatre and dance. They also work to communicate feelings and ideas clearly and unpretentiously.

I think a goal of this piece was to send out a distress signal, I wrestled with how to do that. Ultimately, I landed on me becoming an abrasive version of myself. I wanted to illuminate facts about sides of pop culture than hadn’t been thought about while making apparent the frustrations that come with living in this world today. The thing with theatre that I wanted to exploit was the fact that you can make something

First and foremost, I believe that I am a normal human being. I don’t consider myself to be out of the ordinary except for my love of Prince, but if you don’t like Prince or his music, can you even call yourself a human? I digress, I thought that going into this assignment I would find out more interesting things about myself, however, I learned quickly that that wasn’t really the case. See, what was interesting to me was very boring and weird to others, especially my friends that aren’t in theater. When I would go up to them and explain the new things that I am doing, they would kind of just look at me and secretly judge, but it also let me know that I was enjoying learning more about myself.

Balancing the ethics of representational art is tricky ― if there is one idea I will definitely take away from this class, it’s that. Not only was I immensely grateful to have the opportunity to grapple with this topic this semester, but I know it’s also something I will be directly using in the upcoming months as I delve into my co-op. Through this class, I have been exposed to a variety of engaged and activist theatre that has not only piqued my interest, but also allowed me to connect back and draw new insight from my previous studies. While my coursework and, my writing in particular, have gone through ups and downs as I have struggled to balance clarity and a new fluency in activist performance language; I have remained engaged and pushed myself to do better after every project.