Experience in a Play

This file is dated 23^rd October 2004 and is an essay I wrote in college regarding my experience as an actor in the play ‘Dracula’. To be honest I have almost no memory of writing this, but the events I speak of are clear in my mind. I should have been complaining about the director not doing enough to address actors lighting things on fire and threatening other cast members, but that’s another story.

Experience Paper

I must say that this production was no different than most productions that I have been in. I was well loved by most of the cast, well hated by some, and left a definite mark on the production. However, there are some things that did strike me as needing improvement.

         

The first of which is props. They were not provided in a timely fashion which is what prompted me to provide some of them. The package and the knife were the most significant as they were functional props that required handling that affected character development. I felt that the scene with the package was slightly awkward and this may have been ironed out if we had longer to work with it. This is also true for the flask. I had some difficulties with it in the first act and needed more working time to get used to it. I feel I had trouble with the examination as well but that is my fault. I was under the impression that I was to have more tools during that part of the play.

Another of my concerns was the deadline for ticket sales. I would have liked an explanation for that. I put out twenty five hundred coupons for this play and personally escorted people to the ticket window knowing that I could not get credit for them. Is there no way to encourage people to by tickets sooner? Will the department okay coupons that will expire on the deadline and be useless before the play opens?

It took more than a week to get the fliers I had okayed and I had to be very lean with them. In the future, I will have to use the back if I am to place this information on them and that will double the printing time. It will however give me room for parking directions.

Another difficulty I had with this play was navigating between the dialect coach and the director. At times they did not agree, and it was hard to keep it all straight. I have no suggestion on how to remedy this, it seems to be a fact of theatre but that is the difficulty that I had.

One of the other aspects that seem to be unfixable is volume. I had to try and speak at the level of my fellow actors to avoid feedback from sound adjustments and the American College Theater Festival representative noticed this to be a problem of the show. My only advice on this subject would be to perform more effective warm-ups. I used Sphinx and knee-bend monologues for this and I found that it forces the body to project as well as exercising concentration skills. It works well for me but I have always been louder then the average actor.

That is what I have to say about my experience with ‘Dracula’. I regret that I could not be more helpful but I was given no criteria for this assignment and can’t really say that I know how to go about explaining my experiences.