Both a Leader and a Follower

In addition to the Hamlet example, theatre helped me learn how to be both a leader and a follower. Both positions are needed depending on the circumstance, and through what I learned in my Western Theatre class and through four years of working on the various play productions, I learned how to fulfill each role.

A family friend once described me as a "gestalt thinker", meaning that I like to see the over all big picture and see the forest for the trees. Perhaps that's why I like theatre so much... there are so many different parts and pieces to it- the stage, the set, the actors, the lighting, the sound, the director, the writer, the costumer, the stage director, etc... and this is one area that i happen to have a soid understanding of almost all the roles in theatre. I have done it all.

(My crew members and I during Urinetown. I'm on the far right hidden in shadow... just as well, crew members are not to be seen!)

Sometimes I needed to help make another's vision become a reality, I needed to be a good listener and a good follower. This was particularly true when I worked on sets- I was called to paint a certain wall white, and stencil it with green.... or I needed to build a flat with specific dimensions... or or go up on a ladder and screw pieces of board together at just the right angle. It was all part of the set designer's plan, and I learned to value the role of a listener/ follower. When I learned to do the sound for the one acts, the director provided all the sounds for me to play at the right times, and if I deviated even a second from when it should be played, the drama could have turned into a comedy!

(Me playing the Witch in the children's play, I'm on the far right. This was featured in the local paper!)

As an actor, I learned to follow the director's vision but also add in my own input. Our director taught us that he creates the play ground, but he wants us to play on it. He provides us with basic direction but it's the collective ideas of the whole that make the play superb. When I was in the children's play I tried sticking a wire through my braids suring one of the dress rehearsals, to make them stick up in a whimsical fashion that might get the kids to laugh, but the physical quality of the show was too high and I ended up getting shawls and other fabrics stuck to my head! Even though my idea didn't work, the director appreciated that I tried it. When I was in Hamlet, I played a real minor role of a messenger lady in waiting and had one line, but I made that one line a little more sexual and I worked with another actor to pretend that we were going to go off and have a little fun. It worked with the play enough, and the director had me keep it in.

(These are a few of the costumes I made for Urinetown. Most of these characters were members of the poor penniless rebels, though two were members of the wealthy. I had to make the pregnant belly, and I also used the color red for anyone related to Hope in any way.)

As head costumer and a director at Loras, and as set director for a middle school play, I learned to be a leader and designate jobs to helpers who were acting as "followers". For 5 plays I was given complete control over the costuming, and I had several actors and other volunteers sent to help make my vision a reality. I learned everyone's artistic strengths and asked them what they liked to do, and based on that would designate someone to paint dirt on a skirt, or turn a normal hat into a police hat, or sew a patch on a shirt. But I learned from being a follower myself that a sign of a good leader is someone who can take other people's ideas and incorporate them into your own vision. When I was director of "A Barbie Story", I made it clear that I wanted my actors to share their opinions and ideas for the over all play, one of my actors wanted to make Kelly more rebellious and angry sounding, we tried it, and it worked. Also, I had the problem of Ken and Barbie didn't know each other and there wasn't that much chemistry, so I assigned them the task to run lines together and come up with a back story for the two of them in order for the actors to be more comfortable on stage with each other and for the chemistry to be more realistic. It worked better than I thought it would and even though I arranged for a stage kiss, they got the the point where they REALLY kissed instead.

If I hadn't have learned how to be a follower, I would not have known how to be a good leader... and if I had never led before, I would not know how to be a good follower. Every experience builds on each other, and my strength is that I can take what I've learned from one area of experience and apply it to my other areas of experience. Understanding the whole from various perspectives helps one understand their role and how to perform it better than someone who merely sees their role in relationship to their own 1 dimensional perspective.

To Be or not to Be a Perspectivist

My strength is in my perspectivist approach towards issues. I believe that we as finite human beings can never fully understand the full truth of a thing or issue, but the more perspectives we look through, the more facets we see, and the closer to the truth we become. I'll use my experience learning Shakespeare at Loras College as an example.

(picture from our production of Hamlet. upstage, center is our female Horatio, and my hand-painted skull)

During one of the semesters at Loras, I was given the unique and coincidental opportunity to learn Shakespeare through the lens of a Literature class, a Theatre class, and actually taking part in a Shakespeare stage production. Not only that, but we discussed the specific play Hamlet in all three mediums over the same few weeks. I thought that I'd be bored with Shakespeare and Hamlet... that I would get sick of hearing the same lectures, taking the same notes, and hearing the "To be or not to be..." speech over and over for weeks, but I was wrong.

I was shocked to learn how different Hamlet was from lit class, to theatre class, to a theatre production. Partially because my professors and director understood Shakespeare differently, and partially because they took different approaches to teaching about him. In my litereature class, Dr. Merrill taught us that Hamlet was in his early 30's and we all debated about the character's motivations and whether or not he was actually crazy. In the theatre class we discussed the effects that Shakespeare had on the rest of the community, how he was popular culture back then and why a character like Hamlet might appeal to both the wealthy and the lower class of Elizabethan England. While working on the Hamlet stage production, the director taught that Hamlet was about our age, 21-22 years old, and we should try to make the play relate-able to a college-aged audience. The cast member who played Hamlet was instructed to act like a 21 year old, and also was instructed to choose to have the character become crazy or just act crazy.

Looking at Hamlet through a literature lens, we looked at all the characters and Shakespeare's plot choices for all their potential, for everything they were, could have been, or purposefully were not. Looking at Hamlet through a theatre lens, I looked at the play as Pop culture and how it influenced the public. And through the lens of actually performing the play, I learned to take a position and make it work for a modern audience.

So, what came from my well rounded understanding of Hamlet is that I gained the authority to be able to effect change. I used my writing skills to get my ideas across to a director who had his own. The director was usually pretty good about people contributing their ideas to a play, but he really had his own vision for Hamlet. I knew that there were only 2 big female roles in the play and that the female Loras Player women usually don't get as many opportunities as the men do because there are just always more female roles than male roles in theatre. So, because he was my theatre professor, I wrote him a paper about how Horatio could be casted as a female, and I provided my evidence I learned from both the literature class and the theatre class, and sure enough he casted Horatio as a girl! I wrote the paper in such a way as to not directly stumble upon his plans for Hamlet, but just convincing enough where he couldn't help but take what he read from my paper and apply it to his own play. He acknowledged it as my idea and then throughout the rest of the play, he valued my opinion a lot.

(picture from our production of Hamlet, I made all the helmets and crowns in this picture, the female Horatio is on the far right, and I'm standing in the green dress as a lady in waiting)

When I painted Yorick's skull I made it dirtier and earthier looking than he originally wanted because I thought it would be more frightening and realistic looking, and he kept it. I also designed and constructed the crowns and helmets using what I knew of the director's vision, what I learned from the literature class, and my knowledge from theatre class. Once in a while, the actors asked me to act as dramaturge for them and help decipher what certain lines meant because they knew I had a well rounded understanding of the play.

There have been several other instances in which I have had multiple classes that teach the same subject from different lenses, and I know that it has only strengthened my understanding about the world and how to think and piece information together from various sources.