Sophomore Year, 6th Period: Drama

I never expected there to be so much drama in Drama.

We learned a lot in the Drama class. We learned stage directions. We learned how to stay out of view of the audience. We learned how to project when we spoke our lines in the auditorium. We learned how to set up lights. We learned how to build and paint sets. We learned how to find good costumes. We learned how to improvise. The only thing we didn't learn how to do was act. We had been taught the mechanics of acting, but not the art. This is actually a problem with my education in general, particularly in regards to the creative side of the subjects. I only learned how to structure a sentence and spell the words, but no one was able to teach me how to really write.

We thought we knew how to act. People from the town who came to our productions appeared to enjoy them. However, when we went to the annual high school theatre festival at Eastern New Mexico University, it was quite clear that we were on the lower end of the believable performance scale. It seemed like the acting students from the larger schools knew how to gel during their productions and get their interactions perfect. We were lucky if we could get through a one-act play without somebody blowing their lines.

I realized years later that what was going on in places like Albuquerque was that the Drama teachers had attempted to become actors themselves when they were much younger. They took part in a number of acting classes and workshops and learned "method" acting, a term I never heard of until I got to college. I guess they gave up on trying to make a living off of their talent (probably because they weren't very good looking) and went back to school to learn how to teach. During their acting classes, they were able to impart some very valuable knowledge about achieving believability during a performance.

Now, this isn't to say that someone absolutely has to have a good actor as a teacher in order to become a good actor themselves. I have seen some who were able to reach amazing heights as a performer without the benefit of a gifted acting teacher. I remember one school production at a festival in which the lead actress was so amazing, but her supporting cast appeared to be completely inept, including one person who could only speak in monotone. It was apparent that the teacher was as competent as ours, only being able to get them to say their lines and go where they were supposed to be at any given time.

My not being able to fully grasp the art of acting caused a lot of problems later on in college, as I found myself way behind the other students. On top of that, they were people I had seen perform at the festivals, so I knew what I was up against. I will go into that much later when I get into my college years.

So, why do I say there was drama in Drama? It's because my first girlfriend was in this class. I will also get to that chapter in just a few days.

I should point out that for my junior and senior years, I had the same two classes for fifth and sixth periods: Chorus and Drama. This is just a means of explaining why I won't be going into detail about them during my junior and senior years when I recap my classes.