Reflective Essay 1

The most important discovery I made is finding out that I am enough to be a performer, I don’t

have to try to be someone else to perform well, all of the tools I need are inside of me. Before

coming to AMDA, I thought that performers were great at pretending to be other people; but

since coming here, a lot of my teachers have taught me that performing is has a lot to do with

living in the truth of your imagination. My teachers have been working on getting me

comfortable with being myself during a scene or song. I have learned to be more personal with

scenes and making things personal helps me connect to scenes or songs and live in the moment

better. For example, for my musical theatre class, I sang the song “Proud Of Your Boy” from the

musical, “Aladin.” When I first sang the song, I was very concerned with the way I sounded and

I often doubted myself and truly thought that I was not able to sing the song because it was too

high of a song for me. I could kind of get through the song but I never really live in it until my

teachers helped me. My teacher told me to let go of the worrying and think of a time when I was

a rebellious child and imagine what kind of disappointment my mother could have felt from

seeing me being disrespectful. Then she had me imagine I messed up really badly and I really

wanted to make a promise to her that I would shape up and change to make her proud of me. Just

thinking about a personal moment and really living in that moment has allowed me to truly

perform and learn how to connect with songs or even scenes where I don’t feel connected to it.

Learning how to make things personal and learning how to truly live in the moment have been

my most important lessons learned.

What Is challenging me is just keeping up with the workload and the fast pace of my

classes. We don’t spend a lot of time on a certain song or scene, so we need to work on things

every day to keep improving. Also, it has been a bit challenging having to learn a new song for
musical theatre every week. I have only learned one song before coming to AMDA and It took

me a couple of months to really get the song to a comfortable point where I could perform it and

be confident with it. In our musical theatre class, we only have a few days to learn the song, a

few days to work on it in class with the teacher, and then we demo the song the next day. It is a

quick turnaround so what I do to overcome the challenge is manage my time wisely. Whenever I

am not in class, I am in a voice room rehersing the song or I am in an accompanist session trying

to get plunkings of the song. I also listen to the song throughout the day to engrave the lyrics in

my mind. I have learned how to work on my voice with my voice teacher, so I practice singing

for an hour and a half every day as recommended and while I work on my voice, I work on

current songs. Not only have I don’t this for musical theatre, but I also practice piano in the piano

labs, or a reserve an acting room to work on my scene with my partner, and I even reserve dance

rooms so that I may practice the course material outside of class and be prepared for the next

class, I think work ethic is what makes the biggest difference between performers; I understand

that everyone is talented, but the people who will benefit most are the people who are willing to

spend whatever free time they have putting in extra work into their material. Managing my time

has helped me get used to the quick tunaround in the entertainment business. I think it’s great

that AMDA gives me a lot of work and a short amount of time to get it done. This helps me be

prepared for class and It is also teaching me how to have a great work ethic that will separate me

from other people out in the real world. Since coming to AMDA, my life has been all about

rehersing and learning material quickly and precisely. Working consistently on my craft has

made me grow and I notice how far I’ve come already in the first seven weeks and it just makes

me wonder how far my potential and hard work will get me. I am constantly inspired by

classmates, teachers, and my own progress and I believe that with the willingness to learn and
the determination to always keep working on my craft, I will find the success I have been

dreaming of.