Acting

One of my students was recently tasked with writing a theater review for her Acting I class. The assignment asked her to focus specifically on tracing / evaluating the acting chops of one main character throughout the play, which she found difficult to do without also commenting on other aspects of the play (script, directing, set). Which is to say, it was hard for to separate the acting performance from the other aspects of the performance, and since I hadn't seen the play and she was working from memory, it was hard for me to figure out what kind of questions would tap into those distinctions.

I also have NO experience doing anything in acting or theater. Like, I actively avoid those situations because I hate them. This student is passionate about theater (she previously wrote about a "Dear Evan Hansen" song for a rhetorical analysis assignment) and we have worked in previous sessions on developing a monologue that she performed for her class; this was easier for me to help with because we could focus on the building of a narrative and a persona. (Like me, this student prefers creative assignments over critical ones.)

The way I got around this was actually by noting the student's body language and facial expressions during the session — she was slumped over, she was leaning her face on her hand, etc., conveying that she was feeling frustrated, tired, and bored (lol). We started talking about what the main actor's body language and facial expressions were like during key moments, which really helped get the ball rolling in terms of the observations she was able to make, and the analyses she was able to pull.