If you’ve were walking around Osceola for the last week, you may have noticed that some of the students haven’t been acting like themselves, and more like a completely different person. This is no coincidence, however, as the drama class has been participating in a rather interesting project.
Method acting is essentially becoming one’s character outside of a role to prepare for a role, and is a technique used by many famous actors. Mr. Pace, the teacher of Theatre 1-4, has created a project for his drama students that involves creating their own character and becoming them for a week, in order to improve their method acting skills.
“My theatre classes have been studying various methods of acting, and it’s hard to understand without actually doing it,” explained Mr. Pace. This method acting activity is also the first time Mr. Pace is doing this, though he seems like he is really enjoying what his students are coming up with.
“I definitely think I’ll be doing this again, and my students will understand the depth of a character, which is one of the hardest things to do in acting.” Mr. Pace himself participated in the project, and is playing a radio announcer from the 1940s.
One of Mr. Pace’s students, Loretta Walker, freshman, enjoyed the project and had a very in depth character.
“I’m a suburban stereotypical mom. My name is Helen Harrison, and I’m basically just a super PTA mom,” she said. While many of these characters are impressive, they didn’t happen overnight; in fact, far from it.
“We had around two weeks to kind of brainstorm, create our character, make their backstory and work out every little detail that made them the way they are,” said Loretta. While the project was fun, Loretta also learned many things about the way method acting works.
“I think this process really makes you realize the amount of effort that actors who use method acting as a tool really dedicate themselves to the actors they were playing,” she said.