Trying the Acting thing

So I did my monologue today from Mike's play. I should've told him first, but I needed to know if I was really going to do that. It went... okay. My problem was that I didn't feel as relaxed as I wanted to. There were parts when I wanted to bring the character of Chris down for a particular beat, but it felt like my heart was going to pop out of my chest because it was beating so fast. I tried to use the technique of looking at other people during my monologue to calm my nerves, but it just didn't take. I was still nervous.

After the monologue, I went through an exercise with Allan, that kinda helped. I understand where he was going now, a couple of hours later, but then, i didn't have a clue. I was really looking at the exercise as an improve lesson. And into my overanalytical head, I just kept thinking about "how the hell am I going to make a story out of this situation?" Honestly, I was thinking as a writer. I'm not a very good one yet, but damnit I'm trying! The exercise was to pretend that I was taking a shower when some Awesome mormons knocked on the door. I answer the door and they were going to barge in. Then their boss came in. Then a vacuum sales man... then his wife... then the Landlord... then the pizza delivery person... and then the landlord's lover! holy crap! Of course, I got out of it the only way my crazy ass thought how, I made it a party!

But no matter what I did, I kept thinking about other ways to redo my audition piece. What I did get out of it though was... well, aside from finding the "correct" beats, was picking what is the character going through at the time. I need to work on my miming skills, Acting 101 with Toni at Sac State! I'm trying to remember those exercises :) If anything, what I wound up doing during my little story, was that I made a connection with my audience. I really really tried to establish eye-contact with each of them to tell this guy's story. My emphasized beats were probably in the wrong places, but I was zoning in getting my goal of connecting and telling this story to them. I'm glad that most of them appreciated that.