Blog 17: Interview 3 Reflection

1. What is the most important thing I learned from the interview?  
The person I interviewed is Masiela Lusha and the interview with her really helped me with my answer 1; in fact, she basically gave me my answer one. We first talked about how she got into acting and then went into details about acting and basically what makes acting great.  

2.  How has your approach to interviewing changed over the course of your senior project?
Well, my first interview was interviewing the actors from my mentorship. Their information wasn't the most helpful in comparison to what I know now. But I interviewed an expert in acting (and the arts in general) for my interview 3. The questions kept on popping up and rolling so easily while compared to my other interviews I struggled with coming up with more questions to ask them.

The questions I asked during my interview

• what was your past experience with acting? For example, how many shows and years?
• Did you have any techniques or methods to help you improve your acting?
• How would you describe your production staff? This includes the actors, producers, directors, etc.
• Do actors tell one another what to do during rehearsals?
• How crucial are read throughs?
• How crucial was blocking?
• Were you able to use cue cards?
• Were there ever any times where there were some lines that you just couldn't get down?
• Why do you think the George Lopez Show was such a successful show?
• What do you think is key to having a successful show?
• Did the writers have to go out and experience stuff to make their writings more "real"?
• Do you think that the people who were casted fit their role?
• What did you learn from working in this show?
• Can you talk about what you know about theater?

The audio recording for my interview here https://soundcloud.com/karinanoemi21 

Blog 10 - Interview 2 Reflection

1. Please explain how you are spending your mentorship time (Is it at a workplace or somewhere else?  Are you shadowing?  Are you able to do tasks that are meaningfully related to the topic?  If so, what?  Are there other people who are experts in the location?  Etc...)
At my mentorship, I mainly sit and observe the director, musical directors and choreographers work together to organize the shows. It's a process and I know that I will be doing more tasks the closer we get to the days of the shows. For now however, I sit and observe, though I must admit sometimes it's pretty funny.

2.  How did you find your mentor?  How did you convince this person to help you?  
Luckily, I knew Lisa Pettygrove since summer of 2014 while helping out in her classrooom within a summer program. I came back again this recent summer to help her once more and asked if she could be my mentor. She knew how good of a job I have done within her class that she easily said yes.

3. How would you rate your comfort level with your mentor at this point in your relationship?  How does this relate to the time you've spent so far at mentorship/with this person
I've very comfortable with my mentor. She's always asking how I'm doing especially because she knows how stressed I am and always checking up on me. Of course our relationship has developed over the 2 years I've helped her.

4. What went well in this interview?  Why do you think so?  What do you still need to improve?  How do you know?  How will you go about it?
Sadly, she was extremely fatigued while doing the interview so she wasn't as energetic in her answers nor in the greatest mood. But she still gave me some good information and hopefully she will be answering more as the weeks go by. Other than that, I think it went fairly well.

https://soundcloud.com/karinanoemi21/interview-2  

Blog 5 - Interview 1 Reflection

Click here for the interview audio.

1. What is the most important thing I learned from the interview?  Is there anything I would do differently for other interviews?
I interviewed 5 pretty different people. Some were more silly, others more serious and one in between. But I have to say while interviewing them and, right after, watching them practice for their auditions, they shared one huge obvious trait in common that little did I fail to realize it makes musical theatre what it is: not being themselves anymore but becoming the character. One of the interviewees mentioned before that her best advice was to become the character and repeatedly, the musical director said that was incredibly important too. There's a lot more passion and development physically and mentally in musical theatre than I thought.
I guess one thing I would change in the next interviews are ask more "why" questions instead of "how" and "what" questions. (more personal questions along with more resourceful questions)
2. Did I get additional resources and contacts?  What is the most useful?  Why?
Though it wasn't brought up in the recording and they are high school students still, they did not have any additional resources or contacts besides joining a church or looking for a program yourself.
3. What makes my interviewee qualified to help me? 
They may have been high school students but they have been doing musical theatre for over 5 years, almost over 10 years! So they are extremely experienced and know what they're doing. The interview helped me understand and see how the actors are and what they expect and feel.

Blog 3 - First Interview Preparation

1.  Who do you plan to interview?  Why?
I just started my mentorship yesterday, September 1, and I met a girl named Lauren. You can easily tell she's a hard-core drama person and incredibly dedicated but also very sweet so I asked her if I can interview her. I would've asked the director first but I decided that once the show is further in or at least until auditions are over, that I should start with the actors themselves. Besides, it would be very nice to see how they try to get their parts for a show during auditions and how they rehearse.

2.  Five questions will be assigned to all seniors to ask.  What additional questions do you plan to ask?  

• How do you personally prepare yourself for an audition? What methods or techniques do you use that help you nail your auditions?
• What about being in musical theatre specifically motivates you to keep on staying in the program?
• Is it difficult to balance out learning dancing, singing, and acting at the same time? How so?
• What show have you done that you personally feel was the most successful? What do you think made it so successful?
• Do you take special care of your body, mainly your vocals, a certain time before the show or all the time? What things do you do?
• What happens if you're an actor with low stamina?