Skit/Drama Relflection

              A few months ago, we were asked to create a drama were the main topic was discrimination. My group and I, The Pinkish Purple Panthers, decided to make our drama on discrimination towards the homeless. We specifically chose a beggar on a street light. The writing process was relatively fluid and we ended up with a drama that we all liked. We then performed it for our class and it went great. Everyone liked it and we got a good grade. A while later, we were told that we were going to be presenting/performing our drama on the Annual Student Research and Writing Conference: Student Collaborations and Contributions Across the Disciplines held at out university. At first, I was a little anxious about performing in an amphitheater, but I was able to manage thanks to my previous experience as a musician. The performance went great and it wasn’t as big a crowd as I expected.

(Image from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_improvisational_theatre_companies)

            Writing our drama was a interesting process. We first made an outline of each mayor event going through the drama and how the characters reacted. Some ideas conflicted with others, but we were able to manage them though respectful group discussions. Two of our most innovative ideas were incorporating the poem “Acquainted with the Night” by Robert Frost, and having a character whose role was to portray the thoughts of the other characters as they all froze in scene. We then began writing the actual drama. Since we are a relatively big group and hour schedules conflicted, we decided to write our drama separately and online through Google Docs. It allowed us all to write at the same time, edit and leave comments and suggestions. This was a great idea. We were also able to always have the latest version of the script available, even on our cell phones. After writing the drama, we moved on to making the props. A few days later, we had a successful performance for our class.

               Then, a few weeks later, we were told about our pending performance at the Annual Student Research and Writing Conference on the panel titled “Discrimination: Student Dramatizations and Poetry.” I can’t lie, at first I was a little anxious. I had never performed a play in front of a big crowd. But this is where my experience as a musician kicked in. I remembered that I’ve played in front of big crowds, that things have gone wrong during a presentation and nothing horrible happened, and that you just have to improvise sometimes. That last one is the one that helped me the most. I thought: the worst thing that can happen is that I forget my lines, and I can just improvise, I’ve done it before. As a musician, I’ve had to improvise a lot. It’s not just in parts of a song were you know you’re going to have to improvise a solo. Also, there were other times when people said “the other drummer isn’t going to show up, so you’re going to have to play all his pieces too;” or “hey, tonight we’re going to play this song that you’ve never heard before. Listen to it on my iPod and learn it. We’re on in 30 minutes.” So knowing that I’ve managed though situations before allowed me to lose my anxiety about the presentation. I was completely relaxed and we had another great performance.

(Image from http://www.mjkimpan.com/the-show-must-go-on/)

                Writing our own drama was a very good experience. We were able to work as an efficient team in writing our drama. We came up with innovative ideas and I was able to overcome my anxiety. Through our drama, we delivered a good message about discrimination that was hopefully well received by the two audiences that witnessed our performance.