By Danielle Israde
Courier Staff Reporter
James Logan High School prides itself on having strong performing arts, such as marching band, color guard, forensics, choir and theatre. However, aside from the students taking drama as an elective, the Thespian Club itself consists of no more than thirty members. All performing arts are nerve-racking, but is speaking alone on stage a much larger stepping stone that requires more courage?
Nina, a junior and the Vice President of ITS (International Thespian Society), shares her personal fears while she is acting. ‘‘Messing up my lines definitely. That was in the beginning. But now it’s not giving the best performance that I know that I can have’’.
Other students who haven’t participated in theatre before are interested in the art but hold themselves back from joining and not just because they are worried about forgetting their lines. Lenaya, a freshman, states: ‘‘Students are scared to go up and do what they want without being judged’’.
Brian O’neil, a senior explains that if given the opportunity to act on stage, he would be open to it, but: ‘‘If it’s a large audience, I’d probably be on the edge about doing it’’.
Robert Richardson, a professional actor of twenty-eight years and Logan’s drama instructor is able to provide insight on the most common fear about acting: ‘‘Ultimately it goes back to that fear of another’s opinion of yourself and you’re putting yourself out there for others to have opinions’’.
So how do you deal with those fears? Richardson suggests that : ‘‘If you focus on what you’re supposed to do, a lot of that fear goes away because your brain is involved in focusing on doing something specific’’.
When posed with the question about whether the fear of acting ever goes away, his answer was simple, but thought provoking ‘‘No. If it does that’s when you should retire. Because if the fear isn’t there, what you’re doing doesn’t matter. The reason why that fear is there in the first place is because it matters … there’s worth in what you’re doing’’.
