School of Rock Reaction

     I always look back on shows with nostalgia, because I love individual parts of every one. In Spelling Bee, it was the carefree attitude of my character and the improvisation aspect of the show itself, in The Dead, the way I really had to tap into parts of myself to play Gretta. In School of Rock, I loved the contrast between characters, and the difficulty of playing a character so different from myself. I don't consider myself uptight or hard to work with. Rosalie was all of the above. She was rude,  insensitive, and extremely high strung. Getting into character with her was difficult,  and getting out of character was just as hard.
     Just as with every show I am in, I found myself bringing aspects of my character home with me. I wrote about this after doing The Dead, and I felt it after Spelling Bee and Once on This Island. School of Rock was the same. During the rare times I wasn't at rehearsal, I was much more easily stressed out and high strung. This was obviously in part due to so much rehearsal and school work at once, but also because it was hard to play somebody so intense every day without taking that home with me.
     “Intense” is a really good word for Rosalie. She had no friends, and spent every second of every day working - that is, until she met Dewie. When Rosalie got so caught up in pleasing parents, she lost sight of herself. Dewie helped her find herself again. All of this happens in one, very short scene. The bar scene was my favorite and my biggest challenge, because I had to put a lot of emotion and change into a very short amount of time. The song was also difficult, because it was higher than I am used to at one point and was pretty much only me - something I had not done in a while. (Spelling Bee did have a solo song, but it was funny and not serious). When we talked in class about acting methods, we talked a lot about focusing on moments of change. I was used to doing this in The Dead, but I had a lot more time to make that change. Rosalie goes from up tight to relaxed in about 10 minutes, then back to uptight, then back to relaxed again. This was also her first time making a real friend.
    To combat these difficulties, I spent a lot of time watching videos of the bar scene, both from small productions and the Broadway show. I also watched a lot of interviews with Sierra Boggess, who played Rosalie on Broadway. She was really helpful. One of the most helpful examples of a video of her was when she described Rosalie as striving for perfection, and that she had to learn to be perfectly imperfect. I took this to heart as a character, actor, and even a person. Until the bar scene, I kept the thought of “perfection” in the back of my mind. This allowed me to successfully portray Rosalie.
     I loved playing her, and I loved the way the show turned out. Overall, it was a success!