Some sing for their supper, while students in the beginning acting class at Rainy River Community College perform for their grades.
The final examination for the class Tuesday consisted of students in groups acting out scenes from the Jane Ackermann play “Marcus is Walking: Scenes From The Road”. The performance is considered an exercise for actors.
Jack Gilbertson, professor of speech, theater and English, said the performances allow the students to put together all they have learned in the semester.
"Throughout the semester, students study the 12 guideposts to good acting," said Gilbertson. "In their final examination acting scenes, they put their studies to practical use."
The guideposts include relationship, conflict, humor, opposites, discoveries, place, communication and competition and importance. It also includes game playing and role playing, mystery and conflict, and the moment before.
Gilbertson took notes on the actors as they recited and improvised from the script, complete with props and costumes.
The first group, Breana Black, Cali Olson and Spring Thies, performed a scene in which three college girls are on their way to the video store when they accidentally run over and kill a squirrel. The driver, played by Thies, is overwhelmed with guilt as Olson consoles her. Black could care less and interrupts the two with questions about her report on “Moby Dick”.
Two separate pairs of actors, Emily Shoquist and Jordan Pearson, and Matthew Long and Sandra Wayash, performed the same scene as a nervous professor and wife that argue as they get lost on the way to a potluck put on by new college department faculty.
Matt Salo and David Hielscher were two opposites on a long desert ride together. Hielscher is mortified by Salo, who complains when he can’t find something to drink after waking up from a beer-induced nap.
The three-credit class is for people not majoring in the topic and fulfills a fine arts requirement. Gilbertson said the class offers creativity and imagination in creating characters with relationships that act well with one another.
"It’s a beginning acting class and the basic thing is self confidence," he said. "The idea of being able to get up on stage and present themselves with confidence and authority."
The students also have a monologue that will help them with presentation, and Gilbertson said the class covers critical thinking and basic verbal and non-verbal communication skills that apply to any other discipline or occupation.
