We began our audition process the first weekend that the fall semester began. We do two main stage productions a year in hopes of being cast in one. The cast list went up on Saturday and we started rehearsals Monday night. We had an immaculate crew that designed, built and painted the set themselves. Same goes for costumes, everything we wore had a lot of thought, design and tailoring behind it. Our make-up team gave us age with their skillful hands and our publicity team put audience members in their seat. Not to mention all the people involved with sound, lights, props, carpenter and dressers. The show literally would have been nothing without the tech team and their hard work!
Rehearsals typically involved starting vocal and physical warm-ups at 6:30, rehearsing act by act or running the entire show and leaving after we get notes from the director around 10:30.
Because August: Osage County takes place in Oklahoma, the show called for a slight country accent. Which wasn’t hard to achieve, being born and raised in Texas. The difficult part was having a mid-western accent while still being completely understood by an audience member on the other side of the theatre. Every day we spent time on our enunciation and diction. This show has been named one of the greatest pieces of American theatre since “Angels in America”, so I really wanted to communicate the story and message perfectly to the audience.
Another task to tackle was playing age. We are a group of college students in the age range 18-26, but we needed to make people believe that we were anywhere from 37-65 years old. We spent a lot of time watching family members or professors that fit the age, and asked ourselves- How do they walk? How do they sit? How do they hold their hands? How does their voice sound? After much observation help from our director, we got the physicality and deepness of the voice down pretty well.
Next came the most crucial part of our work, character development. As theatre majors, we take several classes and study several textbooks over what the founding fathers of acting tell us works best. Every actor has a different approach, but the basis of acting lies in empathizing with the character your playing. Defined relationships are crucial in acting, you must know what your character wants from the person they are talking to and how they communicate with each character differently based on that relationship. I would have my character, Ivy, review each character and write down about what she thought of them, I wrote down old experiences Ivy had. It was as if I was keeping a diary of someone else’s life. It really helped me on stage when I could see a book, or a dent in a chair and it would take Ivy back to an old memory, something an audience member would never notice, but helped me get into the character.
Our director Don Luna, who also serves as professor and Chairman of the Department of Theatre & Dance here at TAMUCC, says he chose the play the springtime before. Immediately, he decided, began an intensive script analysis of the play and found new discoveries in the text up until opening night. Don was fantastic to work with, aside from just blocking the show he really helped us dive into the people in the show and relate to them in ways we thought we couldn’t. Apart from just being a director, he served as a mentor and caretaker for us during the rehearsal process (seriously, the amount of pizza and donuts he bought for us in unreal). Don made us feel not just like a stage family, but a real family, too. There were times he was hard on us, but we needed it. We all needed to be challenged as actors and as human beings. His harshness and his generosity showed me how much he truly loves his job and his students.
There is an old saying in the theatre that goes; “I can’t. I have rehearsal.” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said that since I first started theatre in 7th grade. But there is something about walking into the dressing room after a long day of classes, tired and groggy, a cup of coffee from Stripes in your hand, and seeing your friends smiling and ready to face another audience. After the makeup is applied, we go onstage and warm up together, then we get into costume and embody the character we have been assigned to portray. 15 minutes before the curtain goes up, we do this thing called magic circle– I can’t tell you too much, but we hold hands and pump each other up, say a traditional little chant, then the students who choose to send up a quick prayer to bless the performance. After all of that as soon as we hear the curtain speech end and the audience applaud in anticipation of what they’re about to see, we still get butterflies.
If I hadn’t chose to do theatre in college, I’d probably have a lot more fun. But I wouldn’t be happy.
After the final show, we spent a few hours putting all the props and costumes back where they go as well as dismantling the set. The stage is bare now and I started rehearsals for my next show the day after we closed. Oh, life. 
Sterling's Island Life 