Who Am I?
JACK ELLIS / 2024
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As a performer, I offer myself and open myself up to the audience and my fellow performers. It’s not just “to hold as ‘twere a mirror up to nature,” as Hamlet would say, it is to engage in conversation back and forth. When we perform, we have that mutual understanding that we are being watched on both sides of the connection that is the performance. That is the crux of theatre and how I approach the work. I communicate in dialogue with the script so that the director can dialogue with me; then in performance we translate the script and share it with the audience for their enjoyment and their edification.
In my work, I focus on being a good vessel for energy and meaning. I let the words come through me, I engage in honest dialogue with the character as I read the script and explore their world, so that I can come back to the rehearsal space and finally the stage to create meaningful and true work. I am growing past projecting onto character; I am learning to enable and empower the characters to show themselves through me. I am growing past seeking pain and throwing myself into work for escape; I continue to learn how to authentically engage with the characters I play and share in all their feelings, positive and negative, and to do so safely as the vessel that I am. I discover, I do not create. Everything exists in the space (of the rehearsal room, of the performing stage) and as a theatre maker I can and must discover through dialogue with the past (research), with the present world (experience), and with where we can go with a given text (performance). |
isn't it a citizen's duty, whenever he has a new idea, to communicate it to the public?” |
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Nominations & Awards
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IRENE RYAN ACTING NOMINATIONS
DR. STOCKMANN, AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE / 2024 MEPHISTOPHELES, DOCTOR FAUSTUS / 2023 JAMES BRENT, PERSONAL CALL / 2022 Selected Awards
Theatre Field Award / 2024 Siena Award for Excellence / 2024 Siena College Theatre Department Award / 2023 |
