Reflection of Final Project

In my final project, I sang Endless Night from the Broadway production The Lion King.  This final project completed my goal for the semester which was to gain confidence in myself and to try new things. I had never done a project where I sang a solo song from a musical just because I had never had the confidence. My goal for this class was to find a way to do something I had never done before in terms of acting and performing. I was glad I chose this project because in honesty, I don't think my goals for this class would have been met and I would have felt like that I didn't do justice to the class because the whole reason I took this class was to make sure that I was confident in something I wasn't confident before. This class as a whole taught me that if you don't step out of your comfort zone as an actor then there will always be something missing from your performances and I'm glad that I did this as my final project. My first project right off the bat was a monologue which I had never done before which was the first step in meeting my goal. The whole semester was surrounded around attempting to do new, quirky things that I had never done, I did a monologue, I did a comedic dialogue and I did a solo song, all of which I had never done before. When Mrs. Guarino suggested that I do a song from a musical, I got nervous originally because I had never done anything like that. I had never had a solo song in a musical and had never had to be by myself singing a song anywhere. Not only this, I've never had to choreograph or move while I was singing by myself so this was lining up to be very interesting final. The hardest part was finding a song that fit my range and that I could find a way to choreograph or improvise movements to. After about 3 days of searching and agonizing over what to do and how to do it, I decided that I was going to 'Endless Night' from Lion King. I chose this song because I felt like that I had such an emotional connection to the movie that it was the perfect scene to me and that if there was going to be a song that I was confident singing it was going to be that one, only because of it's somber and desperate nature and I felt like that I could really bring that to life in this song. The most difficult part of this project was figuring out the timing. The timing in this song was very strange because it is not a style of music that I'm used to singing so it made it an especially tough nut to crack. I learned the words and the notes in maybe 3 days just from listening to it over and over. In the end, I was able to do a successful run of the song where I demonstrated my skills as an actor and a singer and my skills to improvise on the spot. I feel like this project has been my best yet and I am excited to see where this class takes me next semester.