Hello everyone! ^^ My name is Jaya Powell, 2015 Linguistics and Japanese double major, and I just recently go into acting.

My family has told me for a while now that I should go into acting or some kind of performance/storytelling medium, but I never considered it until this past summer. I’ve recently realized that most things I enjoy – writing stories and poems, reading out loud, listening to and playing music, and now acting – are all different aspects of the same thing, and so I’ve come to view myself as a storyteller. Last week was my first audition ever and I am so grateful to be working with such a wonderful cast!

Vanya on 42nd Street was a very interesting film for me to watch. The thing that struck me at first was how differently I had interpreted the play. In my reading of the text, I imagined a lot more yelling and hostility, yet Vanya on 42nd Street conveyed a sense of humor or sorrow through the same passages in which I had read anger and animosity. The character interpretations were similarly different – I had envisioned “my” Sonya as more naive and delicate, where in the film she seemed more aggressive at times. (Admittedly I did not at first like this characterization, but I thoroughly enjoyed watching her by the end of the film.)

I also loved the way the film slowly increased in empathy – as Professors Storer said during class, it gradually transitions from metatheatricality into the world of the play. In the first few acts we watch the actors become their characters, see shots of the set and the audience. It seemed to me almost seminar-like, as if we were watching a speaker give a talk, and were privy to the reactions of the audience (and, in the film, those of the other characters as well). I even noted how the wide camera angle caused me to imagine a scenery around the characters (as if to reconcile the shot of the theatre with the knowledge that the characters are really in a garden). As the play progresses, however, the camera heavily focuses on the characters – we no longer have a sense of metatheatricality; the audience becomes obsolete; the scenery no longer matters. The play becomes very intimate, with the “true” audience heavily focused on the emotions playing out on the faces of the characters. I remember a specific scene in which Yelena begins to cry after Sonya goes to get the doctor. At one point she lets out a particularly heart-wrenching sob, and I flinched upon hearing it; the fact that I had such a visceral reaction to that one instance leads credence to the intimacy and emotional investment that can develop in the audience over the course of the film.

The film was wildly different from what I had imagined, as I suspect it may have been for others as well, but I enjoyed it! I am so excited to work on this play! 🙂