Yaz takes the Straz...for the last time!

Today was the first day of my last FL State Thespians Festival. As I mentioned a couple weeks back, our large group musical piece, "The Claws that Catch" (we'll call this monster "Claws" for short), won Critic's Choice at our District 13 Thespian Festival, and it also got State Selected, meaning we got to perform at Opening Ceremonies at the State Festival. The Morsani theatre at the Straz Center of Performing Arts seats 2,610 people, and we got to perform there twice! The lights are so bright that you can't even see the audience; all I could really see was a faint view of the first row of the audience and a huge abyss behind them. It's the biggest audience I've ever got to perform for and the most beautiful stage I've ever had the privilege of stepping foot on, and more importantly, actually performing on. I feel incredibly honored that I got to partake in this experience, but even more honored to have dibs so with such an amazing group of people. Having been in our program's large group musical piece for the last three years, I understand the ups and downs of this process more than no other, and I am so glad that I could have experienced the glories and the mishaps with these beautiful peeps. This piece has fueled my artistic capacity just as every piece I get my hands on does, but there was something particular about Claws that really contributed to my overall confidence. 

I've never been a dancer. Tomorrow I might take a workshop called "Acting Through Dance" and I think that title really sums up my dancing quality. I don't know the technique behind a pirouette or the staple stages of ballet positions but I am an actress! Being sort of in charge of this piece, I played around with some cleaning and choreography. I kind of just showed my visions and had my friends Sammi and Amanda help me with actually staging it because I've never really choreographed anything before. Together, our brains and hearts and bodies and souls created this:

Like I said, working on this piece has been absolutely exhilarating. I've learned a lot about choreography, specifically that I can't let a lack of technical dance background stop me from utilizing my imagination and creative energy to make some theatre magic! I can't wait to infuse these recently learned skills into my rendition of "Crazytown"; my hands and head are ready to go to work. :)