Eric Valenti Capstone

For my capstone, I wrote and directed my own play. I wanted to perform my own play because I wanted to demonstrate my own vision and ideas, rather than take another play and attempt to replicate someone else’s idea in my own style.

Over the winter break, I just let myself write. Before I knew it, what started as one scene about a boy getting dressed turned into a story about events that took place in my life with jokes brought in that highlighted this story of a boy wanting to tell his mother the truth.  After a hefty amount of edits from close friends and mentors, I was finally ready to get people to audition.

With just enough people coming to auditions and enough stage crew members, I had put together a team. Every Monday and Thursday after advisory, we would practice simple acting techniques and scenes from the play for about two hours. This would go on for two months. It was more challenging than I expected to get people to simply walk and talk on stage. It wasn’t until the final practice, the day before the play, that I had realized how far we had come as a group and how much work we had put in.

On March 22, we performed “A Year to Remember” during X-band lunch only expecting twenty audience members and actually had triple the expected amount. I left the drama studio with a handful of flowers and this warm feeling that took over my entire body. My capstone allowed me to display a story that I believe SLA will never forget and that I can be proud of.

Link to bibliography:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bDNL68hIhcunZMIIHU-z9vFFQIS7bk2Nczs73mrViUY/edit