Performing: Realizing artistic ideas and work through interpretation and presentation

“Without wonder and insight, acting is just a business. With it, it becomes creation.”

Bette Davis

In this section, I offer examples of my skills and creative capacities as an actor — examples that articulate my sense of wonder and insight. I often remark that as an artist I am interested in creating works at the intersection of art, education, community, and activism. I provide three performance examples that I believe achieved that mission in various ways. The first is a masked-street performance I created for the Fiestas de la Calle San Sebastián in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in January of 2020. The second is an original devised play that I co-created and performed in as the culminating project at the SITI Company’s Graduate Theatre Conservatory. The third is a site-specific audio drama that I performed in, which ran in the 2015 New York Fringe Festival.

FIESTAS DE LA CALLE SAN SEBASTIÁN

This example demonstrates my ability to select, analyze, and interpret artistic work for presentation as articulated by Colletti & Yolen (2017) in section Pr 4. of the New York State Learning Standards for the Arts.

In January of 2020, I traveled to San Juan, Puerto Rico, to study culturally responsive, community centered, political theatre through the course "Drama in Education II," led by Dr. Amy Cordileone. In addition to training in physical theatre and Theatre of the Oppressed, I was able to study mask-making and puppetry with Deborah Hunt of AgitArte and the Papel Machete theater collective. My work with Deborah centered on the creation of both solo and group mask performances, which culminated in a public street performance at El Bastión during the holiday festival.

The following samples are offered as evidence of this work:

THIS IS HOW I DON’T KNOW HOW TO DANCE

By the SITI Conservatory

This example demonstrates my ability to develop and refine artistic techniques and work for presentation as articulated by Colletti & Yolen (2017) in section Pr 5. of the New York State Learning Standards for the Arts.

In the fall of 2013, I became a member of the SITI Company’s inaugural Graduate Theatre Conservatory focusing on physical and devised theatre. My cohort was comprised of ten Americans and ten international students. Cohort members trained in the Suzuki method of actor training and the Viewpoints for three hours a day, five days a week with members of the company. The remaining portion of our days was filled with classes on speaking, movement, scene study, dramaturgy, playwriting, composition (a method of devising), and guest lectures from high-profile artists. Evenings and weekends were spent working in small groups to devise short, original theatrical pieces which we premiered for an audience each Tuesday. We worked pretty much 24/7. Our culminating project was an original, full-length play about twenty people trapped in Grand Central Terminal at the end of the world, which we devised between the twenty of us. Over the course of the year, I developed and refined my practice as a physical theatre practitioner, gained a firm understanding of devising while developing and refining my own practice, and came into my own as a theatre maker with an aesthetic and a unique point of view.

The following samples are offered as evidence of this work:

THE FERRY PLAY

By Jessie Bear

This example demonstrates my ability to convey meaning through the presentation of artistic work as articulated by Colletti & Yolen (2017) in section Pr 6. of the New York State Learning Standards for the Arts.

In the fall of 2014, I was cast alongside Broadway veteran Tom Nellis (Indecent) in This Is Not A Theatre Company’s audio production of The Ferry Play, which is a site-specific smartphone play, or “podplay,” set on the Staten Island Ferry.

The company, under the direction of Erin Mee, often works in a collaborative process to create “site-based, interactive, multi-sensory, participatory dance-theatre that is smelled, touched, and tasted as well as heard.” This production, while not live, was no different. We worked collaboratively in a new play development process giving feedback to the playwright while also creating scratch recordings. We would listen to these recordings on our phones on our own time as we rode the ferry back and forth from Staten Island testing out the logistics of the play as it fit with the behaviors and habits of the ferry and its riders.

The play premiered in the 2015 New York Fringe Festival with great fanfare.

The following samples are offered as evidence of this work: